Ass Pull: Tony and Whitney suddenly dating. Ask any watcher of the show and they will admit they didn't see this coming. However this explicitly came just after this happened in the previous episode. So most believe this was just something to prolong the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Tony and Pepper.
Justin Hammer is a young weapons manufacturer whose company Hammer Multinational is the main competitor to Stark International. Hammer hires the supervillain known as Mr. Fix to work for him and later injects Fix with a nano virus that will kill him if he disobeys Hammer. After Iron Man defeats Hammer's Titanium Man armor, Hammer blames Fix for the armor's failure and uses the nano virus to kill Fix's body, but uploads his mind into Hammer's computer systems, much to Fix's dismay. After Stark International lands a big military contract, Hammer decides to get revenge by placing a control device on Stane's Iron Monger armor and sends Iron Monger on a rampage. Hammer tries to get Andros Stark killed and ensure the creation of the Vortex virus, because the coming Robot War will cause him to get elected president. After receiving blackmail messages from an unknown party—actually sent by Mr. Fix—Hammer becomes increasingly paranoid. Hammer starts attacking anyone who he thinks may be responsible, including his own men. Hammer uses a new chemical weapon called Z Gas to turn crime boss Count Nefaria into a zombie and then kidnaps and tortures Killer Shrike, one of his former henchmen. Hammer then turns Shrike into a zombie. After Iron Man broadcasts evidence of Hammer's crimes across the globe, Hammer starts to lose it and plans to release the Z Gas on New York City.
"The Makluan Invasion" two-part series finale: The Makluan Overlord is the supreme ruler of the Makluan race. For thousands of years, he used the powers of the Ten Rings to conquer countless worlds and enslave entire civilizations, in some instances destroying them. After his son stole the Rings, the Overlord started chasing him all across the universe, determined to kill him for his betrayal. Once he discovers the Rings are hidden on Earth, he comes there with his army and quickly retrieves them before sending drones and giant robots to cause havoc in the nearest city, much to his sadistic entertainment. Amused by the efforts of Iron Man and his friends to defend their planet, the Makluan Overlord offers them to spare Earth if they manage to defeat his best warriors in his Arena of Carnage. However, he refuses to keep his promise when they win his challenge and prepares to destroy the whole planet instead, gleefully electrocuting all the humans who try to oppose him beforehand. Despite his claims that he's fulfilling the great Makluan prophecy and bringing order in the cosmos, it is obvious to everyone that the Makluan Overlord is nothing more than a power-hungry tyrant who merely wants to enslave the entire universe.
Damsel Scrappy: Pepper Potts has two purposes for her existence: help Tony out on occasion and get captured and rescued constantly even in situations she should be able to escape from on her own. Her behavior is consistently damsel-like despite her aspirations to be a kick-ass SHIELD agent - at one point she's in the middle of an abandoned warehouse where two different factions of Chinese assassins are fighting and she sits there waiting to be rescued instead of getting away from the fighting. Yeah, real SHIELD material.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Living Laser, mostly thanks to a genuinely tear-jerking arc that involved finding his own path in life after becoming a villain and then being befriended by Tony, after which he performs a Heroic Sacrifice.
Fan-Preferred Couple: Tony/Whitney for some, and Pepper/Gene for others, if not those same people.
Harsher in Hindsight: In the episode "Dragon Seed", When Pepper takes her new armor out for a test drive, Rhodey says something along the lines of "Let's hope she doesn't take out New Jersey." Tony replies, "Let's hope it'sthe shore." Well, thanks to Hurricane Sandy....
Tony serving as a mentor character to Spider-Man in the MCU becomes this given that this show's premise can essentially be described as fusion of Spider-Man and Iron Man.
Magnificent Bastard: Ghost is a snarky mercenary who will always get the job done for a price. Ghost first appears when he is hired by A.I.M. to assassinate Tony Stark and when Tony is saved by Madame Masque, Ghost forces them into a stalemate and leaves after extorting Masque. Later infiltrating a S.H.I.E.L.D. hovercraft, Ghost disables the security system and forces Tony to allow his escape by threatening to destroy the craft. Recording Tony's secret identity as Iron Man to blackmail him and stealing the schematics to his tech, Ghost threatens to expose him to the world when he turns legal age and gets his inheritance, also playing off Tony's refusal to kill, showing remarkable ingenuity in all of his appearances.
The sentient AI in the armor almost kills Mr Fix and Whiplash in an attempt to protect Tony from danger.
Xin Zhang is heavily implied to have murdered his wife.
Never Live It Down: Pepper isn't really as useless as much as her detractors like to make out. While she is the go-to Damsel in Distress, she's rarely the only person at the time in danger, and while not an Action Girl, she does have her own contributions to the team (notably, she was once able to track down the wife of the Crimson Dynamo's pilot, in order to get him to stop his rampage, using nothing but detective work and pretending to be an FBI agent). However, the Damsel in Distress aspect of her character has made people ignore her other aspects and write her off as The Load. Though it doesn't help that Pepper herself seems to see herself as The Load and hoping to get her own armor to stop being that.
Periphery Demographic: Despite being aimed primarily at boys, the show has an interesting amount of female viewers, which is usually unheard of for a superhero show. The show also attracts quite a bit of anime fans. Both of these are probably attributed to the show's heavy anime-influence as well as it's effort to not rehash the stories found in the comic books like other superhero shows, which have a history of alienating both of these demographics.
Portmanteau Couple Name: Several for each pairing of the cast, but special mention goes to "Pepperony."
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Pepper finally gets her armor to fight with in the three-part season 2 finale. She even gives herself the name Rescue since she just rescued Tony and Rhodey multiple times since getting it.
Special Effect Failure: A minor instance. In the second season, Pepper complains about Tony having gone without a shave in a while, making it look like he's growing a goatee. While this is presumably meant as a Mythology Gag, Tony's character model hasn't actually been changed to reflect it, so Pepper's comment comes off as rather odd.
Banner's transformation into the Hulk in this show (he just transforms in a flash of light and his clothes are back to normal when he turns back to normal) can also seem pretty lazy compared to the usual transformation sequences given to the character.
Whiplash is killed off and the only indicator that it happened is Justin Hammer remarking on it.
A lot of the episodes involving Justin Hammer have a very "filler" feel to them, due to the fact none of his actions actually affect the main plot involving the Mandarin or the Makluan Rings, in spite of his Evil Counterpart aspects to Tony. He also dies just before the final episodes and all of his actions that screwed over Tony get undone very quickly, leaving him feeling unimportant to any of the series' events.
happened in the previous episode. So most believe this was just something to prolong the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Tony and Pepper.