France

France, officially the French Republic, is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe, with several overseas regions and territories.

Asgardian Warrior
A single warrior from the Asgardian Berserker Army decided to stay behind on Earth when the rest of the army returned to Asgard.

The warrior spent years on Earth unnoticed, until, in 1546, he was seduced by a French girl who loved stories, so he told her the own story of his life as the story of a peaceful Asgardian warrior who stayed.

She told the story to his brother, a priest, who used it as the basis for writing the myth of the Asgardian Warrior and the Berserker Army.

Capture of Paris
Paris was captured by the German Armed Forces during World War II. This event became an object of mockery among the Allied troops, often asking how many Frenchmen would take to defend Paris, answering that none knew, as they never tried.

French Resistance
Jacques Dernier become a member of the. Together with his comrades, he resisted the Nazi occupiers in Marseille during World War II, at least until he was made a prisoner of war and taken to the Austrian HYDRA Weapons Facility.

HYDRA Desertion
In 1943, Johann Schmidt and his HYDRA division went rogue, separating themselves from the Nazi regime and intended to nuke the capitals of all countries that would resist his conquest, including Paris.

HYDRA Facilities
Steve Rogers witnessed a map showing the location of HYDRA facilities in Europe while liberating the prisoners in the Austrian HYDRA Weapons Facility. For that he was tasked to destroy all those facilities with a team while MI6 focused on locating the central HYDRA Headquarters.

Rogers enlisted the help of Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, Jim Morita, James Montgomery Falsworth and Jacques Dernier, and also convinced his childhood friend Bucky Barnes to help him.

Known as the Howling Commandos, Captain America and his unit travelled to France, where HYDRA built a factory around forty miles west of the after France was occupied by the German forces.

In December, 1943, Rogers and his men stormed the facility, breaking through the door and opening fire to the HYDRA soldiers inside.

Hunt of Bruce Banner
Paris was one of the potential locations of Bruce Banner after his track was lost following an incident in the jungles of South America. General Thaddeus Ross, responsible of the hunt of Banner, figured that he could be anywhere in the world, even in Paris painting landscapes.

Imprisonment of Ivan Vanko
Ivan Vanko was arrested and transported to a prison in France for his crimes during the Grand Prix de Monaco in Monte Carlo, particularly the murder attempt of Tony Stark.

Stark visited Vanko in prison, and Detective Lemieux informed Stark that the police was unable to verify Vanko's identity based on his fingerprints, and he had not said a word since he arrived. Meeting face to face, Stark praised his attempt at duplicating the Arc Reactor technology, pointing some of its flaws, but he could have sold it in the black market to such countries as North Korea, Iran, or China.

Vanko replied that Stark belongs to a family of thieves and assassins, and that while trying to rewrite his own history, Stark forget all the lives his family had destroyed, and revealed that his design came from Anton Vanko, his father. Vanko seemingly accomplished one of his goals, to prove that Stark was not invulnerable nor unique.

Finally, Vanko taunted Stark with the knowledge of the effect of having a Palladium core in the Arc Reactor embedded in the chest had, and it would be a painful death.

Few hours later, Vanko was provided with a body double and an explosive to escape and fake his death in the prison, in an event orchestrated by Justin Hammer.

Vanko was transported to an hangar where he personally met Hammer, to discuss the terms of a mutually beneficial collaboration to destroy Tony Stark and his legacy, with Vanko providing his knowledge, and Hammer providing his resources.

Hammer Industries Technology
A former employee of Justin Hammer boarded Yuri Klementiev's yacht in Cannes, carrying a briefcase containing a part of a bootleg Starktech from Hammer Industries, the targeting software for Hammer's version of the Jericho missile.

General Starodoub, one of Klementiev's associates, sent the man handcuffed to the briefcase to the lower decks of the yacht before travelling to the city of Sochi in Russia.

Vanchat
In 2013, a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents stationed at Paris were tasked with the retrieval a Chitauri Neural Link that had come into the possesion of the international criminal Vanchat following the Battle of New York.

Agent Grant Ward infiltrated a restaurant disguised as a waiter in order to scan and replicate a set of fingerprints. Despite the Rising Tide published the location of the item, Ward entered into Vanchat's safe house and used the fingerprints to access a hidden safe behind a fireplace, retrieving the item.

Ward had to fight two guards, but was able to defeat them and access the rooftop, where he was extracted via helicopter.

Trivia

 * When Dum Dum Dugan asked Howard Stark if he invented the bikini, Stark informed him that it was a French invention.