13 Surprising Facts You Didn’t Know About Iron Man 3

Tony Stark died in Avengers: End Game but his presence is still felt in the Marvel Cinematic Universe even today. Iron Man 3, Shane Black’s introduction into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, had a high bar to meet. It’s the first movie to come after the genre-changing Avengers and the final one to use the Iron Man moniker. Black and Robert Downey, Jr. strongly drew inspiration from the comic book source material to develop Tony Stark’s world in this. 

This month marks the ten-year anniversary of the movie’s release. So we’ve compiled the best comic book, Marvel Cinematic Universe, and real-world allusions we could discover for this list to help you comprehend the history of this film. Have we missed any? Yes, we did, so please post it in the comments when you do!

1. Anthony Mackie Almost Played The Mandarin

Anthony Mackie had a reading for the role of The Mandarin but didn’t make the cut. He later appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Sam Wilson, also known as Falcon.

Ben Kingsley was ultimately cast in that part, but his screen test led to a lunch meeting with Nate Moore and Joe Russo, two of the company’s creative brokers, to discuss appearing in Winter Soldier. “He has charisma, but he also has the ability to convey integrity in a way that very few actors can,” Russo said. “And there’s a level of trust between him and the audience.”

2. An Extended Version Of The Film Was Edited For Chinese Audiences

In 2013 Marvel Studios announced Iron Man 3 would be a joint production with the Chinese company DMG Entertainment. Financial incentives were the driving force behind this strategy because it would have made Iron Man 3’s entry into the Chinese box office easier. The government imposes a quota to limit the number of Hollywood movies released annually. Disney pulled back on the co-production plan when they realized some creative authority would have been given to the Chinese government. As a result, Disney abandoned the idea. But they did create a cut of the film for the Asian market.

Of the scenes added was a commercial for the Chinese milk drink “Gu Li Duo” and a scene with the doctor enjoying the government-approved drink. Plus, the incredibly popular actress Fan Bingbing plays the unnamed assistant to heart surgeon Dr. Wu (Wang Xueqi), who works on Tony’s heart. They added more screen time with her talking and walking down hallways. Mostly pointless moments.

While the scenes were supposed to bring positive reactions from the Chinese they were criticized on social media and in blogs about the movie. Even the Chinese newspaper the People’s Daily pronounced it “pointless”.

3. All the Armor Had Nicknames

Tony Stark invented almost 40 additional pieces of armor between The Avengers and Iron Man 3. In Avengers, he wore Mark VII armor; in Iron Man 3, he wears Mark XLVII armor. In the movie, Tony Stark obsessively makes dozens of suits of armor. 

In the end, all 42 suits had names created by Shane Black and Guy Pearce. Doozer, Pavarotti, The Godfather, Fatty, Munchkin (a two-foot-tall radio-controlled suit that made coffee), The Suit with No Name (which Pearce calls “an intriguing, mean-looking suit whose purpose Tony refuses to divulge”), Mary Kate and Ashley (which would crush people between them), and B*stard (which had enormous razors for hands) were some of the stranger ones.

Thanks to the promotional material several other suits are named.

• Mark 15: Stealth Suit “Sneaky”
• Mark 16: Black Stealth Suit
• Mark 17: Artillery Level RT Suit “Heartbreaker”
• Mark 30: Silver Centurian Upgrade “Blue Steel”
• Mark 33: Enhanced Energy Suit “Silver Centurion”
• Mark 35: Disaster Rescue Suit “Red Snapper”
• Mark 36: Deep Sea Suit “Hammerhead”
• Mark 38: Heavy Lifting Suit “Igor”
• Mark 39: Sub Orbital Suit “Gemini”
• Mark 40: Hyper Velocity Suit “Shotgun”
• Mark 41: Skeleton suit “Bones”
• Mark 40: Heavy Construction Suit “Striker/Thumper”
• Mark 42: Autonomous Prehensile Propulsion Suit Prototype “Extremis” or the “Prodigal Son”

Speaking of the Mark 42. It created a challenge for the VFX team.

4. Most of the Film’s Visual Effects Team Worked on One Suit

In total, 17 visual effects teams from across the world contributed to the creation of Iron Man 3, although visual effects supervisor Guy Williams’ complicated third-act fight was developed by Weta Digital. Williams is familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe because he was The Avengers‘ visual effects manager, for which he received an Oscar nomination. One suit got special attention though.

“[Shane] wanted to do something to push the envelope further and further,” says the film’s visual effects supervisor Chris Townsend. “We saw the last time, in The Avengers, the suit flying down and landing on him, so we wanted to make it a little more elegant than that.” According to Townsend,  the Mark 42 employed at least half of the film’s 1,500 visual effects artists. 

A challenge arose right away. The hard part is the armor broke into multiple small parts. but they wanted each piece to look like it was a part of Iron Man’s armor. It was difficult to find a balance between the suit’s distinctive shape and the requirement to make it appear more mechanical and contemporary. In addition, the suit would need extra effort in creating the individual components because they had to be separated on screen in various sequences.

In April 2012, Munich-based Trixter, a visual effects studio, seized control of more than 200 pictures that depicted the Mark 42 linking and dissolving in order to figure out the motion of the various components. However, the business had less than eight weeks to create an initial concept since they had to reveal a first look at the suit by the start of Comic-Con.

Trixter visual effects supervisor Alessandro Cioffi explains, “We had to split the design and we split the suit. Although it was crazy, it was also incredibly exciting. We were actually exhausted after Comic-Con because it seemed like a time crunch.”

