5. One Ring To Mislead Them All
So much of Iron Man 3s pre-release marketing focused on Ben Kingsleys The Mandarin. As in the comics, much was put on his magical ten rings of power. Tom has pointed out in his article
that it was The Ten Rings that kidnapped Tony in the first movie, making the entire Extremis plot much more overarching. But one more subtle crossover was in the physical rings themselves. Head captor Raza wears a red jewelled ring on his right ring finger identical to that on The Madarins little finger, furthering the link between the scheme in the third film and Iron Mans creation. With the reveal that Kingsleys all encompassing terrorist is actually drug addled actor named Trevor, the rings simply became the name of Killians fake organisation. Clearly there was no real power to them, making this more of a coincidence than a direct tying together of themes.