MCU Easter Eggs

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Iron Man 2 (2010)

Release (US): May 7, 2010 | Director: Jon Favreau | Runtime: 125 minutes

Now publicly known as Iron Man, Tony Stark is being poisoned by the reactor that keeps him alive while a vengeful Russian physicist and a jealous rival arms maker come after him. S.H.I.E.L.D. moves in closer, bringing Black Widow with it.

Source: Wikipedia: Iron Man 2

The Unisphere, a giant steel globe, with fountains in front of it in Flushing Meadows, Queens
The real place behind the Stark Expo. In the film, Tony re-opens his father's Stark Expo in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York. The real park is home to the Unisphere, built for the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Hidden Details & Easter Eggs

Tony uses a Captain America shield to level his particle accelerator

While Tony is building the particle accelerator in his workshop, Agent Coulson comes across a half-finished Captain America shield and asks Tony if he knows what it is. Tony just takes it and wedges it under his equipment to keep it level. It is a much less subtle version of the shield cameo from the first film, a year before Captain America: The First Avenger. More on Steve Rogers →

Source: /Film

The Tesseract is sketched in Howard Stark's notebook

When Tony flips through his father's old notebook, one page has a drawing of a cube. Kevin Feige told Wired that he asked Favreau to have the prop maker add it without ever mentioning it in the film, because Howard Stark was planned as a character in Captain America. The cube is the Tesseract, which drives the plots of Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers.

Source: /Film

The S.H.I.E.L.D. map flags New Mexico and Greenland

In the scene at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s base, the screens around Tony and Fury include an activity map of places the agency is watching. New Mexico is marked, matching the post-credits hammer discovery, and there is a marker in Greenland, where Captain America's plane went down in 1945. Fans read other markers as teases for later films too. More on Nick Fury →

Source: Screen Rant

The kid in the Iron Man mask is Peter Parker

At the Stark Expo, a young boy wearing an Iron Man mask stands up to a Hammer drone, and Iron Man swoops down to save him with a quick 'nice work, kid'. Fans long guessed the boy was a young Peter Parker. In 2017 Tom Holland confirmed it, saying he had just checked with Kevin Feige. More on Spider-Man →

Source: Gizmodo

Stan Lee's cameo: this time he is mistaken for Larry King

As Tony walks through a crowd of fans at the Expo, Stan Lee appears dressed like talk show host Larry King and is called Larry. It continues the running joke from the first film, where Tony mistook Lee for Hugh Hefner.

Source: Empire

Elon Musk's name is painted on one of the Monaco race cars

The yellow Kodak race car in the Monaco sequence carries the driver name 'Elon Musk'. Musk also let the filmmakers use his SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California, as Hammer Industries, and he has a cameo of his own in the film.

Source: The New York Times (Wheels blog)

Rolls-Royce built two identical Phantoms just to be wrecked

The Rolls-Royce sliced apart by Whiplash was really cut up in advance, rigged with charges and glued back together. Rolls-Royce built two matching Phantoms for the film, each costing $438,000. Most of the 'Monaco' race was shot on a recreated circuit in the parking lot of Downey Studios in California, after Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone overruled permission to film on the real track.

Source: The New York Times (Wheels blog)

The film was shot under the fake title 'Rasputin'

Iron Man 2 used the working title Rasputin. One of its sets, at the Sepulveda Dam in Los Angeles, was a five-story wall of stacked shipping containers, and the permit was issued to 'Rasputin Locations', which led bloggers to work out what was being filmed.

Source: Los Angeles Daily News

Mickey Rourke paid for Whiplash's gold teeth and bird himself

Ivan Vanko's tattoos, gold teeth and pet cockatoo were Mickey Rourke's own ideas. He paid $20,000 for the teeth and bought the bird with his own money.

Source: Daily Record

Thor's director shot the post-credits scene

The closing hammer scene was filmed on the set of Thor (2011) and directed by that film's director, Kenneth Branagh, not Favreau. Favreau said it was shot with anamorphic lenses to match the look of Thor. More on Thor →

Source: Wikipedia: Iron Man 2 (citing the DVD commentary)

Credits Scenes

Post-credits

Agent Phil Coulson drives up to a huge crater in the New Mexico desert and calls in to report that they have found it. The camera then shows a large hammer, Mjolnir, sitting in the middle of the crater, setting up Thor.

Source: Variety

Deleted Scenes

8 scenes cut from the film and released as home-media extras. See them all →

Setups and Payoffs

Moments in this film that pay off later, or pay off something earlier. All callbacks →

Characters in This Film

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