7) Maria Stark
Given Howard Stark’s prominence in the MCU – in either the younger, playboy guise of Dominic Cooper or his elder S.H.I.E.L.D. statesman mode as played by John Slattery – it is surprising that we haven’t met Tony’s mother, Maria, before Civil War.
As well as the tragic sequence showing the Starks’ death at the hands of the Winter Soldier, we see Maria in the scene where Tony recreates his last memory of his parents with some super high-tech doohickey. The scene acts as both a reminder that Tony has had as much a troubled history as Cap and also handily pre-empts the reveal about their murder later in the film.
Actress Hope Davis does a fine job as Maria, but audiences were probably mostly distracted by the scarily good CGI used to de-age Robert Downey Jr. into a teenager.