Beware the Nice Ones: He's sweet, innocent, and oblivious... and he will snap hard if you mess with his friends. Nor will he take kindly to being manipulated.
Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Don't say anything bad about Howard or imply he did anything less than perfect in front of Tony.
Not So Different: He and Gene both have missing murdered parents, a lot of responsibilities, the same tendency to walk the line between hero and villain, and have a secret identity.
He also has this with Black Panther for pretty much the same reasons, Rhodey even says that T'Challa isTony. Rhodey also points out the similarity between Tony and Dr. Doom (he seems to like doing this) so Gene and Doom are like each other and Tony/T'Challa... they should start a support group.
Disappeared Dad: States in one episode that his dad is in the Navy, and he's stationed oversees. Turns out they're extending his tour of duty, so we probably won't see him for a little while longer, if at all.
Top Heavy Guy: The War Machine armor, with its vast and primarily shoulder-mounted armament.
What the Hell, Hero?: Calls Tony out on his actions repeatedly, going so far as to tell Tony he's barely any better than the villains he's fighting in Seeing Red.
Beware the Nice Ones: She mentions offhand to Gene that she got a guy deported for espionage. When the armor designs are stolen and sold to Stane and Hammer, Pepper suggests Tony steal them back or trash their companies trying amidst various angry growls.
Compressed Vice: Has issues with mutants, which is a little strange considering how nice she was to the Hulk. Backpedals by the end of the episode when she says she only dislikes "evil mutants."
Faux Action Girl: As much as she wants to be a member of SHIELD, she has a long way to go, especially compared to Whitney.
In the ultimate irony of ironies, Pepper ends up with armor of her own, finally allowing her to be a legitimate fighter...yet Whitney, in a twisted way, is the one who ends up as "a member of SHIELD".
Invisibility Cloak: When she briefly dons the Stealth armor and when she obtains the Rescue armor. Unfortunately, the effect is somewhat defeated, as Mandarin points out, by her Motor Mouth habit.
I Want My Jetpack: Wants to join SHIELD for a jetpack. In the second season, she begs Tony for her own suit of armor and finally obtains the Rescue armor near the end of it.
Bratty Teenage Daughter: She came off as this in her first couple appearances before becoming Madame Masque and revealing her more tormented side.
Combat Pragmatist: The main reason she's a threat as Madame Masque, aside from Tony's reluctance to fight her, is because she does whatever she can to win.
Dating What Daddy Hates: A possible interpretation of her interest in Tony. Not present with Rhodey.
Face Heel Turn: As of "Iron Monger Lives", she's back as Madame Masque and is now completely obsessed with ruining Tony's life, though only because the insanity-causing mask she's wearing is very selective about which memories it returned to her.
"I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Tony vs. Madame Masque, especially in "Iron Monger Lives", where Tony says that "the real Whitney" is still there and fighting against Madame Masque in her own subconcious.
Karma Houdini: Does villainous stuff in her last appearance and escapes prison in the end by disgusing herself as a SHIELD agent, presumably staying in SHIELD undercover! Though to be fair, she's the victim of a mask that makes you crazy and Tony even points out "the real Whitney" is subconsciously fighting against it, making it questionable if she really deserves karma.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Though her memory does eventually come back, and she somehow gets her hands on the mask again.
Lonely Rich Kid: Stane is predictably not the world's best father, so this is the natural result. The other kids prejudge and shun her due to who her dad is, and she's blamed for acting too good for them in actions like eating lunch alone on the roof, but it's really because she has no friends. She finally gets a real friend in Tony though, who had often brushed her aside until he learned how troubled her home-life was.
Sassy Black Woman: She can be this, especially if riled, but otherwise is pretty nice.
Howard Stark
Voiced by: Fred Henderson
Tony's father.
Actual Pacifist: After Tony was born. Before that, he invented weapons.
Badass Normal: Managed to help banish Dr. Doom into another dimension, then invented a gun that could neutralize the Makluan rings (that didn't entirely work, but it's the thought that counts).
Establishing Character Moment: Wants to use Tony's inventions to save lives, speaks in a gentle voice and, in a flashback at the end of season one, pleaded for Tony's life even in the face of his own imminent death.
