A closer look
Robert Downey Jr credits a disgustingly bad Burger King cheeseburger with saving his life, which is why Tony Stark aggressively demands one upon returning to America in the first Iron Man film. In two thousand and three, Downey was driving with a trunk full of drugs, ate a burger that tasted so phenomenally awful it triggered an epiphany, and subsequently threw all his narcotics into the ocean. Marvel kept the fast-food reference as a subtle nod to his real-life path to sobriety, seamlessly blending an actor's traumatic rock bottom with a massive superhero franchise's product placement strategy. Most people just get mild indigestion from cheap drive-thru meals, but the man who built the Marvel Cinematic Universe managed to extract a life-altering spiritual awakening from a soggy bun
