About

"Tony Stark Was Able To Build This In A Cave, With A Box of Scraps!" is a quote from the 2008 Marvel film Iron Man. The quote and scene has since been used in a variety of memes, including reaction image images and exploitable templates.

Origin

The scene comes from the Marvel film Iron Man, which was released on May 2nd, 2008. In the scene, Pepper Potts manages to escape after downloading Obadiah Stane's hidden files from his computer, which contain various weapon plans including the first iteration of Tony Stark's Iron Man suit. Obadiah, now frustrated, goes to his scientists to see the progress they've made on replicating the suit. However, they haven't made much progress on it as the technology needed to power the suit "doesn't exist." Obadiah only gets angrier at this, and shouts "Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave, with a box of scraps!" (scene shown below).

Spread

The scene initially saw use in memes poking fun at a powerful entity being unable to outperform a more modest entity. For example, in 2015, a Steam user posted the scene as an object labeling meme portraying EA yelling at Activision for being unable to outperform Undertale (shown below, top). The original post^[1] has since been deleted. It also saw multiple uses in the Star Wars fandom. For example, on February 20th, 2021, Redditor Torpedo11 posted a Prequel Meme using the template, gaining over 27,000 points in /r/prequelmemes^[2] in three years (shown below, bottom).

The template also was used as an exploitable. For example, on February 28th, 2021, Imgur^[3] user Mystichead posted a Warhammer version of the meme, gaining over 6,100 views in three years (shown below, left). On May 29th, 2023, Instagram user @cinematicmemeverse^[4] fit the meme into the I Am A Surgeon, Dr. Han template, gaining over 1,000 likes in one year (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References