Let’s admit it, we all feel pretty smart whenever we expose a plot hole in an intricately weaved narrative. In fact, our heads can barely fit through the door after we point out that, “no, that wouldn’t work because XYZ reason.” There’s probably countless plot holes in the MCU, scattered all across its filmography from the early days of Iron Man (2008) to the modern-day Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), but as superhero fanatics, we’ve expertly mastered the art of ignoring such trivial errors. After all, it’s fictional. How realistic can it be? That being said, there’s still some inconsistencies in the continuity of Marvel projects, at times, which distracts from the content at hand. Most of these slip-ups aren’t noticeable, but one particular Redditor wholeheartedly believed they’d sussed out an inconsistency in Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, starring Robert Downey Jr. as the infamous genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist Tony Stark.
That was until the entirety of Reddit shut them down in an instant. In Iron Man 3, Tony finds himself facing off against Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery, hired by the real villain, Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian, to portray a terrorist known as the Mandarin. Rather early on in the story, The Mandarin — in an effort to wipe out Stark and all his assets — sends gunship helicopters to destroy his home at Malibu Point. Obviously, Tony survives, only to meet his maker at the hands of the Infinity Stones in Avengers: Endgame — but that’s another topic entirely. Our aforementioned Redditor believed they’d got it all figured out when they pointed out that Tony couldn’t afford all the materials to assemble the Mark 42 after losing everything he owned to the Mandarin’s siege.
If we know anything about our resident Iron Man, we know he’s intelligent enough to have back-ups for his back-ups, so when Malibu Point was blown to smithereens, one needn’t worry about Stark, who’s still got his plentiful riches in his back pocket. Reddit’s top comment summarizes everyone’s internal ‘face-palm’ rather eloquently, stating that “just because his house was blown up doesn’t mean he was broke.” Obviously, if we relate this scenario to real life, then anyone who loses their home certainly loses a large chunk of belongings, but there’s still savings, investments, stocks, assets and family/friends to get one back on one’s feet.
We don’t need to spell it all out. It’s obvious where this individual went wrong in their analogy, but some Redditors were far kinder to the foolishness than others. If most of us experienced an internal face-palm, otherwise were more vocal about their disbelief.
From this discussion, we’ve established that Tony Stark never went a day of his life without bountiful riches. Thereby, building the Mark 42 with materials from the local Home Depot shouldn’t be too strenuous a challenge — not for Tony nor his bank account.