Iron Man is constantly upstaged by two men who call themselves the Guardsmen who have armor made by Obidiah Stane off Tony's armor designs. Despite bad publicity, Tony tries to prove they are not what they seem.
Tropes
- Deducing the Secret Identity: Pepper is able to figure out Force and Shockwave's real identities by using the FBI database and getting voice-prints off the news to match them, as unlike Tony they don't have good voice modulators.
- Engineered Heroics: Force and Shockwave cause accidents so they can save people and look good for the camera.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Tony eventually figures out, with Pepper's help, that not only are Force and Shockwave are really criminals, but they are the ones causing the accidents where they make themselves look like heroes.
- Evil Knockoff: Once the armor schematics end up in his hands, Stane rolls out inferior copies of the Space, Stealth, and Hulkbuster armors. However, they're just trial runs to iron out the bugs for his Iron Monger project.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: Force and Shockwave show signs of this during the fight with Count Nefaria, taking all the credit even though they couldn't actually beat Nefaria themselves (Iron Man did).
- Foreshadowing: During a robbery by the Maggia, when Count Nefaria doesn’t find what they are looking for, he says they have set up and that he was lied to from someone on the inside. It is later revealed in the episode the Guardsmen are in fact former Maggia gangsters, and they set up Nefaria so they could bust on Television.
- Friendship Moment: When Rhodey returns after he called Tony for caring more about getting revenge against Stane, he tells Tony even after they have an arguement he will always have his back.
- Heel Realization: When Tony sees that Stane replicated his Hulk-buster armor in the form of Firepower, which could do some damage in the wrong hands, he realizes he shouldn’t be caring about getting revenge against Stane or his ego more about saving people’s lives, which is what is really important.
- Idiot Ball: Stane hires wanted criminals to pilot his three armors. Sure, he did need their help to stage a fight with the Maggia, but he could have simply paid off said criminals while having a couple of his legitimate employees do the actual fighting. Or at the very least provide voice modulators so Pepper couldn't uncover them with a simple pattern match. Worse still, he didn't even need to have a criminal run the third. He had his publicity by the point.
- It Only Works Once: When Tony uses negator packs to neutralize Stane's Iron Man knockoffs, the replacements are immune.
- Mythology Gag
- The episode title, with the storyline of Tony fighting to take back his stolen armor specs, not to mention the negator packs.
- Within the episode itself, Pepper suggests that Tony take revenge on Stane, "Punisher-style!"
- Not Helping Your Case: While Tony has every to be angry that the Guardsmen are using his stolen armor specs, he isn’t making himself good by acting jealous and hostile towards especially after they appear to be doing some good.
- Properly Paranoid: Tony is right about the Guardsmen not being heroes, when they caused the accident when they first appeared to the public as well set up the fight with Count Nefaria.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Parodied in this episode between a conversion with Tony and Pepper.
- Pepper: What, are you addicted to that thing?
Tony: It. Helps. Me. Think.
Pepper: Well, I have something else you need. To. Obsess. Over.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Force and Shockwave immediately bail when War Machine shows up to help Tony. After watching the two heroes beat Firepower, they surrender on the spot.
- What the Hell, Hero?: When Stane calls for Iron Man's arrest on TV, after he attacked the Guardsmen in front of a crowd of people, he becomes angry about it. Then Rhodey calls him for actually caring more about defeating Stane than helping people.
- Your Television Hates You: When Stane does a public service announcement to call for the arrest of Iron Man for attacking Force and Shockwave, Rhodey tries to change the channel on TV, only to learn it is on every channel, much to Tony's chagrin.
