The events of Spider-Man: Far From Home made Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) joke in Iron Man 3 about A Christmas Story better. On the heels of The Avengers‘ success, Marvel Studios kicked off Phase 2 with its inaugural hero’s third and final solo outing. Directed by Shane Black, it tackled Tony’s PTSD after his near-death experience during the Battle of New York. Despite the heavy premise, it still had the MCU’s signature humor, which was expected considering that it has the sarcastic and quippy character at the center of its story.
Over the years, Tony has dropped a lot of pop culture references. He mainly used it as nicknames to other characters either because they’re similar in looks or personality. As examples, he called Ebony Maw Squidward and Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) Flash Gordon in Avengers: Infinity War. He also called Thor (Chris Hemsworth) Point Break and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) Legolas in The Avengers. What’s more interesting is, it didn’t matter what the situation he was in or what the reason was, he would always take any opportunity to give people nicknames.
Tony was so quick-witted that he didn’t have to think hard about these pop culture references. He could dish one when his life was in danger and even when he was in the middle of a burgeoning panic attack, which was what happened in Iron Man 3. While he and James “Rhodey” Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle) eat out in a restaurant, two kids approached them to ask for Iron Man’s autograph — one of them looks like Ralphie Parker from A Christmas Story. Despite being on the brink of another panic attack after seeing a drawing of Iron Man hauling the nuclear bomb to outer space, Tony is still able to come out with a snarky quip, telling the boy that he loved him in the 1983 Bob Clark-directed holiday film.
The irony in this is, the actor who played Ralphie in A Christmas Story is actually in the MCU since the very beginning and he has a couple of connections to Stark. Peter Billingsley plays William Ginter Riva who was first introduced in Iron Man. He was the poor scientist that Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) chastised for his inability to re-create the mini arc-reactor which Stark made “in a cave! With a box of scraps!” The character was then absent in the franchise from the 2008 movie until he was revealed to be Quentin Beck Mysterio’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) primary technical guy in Far From Home. Interestingly, while Tony declared for Billingsley in Iron Man, he might need to reconsider that if he only knew what role Riva played in Peter Parker/Spider-Man’s (Tom Holland) current predicament. In Far From Home’s mid-credits scene, a heavily edited video of Mysterio not only framed Peter for the villain’s death but also confirmed his real identity.
The general assumption is that Mysterio is dead, and since Riva was his “guy in a chair,” he had direct access to the villain, presumably before he actually died. A brief scene in Spider-Man: Far From Home also showed the disgruntled Stark Industries scientist running away with a flash drive in his hand. This implies that he’s the one who tipped The Daily Bugle the news which J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) gladly took. While Tony and Riva never encountered each other in the MCU, It’s safe to assume that if the franchise’s inaugural hero is still around, he would have a different opinion about Ralphie than the one he had in Iron Man 3.