MCU: 10 Fascinating Facts Behind Iron Man 2 (2010)

6. John McCain's Role

It would probably be a mistake for the MCU to be too overtly political, given the potential for alienating a significant part of its potential audience either way, but there is one political comment in Iron Man 2 in a round-about sort of way.

When the Stark Technology stock crashes on the back of Tony Stark's erratic behaviour and Pepper Potts is promoted to CEO, she offers the assessment that "the fundamentals of our company are strong."

That's a mirror of what Sen John McCain said in 2008 after the stock market crash ("The fundamentals of our economy are strong"). Given that it pretty much cost him his loss inthe Election of that same year, Pepper's line was supposed to indicate that she wasn't actually all that confident in the company (or Tony) at that point.