Honor Before Reason: Related to the screwing of money below. Weapons are profitable, but Howard's morals don't allow him to sell them knowing what they'll do to people.
Millionaire Playboy: Averted. Unlike his son, or more accurately how his son is in other universes, Howard has no romantic interests after the death of his wife.
Never Found the Body: Mentioned in passing once. Since it was a plane crash, it makes sense.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Wanted to study the Rings and how they produce energy, thinking of the good it could do. It got him killed*
actually kidnapped
. Left the company to his best friend in an effort to make sure Stane wasn't out of a job upon his death. Stane immediately went out and began selling weapons, which is horrifically wrong for a large number of reasons and deeply disrespects Howard's memory. Basically, Being Good Sucks in this universe.
Secret Secret Keeper: Howard's comments imply that he knows his son's secret, but it isn't stated directly. He comes out and says it in the finale, having figured out at a glance that no one but Tony could have invented the armor.
Clothes Make the Superman: Played With. His suit allows him to tank machine gun fire with absolutely zero damage and other things that'd kill anyone not wearing it. However, his incredible fighting ability, bullet timing and laser dodging is all due to him being a Badass Abnormal.
Diplomatic Impunity: Goes around attacking whoever he feels has wronged him and/or his country, using this trope to avoid punishment on the international stage.
Hot Blooded: Since his father was just murdered and he has none of the emotional support that Tony did, this isn't too surprising.
Good Is Not Nice: T'Challa has no problem knocking people unconscious to get them out of his way and even threatened to reveal Tony's secret identity if he continued to interfere in Wakandan matters.
Not So Different: Though he denies it, his situation is nearly identical to Tony's and they act extremely similar.
Pride: His biggest flaw and defining character trait. It's very clear that his reluctance to accept help from anyone isn't helping as much as he thinks. Luckily, he's getting better about it.
Secret Public Identity: It's public knowledge that the Black Panther is the king of Wakanda, so T'Challa doesn't bother trying to hide it. He actually wears the suit (sans mask) in public during a press conference.
Jerk Ass: when first introduced, he tries to prevent Iron Man from stopping the Living Laser so SHIELD do it themselves (and fail miserably), threatens to arrest him and is willing to have the space station explode with his men still inside to prevent the Living Laser from using it. Then, next episode, we learn he keeps a dying Living Laser prisonner under awful conditions.
Took a Level in Kindness: as the story goes on, he becomes slightly more sympathetic; in later episodes, he learns about Iron Man's real identity, but decides to not oppose his carrier, even congratulating him. Then Ross is introduced, and makes him look sympathetic by acting even more of a Jerk Ass than him.
Abusive Parents: Verbally and emotionally to Whitney. He does care for her, but he's really bad at expressing it.
Anti-Villain: Surprisingly, he has shades of Type I. While he is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who's not above using illegal ways to reach his goals, he is still more of a businessman than a straight-up villain, and there are some lines he is unwilling to cross. Plus, he lacks Justin Hammer's psychotic traits.
Big Bad: Shares the role with Gene and later Justin Hammer.
Cassandra Truth: Anytime he claims not to be involved in anything evil or immoral, no one believes him. To be fair, he pretty much deserves it most of the time.
Corrupt Corporate Executive: Though he would claim to just being a regular businessman, Stane breaks many laws in his quest to make Stark International the biggest weapons dealer on the planet. This actually makes it harder for him to turn a profit (Stark International is losing money at the start of the second season and is only turned around by stealing the Iron Man armor designs) and also resulting in Blizzard dedicating his life to making Stane either miserable or dead.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His relationship with his daughter Whitney is.... complicated. But deep inside, he does care about her.
Even Evil Has Standards: Stane objects to the public endangerment involved in capturing Iron Man. Though he sells weapons, he says he is no murderer. Unless the line goes fuzzy at company heads and their sons. Perhaps his demands in the first episode were coincidence.
Turns out to not be his fault as he was in fact warring Stark. In fact the idea of Tony going to School was an Idea of Howards and he was just respecting his friends last wishes. For the most part his comment above is accurate. He may commit a few illegal acts, but draws the line at murder.
Greed: He wants to turn the Stark family's inventions into weapons despite the the tech being so far ahead of the curve that only Tony and Howard know how it works. In the two-part premiere, he nearly blows up half of the state of New York trying to show off said technology to the military.
