You might say Tony Stark is an obnoxious person, but you should think twice before calling him an egocentric superhero. He was actually a selfless man.
In fact, Iron Man saved the most people in the MCU because he was always ready to sacrifice himself. To prove that, let’s see how many people Iron Man has saved in the MCU.
Before we get started, we will exclude the events of Infinity War and Endgame because Tony sacrificed himself for countless lives in the universe.
Outside of those events, we’ll count the people saved solely by Iron Man. Let’s get started!
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Trilogy of Iron Man (2008, 2010, & 2013)
In Iron Man’s first movie (2008), the Battle of Gulmira was an open confrontation between Iron Man and the Ten Rings in the village of Gulmira, Afghanistan.
At that time, Stark was building his armor while watching an FBX news report on how Raza Hamidmi al-Wazar and his Ten Rings soldiers were using Stark’s own weapons to attack innocent people.
Angered by what he saw and wanting to do something good with the technology he had created, Stark weaponized his Mark III Armor and flew to Afghanistan.
Stark attacked and eliminated multiple terrorists with his advanced weapons systems, saving the lives of innocent people. In this scene, a total of 30 people were saved.
In Iron Man 2 (2010), while the chief villain Ivan Vanko first appeared at the Monaco Grand Prix, he only targeted Tony Stark at that time, so that incident is not counted.
The final incident at Stark Expo, however, is significant. While trying to evacuate civilians, there was a boy wearing an Iron Man mask who was stopped by one of Vanko’s drones. Iron Man saved him, adding one more to the count.
In Iron Man 3 (2013), when Killian, in the Iron Patriot suit, kidnapped President Matthew Ellis and destroyed Air Force One, Tony Stark remotely controlled the Mark 42 armor to save 11 people from the cabin crew.
In total, across the Iron Man sequels, Iron Man saved 42 people in action.
The Avengers (2012)
In The Avengers, Iron Man, alongside his fellow Avengers, confronted hundreds of Chitauri who flew in through the portal, as well as several Leviathans. They all gave their best to rescue the city and fight against the Chitauri.
However, there was a pivotal moment that determined the fate of New York. Tony Stark intercepted the nuke and flew it through the portal, destroying the Leviathan mothership. This decisive action saved New York.
In 2012, there were more than 8.3 million people in New York, according to the US Census. Therefore, it’s fair to say that Iron Man saved about 8.3 million people in this event.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
In Age of Ultron, when Iron Man hunted down Ultron, Tony revealed that Bruce Banner had been manipulated into Hulk form and was rampaging in South Africa.
Knowing that many innocent civilians would undoubtedly be killed in Hulk’s rampage, Iron Man did a quick search for Hulk via the internet (very realistic) and found him in Johannesburg.
Then came the classic showdown in Johannesburg: Iron Man in his Hulkbuster suit versus the Hulk. Tony managed to knock out Hulk, saving countless civilians from harm.
According to World Population Review, Johannesburg’s population in 2015 was 5 million people. Therefore, we can count this as Tony saving 5 million lives.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
After his role in the Civil War, Tony Stark returned to his life as a billionaire in a big armor suit. This time, he unexpectedly became an adviser for Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
In this movie, Peter, as Spider-Man, is on a solo journey to investigate illegal smugglers with dangerous advanced weapons working for someone named The Vulture.
Despite his cool demeanor, Tony did care about what Peter warned him about and took Peter’s information seriously. Stark alerted the FBI to Vulture’s illegal activities.
Later, Tony became suspicious when Peter hung up his call, so he suited up and arrived at the FBI’s ambush on the Staten Island Ferry, just in time to see it being literally torn apart.
Iron Man then proceeded to fix the Ferry by pushing it back together and using the lasers in his armor to weld the cut.
The Staten Island Ferry can serve around 500 to 750 passengers per trip. However, the movie scene suggests the capacity was not fully utilized.
Therefore, let’s take 500 as the number of passengers for this case. By saving the ferry, Iron Man rescued about 500 passengers.
So, before the final showdown of Infinity War and Endgame, Tony Stark as Iron Man had saved about 13,300,542 people in the MCU.
And we all know that in Endgame, Tony Stark saved countless lives by reversing Thanos’ snap, rescuing half of the universe.
What do you guys think? Are there any cases we haven’t counted yet? Share your thoughts!