This is just how people are, and always have been. We use stories as shorthand for various concepts, or to tie current events to either actual events in the past or mythic events from our cultural mythology. Afaik it's a human constant across all cultures, whether it's Americans looking at Marvel comics or Soviet looking at Alexander Nevsky. Perisan/Iranians name everything after Rostam, India has like five different weapon systems named after Arjuna, England goes on and on about St. George and King Arthur, and other cultures all have culture heroes and folk heroes.

America is a weird country bc it's culture is a mishmash of other cultures smothered in the anti-culture of neoliberalism. Comics and games are prominent forms of storytelling in America and their wide appeal and relatively long period of popularity gives modern Americans a vocabulary they can use to communicate complex ideas to each other with references to these stories - superman and captain america do the right thing, peter parker says power needs to be used repsonsibly, etc etc. Everyone knows the stories, at least in a very basic form, so they can be used to convey ideas to most Americans.

Okay i'm turning my anthro training off now.