< Spider-Man

Spider-Man/Headscratchers


Comics

  • So is Ultimate Spider-Woman a lesbian? She's Peter Parker in a woman's body. So would she retain his sexual orientations or would the hormones make her suddenly prefer guys despite her previous experiences?
    • Really, he/she probably counts as transgender.
    • Or maybe it makes him bisexual? (Like the TF Gun in El Goonish Shive.)
    • It's been a little while since I took Human Sexuality, but I don't think there are "like guys" or "like girls" hormones. Sexual orientation is emergent gradually during the formative years along with the other elements of one's identity. If the differences in his neurological structure and hormone balances didn't radically change other elements of his personality, (s)he's probably still into chicks. What most likely has been affected is his/her sex drive, as MTF transsexuals report.
      • Yes, but those are surgical transgenders, whose hormone-producing sex organs are removed. Ultimate Spider Girl-Woman is genetically female, and presumably has all the standard plumbing intact, sex glands and all.
        • Removed their hormone-producing organs? You mean their brain? Protip: wombs and the like don't produce hormones, the brain produces them and that tells the organs what to do.
        • I don't think there's any scientific consensus on why people are gay or not: whether it's something genetic, something in the brain chemistry, or something that comes from growing up in certain ways. As such, the easiest (and least controversial) explanation is that she likes girls because she's always liked girls.
        • It's worth noting that she appears to be very concerned about MJ during the Ultimate Clone Saga.

Jessica: I just don't want (MJ) involved in any of this.
Peter: You don't?
'Jessica: I know, I was, uh, speaking for both of us.

    • She recently made out with Johnny Storm. So, it looks like she may be attracted to guys. Peter does not take it well when he finds out about it.
      • Well... this is Johnny Storm we're talking about, so can we really take him 100% seriously?
    • Deadpool mentioned it, and well she is a bisexual. Let's leave it at that. I'd hit it tho.
  • Why can Spider-Man stick to walls with his feet even when he's wearing shoes? Also, why don't the palms and soles of his costume ever get incredibly grimy due to dirt sticking to them?
    • As for the first question, in the comics the palms and soles of his costume are incredibly thin. Since his powers work there by static electricity, this lets the stuff go through and allowing his wallcrawling powers to work (one must assume that he did the same thing to the butt of his costume, considering how many times we see him sitting on a wall). As for the second, maybe Mr. Fantastic loaned him some unstable molecules. That usually answers any Marvel costume-related quandries.
    • Depending on the Writer, Spider-Man actually takes off his shoes when he needs to wall-crawl without having time to change costume. This troper remembers an early Lee-Romita Sr. story where Peter Parker climbs out the window of Norman Osborn's townhose in his stocking feet, holding his shoes in one hand. Of course, that doesn't explain how Spidey manages to wall-crawl when he actually has his shoes on.
    • Typically, Peter only needs to remove his shoes when he is in his street clothes, his powers will not work through the thick rubber soles. His costume is thin enough to let him wall crawl with out doing this. Which is probably why is he sick so often for a superhero.
    • For quick jaunts, I'd imagine Pete can climb with only his hands, kicking against the wall with shoed feet.
      • Doesn't help that he can simply stand on the wall in cartoon, lean against it in comics (sticking to it with his feet) and run up the wall in games. So...
      • I remember reading an issue of Amazing Spider-Man where Peter is (when is he never?) lost in thought on a Subway train which comes to an abrupt halt. The rest of the passengers are flung from their seats and clutter about on the floor in distress. Peter is the only person still standing and the rest of the passengers cast him a wary look. One of them even asks how it was possible for someone who wasn't firmly planted and prepared for the shock nor ready holding onto anything could maintain his position. Peter threw out a witty remark and got off at the next stop to check out the occurrence. Taking that into account it's safe to say Peter's sticky powers are always active.
        • There's another issue where a nearby explosion knocks every superhero present to their feet... except for Captain America and Spider-Man. Dialogue establishes that Cap managed it because he has exceptional training and reflexes, and Spidey comments '... I stick to things.'
  • Venom's influence turned Eddie Brock into a cannibalistic serial killer. Spider-Man simply became more aggressive. What the Hell does this suggest about him?
    • Eddie Brock merely became a vigilante, not unlike Wolverine and the Punisher. You're probably thinking of Carnage, who was a serial killer before he ever got his symbiote.
    • Venom did indeed become cannibalistic, as a particularly bad story had the symbiote needing to feed on human brains. As for Venom's homicidal tendencies, the psychological strain of being separated from Peter, followed by bonding with the disturbed and suicidal Eddie Brock, who had a pathological hatred of Spider-Man, basically caused a psychotic break for both Eddie and the symbiote. The circumstances were very different from when the symbiote tried to bond with Peter.
    • Note that in the original comics, the suit didn't make Spidey more aggressive or change anything about his personality. It just made him tired as the symbiote fed off him.
      • Didn't even do that originally. It made him tired because it would take him out while he was asleep for crime-fighting stuff. Which really grated hugely for me later on; it was trying to help!
    • If you're talking about the movie Venom, think about this--the symbiote drives Peter Parker, who has a very strict code against killing, to attempt to murder Sandman... what the heck do you think the symbiote is going to influence the significantly less saintly Eddie Brock to do?
    • In the comics, Eddie Brock wasn't actually cannibalistic while he possessed the symbiote. Mac Gargan, on the other hand, became cannibalistic after some psychics messed with his mind.
      • I have a few Spider-Man novels, includng some written by David Michaline, set during the time Eddie was Venom, and they strongly hint that he ate some of the criminals he murdered. And if you say "The books are non-canon!" then I can always point to the (now seemingly discarded arc where Eddie was eating peoples' brains0.
    • In "Sinner Takes All" storyline, the symbiote temporarily bonds with Brock's ex-wife, Anne Weying. She was afraid of him and didn't want anything to do with it or him. With the symbiote on, she brutally gutted two ambushers in a way that made even Brock himself feel sick. Once the symbiote left her, she was completely freaked out about what happened. It made her behave exactly opposite of what she was.
    • The Venom symbiote was fairly fresh when Spidey got it. It wasn't malicious in any way; the worst things it did was what Pete taught it to do, go out and fight crime. It wasn't until Peter rejected the symbiote that it became angry and vindictive, but it still tried to do what Peter taught it, in its own hurt way. Venom's Lethal Protector period can be seen as Venom still fighting crime and protecting "innocents" the way it learned from Peter, but in its own spiteful and emotionally hurt way. With any given thing that Venom did, it can be interpreted a thousand different ways how much was Eddie and how much was the symbiote, but the one critical detail is the "bitter ex-girlfriend" metaphor; it wasn't a murderous creature until Peter cast it away, and after he did, it started bonding to people who hated him and learning from the less savory side of the world.
  • If the Rhino costume is permanently stuck to his skin, except when removed with acidic chemicals, how does the Rhino . . . you know, pee?
    • Answered in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and later confirmed in canon-- he has a small unsealable flap for waste disposal. It's also confirmed, somewhat Squickily, that said flap does not allow him the option of normal sexual relations.
      • That explains so, so much about his personality.
    • This troper isn't up to speed on the Rhino's most recent costume, but at one point in the 1990s he managed to get the outfit that was stuck to him surgically removed. He then took a Ten-Minute Retirement in Mexico, where he was depicted in normal street clothes, until he finally got bored with his easy life and got a job with Justin Hammer, who made him a new Rhino suit. Epileptic Trees could suggest that he employed the services of local hookers and call girls while he was in Mexico, and that his new costumes are removable.
      • Two stories shows this - a) Rhino's suit is no longer bonded to him, since we see that he was working without it (and married) and b) it can be taken apart, since Dr. Ocktopus replaced his horn with a fang.
  • Is anyone else both pissed off and bugged at the fact that Spidey beats up Rhino for being in the same cemetery as him? For that matter, even after Rhino told Spidey he was mourning his mom, he still beats the hell out of him?
    • If memory serves, Aunt May had just died. I mean, when you compare when Mary Jane died and he went after the freaking Hulk, this was downright mellow.
      • Actually, this was very UN-mellow. Spidey was mourning Captain America's death and visiting Uncle Ben's grave. He spots the Rhino, so he just attacks. Spider-Man doesn't let the villain explain himself until after he makes Rhino run over his own mom's headstone. Turns out, Rhino was visiting his mom's grave. Turns out supervillains have moms too. Spiderdickery, indeed.
  • I don't follow the comics closely, so forgive me if there's a simple and obvious explanation, but why does Jameson hate Spidey so much? Most of the adaptations I've seen show his fights causing some collateral damage, which would go some way toward explaining it, but it always seems that the damage would have been worse of Spidey just let the villain run riot.
    • It depends on the adaptation. In some continuities, he's just a Jerkass. In others, he had some traumatic event in his life involving somebody wearing a mask. In yet other continuities, he's an idealist who believes that people should be public and masked men inevitably become menaces.
    • When asked point-blank about it by Betty Brant early on (one of the single-digit issues, I believe), JJJ claims that he manufactured the vendetta just to sell papers. It's not convincing to anyone in earshot, but it's his story at the time.
    • Within the first twenty issues or so, JJJ soliloquized on his real motive - envy. He knows, deep in his heart, that Spidey is doing more good than he is - sure, JJJ supports good causes, but Spidey is out there most days saving lives. Rather than deal with this blow, JJJ found it easier to believe that Spidey is actually a Villain with Good Publicity. Of course, this was back in the '60s, so...