Thou Shalt Not Kill: Claims to follow this. No one believes him, mostly because he's a ruthless businessman who doesn't seem to care about anything but money.
Ungrateful Bastard: Despite Iron Man saving his life many times, he will never thank him nor will he stop trying to get his hands on the armor's design.
Villainous Breakdown: When Tony finally gets him fired by exposing his deal with Ghost and he discovers Tony and Iron Man are the same, Stane steals an Iron Monger suit and goes on a rampage in an attempt to find Tony.
Half-Human Hybrid: Albeit several generations removed. The original Mandarin was given alien DNA to make the rings work, and that DNA was passed to Gene. He's functionally human, just with a little bit of alien for compatibility.
Heroic Sacrifice: Attempted this when Gene pushes Pepper out of the way of Fin Fang Foom and is apparently killed. Ironically, his sacrifice is what allowed him to acquire the fifth Makluan Ring and then betray the very friends he was helping.
Kick the Dog: Gene's treatment of poor Happy can be seen like this.
His treatment of Howard Stark in the second season is worse. It's like the writers want to erase any sympathy the audience might have for him.
It seems Gene himself, however, sincerely believes that he has good motives. He just won't tolerate people trying to keep him from obtaining the rings to act on them.
Of course his justification doesn't prevent the last gaurdian of the rings Makluan Overlord's son from dying by his hands.
I Did What I Had to Do: The way he attempts to justify everything he does - he thinks getting all the rings will allow him to do great good (with vague goals that even he realizes he doesn't know when he thinks he has them all), and so any manipulation and if he thinks manipulation, lies, kidnap and attempted murder are necessary to accomplish that he will do so with little hesitation.
My God, What Have I Done?: Nearly played straight and then subverted for dramatic effect. When he finally obtains the first five rings, which he believed was the entire set, he essentially has a reaction, realizing that merely having the rings has done nothing, that he has no actual goal or motive for wanting them, and that having them has only caused him and others pain and leave him without any friends or companionship. And then, literally seconds before realizing this couldn't have been what his mother wanted for him, he discovers that there are five more rings... and then rather than admit fault in himself he immediately snaps back and becomes obsessed with finding the rest.
In the second season finale, after a failed attempt at world domination, he finally realizes that his motives were not as pure as he had tried to convince himself, and thus sets out to be a true hero.
Parental Abandonment: His mother was killed by Zhang. We have no clue as to what happened to his biological father. And Zhang is pretty much evil.
Pet the Dog: They may be at odds in the second season, but Gene has gone out of his way to save his former friends even when it would benefit him to let them die. He also saves the world at the end of "Doomsday" trying to deliberately invoke this trope in front of Tony.
Ring of Power: Starts out with one; is trying to collect all five of them. Then all ten of them after learning there are five others.
Smug Snake: He acts a lot like Zhang, though he'd never admit it.
Utopia Justifies the Means: What Gene is using as an excuse to get all the rings whereas Tony believes that it's all a lie to justify his actions.
Freudian Excuse: His mother's treatment led to an extraordinarily bad inferiority complex, which led him to commit crime in part to get attention and in part, to be successful and prove her wrong. This is what led him to become the Living Laser.
From Nobody to Nightmare: started out as a random Maggia Mook. Then he got his hand on an experimental suit from Stark Industries, and he ended up transformed into a powerful Energy Being who caused massive damages, almost blowing up Manhattan at some point.
Heel Face Turn: Turns good once he realizes Iron Man only ever tried to help him.
Heroic Sacrifice: Played heartbreakingly straight... though it doesn't stick.
Hidden Depths: when first seen, he apparently is a mere mooks who got a suit too powerful for him. Later episodes flesh out his motivations, revealing he was the Butt Monkey to everyone as a kid (down to his own mother) and always wanted to be recognized as somebody.
Not-So-Harmless Villain: the first time Iron Man meets him, he defeats him relatively quickly despite his powerful suit. Then the suit's side effects turns him into an Energy Being, and he basically almost kills Iron Man when he comes back.
Redemption Equals Death: he dies a few minutes after reconciling with Iron Man and helping him defeat MODOK.
