The film features Pepper Potts, who, after being injected with Extremis, gains enhanced physical abilities. She uses these abilities in a direct physical confrontation to defeat the male antagonist, Aldrich Killian, through close-quarters combat.

The character of The Mandarin, canonically depicted as East Asian in Marvel Comics, is portrayed by Ben Kingsley, an actor of British-Indian descent, in Iron Man 3. This constitutes a race swap.

The film initially presents The Mandarin as a stereotypical radicalized terrorist, but later reveals this persona to be a fabricated character used to manipulate global fear. By exposing the 'Mandarin' as a hoax, the narrative satirizes the creation and exploitation of fear-mongering stereotypes, rather than condemning the religion itself.