    • Some writers have also postulated that Jonah wanted people to give less adulation to costumed vigilantes and more adulation to "regular heroes"... like his son, the astronaut. I recall Kurt Busiek used that in one issue of the short-lived Untold Tales of Spider Man.
    • Jonah has a real problem with extrajudicial vigilantism. In Amazing Spider-Man #91, driving away from Cpt. Stacy's funeral, Jonah vows to use Stacy's death to turn public opinion against Spider-Man. "Nobody should be able to slink around town, masked and costumed, taking the law into his own hands!" Perhaps this makes Jonah a Lawful Jerkass.
      • On the other hand, he was still on Spider-Man's case without letup even when Spidey was serving as an Avenger (the first NEW AVENGERS run, specifically). Apparently joining one of the world's most legal and aboveboard superteams, at a time when Captain America expressly had official US government sanction to form and lead such a team with perfect legal authority, still isn't enough for JJJ to get over it. In fact, Jonah eventually started going after Captain America[1] because if he was willing to employ someone as reprehensible and nefarious as that damned wall-crawler clearly he had to have something wrong with him. At this point there is no rational explanation for Jonah's hatred, he just hates.
  • Why does Spider-Man get such a bad reputation in New York? The city has at least a dozen superheroes and who knows how many villains, they should be used to any collateral damage by now. Besides that, Spidey's one of the nicest, and most effective heroes around, if anything, he should be as liked as Superman is. Are New Yorkers dumb, or is Jameson just that good at running smear campaigns?
    • Well sure, to US he seems nice, pleasant, and an all around fun guy to be around, but to the people of NYC he's just some weirdo in an animal-themed costume who jumps around and punches out other weirdos in animal-themed costumes. The only ones who can be counted on to have a half-way decent opinion of him are the people he's saved from muggings and bank robberies. But Manhattan alone has a population of over 1.6 million. There's no way Spidey's even met most of them, let alone personally saved them. So the only thing they know about Spidey is what they read in Jameson's anti-Spidey editorials.
      • To expand on this point: a part of the original concept of Spider-Man that's kind of been overlooked in most portrayals is that he's actually quite creepy. He wears a full facial mask, contorts his body into weird positions, is named after an animal everyone hates, and is constantly making sarcastic remarks. Back in the Stan Lee days, even when fellow super-hero Wasp worked with him, she respected him well enough, but didn't like him personally. He just creeped her out.
    • Okay, but he's still publicly seen working with the heroes that have better press as they save the city/world all the time, but rarely gets credit for that. He was an Avenger at one point. (Though that may or may not have have occurred thanks to One More Day.)
      • I imagine his credibility was improving at that point, but that's a fairly recent development (and as you pointed out, it may have been retconned away).
      • On the same note, Howcome the likes of Tony Stark and Reed Richards never, oh, I dunno, GAVE HIM SOME MONEY? Sure being a struggling everyman makes the story interesting, sure it's kinda difficult having him in the same continuity as the FF who, for some reason, get to not have secret identities, but seriously, has anyone tried explaining why he puts up with being dirt poor when he has extremely rich friends? Before you call me a commie, keep in mind that he's just as smart as the aforementioned super geniuses of Marvel, and their money comes straight from their scientific breakthroughs.
        • Because they've SOLD and MARKETED their ideas and inventions- Peter hasn't. And Peter is probably a lot like most of us- asking for money is hard. I have a work acquaintance who won the lottery (before I knew him)- he and his family have over 50 million dollars in the bank, but I can't imagine asking him for any.
          • Which still doesn't answer the question why they don't help Peter sell and market his inventions. Tony especially -- Reed's business interests don't extend much beyond his own patents, but Tony Stark makes his money manufacturing and selling pretty much anything and everything (except weapons). Simply buying the rights to some of Peter's more useful patentable ideas and handing him a large royalty check while going 'Thanks, Spidey, I'll take it from here' would have solved so many of Peter's money woes.
          • It's more than that. Peter Parker is absolutely driven to redeem his callousness getting his Uncle killed, even after all this time. Peter Parker let the guy that robbed the wrestling gate money go in the first place because he'd just been bilked of half his agreed pay by the manager. I'm pretty sure that Spidey's simply averse to greed as it is a proven prelude to tragedy in his mind.
        • The public also continues to hate and fear mutants despite the X-Men's best efforts, they trust convicted murderers and psychopaths to keep them safe after Civil War, and routinely misblame the heroes for things that are the fault of the villains. Suffice it to say that the general public in 616 Marvel is a collection of ungrateful douchebags who are Too Dumb to Live and quite frankly don't even deserve to have the heroes continually fighting to protect them. That means you, Sally Floyd! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
        • Wow, replace Spider-man with Superman and you've got the basic plot of Irredeemable.
  • Why in gods name did Peter decide it was a good idea to bring Aunt May back from the dead after she told him she was happy and that he should move on with his life? That's just spitting right in her face!
    • Because Quesada has personal issues relating to his own family and is living vicariously through Peter.
      • Look we get it, you're a dick, but why is Spider-Man has to be Jimmy Olsen? Seriously!
    • Another headscratcher, why did Mephisto allow Peter and May to have a "Happy Ending", at all? why not bring her back from the dead (while taking Peter and MJ's marriage) and then have to old bat get hit with a bus and killed again? I thought he was supposed to be evil!
      • I don't follow on his story at all, but if movie is to hold any merit - Mephisto doesn't want Ghost Rider to show up. He broke his deal with him, and this is what he got. On the other hand, i don't think it was just Aunt May's life he was barganing for. It was his own life, his secret identity and all that.
  • Other than pure coincidence, is there any particular reason why so many of Spidey's enemies are/wear green? Green Goblin, Mysterio, Doc Ock, Vulture, Scorpion, Electro, The Lizard, Sandman. It just seems odd considering all of these were original Stan Lee villains.
    • Green provides a clear and colorful contrast against Spidey's red and blue.
    • In the sixties, when these characters were created, the limited coloring technology generally meant there were only a handful of colors to choose from. And if your hero is already in red and blue...
    • It was still going according to a Silver Age convention - heroes were dressed in primary colours (red, yellow, blue), villains in secondary ones (green, orange, purple), with a few exceptions like the Green Lantern and ambiguous character the Hulk (who originally was supposed to be gray, but became green largely thanks to a colour-printing error).
  • Just how difficult could it be to deduce SM's true identity? Let's see: he's a young man, who uses apparently unparalleled artificial webbing - obviously a chemistry prodigy, which is pretty narrow stratum already. His time as an amateur wrestler suggests meager income, and the sudden termination of promising career, followed by the turn to crime-fighting suggests some personal drama, probably crime-related, having occured in a rather specific time interval. Do a cross-search based on said parameters, and whom will it yield? Exactly, Peter Parker, SM's one and only stalker. Now, I understand that most of these assumptions are made with the benefit of hindsight and are rather far-fethched, but wasn't the matter ever adressed to in the franchise by some villain with sufficient wits and resources (like Kingpin or Osborn)? Hell, the pictures themselves give ground for a strong suspicion, since most of the sets they are taken from would take a regular person a couple of hours to get into.
    • Peter Parker is, essentially, a nobody in a city with several million people in it. Most people don't even notice the name that's under a newspaper picture. Hell, people generally don't notice the name of the writer. In the case of the Bugle, they may not put names in at all, at least in movie continuity. The Green Goblin crashes into Jameson's office to ask who sends in the pictures, so he's obviously seen the paper, but either the Bugle doesn't put in photo credits (most all papers do) or the Goblin just wasn't looking very hard. So the amount of people who even know that Parker's the one getting all of Spidey's pictures is going to be very small.
      • In the comics when Peter starts working for the Daily Bugle, he asks Jameson to give his photo credits to staff photographers rather than himself just for this reason. Also, in one of the issues, Spencer Smythe uses spy cameras planted around the city to catch Spidey unmasking, only to realize that Peter is just an average looking white guy with brown hair, so even after seeing his face he still had no idea who he was.
      • Normal people are not hell-bent for uncovering SM's identity, unlike the villains. I'm talking about a purposeful and systematic investigation here. Are we to assume that nobody with appropriate resources ever attempted it at all? Kingpin, Osborn, police, S.H.I.E.L.D., nobody?
        • Oh, Nick Fury totally knows who Spider-Man is and has for years. But Nick is legitimately that good at this game, and lesser lights like the NYPD or the Kingpin aren't quite up to his speed.
      • The movies actually had me wondering this. In all three cases MJ was captured, in all three cases Spider-Man shows up. First movie, Osborn shouts that he has to choose between the kids and 'the woman he loves'. Okay, so maybe someone saw the upside-down kiss. Second movie Doc Ock abducts her, okay she was a target of convenience. Third movie, abducted again, now I would personalyl argue that a pattern seems to be emerging here. Jameson if no one else might think, "Hmm, this girl left my son at the altar. She seems to be bait for Spiderman, and who brings me lots of pictures of Spiderman?" And given that he was presumably a reporter in the past he could do a bit of digging and see if either Peter is seeing her or, maybe thinking that MJ is with Peter and Spider-Man is a close friend of one of them, do an elimination search. It wouldn't be difficult and it would in fact be in character for Jameson.
