Trivia / A Man of Iron

• Bonus Material:
  • While writing the wedding of Jon and Natasha, the author mistyped the word "kiss" as "kill", which got him thinking that this really wouldn't be too out of place in Westeros, so he wrote a whole gag scene in which they kill Lancel as part of the ceremony.
  • There's another one at the end of Chapter 48 of A Crack of Thunder, a non-canon scene which features Sansa, Arya, and Rickon meeting at the Inn at the Crossroads to discuss their respective Plot Relevant Age Ups, and Deadpool Breaking the Fourth Wall to reference Child of the Storm and The Last Son (regarding how DC isn't getting involved), as well as a number of regular reviewers (including Nimbus Llewelyn, who wrote Child Of The Storm).
  • A Shield of Man ends numerous chapters with omakes that re-create scenes from The Simpsons with ASOIAF characters (usually with Jon or Robert in the role of Homer).
• Flip-Flop of God: The original plans for this series were VERY differently planned. From the first chapter, the author's notes say that he was NOT interested in doing The Avengers because, "it would be too large a project to include them." While not admitted to, he clearly changed his mind in the middle of Book 1 as the story pivoted from a Stark exploration to a Marvel/ASOIF expanded story by the next book.
• Follow the Leader: The author acknowledges being influenced by The House of Wayne.
  • This series has in turn inspired the writer Shadowblade217 to write his own A Song of Marvels series.
• In Memoriam:: Chapter 36 is dedicated to Chadwick Boseman. Fitting, since this is the chapter where T'Challa debuts.
• Irony as She Is Cast: It’s actually Sansa who becomes the story’s version of Wolfsbane, despite Arya’s actress Maisie Williams being the one who plays her. This was a deliberate flip of expectations on the author’s part.
• Throw It In!: While writing Ned's last chapter in Book 2, Mr. Chaos realized we'd never yet seen him in action as the Punisher, so he whipped up a flashback battle scene in the middle of the chapter.
• What Could Have Been:
  • At the end of Book 1, Mr. Chaos admits that an early idea was to make Varys the equivalent of the Kingpin, but he quickly realized it was a bad idea, being based entirely on his appearance and not fitting his personality at all. Kingpin is later briefly mentioned as a powerful warlord in Essos.
  • He went through a few ideas on which Marvel character to make the resurrected Sansa, including the Phoenix and Enchantress (later revealed to be a Composite Character with Melisandre), before just making an original character (though she later becomes a Composite Character with Satana Hellstrom and Hela).
  • Mr. Chaos admitted that he originally planned to have Catelyn believe the Lannisters' offer to return "Sansa" for Jaime, leading to a fight that dissolves her marriage with Ned, and results in him marrying Margaery Tyrell. He threw this all out for making no sense.
    • To be fair he also states that this was well in the beginning of the scripting for the story and had long been rejected along with other ideas (see below)
  • He's also mentioned some half-formed ideas that have been tossed over time, like Jaime becoming Iron Fist or Drogon being Fin Fang Foom.
  • He had a very hard time figuring out how to include the Hulk, and was seriously considering leaving him out entirely before a scene in And the Giant Awoke gave him the idea of Brienne becoming She-Hulk. And beyond that, he wasn't going to include Bruce and certainly not as the Hulk beyond a brief mention of the source of the powers, but came up with a new idea for a role he could play in Book 3 literally while he was writing the backstory.
  • Sansa escaping the Night Queen by permanently warging into a resurrected Lady initially wasn’t going to happen until Book 4, but got pushed to the end of Book 2 when he again came up with an idea for how to use it in Book 3 in the middle of writing the chapter.
  • Steve was going to reveal his entire backstory in his first appearance in Book 3, until Mr. Chaos realized the exposition was getting far too long and decided to split it up.
  • Jory Cassel was originally going to be the story's version of the Punisher, marrying a Riverlands girl and having a daughter in Book 1, then seeing them killed at the end and coming back as the character in Book 3. Then readers started suggesting it could be Ned due to the Weirwood tree on his breastplate looking like a skull, and Mr. Chaos liked the idea enough to change it.
  • There were originally plans to include even more Spider-heroes in their introduction in facing off Brice, but Chaos decided that it would have too many characters.
  • Given the reveal of Lyanna and Rhaegar having a kid, the pieces were clearly in play to have Jon and Natasha leave King's Landing near the end of book 3. But, upon consideration of the wider cast in that area, Mr. Chaos thought that Jiffersun Davis was too well entrenched to want to leave, and Jon would never leave behind the newly allied Spider family in his escape. Also, he said he wasn't interested in telling a "powerless lords on the run" story with this set of characters. So, Mr. Chaos instead took a different approach to keep them in King's Landing: Give Jon near unfettered power as Hand of the King and Tommen's new regent.