Trivia / Iron Man 3

• Actor-Shared Background: Like Mrs. Davis, Dale Dickey is a native of Tennessee.
• Author's Saving Throw: In All Hail the King, it's revealed that the real Mandarin is still out there and is neither Trevor nor Killian, thus saving the character for those who did not like the twist. Ironically, while it did lampshade the negative fan reaction, Word of God is that it was already planned during production of the movie, explaining the plot holes in the first Iron Man film that would be created if Killian was the real Mandarin.
• B-Team Sequel: Jon Favreau declined to return as director due to the conflicts he had with Marvel during Iron Man 2. He did agree to reprise his role as Happy Hogan.
• California Doubling: The scenes taking place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, were actually filmed in Kenansville, North Carolina... by people who had clearly never seen Chattanooga in real life. In real life, Chattanooga is mid-sized, fairly modern, and in an ironic twist, has some of the fastest internet speeds in the world.
• The Cast Showoff: Robert Downey Jr. is a practitioner of Wing Chun martial arts, so Tony Stark has a Wing Chun dummy in his garage which he is seen dealing out a few strikes to.
• Channel Hop: Originally due to be distributed by Paramount, but given to Disney after they purchased Marvel. Like The Avengers, Paramount is still credited as the film's distributor for contractual reasons.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Rebecca Hall was unhappy that she was led to believe Maya Hansen would have a bigger role, only for the character to be killed off before the third act.
  • As a whole, Marvel Studios doesn't seem to hold the movie's plot twist (that the Mandarin is really an actor to distract the audience from the real villain, Aldrich Killian) in high regard based on the absurd amount of Leaning on the Fourth Wall in All Hail the King, along with the Retcon that stated that there is a "real" Mandarin that exists, and he's not happy with what happened in the events of Iron Man 3. Said real Mandarin would eventually become the main antagonist of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: While the Canadian French dub of this film was still recorded in Montreal, it also used voice actors from the European French dub recorded in Paris, including Bernard Gabay as Iron Man. Since then, all of the MCU films' Canadian French releases have been recorded in Montreal and Paris.
• Deleted Scene: See here.
• Development Gag: Possibly. When Maya arrives at the Stark Mansion, Tony sarcastically says "you're not the Mandarin". Several sources state that the original script had Maya as the main villain, presumably playing the same role that Killian played in the finished film. Notably, this would have been accurate to the comic the film is largely based on.
• Disowned Adaptation: Bob Layton was not happy with how the film turned out. John Byrne was also dissatisfied with the film's Mandarin twist.
• Executive Meddling: Ellen Brandt and Maya Hansen were originally going to have larger roles in the story and the villain was supposed to be female, but Marvel's Creative Committee (particularly the notoriously sexist Ike Perlmutter) insisted that the Big Bad had to be male, following the reasoning that toys based on female characters wouldn't sell (ironically, not a single toy of the film's true Big Bad, Killian was ever made for the film, save for a single LEGO minifigure). The entire script had to be altered as a result.
• Fake American: Australian Guy Pearce as Aldrich Killian.
• Flip-Flop of God: Oh, boy, the Mandarin... Shane Black initially said he had no intention of doing the Mandarin at all, citing the character's reputation as a racist stereotype as the reason^note Apparently unaware that later writers heavily toned down the offensive elements of the character and evolved him into a more well-rounded individual that is probably Iron Man's single most popular villain. The Mandarin ended up appearing as the main villain, albeit casting the half-Indian Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin in order to avoid offending Chinese audiences and the movie's own Chinese financial backers. Later, Black originally stated both in an interview and on the commentary that Aldrich Killian was the actual MCU incarnation of the Mandarin, not Kingsley's Trevor Slattery. However... All Hail the King retconned it, revealing that Killian wasn't really the Mandarin, either, but someone else who is the real Mandarin wasn't happy with what Killian and Trevor did. Despite being assumed that this was because how some people reacted to Killian being the Mandarin, co-writer Drew Pearce later said the short was not made to please Mandarin fans, but to fix the potential Plot Holes caused by The Reveal, with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings giving us the true "Mandarin" (the film showing he hates the name), Wenwu.
• God Never Said That: Many of the rumors by sources such as Latino Review that have been attributed to Marvel Studios such as a post-credits scene involving Tony going into space and meeting the Guardians of the Galaxy have been debunked by Kevin Feige himself.
• International Coproduction: The film was partially funded with Chinese money, and some filming took place in Beijing.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Bernard Gabay voiced Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Canadian and European French dubs.
• The Other Darrin: In the Canadian French dub, Tony Stark/Iron Man is voiced by Bernard Gabay, Robert Downey Jr.'s European French voice actor, rather than Daniel Picard, his voice actor since the first film.
• Out of Holiday Episode: The film is set during Christmas, but it was released in April. This, of course, falls in with Shane Black's Christmas obsession.
• Short Run in Peru: The film was released in theaters in dozens of countries at least a week before the US.
• Spared by the Cut:
  • In an interview regarding Spider-Man: No Way Home, Kevin Feige revealed that Happy Hogan was originally planned to die. Jon Favreau was the one who insisted that Hogan ends up in a coma instead of dying.