    • First, you're projecting your own omniscient reader knowledge on the characters in the story. Why do you assume that people in the 616 universe know Spider-Man's webbing is artificial? Why wouldn't they assume it's organically generated by his body? And even if Peter Parker were a chemistry prodigy (in the original comics he was very smart but hardly a child genius) why do you assume anyone else in the world knows about it? The fact that he got good grades in high school does not make him a well-known chemistry prodigy. Second, you make a lot of spectacular leaps. A sudden change of career suggests personal drama...how exactly? Have you never known anyone who changed their career for non-drama related reasons? Third, you are seriously underestimating just how many people there are in New York City. Even if you did have some magic computer with the identify of every resident of NYC in it, and even if you were a character in the 616 universe with access to all the information you listed (a dubious proposition at best), if you did a search based on those parameters it could easily turn up hundreds or even thousands of suspects. Do you really think that of the 1.6 million people living in Manhattan alone there's only one scientifically-inclined young man who suffered a personal trauma as a teenager?
    • First, thank you, I'm aware and even admitted it firsthand. Webbing: cause they might, you know, collect and analyze it; Chem Prodigy: the fact that he designed said webbing; Career change: he changed to crime-fighting of all things, and that takes some strong incentive, otherwise what, did he just wake up one morning and thought: "shit, crime is really winding up, I'd better do something"; Drama: not just any drama, but something severe and crime-related in a rather narrow time gap (between the termination of his career and his rise as Spider-Man). Finally, I'm not saying such search would yield a single name, but it would yield Parker among others. Add here a list of all names somehow connected to SM, and bingo! But even if they can indeed only narrow it down to hundreds or thousands of people, so what? We're talking about the likes of Osborn or Kingpin, do you really think it'd be too much of a strain for their resources to shadow even this many people for a day or two, if the stake was rooting out SM?
      • I think it's too much of a stretch for them to care if the search yields hundreds or thousands of names. What if they can't narrow it down from there? Are they going to put hidden cameras in hundreds or thousands of homes and hope none of them get noticed? Are they going to hire hundreds or thousands of private detectives to investigate each person on the list? As for the rest: You have yet to prove they could even determine the webbing was artificial. You don't know what that stuff is made of, so how can you say an analysis would prove anything at all? Maybe Peter synthesized it from organic materials, which would give it organic properties. Ever think of that? And even if they could magically prove that this completely unknown and unprecedented substance was artificially created, who says it would lead them to Peter? Again, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of chemistry students all over Manhattan. They're supposed to pick Peter's name out of that? For that matter, why would they assume he invented the webbing himself? Maybe he gets the webbing from some secret ally. Or maybe someone else invented the webbing and Spidey just appropriated the formula for himself (as happened with Ultimate Spider-Man where the webbing compound was invented by Peter's dad). As for his career change to crime fighting, people sign up for the military or law enforcement all the time. Were they all inspired to do so by a personal trauma? Of course not. For that matter, think about the number of heroes in the 616 universe who just up and decided to become superheroes right after they got their powers. Why would the Kingpin or Norman Osborn assume Spider-Man was any different from the Fantastic Four, who became heroes just because they could, or Captain America, who became a hero out of his sense of duty and patriotism?
        • *Bang* *Bang* *Bang*. AGAIN. Like with most of the "Why didn't they..." headscratchers, the point is not whether some idea would or wouldn't feasibly work, but that nobody ever TRIES it. With the same benefit of hindsight I have you can come out with all kinds of explanations why this idea would hardly work, but none of them invalidates the main point, i.e. that it COULD work. Probably. A Million-to-One Chance. So it really all comes down to one simple question: would they have the urge to try? YES, THEY WOULD. Hell, they are fighting that guy for years, if not decades, they spend eminent resources and concoct all kinds of insane plans of world domination, and they cannot be bothered with a little boring investigation, that would cost them relatively little, but could potentially root out their greatest nemesis? What do they have to loose? WHY THE HELL NOT TRY IT?
          • The fact that it would never feasibly work IS the point. Because if it's completely unfeasible, THE VILLAINS WOULDN'T TRY IT. Jesus Christ, man. Use your brain.
          • If the humankind actually used "it's completely unfeasible" as an excuse not to try something, we would all still be in the Middle Ages. And I'm talking normal people here, not megalomaniacs, who should be even less fettered by the notion of "unfeasible".
            • Are you kidding me? Are you seriously not aware of the fact that most people will not try something that is 99.99% guaranteed to not ever work? You asked why they didn't do it. I pointed out that they didn't do it because it would never work. Then you shifted the goal posts to ask why they wouldn't at least give it a try, even if it was completely unfeasible. I answered they wouldn't try it because it's completely unfeasible. People don't try things that are completely unfeasible. It really is just that simple. Why is that so difficult to understand?
        • ^^ Not really. Big scientific discoveries don't come from things that the people trying it are 99.99% certain isn't going to work. They come from long sequences of trial and error, developing theory, and then coming up with a final process that you're pretty darn sure is going to work. Yes, the scientific process does consist quite largely of finding out ways not to do what you want to do, but 99% of the time, the person trying it at least thinks there's a decent chance it will work. Why would you try something that you were sure wasn't going to work?
      • People, it has been done. At least two times. First, Ezekiel used half a dozen of detectives, every one of them working in a piece of the full jigsaw, so Ezekiel was able to put it all together and discover Spider-Man's identity (kinda like Ra's Al-Ghul did about Bruce Wayne). The second time, it was an everyman reporter that had a one-shot. Based on analysis on Spidey's webbing (that link him to photography), recordings of his voice (that revealed, by his speech, that he was from the Queens zone), and so on, that reporter closed the possible answers to a few people, and finally... missed it, thinking that Spidey was J. JONAH JAMESON and telling that to J.J.J. in person. Sadly, that happened on the last panel of the comic...
        • FINALLY, a sensible answer. To every skeptic above - THIS is what I've been talking about. And all it took was one rich guy, and half a dozen sleuths. And after that you're going to tell me Kingpin or Osborn couldn't manage that? Bull.
          • You were talking about a guy failing to discover Spider-Man's secret identity? Were you trying to prove every point the so-called "skeptics" were making? The reporter spent thousands of dollars and countless hours or days desperately analyzing the information available and...didn't find Spider-Man's identity. Basically PROVING that the effort was so unlikely to work that most people wouldn't bother at all.

            As for Ezekiel, first of all, he had a magical connection to Spider-Man through their shared powers. Not only is there a lot more motivation for him to find Spider-Man, but there may have been some sort of mystical attraction between them that helped direct his efforts. Second, one of the investigators he hired was Felicia Hardy, a person who already knew Spider-Man's identity and almost certainly used that knowledge to "find" Spidey's identity. If he hadn't hired Felicia to find Spidey it's entirely possible he never would have found anything.
    • I just want to add that even if it seemed like there were 99.99% odds that an attempt to figure out his identity would fail, someone might just say "Hey, I'm sure I'll make it." That's why people try to become wrold-famous writers, athletes, movie stars and so on. People do attempt things that have extremely bad odds of success. That is not debatable. That is a fact.
  • Peter gains the spider ability of seeing the future. Which spider can do that?
    • It's not an ability to see the future at all. It's a sense that something is threatening toward you. Big difference, and it could be explained any number of ways, like being more sensitive to shifts in the air, or to any of his other senses.
    • Well, it is precognitive, in a sense. It's an expansion of awareness across time and space--he can use it as a radar AND he can sense 'threatening' events milliseconds before they occur (although he has had visions of the future across further in time). The movies describe it as quick reflexes Up to Eleven, though they function more as super reflexes. Negative reaction time.
    • And its based on a spider's apparently amazing reflexes.
      • His Spider sense can sense even cosimc threaths, which was shown at least once. So it's either gift from Spider God (and connectiong to the Great Web), human ability unlocked upon augmentation (when he got his powers) or unknown unique trait of spider that bit him. Which however has another headscratcher - why does his clones have (had) it?
  • Why can't Peter tell MJ his secret identity? I understand not revealing it to the world at large because his friends and family would become targets, but MJ's not exactly going to kidnap herself now is She? It seems to be for no other reason than pointless conflict.
    • I think part of it is to keep the weight of being Spider-Man on his own shoulders. Telling MJ or Aunt May would not only cause them worry, but might also put them in uncomfortable situations for which they aren't ready, like lying under oath or to the police. That's just me, though.
  • Kraven The Hunter. As far as I'm aware, "craven" means cowardly. What kind of a name is that for a relentless hunter?
    • Kraven's real name is Sergei Kravinoff. Apparently Kraven is short for Kravinoff. (Interestingly, this point was brought up by Deadpool)
      • It was shortened from Kravinoff to Kraven when some reporter couldn't spell his last name.
        • So you can swear ".... off" but can't say Kravinoff? What.
          • It was also only about 20-odd years after the communists had taken control of Russia, so changing it to something less Russian-sounding may have been a practical move.
  • How old were Peter Parker parents when they had him if they were spies during WW 2?
    • Remember that the Marvel Universe operates on a "floating timeline". Ignore any dates shown in the comics, all we know for sure is that Richard Parker and his wife (who, for the life of me, I can't remember the name of) were secret agents...at some point.
    • So they were no longer spies during WW 2 cause I remeber the comics saying that they were during the 90's.
  • Does his spider sense protect him from psyhic attacks?
