WARNING: If you couldn’t tell by the headline, this post contains huge, massive, potentially life ruining spoilers for Avengers Endgame. Don’t keep reading unless you want to know how Tony Stark’s character arc wraps up and the secrets of cheeseburgers in the MCU.
One of the many things that sets MCU films apart from so many other superhero offerings is their fanatical attention to detail. Over the course of 11 years, there are call backs to brief moments and lines of dialogue that intertwine through all 22 films. That can be frustrating for causal fans, but utterly rewarding for those who have watched, dissected and loved the entirety of the MCU.
One of the most subtle and lesser known of those details is how and why cheeseburgers are so important to Tony Stark.
It all starts with the key a scene in the first Iron Man film, which came out in 2008. Tony, having finally escaped his captors, is now safely in a limo with Pepper and Happy. There are two things he wants, he says. A good, old fashioned American cheeseburger, and, after a pause for comic affect, a press conference.
In the next scene, Tony pulls a Burger King cheeseburger out of his pocket and is seen eating it as the press conference starts. In the film, it adds a lot of humanity and little levity to two key, emotional scenes. Tony Stark’s appreciation of fast food also becomes a little character tic that’s fun to play with.
But, there’s a surprisingly moving backstory to the reason cheeseburgers are associated with Tony Stark, and it has to with Robert Downey Jr.’s troubled history of drug addiction.
According to a 2008 interview aggregated from The NY Daily News, Downey Jr. says Burger King’s cheeseburgers helped push him to get clean and get started on the path of recovery.
“I have to thank Burger King,” he said. “It was such a disgusting burger I ordered. I had that, and this big soda, and I thought something really bad was going to happen.” Downey Jr.
The article goes on to say that Downey Jr., who had previously served jail time for drug charges, then threw all the “dope” he had in his car into the ocean and committed to rehab. The cheeseburgers then, aren’t just a crass product placement, but a nod to a pivotal moment in the actors life that set him on the path to recovery, much like Tony Stark himself.
Of course, because this is Marvel, things don’t just get mentioned once and then dropped. In one of the closing scenes of Endgame, Tony’s daughter Morgan and Happy are shown sitting on a bench after his funeral. Happy, with his arm around Morgan, asks her if she’s hungry. She replies that she is and would like to eat a cheeseburger.
“Your dad liked cheeseburgers too,” Happy replies, smiling, “I’ll get you all the cheeseburgers you want.”
The scene works on multiple levels. It’s a touching call back to the first Iron Man film and shows how Happy will now help take care of Tony’s daughter, but it’s also a nod to how far actor Robert Downey Jr. has come as well. Before the Iron Man films, his personal and professional life was in shambles, and a cheeseburger helped turn all of that around.
