Spider-Man/Fridge

Comics

Fridge Brilliance

• One More Day

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• The Venom symbiote bonding to Mac Gargan (the former Scorpion) makes perfect sense in hindsight. The symbiote originally bonded to Spider-Man and got hooked on his enhanced spider powers. Ever since they were seperated, it always secretly wanted to return to him. It settled for Eddie Brock because he had a certain kind of cancer which provided the adrenaline the symbiote needed as a substitute and he also shared the symbiote's hatred of Spider-Man. With Gargan, it has the best of both worlds! Gargan has genetically-engineered arachnid powers similar to Spider-Man, and shares the symbiote's hate for him. -- rahabim87
• I just realized that it's likely that Spidey chose red and blue deliberately, and why he doesn't switch to a black costume all that often. He's wearing a full-body suit (no skin showing), and he slinks around in odd postures. He looks downright creepy. The red and blue outfit could be his way of lightening up his appearance so others aren't freaked out by him.
  • It was originally a costume made for performing on television, so it needed to be flamboyant and exciting.
• After a decade and a half long mystery, the true identity of the Hobgoblin ended up being Roderick Kingsley, the fashion designer. And back in the Hobgoblin's first issue, when the mysterious figure finds the Green Goblin's stuff, what's the very first thing he does? He didn't upgrade the weapons, he didn't improve the glider; no, the very first thing he did was change the costume.

Fridge Horror

• The fate of Mary Jane's pregnancies count: drugged and forced to miscarry, with the implication being made that the baby MIGHT have survived and was now in the custody of Norman Osborn (Spider-Man's archenemy) and (due to Executive Meddling) the storyline ended up with the baby's namesake (Aunt May, in a stroke-induced coma) instead being Norman's hostage instead! Oh, and this child got erased from existence by One More Day! That's not all though; during One More Day itself, it's revealed that Mary Jane is pregnant again! And Mephisto SPECIFICALLY torments Peter and MJ, as he seduces them into taking his deal, by taking the form of their second child (another girl) as he taunts them with how their deal with the devil will negate this child's existence!
  • Um... What? It was never claimed MJ was pregnant, in fact, I seem to recall that shortly after the One More Day was published that Marvel had to come out & clarify that the form Mephisto took wasn't the baby from the Clone Saga or that Mary Jane was pregnant again, as people immediately began questioning if that meant it was Spider-Girl from the MC2 continuity.
• Speaking of One More Day, have you noticed the logo for Joe Quesada's column, "Cup O' Joe"? Like, the fact none other than Spidey is behind Quesada? You know what that really means? The implied meaning of the logo is about Quesada either threatening, teasing, daring, trolling, provoking or irritating the audience (and other writers alike) with the message, "if you want to retcon Spider-Man, you have to get past me".
• Similarly, the final fate of Ben Reilly: in order to show fans that Ben was a clone all along, it was decided that Ben wouldn't just die, but die horribly via disintegrating into a puddle of goo in his last moments of life, even though it had been firmly established that Jackal's clones only disintegrate into goo after a long period of time.
  • Word of God states that this happened so that everyone knew for certain that Peter wasn't the clone after all.
• The ultimate fate of Ned Leeds: while investigating the hot new villain Hobgoblin, you are grabbed and subjected to Mind Rape, in which the villain uses you as his stand-in to establish an alliance with the mob in order to overthrow the Kingpin after Hobgoblin made an enemy of him. You have periods of black outs and become more and more aggressive, as the mind rape takes hold of your brain. You become more and more angry, driving your wife into the arms of another man and finally, when the Hobgoblin is ready to make you take the fall for him, has you attack both the wife and her lover, unmasking in front of her and causing her to have a mental breakdown (in part because the Hobgoblin had framed Ned's wife's lover for being the Hobgoblin when Flash publicly dissed him on TV). But you don't remember that because of the blackouts and you head off to Europe where you and your only remaining friend stay at a hotel in Berlin, the middle of Communist East Germany! Once alone in your room, you have another blackout and wake up dressed as the Hobgoblin! Suddenly the door is broken down and hired assassins MURDER you in gruesome fashion. While one of the assassins takes pictures of you being beaten up, your arm being broken as you try desperately to defend yourself, and finally death by way of having piano wire used to garrote you. OH, then the costume is taken off of you and you are posed as if you were killed by the KGB by your friend. A friend, when confronted with PICTURES of your death (dressed as one of his major enemies), can't be bothered to fucking remember that said villain HAD SUPER-HUMAN STRENGTH, meaning that there is no way that a bunch of assassins would have been able to break your arm, let alone be able to kill you like they did. And no one would fucking care to ask any questions whatsoever, until the villain who ordered the hit "outs" you as the Hobgoblin in a desperate bid to get several of his convictions overturned, after spending years claiming to be the one true Hobgoblin in order to pad his reputation.
• In the Spider-Man: Noir miniseries, May Parker is a proponent of socialism. Keep in mind in the fifties, this would likely result in Peter being blacklisted by his employers or generally used to screw him over later in life by McCarthyism tactics.
  • Of course. It wouldn't be Spider-Man if Peter's life wasn't a pain in the ass.
• In this comic we find out that when Peter Parker was a child he was molested by older person named Skip, it is already creepy and gross, but how do we know that Peter wasn't the first child that Skip molested?
• Morbius is trying his best not only to cure himself, cuz being a vampire sucks (apparently) but to cure his mysterious friend Curt Connors. I makes me shudder when i think that poor man would most likely remember that he Killed his own son.