    • No, because it's not actually a psychic power. It's really just his reflexes boosted to such incredible speed that it almost seems like he's able to anticipate danger.
      • Yeah...no. If that were true then Venom shouldn't be immune to the spider sense. Doesn't matter that the symbiote was once linked to Spidey, if it's just enhanced reflexes Spidey should still be able to sense him.
  • Okay, i know OMD is something that some people can't stand to see even here, but there is somethhing that bugs me. Before the Deal with Quephisto, Peter met some Divine creature (angel or a God), he met himself from Two different worlds, and his future Daughter. That didn't stopped him (was it a hallucination?) from accepting the deal. Fat guy falls on him, boom. Why does Spider-man forgets that he actually Died twice?! And both times he gained new powers, before he died the first time, he met Ezikil, and Morlun. Then after he died the first time he met Morlun again. Ezikil dies (Peter still married). Then comes BND and Kravinoff family Arc. Ezikil "returns" (Peter Single) but Peter remembers him. What. He doesn't remember that he had organic webbing, had Half Atomic/Half Totemic powers and serious upgrade to all his abilities, but remebers a dead guy who tried to kill him at some point? What.
    • Well, as of Spider-Island it turns out that Pete actually DOES remember having his totem powers, he just doesn't have them anymore. Why he doesn't have access to them remains to be seen (though the writers have pointed out, that he never could access the full extent of it in the first place, so they could still be inert or something). While a lot of people say that OMD altered history all over the place, that's actually been shown as an exgaggeration. All that's been changed are people's memories and the only memories that have been altered are those stating that Peter and Mary Jane were married, memories of how the mindwipe happened and memories of what happened to his Aunt in hospital. In other words, just memories related to the deal. While there were indeed a wide array of changes aside from that, such as Black Cat having bad luck powers again or Harry Osborn suddenly being alive again, this is more of a result of a small narrative timeskip, the events that occured within said timeskip are providing alternate explanations for any changes unrelated to the deal. With this in mind, the loss of Peter's totem powers may not have had anything to do with OMD at all, though I do wonder if Mephisto's involvement pissed off the totem entity similar to how Cyttorak likes to take away Cain Marko's powers whenever he draws from another deity such as the Uni-Force or Kuurth.
      • Okay, that part about pissing off Spider God, i wonder about that too. If there will be some alterations in the future i hope that writers won't forget about it. Oh wait a minute, why does Caine has Stingers?!
  • What is it with everyone who wears the Venom symbiote or a replica of Spider-Man's black suit striking the exact same [dead link] pose?
    • I'd bet my hat that the latter two were shout-outs to the first. The original is a fairly well-known, maybe even iconic, comic book cover.
  • What is it about Peter Parker that causes all his science teachers to turn evil? Doctor Octopus, the Lizard, the Green Goblin... there seems to be a trend here.
  • Venom again. So, the explanation for why the Venom symbiote ended up on Battleworld is because it was exiled to prevent it's desire to bond more permanently with one host from polluting the entire species gene pool (the rest of the species just used up host after host in a short period).

Now that the explaination is out of the way, my question is this, Symbiotes reproduce asexually as far as we know,(only 1 parent in other words) so how would the Venom symbiote even pollute the symbiote's gene pool? If they only reproduce asexually there's no way to pass this trait off to another line, it would just stick in a single line of symbiotes.

    • Could they be talking about giving birth to symbiotes - sexually? You know, bond to the host, have sex, impregnate with a symbiote egg, give birth to new line of creatures whatnot.
  • Okay that question hit me like Hulk on laxative - at what point (and why?) did Spider-man came up with his own Bat-signal? I mean sure it's a flashlight, and it is useful. But how did he just sat there and thought - I'll make my own Spider-Signal!


Movies

  • The dance scene in Spider-Man 3. The hell? I'm sure I'm not the only person who was bugged by that scene. Seriously. What was up with that?
    • First, I think it was meant to look silly. Secondly, it's indicative of Peter's mood (accelerated and altered by the symbiote); he's enjoying himself, his ego is inflated, and believes he's the meat, bread, pickles and secret sauce in an Awesome Sandwich. Dancing (particularly his "style" and doing so in public) is often used as a sign of someone being carefree and/or full of himself. Again, it's mostly the black suit.
      • Also keep in mind, he's a shy, socially awkward nerd who's suddenly been injected with a hit of self confidence. Speaking as a former nerd who recently started coming out of his shell, I can tell you that the rush you get from social self confidence can be quite overwhelming and even cause you to make a fool of yourself at times. Add that to the black suit and it's taken Up to Eleven.
  • In Spider-Man 3, why, exactly, does Harry's butler watch and wait until Harry's wasted his life waging an obsessive and futile war of vengeance against Spider-Man and had half his face blown off by a pumpkin grenade before pointing out that he has first-hand proof that Spider-Man wasn't responsible for his father's death?
    • The butler was next in the Osborne will and wanted to knock them all off without getting blamed for it?
    • Or maybe the butler wasn't aware Harry had discovered that his father was a supervillain (and had started a shooting war with Spider-Man) until he found the guy half-buried under rubble in the secret room. Better to let him think Dad was an okay guy so he could hate an unknown masked vigilante instead.
      • That's a good explanation. Should have been covered in dialogue, though.
    • Actually, in a deleted scene it was revealed that the butler wasn't real at all; just another part of Harry's pyschosis. Unfortunately, like a lot of ideas, it kind of got lost in order to facilitate the sheer number of dangling plot threads.
      • That would have been cool, but weird, since Harry once talks to him in front of Peter.
      • Also, he appears way back in the first Spider-Man. Of course, he could simply be a hallucination of the butler Harry already fired.
      • And he went to go get food. All of this makes him a Voodoo Shark.
      • Purhaps the butler was real, but not the scene. Maybe he was imagining the Butler there, when the butler was in the kitchen making a sandwhich or at home.
    • An alternate explanation would be that the butler didn't think Harry was ready to hear the truth. I believe Harry had put his father on a pedestal after his death, so trying to insult that memory would get him fired.
      • A completely selfish motive for acting the way he did...that makes absolute and complete sense. The butler doesn't give a damn about the Osbornes, he just wants to keep his job.
  • Also in Spider-Man 3, why doesn't Mary Jane just bite the bullet and admit that she got canned from that play? True, Peter's being a bit obnoxious and over-impressed with himself, but mind-reading isn't one of his Spider-powers and he can't exactly show her any sympathy that she got canned if he doesn't actually know that she she got canned.
    • You don't know much about women, do you?
    • This one works for me. It was pretty clear that MJ was upset and needed someone to listen to her, and Peter wouldn't shut the hell up about himself and hear what she was saying. It's pretty common for men to be too assertive when a woman just wants to talk. Maybe that's unfair of MJ, but Peter wasn't really paying attention like he should have. Trust me- been there, done that.
    • Passive-aggression and expectations of mind-reading are pretty much the emotional default for any woman in a relationship.
      • Any woman in badly written pulp fiction perhaps. Not in the real world where this troper lives.
        • Try telling that to women I have dated then...
        • I rest my case.
        • "Real world"? You mean the real world where people don't have super-powers? The one without psycho black goo from outer space? The one devoid of men made out of sand and people who go swinging over the rooftops making smart remarks? That's the real world we're discussing here?
      • Well, this is the Mary Jane of the movie franchise we're talking about here, and she is (to put it bluntly) a four-star bitch. So while what you're saying is not necessarily true for every woman, it durn sure is for her!
      • If only she were a bitch. That would be a huge improvement. A bitch usually has a backbone. Movie Mary Jane complains and pities herself far too often. Movie Peter has the same problem. They are both addicted to Wangst. In the comics, Mary Jane has a backbone and makes conscious choice not to be a victim. She is a bitch at first, but she grows out of that as she matures and deals with her trust issues.
      • On the subject of Mary-Jane getting canned from the play, why was it not until Opening Night that anyone found out her voice projection sucked? Wouldn't that have come out during, say, her audition?
        • During rehearsal and auditions, the auditorium would presumably be empty, right? It's surprising just how much sound can be absorbed by an audience being there.
        • Yeah, but this was a Broadway (or maybe Off-Broadway, I don't remember) play. The director, musical director, and sound designer would be able to tell. Speaking of the sound designer, do they not use body-mikes in that universe. EVERYONE in a Broadway play in the real world does nowadays. Plus, if she was that bad, she would have been fired before the press night. That's one of the reasons for preview performances. (Actually, just about everything about MJ's acting career is done poorly in the movies, almost to the extent of being Dan Browned- which is odd when you consider how many people on the staff and cast of the film should have some experience with the theater.)
      • What gets me is apparently she was rather successful in the play in the second movie, certainly enough so that the play ran for a little while. So she can't project when she's singing, and all of a sudden a once-headlining ("once" here meaning less than a year or so ago) actress is unemployable on Broadway?
      • In the matter of why MJ didn't tell Peter that she was fired, I think there's another possible reason. She's living in the presence of a hero. A nerdy hero, who's sometimes prone to complaining, but a hero nonetheless. He's going out into the world, day after day, night after night, risking (and often receiving) bodily harm to save people he's never even met before, even though, until recently, the city hated him for it. He does all this to make up for one, tiny mistake which cost him the life of the most important man in his life and, for the most part, he shoulders all of these burdens pretty well. It's already going to be difficult for MJ to compare herself to the guy she spends most of her time with, but on top of this, she can't even hold down a job? Plus I don't think she wanted to bring Peter down. He was riding high on the fact that the city was finally appreciating all he does. She's going to come to him with her problems just when the city is throwing a huge parade for him? And I think she was planning to tell him at dinner, but his newly inflated ego and then Gwen Stacey got in the way and messed things up.