Special effects were created for an x-rated purpose.

5. Stark Bunny was Censored

When the very first Iron Man 3 trailer was released many noticed a giant pink, stuffed bunny. Fans started calling it “Stark Bunny”. Unfortunately, the extra attention led to more questions. To make the enormous plush bunny that Tony gives Pepper clearly resemble paws, the production team had to use CGI.

Early test screening participants thought the paws looked like boobs.

6. The U.S. President Was Named After a Comic Cook Writer

In the movie, the 45th President of the United States is named Matthew Ellis (William Sadler). Ellis was abducted and almost killed by Aldrich Killian as he vowed to end the attacks from the so-called Mandarin. However, Ellis was saved by Iron Man and Iron Patriot, allowing him to remain as President.

The surname of Matthew Ellis is a nod to Warren Ellis, the creator of the Extremis comic book series, which served as a major inspiration for the film.

7. Meeting Yinsen Again

In the opening scene of the movie, which is set in 1999, Tony runs across Ho Yinsen (Shaun Toub), the man who helped save his life in the Afghan cave. The tragic doctor made a reference to an earlier encounter in the first Iron Man movie. He tells Stark they had met “in a technical conference in Bern [Switzerland]”. When Stark says he doesn’t remember him the doctor laughs”If I had been that drunk, I wouldn’t have been able to stand, let alone give a lecture on integrated circuits”. So the threequel sees his character come full circle.

Also, take note of Tony’s nametag, which reads, “You know who I am”. This is currently the Twitter description of Robert Downey, Jr.

8. The Mandarin is Not Chinese Because of Racism

Fans of the comics know the comic book Mandarin When the development of the film began Shane Black refused to use The Mandarin because of the ethnic stereotypes around the character. But the production came up with a way to use the character without the Mandarin’s racial baggage.

According to producer Kevin Feige, the Mandarin is portrayed with a murky background: “It’s less about his specific ethnicity than the analogy of various cultures and their iconography that he perverts for his own end. We’re not saying he’s Chinese, we’re saying he draws a cloak around him of Chinese symbols and dragons because it represents his obsession with Sun Tzu and various ancient arts of warfare that he has studied.”

In the short film “Hail to the King” the “real” Mandarin reaches out to Slattery during his time in prison. In the 2017 movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Tony Leung Chiu-wai played Xu Shang-Chi / Shaun the true Mandarin.

9. Marvel Made Fake End Credits

It’s safe to say that Marvel Studios realized they had us all eating out of their hands by the time Iron Man 3 came around. With The Avengers, they produced the highest-grossing superhero film ever, and they turned B-List comic book characters into A-List movie stars.

Starting in Iron Man (2008) audiences were rewarded for sitting through the credits with a post-credit scene. The Iron Man Three movie includes one too. But only eagle-eyed viewers would have noticed something else. During the almost ten-minute credit scroll, the filmmakers included visual gags. In one moment the credits list “Gwyneth Waltrow” as a visual effects team member. 

10. Both Ben Kingsley and Robert Downey Jr. Have a Director Connection

Both Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark) and Sir Ben Kingsley (The Mandarin) portrayed the lead roles in biopics directed by Sir Richard Attenborough: Downey portrayed Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin (1992), and Kingsley portrayed Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Gandhi (1982).

On their first day of working together, Robert Downey Jr. and Sir Ben Kingsley took a photo and sent it to the director and their buddy Sir Richard Attenborough.

11. There Was Almost a Pepper Potts Sex Tape

According to a 2013 interview with the writers Shane Black and Drew Pearce, in the second draft of the script Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) had an affair with Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce).

Aldrich even taped a sex tape of the two of them. To make Pepper look bad, Aldrich later made the tape public.

12. The Mandarin Talked Like One of the Beatles

Ben Kinglsey based some of his mannerisms on Baptist preachers, but he also used an old friend. The voice of Trevor Slattery was partially inspired by Britsh Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. Kingsley and Starr were good friends. Before he studied to be an actor the drummer encouraged him to become a rock star.

13. Captain America Tattoo

Trevor Slattery has a tattoo of Captain America’s red-white-and-blue shield on the back of his neck. In a subversive twist, there’s an anarchy symbol in the middle of it.

Iron Man 3 director Shane Black explained that Trevor’s tattoo was a component of the fake Mandarin design that the character’s puppet master and the movie’s main antagonist, Advanced Idea Mechanics’ vengeful founder Aldrich Killian, and his employees, came up with during a podcast interview with Empire Magazine in 2013.

When Tony Stark finds Trevor in Iron Man 3, he alludes to the anti-American undertone of his Mandarin attire by saying that Killian had him undergo plastic surgery to make him appear more like a stereotypical terrorist in the style of Osama bin Laden. In the same interview with Empire, Drew Pearce, who co-authored Iron Man 3 and also wrote and directed “All Hail the King,” said that Trevor’s tattoo was an extension of this concept.

“It was that brilliant kind of mash-up vibe of, ‘How would a think tank create a terrorist?'” Pearce said. “And the way that they would do it in their own wanky way is to put together a mood board of all of the symbols of modern Western power. And I think post The Battle Of New York, Cap’s shield would be one of them.”

From CGI bunnies to Ringo Starr the movie has tons of amazing things to see. So the next time you watch the movie look for these and other fun little facts about Iron Man Three.

What did you notice in the movie? Is there anything we missed?