A detail I don't see many people talk about is the little badges featured on the two Jaeger ground transports we see in the film. I believe these transports have some interesting implications to who was stationed in a Shatterdome and the military structure of the PPDC. Everything here is a theory but I think its a compelling one.
The first crawler we see is the one carrying Gipsy Danger in the start of the film (images 2-4).
To anyone familiar with Romeo Blue the second image might stand out to them since both the skull and crossed swords and the blue/red field with the yellow lighting are symbols featured prominently on the Jaeger (shown in image 3).
As for reasons I'll explain later I believe these crawlers show symbols related to Jaegers they've transported before*.
But Romeo Blue was stationed in the Los Angeles Shatterdome for all of its career, right?
Yes, but theirs actually a window of time where Romeo Blue would've been stationed in Anchorage. The Los Angeles Shatterdome wasn't built until July 11th, 2017. The Anchorage Shatterdome was the first North American Shatterdome and it was built in November 23, 2016.
While most Jaegers weren't stationed in their home country, I don't think its a stretch to assume that Romeo Blue could've been stationed in the Anchorage Shatterdome for a few months between 2016-2017.
Also depending on the source the Anchorage Shatterdome is located on Kodiak Island, where all the Mark-1's were built. This has been retconned to it always being Anchorage, but Mark-1's lead nicely into my next point.
The 4th image shows to more badges. One "belongs" to Gipsy Danger. More on this later. But the green clover design verifiably belongs to Horizon Brave. This is proven by Image 5 and the symbol can be seen on the Jaeger in the movie.
If we go by the previous logic that implies Horizon Brave was stationed in Anchorage once. This is a little weird since the Hong Kong Shatterdome was opened almost exactly a year before the Anchorage Shatterdome. It could be a left over of the Anchorage Shatterdome being apart of the Mark-1 factory on Kodiak Island, or it could mean Horizon Brave was stationed in Anchorage for some reason.
Now onto the second transport. We see this one carrying Cherno Alpha in Hong Kong. Images 6-9.
Two symbols immediately recognizable are Crimson Typhoon's logo (Its red here but its also the golden symbol seen on the Jaegers left shoulder armor. The last image shows a clearer version of the logo).
The other immediately recognizable logo is Striker Eureka's. Its the blueish-orange icon on the right. The symbol is actually Max biting down on a missile.
However theirs a secret third icon in the far right of the image. A zoomed in screenshot is on image 7.
I believe this is Tacit Ronin's icon, or one related to the Jaeger. Looking at the in movie image it appears to be a red circle with a red triangle inside of it. Now look at image 8. The same logo is on the right thigh of Tacit Ronin. This may not be Tacit Ronin's icon, but I am sure this symbol is related to the Jaeger.
Going by our logic established earlier this implies Tacit Ronin was stationed in Hong Kong for a time, which again lines up with the lore. Tacit Ronin was stationed in the Nagasaki Shatterdome and the Tokyo Shatterdome. Both of these were built months after the Hong Kong Shatterdome was built, meaning for a time Tacit Ronin could've been stationed in Hong Kong and ridden this exact crawler in the film.
Image 9 is of the other side of the Hong Kong crawler.
On it we can see a repeat logo for Striker and Typhoon. The two new badges are Cherno Alpha's logo (top left), and one we haven't seen before. Its similar to the one on Romeo Blue, but image 10 shows a clearer version and its 100% not the one on Romeo Blue.
This leads me to some theories about the PPDC's structure and a Jaeger's role in the military
Look at images 10-14. Those clearly aren't Jaeger logos, but they are on Jaeger crawlers and even on the Jaegers themselves.
Remember how I mentioned that badge that "belonged" to Gipsy Danger. Look at Image 11, then back at Image 4. Those are the same badge. Now look at Image 12. On Gipsy's outer neck/shoulder armor is the same logo (its mirrored in the image but its clearly the same logo, its also on the Infinity Studio figure, an image of it will be in the comments).
The badge on Gipsy says "Pacific 1st Defense" and the one on the HK Crawler says "Jäger Core 1." The few others that we know exist, but I haven't been able to find in the film, say "Ocean Tactics" and "JA-232."
I believe these could be military patches. They resemble military (specifically United States) patches in look and feel, and would make sense being on a Jaeger.
If that's the case this does simply that either A) The PPDC is a much more complected structured military than we initially thought, with "cores" of Jaegers or specific "defense" groups. Or B) Jaegers could be an honorary part of their home country's military.
I personally lean towards the former rather then the latter. Either way Gipsy was likely part of the Pacific 1st Defense alongside an unknown number of Jaegers.
Now what does this mean. I have no clue. I highly doubt the people working on the movie put much thought into what each little badge or icon truly meant, but its fun to theorize.
Either way I thought these findings were interesting. They add to the silent worldbuilding on the movie which implied a much larger universe than the one we got (Not retconned by Uprising as some think, this smaller universe is OG PacRim creators own doing).
These theories are actually the first theories I came up with years ago, but I've never posted about them until now. Tell me what you guys think of them. Do they make sense or have I missed something?
(Fun Fact: these Crawler Transports are similar in size and design to the ones NASA uses to transport rockets. Its fun to headcanon that these crawlers were taken from NASA and repurposed by the PPDC to be Jaeger transports)
*Note: I feel I didn't explain this as well as I wished. I believe these crawlers carry the symbols of the Jaegers they carried due to how varied they are. For example the one carrying Cherno has symbols related to Cherno, Typhoon, Striker, and Tacit Ronin. All 4 of these Jaegers were predominately stationed in 4 separate Shatterdomes. But each Jaeger has a period in their history where it's plausible (or all but confirmed) that they could've been stationed in the HK Dome. We also know that Jaegers get moved around from dome to dome. Gipsy was originally stationed in Lima before being moved to Anchorage and Echo Saber was in Tokyo before being moved to Sydney. So its not impossible for all of them to have been in Hong Kong.