    • For that matter, why does everyone act as if Peter being a bit pleased with himself is a really terrible thing? Okay, he's a bit obnoxious about it, but come on - considering how the status quo seems to be life consistently taking a dump on him, why shouldn't Peter feel good when things are going his way for a change?
      • Hey, if it makes him strut like the opening sequence of Saturday Night Fever and leads to that unforgiveable jazz club sequence, I'm saying terrible.
        • Yeah but what about before he started wearing the black suit? He didn't dance then and he was no more obnoxious than anyone else would be in his position.
          • Opinion is divided on what kind of character Spidey should be. The average joe who experiences both the downs and the ups we can all relate to, or constant humiliations to create a "Spidey-against-the-world" kind of feel. Even Steve Ditko was more supportive of the second version. It's worth noticing in the comics that after Ditko left, Peter started getting a lot luckier. Two girls fighting over him, a son of a rich scientist for a best friend/roommate. A motorcycle, etc.
            • Two girls had been fighting over him long before Ditko left (Betty and Liz), and both the friendship between him and Harry and rich girl Gwen's obsession over him were already set up during his run.
              • Furthermore, during the remainder of Ditko's penning, Peter was too occupied with Aunt May's health. In other words, it was the beauty queen who made the first move. Peter didn't really care at the time.
    • So many people hating on movieverse MJ and calling her a bitch to Peter is what bugs me. It seems these people are never looking at things from her perspective due to a bias towards Peter. Okay so she was something of a Shallow Love Interest bitch who gave Peter No Sympathy in the second movie but she was never a bitch in the first film unless you consider seeing other people besides Peter bitchy and she was having to deal with harsh personal issues in the third. She came off as self absorbed about it but so did Peter: these two are both flawed human beings after all. If you dislike MJ for being a Damsel Scrappy is one thing but a "four star bitch" is taking it too far.
      • In the first film, she was indeed a nice girl. In the second, she had such little sympathy for him that she couldn't understand him missing the play despite him being a) dirt poor, b) recently being fired by one of his jobs, c) his mode of transport was recently trashed. There was pleanty of reasons for him to miss it, and he called the next day to apologize. He did go, but was late. It was a known characteristic of him in the film to be late for things, and if the policy -that he had no previous knowlege about- was to deny late arivers a seat, then its understandable he'd be late. As for the third film, you're acting Biased towards MJ there. Peter wasn't as self absorbed as either you or her made out. Before he started wearing the black suit full time, which is before she broke up with him if I recall, he attempted to use his troubles to compare with her troubles. As he pointed out, criticism is something you need to get used to in this kind of job or life. When she was canned, she should've told him, not keep quiet and get angry when he doesn't seem to care. He tried to talk to her about it, but she kept it from him and only confided in Harry. She had a point about it feeling like her dad said them, but Peter grew up being picked on at school, so he has just the same experience as she does in the field of being verbally abused, AND HE STILL FIGHTS CRIME DESPITE BEING CRITICISED FOR IT! She was being a lot more unreasonable than he was, but that was because the writers were merging all his love interests into one, and it just didn't work. As Raimi was focusing on how the woobie angle, he made it look like everyone only focused on their own problems, which makes them all seem depressing.
        • Agreed on how she was nice in the first film but bitchy in the second. But the third...biased to MJ? Like everyone else is biased to Peter? I said they BOTH had their faults in the situation. MJ didn't tell Peter about her getting fired because she knew Peter was having success and didn't want to trouble him with her problems, so Harry was the next best friend she could turn to. Was it the right move? Probably not, but that just means she made a human mistake. And her getting angry at Peter was because she got the misconception that fame as Spider-Man was causing him to drift away from her, and things Peter did like the kiss with Gwen gave her damn good reason to believe this. Foucsing on one's own problems is what some people do, that just makes them realistic characters. Peter and MJ both gave it the best they could but their own flaws got in the way. But having flaws does not make one a bitch.
          • Yes, but there's a difference between having faults, and being very self centered about that. He told her he knew what she was going through and she insisted he didn't, thats Wangst. She does have a point, but she was being unreasonable about it. Then the kissing Gwen thing, as has been pointed out somewhere on this site, she's an actress, she kisses people all the time. He kissed her to entertain the crowd, she does it to, what's that? Entertain the crowd. Then, when she made a big deal about it being 'their kiss', she seems to of forgotten she did the exact same thing with JJJ's son. Yes, they're both flawed, but MJ acts pretty unreasonable at times, which makes her unlikable in the films. I'm not being biased towards either, but she was being pretty harsh to him in the film, more so than he deserved. "MJ didn't tell Peter about her getting fired because she knew Peter was having success and didn't want to trouble him with her problems"? Erm, no, that seems more like guesswork. There wasn't anything in the film that said that's the reason, she just did. That could have been why, but there's no more indication to that than there is that she did so for any other reason. The fact is, when she had a problem, she kept it to herself and lashed out at him when he tried to help. Yes, it may be a human response, but that doesn't make it the right response. I'm not saying Peter was in the right either, but MJ was being very self obssessed in the film, which many could see as something a bitch does. I don't have anything against Mary Jane, but film MJ was a Tsundere at best and a Jerk Sue at worst.
            • Wangst is subjective; some people find troubles like MJ had realistic for a girl her age. And as I said before, she got the false impression that Spidey's newfound fame was causing Peter to drift away from her, so to her, Peter kissing Gwen confirmed that to her. But clearly she still had feelings for Peter since afterwards she was still concerned about him when he was obsessing over his uncle's killer being loose. And since you are saying that they were both unreasonable, there's no reason MJ should be labled "a bitch" if Peter can't be too. Really, the most reasonable person involved was probably amnesiac Harry!
      • There's a couple substantial differences about the kissing: Mary Jane might kiss someone to entertain the crowd, but that's explicitly her job--she's getting paid for it, it's part of the script that she can't change. Peter, however, is not getting paid for it, and did it on the spur of the moment with his actual girlfriend watching. As for kissing John., MJ was engaged to him, and had no idea who Spider-Man was at that point--I got the impression she was trying to 'test' it, like seeing if he kissed like Spidey did. There's a world of differences between Peter kissing Gwen and MJ kissing John.
  • In Spiderman 3, why does Mary Jane not try to warn Peter that Harry threatened her? Did she really think Harry would settle for merely breaking Peter's heart. If Harry were that subtle he would not have threatened her, he would have seduced her or he would have pulled a Iago and made Peter and everyone else think he did.
    • Well she was terrified and had no idea until this point that Harry was going insane, so I can assume she wasn't in the best mindset.
  • Why does Peter stoop to super villain level when he attacks Harry in his own house? He nearly kills Harry, because Mary Jane dumped him. The audience knows Harry threatened to do some undisclosed thing to her if she did not dump Peter, but Peter does not. Moral dissonance much?
    • 2 words- Black suit.
    • Harry also ambushed Peter at the beginning of the movie and beat the piss out of him. When Harry woke up with Laser-Guided Amnesia, Peter was willing to be the bigger man and dropped it. Then Harry starts messing with him and his woman * again* , so Peter beats on him. Not the best response, but he was wearing the Black Suit. Then as Peter turns to walk off * again* , Harry throws a hand grenade at him. Moral dissonance nothing, Harry got off light.
      • I'm not sure not attacking the amnesiac for no reason he'd know about counts as him being the bigger man. More like... not being a complete asshole, and not going out of his way to create problems for himself.
        • When he attacked Harry in his house, I was under the impression that, at this point, Peter had guessed Harry had got his memory back (remember the villainous wink in th café?). Note that when he arrives, he comes in from the balcony. The only way he could enter would be by webswing or wall crawling. Plus his shirt is open just enough to leave his black suit exposed. If Peter thought Harry still didn't remember, I doubt he would have arrived in such a suspicious way.
          • I'm not sure not attacking the amnesiac for no reason he'd know about counts as him being the bigger man. Peter also simply allowed Harry to go about his business, even knowing that Harry was smart, wealthy, had a vendetta against Spider-Man, * and* had tried to murder Peter on at least 2 occasions. Not turning Harry over to the cops was the bigger man part of it. And as noted above, Peter was accused of Moral Dissonance / Hypocrisy because he nearly killed Harry. But that happened when Peter threw back a hand grenade that Harry had thrown at his head.
      • Again: The Black Suit. Peter didn't care at that point whether Harry knew or not. Harry took his woman, so he was going to pay.
      • Seriously, at that point, Peter was under the influence of the symbiote. It doesn't make it okay that Peter physically scarred Harry, but it also isn't exactly moral dissonance or Disproportionate Retribution for that matter.
      • And to be fair, that last bit where he catches and throws the bomb back looked to be his spider sense acting up (which the third film plays really subtle-like for some reason), i.e. pure reflex. Then the black suit made him not care. Did I mention he was wearing the black suit, which decreases or eliminates his moral compunctions and makes him more unfettered?