The Bad Guy Wins: a master of this; most of his appearances, he ends up succeeding in the mission he is given and getting what he wanted with total Karma Houdini.
Though in away, one could see Tony and friends revealing their secret identities as karma, as Ghost was planning on using that for his retirement.
Deadpan Snarker: He delivers some particularly enjoyable snark about how A.I.M. wasn't able to make their M.O.D.O.C. project less uglier despite all their tech.
Punch Clock Villain: He has few concerns with his contact's objectives and only cares about being payed. If you are able to give him more money than his original hirer did, he will gladly accept to give up his original mission.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When A.I.M.'s Scientist Supreme told him to fight Iron Man, he phased through the floor instead, mockingly pointing out he wasn't being paid nearly enough. He also consistently avoids direct combat with Iron Man if he can help it.
Secret Keeper: Keeps Iron Man's secret identity to himself in order to blackmail him. Given that Tony is exposed to the public at the end of season two, that plan fell through.
Adaptational Badass: And how. The Whiplash from the comic was basically just a guy with whips and a lame costume. Armored Adventures redesigned him as a very competent and dangerous henchman with energized whips who almost killed Iron Man in his first appearance. Interestingly, Iron Man 2 later makes an Adaptational Badass of the same villain (making himeven morebadass in the process) and used the electro-whips as well.
Combat Tentacles: His whips are much too versatile to be considered mere whips.
Explosive Leash: The reason he's a Dragon rather than an independent agent. Justin triggers it in "Titanium vs. Iron". After that, Justin could always delete him from the mainframe.
Anti-Villain: Type II, though a strong part of it actually is a façace.
Composite Character: Former Stark employee like the original Blizzard, Gregor Shapanka, but has the identity of the better known Blizzard, Donald Gill.
Even Evil Has Standards: even though he is himself a murderer, even he is shocked when Justin Hammer kills Mr Fix.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: half of his face has been disfigured due to an experiment from Stane.
Manipulative Bastard: Manipulated Tony/Iron Man into helping him attacking Stane in his first appearance. Later, when Stane attempted to force him to find a cure for Whitney, he faked submission only to betray him.
Create Your Own Villain: Litterally; Technovore originally was a virus developped by Tony to deal with Project Pegasus after they weaponized the Crimson Dynamo technology for Stane. Then the virus consumed Pegasus' data and became a sentient creature.
The End... Or Is It?: After Tony seemingly destroyed it, it's revealed that part of Technovore survived inside the clothes of the Project Pegasus head.
Turned Against Their Masters: played with: when first brought back to life, his first move was to fire the Controller, than overthrow the A.I.M. leader before taking control of the organization himself. Ironically, they were planning to make him their leader anyway.
Adaptational Attractiveness: The Hammer from the comic is an old man; This one is eighteen years old and very good-looking.
Adaptational Badass: While the Justin Hammer in the comics is in no way harmless, he is still an old man and Non-Action Big Bad. This one, on the other hand, possesses his own armor, the Titanium Man, which he uses to fight Iron Man on numerous occasions.
Evil Counterpart: To Tony; both are young genius with ownership on companies (though Tony is still too young to own Stark Industries at this point while Hammer already own his), both are opposed to Stane, both are involved in secret in the Supervillain / Superhero business, and both have their own armor and superhero / villain aliases. Moreover, Hammer really looks and acts like a younger, evil version of adult Stark in the comic. For this reasons, Justin sees Tony as a kindred spirit at the beginning of the show. Tony begs to disagree.
Jerkass: Big time; he makes Stane look like a nice guy by comparison.
Psychopathic Manchild: Pretty much all the time, especially when things don't go out his way. He gradually loses all common sense as the series goes, becoming more and more Ax Crazy. By "The Hammer Falls", he goes into full Villainous Breakdown thanks to Fix messing with him, to the point he has no scrupples about unleashing a Zombie Apocalypse on New York.
Nick Fury even lampshades his eccentricities during Justin's presentation, basically asking the other military figures, "Are we seriously buying weapons from this guy?"
Ironically, this is mostly what gets him in the end: he is betrayed by Mr Fix as revenge for digitizing him, loses all the supervilains working for him because he took them down out of paranoia, and he exposes his true colors to the world on live television himself thanks to Iron Man recording him acting crazy. He pretty much destroyed himself with his own crazy behaviour.