  • Trevor Slattery/The Mandarin was originally slated to die at the end of the movie, exploding after injecting himself with Extremis.
• Trolling Creator: Kevin Feige and Shane Black were on a roll with this.
  • A Super Bowl trailer that promised an 'extended look' had Robert Downey Jr. staring at the camera. To be fair, "extensive" and "extended" could be easily confused.
  • Many elements in the film were Red Herrings that were obviously designed to fool the audience, such as getting someone as high-profiled as Ben Kingsley to play The Mandarin (who's nothing more than a dupe) and the post-credit scene not being an Avengers 2 plug.
  • Subtler, but the director makes use of the whole 'HUD on Tony's face' thing to keep audiences guessing if Tony's even in the suit when he rescued the thirteen passengers from the plane. He was later revealed to be remotely controlling the armor.
  • Early discussion implied Killian was a glorified cameo, and that Guy Pearce was a last-minute addition to the cast. He is, of course, the Big Bad.
  • As for official Iron Man 3-branded LEGO sets: One of the sets is called "Iron Man vs. the Mandarin: Ultimate Showdown", and features Tony going up against the Mandarin in a weird weapon-covered tank-thing, the obvious implication being that this is a toy recreation of the film's big final battle. That's right, even the toys are deliberately misleading you as to the film's plot! (There's also a set based on the scene where Tony's house gets blown up which includes a Mandarin figure, implying he's flying one of the helicopters.)
    • On a similar note, a bunch of toys, including one LEGO set, depict Rhodey in his traditional, unpainted War Machine armor, which never appears in the film. This, combined with the trailers and merchandising never showing who was under the Iron Patriot suit, resulting in people assuming the Patriot was a separate character (if not Norman Osborn for rights reasons, then Killian or one of his henchmen, which does technically happen when they steal the suit and use it to kidnap the president).
• Uncredited Role: Mark Ruffalo is uncredited for his cameo as Bruce Banner in the post-credits scene.
• Wag the Director: Part of the reason adapting "Demon in the Bottle" was nixed was because Robert Downey Jr. was afraid that going back to that mindset after the progress he'd made in his recovery would cause him to relapse, hence the decision to refocus it on PTSD and the need to constantly be Iron Man.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Jessica Chastain was approached for the role of Maya Hansen before Rebecca Hall was cast, but turned down the offer due to scheduling conflicts with The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. Chastain would later go on to play D'Bari Vuk in Dark Phoenix.
    • Gemma Arterton, Diane Kruger and Isla Fisher were also considered for the part of Maya Hansen before the casting of Hall. Arterton was previously considered for Natasha Romanoff and Peggy Carter in Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The First Avenger.
  • Anthony Mackie auditioned for the Mandarin before the casting of Ben Kingsley. Mackie would eventually go on to portray Sam Wilson in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  • Jude Law was considered for the role of Aldrich Killian before Guy Pearce was cast. Law would later go on to play Yon-Rogg in Captain Marvel.
  • Tom Hooper was offered to direct the film before Shane Black was hired.
  • Jon Favreau refusing to direct the film nixed his original plan for the Mandarin. During a 2008 interview, Favreau revealed that he envisioned the Mandarin as the true Greater-Scope Villain of the Iron Man film series, likening him to Sauron and Emperor Palpatine. Despite the first two movies having Foreshadowing for the character, Favreau's departure from the director's chair for Iron Man 3 meant that this idea was never fulfilled. Once Shane Black and Drew Pearce took over, they instead went with the idea that the Mandarin was merely a charlatan and Decoy Leader, though a Marvel One-Shot revisits the idea of a real Mandarin being out there. The Mandarin finally appeared in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
  • Black wanted to do a little more of the "Demon In the Bottle" storyline in the film, but Disney nixed it, and it was already somewhat covered in the previous film.
  • A flashback featuring Tony's mother was planned, but was cut from the film despite an actress being cast. This idea was revisited in Captain America: Civil War, where Hope Davis appeared as Maria Stark during a presentation of the BARF holographic device Mysterio's invention that showed Tony when he was younger.
  • Brandt was originally considered as Killian's Dragon instead of Savin. She would've even emerged instead of Killian in the ending in a Dragon Their Feet moment, with Pepper engaging her in a Designated Girl Fight.
  • Originally the film was intended to start with flashbacks of Tony's youth, other idea considered was to start the film with Tony landing in Tennessee and another had Tony cleaning up land mines with the Stark logo on them as an allusion to the many explosive elements from his past waiting to detonate.
  • In early drafts Maya Hansen was going to be the main antagonist of the film, but this was nixed by Marvel hire-ups for toy selling reasons, and her antagonistic role given to Aldrich Killian.
  • Aldrich Killian was originally going to be Simon Krieger, with Edwin Cord assisting him rather than the Vice President of the US.
  • The film's original time run was 3 hours and 15 minutes.
  • Before the release of The Avengers, there were talks about Clark Gregg reprising his role as Agent Coulson. Coulson becoming the main character of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. likely also put a dent in that.

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