  • In Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock makes a point of claiming that Tritium, the isotope he uses as fuel in his nuclear fusion experiment, is the rarest substance known to man -- to the point that there is apparently only mere ounces of it in all of the world. Now, how exactly in high hell does this help Doc Ock's case in pushing fusion as a cheaper alternative to fusion when there's not even enough of the stuff in the world to last into next week?
    • Perhaps the tritium is only needed to jump-start the reaction, and after the mini-sun stabilizes, the reaction becomes self-sustaining. Honestly, nothing else about the reaction makes any physical sense, either.
    • Tritium's not rare, per se. What it is is very light: It's an isotope of Hydrogen, the least dense thing in the universe. His numbers are wrong, BTW, as there's been about 225 KG of it produced since 1955.
      • On the other hand, the current price is somewhere around thirty thousand US dollars per gram. And it decays radioactively, with a half-life of 12.32 years - so it goes away too, even if you aren't using it.
      • And, For Science!, the rarest element is Astatine, of which there is usually less than an ounce of at any one time on earth.
        • And if we're talking rarest SUBSTANCE - how about anti-matter? With current levels of production, CERN could give you a gram of anti-matter in 2 billion years.
  • I was under the impression it was a different substance they made it. I thought it was called 'Tridium'. Huh, I misheard Doc Ock. Oh well, I like to think of it as just a fictional element they needed.
  • Also on the subject of Spider-Man 2: When Peter Parker comes across a guy being mugged in an Alleyway by two other guys, why does he just walk away? Even an ordinary citizen would at least try to call the police or remember the muggers' faces. Hell, even a medium-strong person would try to at least stop them or get the guy away.
    • He probably felt an urge to go help, and you can see by the look in his eyes it takes a lot of willpower not to interfere. He's associating fighting crime with being Spider-Man, which, at this point is a memory he's trying to shed. So he has to force himself to take on the attitude that it's not his problem. We're supposed to disagree with this attitude. We're supposed to question his actions in this scene, and at that point if we haven't already, disagree with his decision to quit being Spider-Man as a whole.
    • Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genovese_effect
  • In the first movie, Green Goblin kills the other members of the OsCorp board with some sort of bomb that destroys people instantly by disintegration. Why doesn't he use this incredibly powerful and deadly weapon against his archenemy, Spider-man? I get they didn't want to show chunks of old men blowing up in a family movie, but the "one-use instant death bomb" was really lame and the biggest plothole in the whole thing.
    • Weirdly enough the disintegrator bomb shows up again in part three. Look close when Eddie and the Black Costume get killed. Eddie turns into a skeleton.
    • He's a mad supervillain; vaporizing his flesh instantly would take all the fun out of it.
      • As noted in the Jekyll/Hyde dialogue by the fireplace. The Green Goblin doesn't just want to kill Spider-Man; he wants to hurt the little bastard. Or maybe those disintegro-bombs are really expensive, and he used his only one on the board.
    • To elaborate further, the board members were in Osborne's immediate way, so the Goblin killed them immediately and the company stayed with Osborne for future villianous purposes. Spider-Man was another matter; at first Gobby tried turning him, but it didn't work. All Spidey could do was react to whatever dangers Goblin created (different threat, different tactics). When he discovers Spider-Man's identity, Goblin/Osborne takes his interference personally (considering Harry is involved) and decides to get personal in his own way, namely terrorizing Aunt May and threatening MJ, to make the web-slinger suffer (more painful than quick disintegration).
    • Perhaps you should try throwing pumpkin bombs and other explosives at a character that can not only sense danger before it happens, but can also backflip twenty feet away from any bombs you might care to throw.
    • Probably Goblin realized that Spidey could theoretically throw back any of his bombs with a web throw or while he was dodging. He probably figured he could take one of his own explosions better than an instant disintegration.
  • Was anyone else bothered by Harry's death in Spiderman 3? It takes some thinking about, but he dies facing Spiderman, away from Venom. We have to assume he could see Venom was about to stab Peter and he was off screen, so a bit to the side. To see he would either have to be between them, behind Peter facing Venom, or behind Venom facing Parker. Only the third option explains why he would end up facing away from Venom, because he would have run in front of him. But then it would easier, faster, and safer to just tackle the guy. Otherwise we have to assume that he did some kind of pirouette to end up facing Parker, and deliberately turned his back on the sharp blades plunging towards him. Would it really have been too hard to have him try and fail to block the glider, or attack and be killed by Venom while Parker was getting free? Because as it is it seems like he committed suicide by alien symbiote.
    • Which, if you think about it, is entirely in-character. Mentally disturbed, remember? Nothing to see here, move along.
    • I missed the bit where he seemed suicidal during that fight. He actually seemed a lot happier than at any time in the movies except when he had amnesia, freed from most of the issues he'd had. "Mentally disturbed" doesn't mean "does things at random".
  • Did Spider-Man lose his spider-sense in Spider-Man 3. he gets surprised by Harry, the effects used in previous films isn't shown once, the only evidence he has it is throwing a bomb back. On a related note, why didn't harry just let spider-man use his spider-sense to avoid the glider.
    • Once I figured out what you were trying to say, I can tell you Spider-Sense isn't perfect. In the comics and the movie, the symbiote was able to avoid Spider-Sense somehow, probably as a result of attempting to bond with Peter. This is why Spidey never knew the symbiote was a danger in the first place and also why he can't sense Venom coming. Also, in the comics, Spidey keeps his Spider-Sense secret. Very few know about it at all, save maybe Daredevil and the Fantastic Four. Harry wouldn't know about Spider-Sense, either, so Harry couldn't have "let" him use it; he didn't know Spider-Man has it.
      • But the symbiote's ability to bypass the Spider-Sense comes from and after the time they spent together. No reason for it to do that before the split.
        • The symbiote wasn't dangerous, strictly speaking. So it wouldn't alert his spider-sense.
      • In fact the symbiote DID trigger his spider-sense. In Secret Wars, when Spider-Man activates the machine that pops out the symbiote (what was that thing supposed to be, anyway? a symbiote vending machine?) he picks it up and his spider-sense does go off for just a moment before the symbiote merges with him for the first time.
      • The symbiote "Venom" was placed there by a combination of his own species and Thanos. When Thanos feels the presence of the symbiote on Earth he realizes what it is and how it got there - most importantly is that the entire species felt "Venom" was a threat more than any of their other kin. Bonding for the feeling of exhilaration and the adrenaline rush led to the rest labeling him a deviant and sticking him in the machine - since The Beyonder was taking random pieces of reality and placing them in his world he wound up with the machine that had the symbiote in it (the next part is CANONICAL. DON'T BLAME ME.) whose purpose was repairing the clothing for the team when The Beyonder was finished beating the tar out of them for that day. When Spider-Man used the machine and acquired the symbiote, he felt that it was looking for something - he didn't feel paranoia. His thoughts about Spider-Woman led to the suit replicating her design. Leading to even the Japanese, who only know of him from 1995-onward in the comics, and finally seeing him in the symbiote, realizing that this was the Bad-Ass, Take No Prisoners, All Shall Fall, Victory Or Death Spider-Man. (Sorry for name-dropping storylines. I couldn't help it).
      • I believe you all missed the point. In Spiderman 3, there is a scene in which Peter is driving his scooter down the street and Harry bodyslams him from behind wih his flying horizontal surfboard. Harry was not related to Venom at all, but still didn't activate Peter's sense.
      • Doesn't he, though? Didn't his eyes widen or something when Harry attacked him? He avoided a thrown bomb without looking, and if I recall, there are a few things he does that required some kind of precognition.
        • Contrary to popular belief, the sense is not pregognitive. At best it warns that danger is about to happen. It doesn't tell what the thread is or where it's coming from. Most of the time he's just fast enough to react to it. That and he propably wasn't expecting anything to come from above.
      • The Spider-Sense doesn't give Spidey, like, a picture of what's about to happen. It seems to be, basically, a little voice in his head that shouts, "SOMETHING'S WRONG GET OUT OF THE WAY!" at appropriate moments.
      • And contrary to the above, the sense is precognitive. It gives him precognitive dreams of events to come, and will give him several minutes of warning for low-key dangers. He can use it to make predictions, for instance being able to predict what image a computer will give if it's compiling completely random images, or to win at poker.
        • Except this is the movies and none of that stuff is ever shown.
  • Okay, so in Spider-Man 2, Otto Octavius is working on his big fancy fusion reactor thing that'll provide infinite power forever. He's well aware (even before Peter points it out to him) that even the tiniest error in his calculations will turn the surrounding few miles into a fairly large hole in the ground. And so he chooses to build this extremely dangerous machine...in his his loft in downtown Manhattan. Nobody, uh, objected to this? No one pointed out, "You know, Otto, we've got some deserts in Utah miles from civilization..."?
    • While the idea of creating an infinite source of power would make any physicist salivate, how does everyone overlook the fact that, as a byproduct of this endeavour, Otto Octavius has made several significant breakthroughs in the field of robotics, to say nothing of CREATING A FREAKING ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE? Whether doing it was a well-advised move or not, he managed to make a machine that he could control with his mind, as well as one that could think for itself. It's never so much as remarked on. Now if he'd done it in a cave, with a box of scraps . . .
      • Hello? This is the same universe with Dr Doom, Mr Fantastic and the like. That other stuff is old hat.
      • They're discussing the Spider-Man films, so no. No it isn't.