Movies

Spider-Man 2

Fridge Brilliance

• In the second Spider-Man movie, Mary Jane chewed Peter out for missing her play, not listening to his legitmate explanation for why he missed it in the first place. Then, I remembered how Mary Jane was used to be being disappointed by others. In the first movie, she had a terrible relationship with her father. She broke up with her then-boyfriend Flash at their high school graduation. Her next boyfriend Harry didn't really stick up for her when his father said she only dated him for his money. In fact, the only person who she could depend on was Peter. So when Aunt May, Harry and even her father showed up to see the play and Peter didn't, she probably felt a little betrayed.
  • In the same film, and related: the "cake scene" is often pegged as a pointless Non Sequitur Scene. Basically, a minor character - the somewhat attractive daughter of Peter's landlord - invites him over for a slice of cake, and he sits there eating in awkward silence for a minute, enjoying the cake but not having anything to say to her. It took a while for this troper to get the point: the scene was emphasizing that despite the Character Development over the past film-and-a-half, deep down Peter is still a socially awkward geek who can't relate to people. This casts new light on his relationship with Mary Jane - whom he can talk to.

Fridge Logic

• Octavius' arms. While the AI might be explained away as a freak accident (like a guy getting superpowers from a spider bite), why did Octavius install blades in a scientific tool?
  • It is also an assembly and crafting tool.

Spider-Man 3

Fridge Brilliance

• Many people have mocked Peter's 'emo' phase when the symbiote is gaining influence over him. But actually, during this sequence Peter is displaying the classic symptoms of a manic episode. Check 'em: an inflated sense of confidence, sexual aggressiveness, physical aggressiveness, and a near-lethal irritability. Given that mania is associated with elevated adrenaline levels, and the symbiote canonically fed off the adrenal glands... this is probably exactly what they were going for.
• Came over here after seeing the What Could Have Been for Spider-Man 3—specifically, that the butler was supposed to be another illusion of Harry's. Suddenly, that scene with him telling Harry that Norman did indeed kill himself MAKES SENSE. It's not the butler being a moron and not letting Harry know that his father wasn't killed by Spider-Man; THERE IS NO BUTLER. Harry's just using the butler as a mouthpiece as he tells himself that his friend Peter wasn't responsible for his father's death, and that there's no need for revenge!
  • Funny thing; we see the same butler in the first film, but he's completely absent for the second. Harry wasn't just imagining him; he was imagining a man he knew who had already died or been fired.
    • He was in the second film. Though even here he seems like he could just be Harry's imagined voice of reason, given the latter's hallucination at the end.

Butler: "Your father only obsessed over his work."
Harry: "Goodnight, Bernard."

• • Isn't this canon? The intent for him to be a hallucination was always there, and there's nothing in the final product to contradict that.
    • 'Fraid there is. The scene where Peter visits Harry at home after the accident, I'm pretty sure Peter and Bernard spoke to each other. And then when Harry asks Bernard if he has any girlfriends, Peter doesn't react as though anything strange is happening.
    • Yeah, Peter doesn't respond awkwardly when Harry speaks to his butler later, so the butler is certainly alive.