It’s Top Gun: Maverick Week here at For The Win, where we’ve taken to the skies for five days of content to celebrate the premiere of the sequel to 1986’s iconic ode to naval aviation. Strap in for a wild ride (no spoilers!).
If someone told you their favorite movie was an action flick about Pete Mitchell, Tom Kazansky and Nick Bradshaw, it might take you a minute to figure out what they’re talking about. Now imagine they said an action flick about Maverick, Iceman and Goose. Whole new story.
Behold, the power of the call sign.
Tom Cruise’s 1986 mega-hit Top Gun first introduced us to Maverick et al. and introduced (a lot of) us to the notion of a call sign and its place in military aviation. A call sign is essentially a nickname, but its origins stem all the way back to the early days of flying as pilots needed ways to both distinguish their aircraft and speak concisely over the radio.
Call signs are more common in jet or attack squadrons like those portrayed in Top Gun. Much like in the fleet, the actors in Maverick were assigned call signs rather than choosing their own. Each actor was given the opportunity to pitch a new name for their characters, but none of them ended up taking it.
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“All of our call signs were scripted,” said actor Jay Ellis, a.k.a. Payback. “But Joe Kosinski (the director) was like, ‘Hey, if you have pitches for call signs, let me know.'”
Ellis said they all fell in love with their given names. “I remember just going, ‘I love Payback! There’s nothing better. I’m coming for payback!'”
“We all earned them, too,” said Monica Barbaro, who plays Phoenix. “I remember [Ellis] convinced [co-star Lewis Pullman] to put his phone on the bar, and then he had to buy everyone in the bar a round of drinks. We were all like, ‘you better pay him back.'”
Miles Teller, the actor who portrays Rooster, was one of the few — if not the only one — that got to choose his own call sign. Playing Goose’s son meant the pressure was on to find the right one.
“Rooster did just kind of come to me,” Teller said. “I remember meeting with Joe Kosinski, our director, and [producer Jerry] Bruckheimer, and they went through thousands of call signs.”
Rooster was really the only bird-related call sign they considered.
Each cast member was partial to their own call sign, though that isn’t always the case in the fleet.
“You can get a call sign for almost anything, and usually it’s a work in progress,” said Marine Corps F/A-18 Weapon Systems Officer David “Uncle Rico” Hall. “Whether it’s because they did something stupid, or whether you just think of one that sounds funny because of their name, or just how they act.”
The surest way to make sure you’re not stuck with a bad call sign is to let your squadron know you hate it.
Hall is an expert in assigning call signs thanks to his time with VMFA(AW)-225 in Miramar, California and VMFA(AW)-242 Iwakuni, Japan. For him, the call sign is more than just a time-honored aviation tradition; it also serves to breakdown rank barriers in the cockpit.
“I could be flying with the general, and if he does something stupid, then I need to be able to say, ‘Hey, Smiley, you’re doing something stupid,'” Hall said. “It just kind of levels the playing field, and that’s super important — tactically and safety-wise — at least in aviation.”
You can see Maverick, Rooster, Payback and more in Top Gun: Maverick, which opens in theaters worldwide May 27.
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