      • All the marvel films have a mysterious Stan Lee character in them, putting them in the same universe.
        • The movie hints that their are other Marvel heroes in this universe in one scene. When Jameson and Hoffman are trying to think up a supervillain title for Octavious, Hoffman suggests "Doctor Strange", which Jameson then dismisses because it's already taken. ***** In the end of Hulk, Tony Stark speaks with general Ross, so Iron Man and the Hulk are in the same world. However Spider-man will be rebooted so, what about FF?
            • They aren't in the same universe. Stan Lee's appearances were solely out-of-universe nods/gags. That's it. Saying "Doctor Strange" had been done also is just an out-of-universe nod to the audience. Then you have the fact that the film licenses are held by different studios, which means that, say, Spider-Man won't be commiserating with Daredevil any time soon, or running into Johnny Storm, or getting on Logan's bad side. As far as Spider-Man's films go, only the characters who appear in the films actually exist in the same universe as he does.
    • Seriously, forget the miniature sun thing in Spider-Man 2. Why didn't he just market the robotic arms? Doesn't he know how utterly useful those would be? Use 'em for construction, warfare, scientific research where using one's own hands is a bad idea (like with diseases)...Doc Ock, a business man he is not.
      • It probably just didn't occur to Octavious to do that. It's not like he has a friend who's an amputee or...Oh. Wait.
      • Considering Ock's bitter misanthropy and tendency to view the rest of humanity as his intellectual inferiors, he probably doesn't consider them "worthy" of using his arms. Anyway, it's Cut Lex Luthor a Check Syndrome. And in the movie, perhaps he was planning on marketing the arms, at least before the accident shot everything to hell.
      • In the comics, at one point he did begin working for pay with those arms. Unfortunately for fans of cutting him a check, his new boss turned out to be a Corrupt Corporate Executive named Carlyle who used the technology to build a suit of Powered Armor. It ended up with, believe it or not, a Spidey/Ock Enemy Mine scenario where both of them worked together to beat the crap out of Carlyle.
        • Later he did made some profit (i'm guessing) creating artificial limbs, but got shot down by Spider-man. For trying to mind control people with it. What a dick.
  • How are DO's tentacles non-magnetic? Aren't they made of adamantium?
    • Not in the movie. The movie version of the tentacles have an entirely different purpose, including functioning in and maintaining a very powerful EM containment field. Even if the comics substance existed in the movie, those things would have had their own magnetic field to protect them.
    • Not all metals are ferromagnetic.
      • Well duh, but adamantium is.
      • And the film never actually says they're made of adamantium.
      • nope just an indestructable metal in the marvel universe, what else could it be?
      • The Spider-Man films don't take place in the main Marvel Universe and never mention Adamantium. Therefore, there is no reason to even assume that Adamantium exists, never mind existing in Doc Ock's arms.
    • In original comics, the first set of tentacles are all but indestructibles. Spider-Man destroys them several times, until Ock grew sick of that and built a new adamantium set, without eternal controls. He even used the old one as a remote-controlled drone once (they are immediately destroyed for good).
  • Again with Spider-Man 3. The News identifies that the hostage in the cab is Mary Jane Watson, and lists how she just got of Broadway. Well if they have that information, isn't a little odd how they didn't mention she was also a hostage for The Goblin and Doc Ock?

News Anchor: "At the risk of editorializing I'd say this girl has really bad karma."

    • I think the writers didn't really want to draw any more attention to this fact, particularly considering that in the original script, it was supposed to be Gwen who was kidnapped.
    • On that note: Nobody in New York draws some kind of conclusion from the fact that this same girl keeps getting kidnapped and saved by Spider-Man?
      • Spider-Man saves tons of people, all the time. I doubt anyone out there is keeping count. And if they are, hey, she's a smokin' hot redhead. Who could blame him?
    • Does anybody in New York even know about Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus kidnapping her? Those two seemed to be private, villain to hero only. The ordeal in the third movie seemed to be the only one that was really public.
      • In the second movie, at least, she was publicly engaged to Hero Astronaut John Jameson, and you think if his son's fiancee is kidnapped by a supervillain, J. Jonah Jameson isn't gonna put it in the paper? Likewise, the thing in the first movie happened in a very public place, you'd think some reporter would have showed up to interview those kids on the gondola and probably spotted MJ too.
      • Although since in the end his son's fiancee was saved by Spider-Man, who JJJ hates with the fire of a thousand supernovae, he'd probably keep it quiet at the risk of actually saying something nice about Spidey.
      • Also, Doc Ock's kidnapping of her wasn't exactly private either, what with him snatching her out of a restaurant, not to mention that Ock is explicitly kidnapping her for her connection to Peter Parker and says so in front of several witnesses.
  • Films: Why does Peter keep taking his mask off in public places?
    • Raimi and Mc Guire both stated that they didn't want the audience to "forget about Peter Parker", so they keep looking for excuses for him to lose the mask. When leading up to the first film, Raimi even considered leaving the mask's eye pieces uncovered.
      • So they thought that audiences would be such complete morons that'd we'd forget who was under the mask? It's almost as insulting as everything involving Venom in the last movie.
        • No, they didn't think you'd forget who was under the mask. They just wanted Peter Parker the character to be as prominent as Spider Man the character, because both personas are important to the character as a whole.
      • More likely, it's because it's hard for an actor to emote with a full face mask on. I agree it's silly story-wise, but it makes sense for movies; at least comic books give you thought bubbles and artistic tricks to show emotions.
      • More likely still, McGuire is an actor who wants his face in every frame of the film, and Sony paid good money for that face and not for CGI or masked stunt guy. It was subtle in the first film, with pumpkin bombs blasting holes through his mask and such, but the sequels are just ridiculous.
    • Looking over YouTube comments, that seems to be one of the chief complaints about III: that Venom was barely in the movie and spent most of his screentime out-of-mask. In the official "The Making Of Spider-Man 3", Rami stated that the reason he had Spider-Man's mask rip at the end of all three films, the Green Goblin's helmet smashed in I, Doc Ock's glasses broken in II, and Venom spend 90% of the final battle out-of-mask in III was so that the viewers could see the actors' emotions during the climactic scene. Then again, Rami has stated in the past he never liked Venom to begin with and only added him due to his popularity with the fans.
  • In the films, they have Peter producing his webs biologically instead of with web-shooter devices, but nothing about the metabolic impact this would necessarily have on him. It takes a huge amount of raw material to produce and secrete organic matter. (This is why it's generally agreed that breast feeding is the best way for a mother to lose weight again after pregnancy.) With the amount of webs he's tossing around all over the place, he should be suddenly eating enough to feed an army just to maintain his current weight.
    • That would be one explanation for why he never has much money...
    • Just because we rarely see him eating, doesn't mean he isn't eating a fair amount in-between scenes. It's just that in importance stakes, "Spidey wails on the bad guy" is a lot higher than "Peter Parker eats waffles." They're action movies, not documentaries. It's "Spidey Vs. Villain X", not "A Day in the Life of Peter Parker". And his spider-powers have been shown to have effects like letting him hold his breath for longer, so a more efficient digestive system isn't too much of a stretch...I need to get out more.
    • I seem to recall him lamenting at one point in the comics (Ultimate Universe) that his metabolism is through the roof due to his powers, and in that universe he doesn't even had bio-webs. Just the boost in speed and strength, not to mention all the exercise he gets, contribute to it. I imagine his webbings would send it even higher. And yes, he points out that he never has any money because he spends so much on food.
  • How would the police explain Harry's death? Did Peter take Harry out of his costume the same as he did with Norman? What would the post-mortum say?
    • Is it possible that Spider-Man simply told them (most of) the truth? Harry wanted to save M.J, so he used technology created by Oscorp to join the battle and sacrificed himself.
  • One of my biggest questions about the final battle of Spider-Man 3: If the news cameras could zoom in to the point of making a clear identification on Mary Jane, why did the same not work with Parker? He did have his back to the crowd when he was pinned and un-masked by Venom, but when they were fight-falling, wouldn't the cameras have picked up something? And when he lands, he is still un-masked, and is facing the crowd. The news cameras would have had a clear shot of his face.
    • MJ was constantly in the same spot, while Spidey was constantly on the move, making him harder to track. Plus there was more than one thing to focus on once he showed up. Perhaps the cameras were following Venom when he landed on the ground.
      • If I was a reporter or a camera man, and a superhero had lost his mask, I know where my attention would be.
      • Do you want to give the guy who fights the rhino and the scorpion on a weekly bases a reason to focus on you?
        • Filming Spider-Man's real identity might get you in trouble. By this point it seems people like him again, so if someone just filmed him and put it on TV, it could cause a ton of controversy. Plus, if you expose his identity and someone kills him as a result, who are you going to turn to when some costumed maniac is laying waste to New York? Maybe his face did get filmed, but whoever filmed it destroyed the footage a la the guys on the train in Spider-Man 2 out of admiration for him, worry for what would happen to New York without him, desire not to court controversy or some combination of the above.
      • If your city had a near-legend like Spider-man running around, would you want to be the guy who ruins the "awe" factor by revealing him to be just some ordinary guy? It's much smarter for the media to leave him as a larger-than-life character and grab viewers that way.
  • In part two, Harry makes a deal with Doc Oct to find Spiderman using Peter Parker, only he warns him not to hurt Peter. However, when he finds him, he throws a car. It was his Spidey sense that saved him, but Doc Oct didn't know that yet. So WTF?