Sanity Slippage: He sure didn't have much sanity to begin with, but he gradually becomes more insane as the story goes on.
Self-Made Orphan: His father died under mysterious circumstances and Justin comments about a deity that did whatever necessary to gain power. Nick Fury even suspects that Justin killed his father to take control of Hammer International.
Villainous Breakdown: The appropriately titled episode "The Hammer Falls" is pretty much about this; he gradually loses the little bit of sanity he has left, becoming more and more paranoid as a mysterious blackmailer is pressuring him.
Badass: His superior technology allows him to go toe-to-toe with both Mandarin and Iron Man at the same time, while Mandarin had eight rings at his command.
Freudian Excuse: Just like in the comic, he is attempting to get his family's souls back.
Hoist by His Own Petard: After trying to bargain his family's souls for those of Iron Man, Howard Stark and the Mandarin, he ends up having his own soul trapped in the demon's dimension.
Disproportionate Retribution: She attempted to kill Tony and his friends through a school full of traps and death games. Why? Because Tony took her place as the school's smartest student. And because she felt like Tony was mocking her even though he hardly even noticed her presence until she and her brother started getting actually aggressive.
The End... Or Is It?: When she is arrested at the end of her debut episode and taken by a doctor, the doctor's eyes glow red, indicating that this is just one of her robots.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She does care about her brother Andy even though he is a mere robot she created in an attempt to replace her dead family.
Gadgeteer Genius: Smart enough to create hightly advanced traps, build very realistic androids, and reproduce Dr. Pym's shrinking ray.
Not So Different: Played with; she apparently likes believing that Tony has the same defect as her, accusing him of befriending Happy because having an idiot for a friend made him feel more intelligent, and having her brother hint that Tony killed Howard because he couldn't stand his father being smarter than him. She's wrong, of course, and Tony didn't take the accusation well.
Not-So-Harmless Villain: Stark initially didn't see her as more than a weird and aggressive schoolmate who was no more than a nuisance. Just try imagining his reaction when she turns out to be an Evil Genius with a robot brother who tried to kill him and his friends.
Smug Snake: She won't admit that Tony's smarter than her and will keep acting arrogant as much as she can.
Tony's grandson from the future, who was sent back into the past in order to prevent his grandfather from creating a virus named Vortex that would almost eradicate humanity.
Adaptational Heroism: The comic version of Iron Man 2099 was a straight villain; this version, while acting antagonistic toward Tony, is a Hero Antagonist.
Anti-Villain: Type III, with shades of Type IV; he attempted to kill Tony under the belief that it would prevent a cataclysm who eradicate most of humanity in the future. He was even willing to explain Tony why he needed to kill him before proceeding to do so. The fact he was unwilling to harm innocent bystanders makes it even more difficult to see him as a villain; actually, it went so far that Tony even wondered if Andros wasn't right.
Bad Future: In the future where he comes from, humanity has been almost eradicated by a virus accidentally created by Stark and SHIELD; Oh, and Justin Hammer is the president.
Heroic Sacrifice: he is perfectly aware of the fact that killing Tony will erase him from existance, but considers his own life an acceptable price to save humanity.
It's All My Fault: When he learns that the main reason Tony created Vortex in the first place was to defeat him.
Transhuman: He's running a higher version of Extremis than Tony's. He's not an example of Transhuman Treachery, though, as he's trying to save humanity by killing Tony.
Bullying a Dragon: Not only does he do it with the Hulk as usual, but he also acts rude toward both Iron Man and Nick Fury.
Dirty Coward: He panics and cowers before the Gray Hulk when his plan goes to pieces. This is notable because most versions of Ross aren't cowardly, despite his other flaws.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Subverted; Not only is he far too heinous toward the Hulk to be this, but he actually wants to dissect him in order to create more like him.
The Makluans
Aliens Are Bastards: subverted with the Makluan Emperor's son, but played straight with pretty much all the other representants of the species seen. Especially their emperor.
Beethoven Was an Alien Spy:the original Mandarin, strongly hinted to be Ghengis Khan, was given the ability to use the Makluan Rings by a Makluan who alterned his DNA so he would be part Makluan.