    • Considering Ock was already halway down the building, with those loud tentacles clacking away, it's most likely he didn't hear Harry. Another possibility is that he simply didn't care. Although, throwing a car at the guy you want to interrogate is a pretty stupid idea, maybe he just gave into the aggressive nature of the tentacles.
  • What exactly was the Green Goblin trying to accomplish at the end of the first film? He attempts to stab Spider-Man with the glider, and when he dodges it, it becomes clear the GG doesn't have the reflexes to dodge it as well. Even if Spidey hadn't dodged the blades, simple inertia would've carried it right through Peter's guts and stabbed GG anyway, making a hero-villain shishkabob. Was it meant to be a Taking You with Me?
    • Fact is, sometimes Norman just gets sloppy. He's a smart guy, but he does make mistakes. As we see, it was a mistake for him to even try and attack a guy with spider reflexes and precognition from behind in the first place.
      • To be fair, I don't think Osborn knew the guy had spider-sense and heightened reflexes. None of their battles up to that point had showcased it, if I remember. He was just faster and stronger than most in Goblin's eyes, but there was nothing to indicate he would *sense* the glider without seeing or hearing it.
    • I'm now imagining the image of the position those two would have been found in by the cops. Thank you and good night.
  • How did nobody suspect Peter Parker was Spider-Man? I mean, one day there's this fighting competition, and the guy who signed up called himself The Human Spider (or Spider-Man). He kicks the champions ass, and he even used webslinging. One could say nobody saw his face, but the guy who gave him the money obviously got a good look at Pete's face.
    • True, but he also saw Peter allow a robber to flee with his money. He probably assumed that the real Spider-Man would never allow that
      • Fridge Brilliance for the win! Similarly, the police officer also saw Peter let the robber get away; it wouldn't be surprising if Peter Parker had from that earned a bit of a reputation as someone who is not that inclined to stop criminals, deterring them from concluding he would do what Spider-Man does. And also, The Human Spider was the name he gave himself, he was CALLED Spider-Man in the fighting competition, and later just happened to adopt the name. However, to others in the city, it could have been just as likely that someone in the audience of that fighting competition adopted the name instead.
    • Because it matches the events in a comic book series that is coincidentally also named "Spider-Man" (sometimes with superlative adjectives in front), in which Peter's interactions with the promoters and the robber are all in costume.
  • So what exactly did the Goblin do to Aunt May in the first movie? He doesn't seem to have physically assaulted her, because she probably wouldn't have survived a beating from a super-strong lunatic. Did he seriously just fly up, blow a hole in the wall, scare the shit out of her, and fly off? Because that image is just hilarious.
    • He probably did just scare her and fly away. If traumatizing an old lady is enough to drive Spidey up the wall, why kill her when you can keep on coming back and tormenting her for shits and giggles.
  • The Green Goblin asking Spider-Man to join him. Why would he do that? What possible use could he have had for Spider-Man? It's not like he had some sort of plan to take over the world, or something. All he had been doing up until that point was killing all the people who were mean to Norman Osborne, and by the time he talks to Spider-Man, they're all dead anyway; mission accomplished. After that, there is no reason for him to continue being the Goblin. But instead of hanging up the glider, becoming even more rich and powerful and drifting into reclusive madness, he decides to try to recruit Spider-Man for... something, and then launches a personal vendetta against him after he refuses.
    • I assume you're referring to the first movie, in which case, I can only answer your question with another: What was the Goblin trying to accomplish in the first place? After he kills his board of directors, he talks to Norman about obtaining "power", but never what kind, how they plan to obtain it, or what they'll do with it. It's possible Norman's just schizophrenic past hope of a coherent game plan, but it sounds like there's a goal in mind that's being left too vague for the audience to grasp.
    • He was channeling Magneto with the idea that people with superpowers should work together and crush the Muggles.
    • There just happens to be another dude with amazing inhuman abilities dressing up in a silly costume. He is having the time of his life murdering random innocents and destroying all in his path. You know how some video games are more fun when played on Multiplayer. Same deal, really? Gobby's just a pissed gaming nerd.
    • This isn't canon, but this troper has always had a suspicion that the Osborne-Goblin situation isn't schizophrenia so much as demonic possession. It wouldn't always look like Linda Blair, you know...
  • Drowning a sun. What.
    • Or how about how no steam comes from it.
  • Self-sustaining fusion. On Earth. Where the only thing keeping the reaction in one place is the worldwide gravitational field. The writers use bad physics! It's super effective!
  • When Oc throws the car at Peter while he's chatting with MJ, um, how did he find Peter?
    • It's not like Peter's trying to hide, and Ock knows where he goes to school (and could probably find out more with a litte digging). He could have just hid his tentacles under his coat and gone around asking until he found someone who knew where he was.
  • In the third movie, why doesn't Marko's locket turn into sand in the test reactor? One would think that the material it's made out of would be alot easier to turn into fine rock on a molecular level than a human being...
  • In the climax of the first movie, what the hell are girl scouts doing on a field trip to Roosevelt Island at one o'clock in the morning?
  • In Spiderman 2 in order to get Peter Parker's attention and get to help find Spiderman he throws a car at him throw a window then throws him up against a wall hard enough to crack bricks. Had Parker NOT been Spiderman the attack would most likely have killed him. Best case scenario at that point is Spiderman comes looking for revenge but more than likely he'd fine a new photographer. (Or not since the Bugle doesn't exactly give him fair and balanced coverage.)
    • Already asked, read above.
  • In Spiderman 2, what the hell was Doc Ock made of? His only enhancement were the arms. Other than that, he was just a plain ol' human with manboobs. Why could he take dozens of punches and kicks from Spidey? Are we to believe that Spidey was holding back THAT much? I could take Spidey not being able to get past the arms effectively, but he was wailing on Doc Ock repeatedly. And he just kept going.
    • My guess was more that the interface with the cyber tentacles had gone on long enough that they were killing his pain receptors.
    • You think that's bad? Batman in every animated depiction has him getting thrown to walls and getting direct hits from Superman-level beings, who I doubt pull their punches, and is able to just walk it off.
    • In the game, it explains it for the most part as him using a force field. This is a guy who made revolutionary robotic arms and made a nuclear doomsday device when attempting to get free power, making a force field isn't unbelievable. Alternatively, Peter's powers were going, and that likely included his strength. He was probably hitting like a girl at this point.
  • In Spiderman 2, Dr. Octopus, despite the addition of his arms, is still physically a normal man (they often comment on this in the comic books). Despite this, Spiderman punches him many, many times over the course of the movie, doing relatively little damage. Shouldn't have Peter's first punch caved Doc Oc's face in?
    • Yes. And that's exactly why Spider-Man pulls his punches.
      • He hits Doc Oc in the face with a bag of coins. No pulling that punch.
      • Besides, why does he? Why not just knock him out? Ok, maybe the tentacles would just carry on even with an unconcious body, but SM doesn't know that. Even barring the punches themselves, Oc repeatedly falls from big heights and tumbles around - he should at least have a few broken ribs!
      • He pulls his punches because he's strong enough to lift cars. If he punched a normal human at full power, he'd probably kill them.
      • Again, he hits Doc Oc in the face with a bag of coins from a floor above him. The impact of which would have crushed his skull. Ever been hit in the head by a thrown coin? Now multiply that by thousands.
      • You know, there's no 'standardized' velocity that a thrown bag of coins would have if it's thrown. Spider-Man can adjust how hard he throws a bag of coins just as well as he can adjust how hard he throws a punch. Also, even if there were "thousands" of coins in the bag, the amount of force wouldn't be directly proportional like that anyway unless Spidey is throwing it thousands of times more force on it.
      • Look at this video and skip to 1:48. Now tell me that wouldn't cause serious injury to any normal human being. Still not convinced? Then how about the time later on in the scene where he hits him with a flying desk, which propels Ock out the window and into the side of a taxi, leaving a huge dent in it?
        • Reality Is Unrealistic. The human body is FAR more resilient and durable than Hollywood would have you believe(i.e. Made of Plasticine).
        • Even if I accept that (and I'm not) most normal humans would at least show injury or bruises from being pummeled with heavy objects and being punched and jossled by a superhuman, especially if you are a pudgy, out-of-shape scientist who probably hasn't been in a fight since the playground (pulled punches or no, being hit in the face repeatedly adds up). All the damage he visibly sustains are broken glasses (at Aunt May's hand, no less).
        • Even if the bones can take it, there's still something called blunt force trauma. And it doesn't even take much to mess with your head.
          • Which is explored now. Since poor doctor had a little too much of those.
    • And, this exact question was asked right above, but with less response.
  • What was Doc Ock stealing from the bank? He was hauling bags of gold-looking coins. The U.S. doesn't use gold coins as currency, and commercial banks don't keep gold coins on deposit. Why wasn't he stealing cash like Sandman did in the third movie?
    • Sacajawea dollars?
    • In the novelisation they're old coins just recovered from some underwater wreck.
  • Why is that ONE nameless bank chain always getting robbed in the Spider-Man films?
    • Spider-Man: The infamous cut 'Twin Towers' scene begins with people robbing the bank
    • Spider-Man 2: Doc Ock robs the same bank
    • Spider-Man 3: Sandman robs a truck carrying bags from that same bank.
      • I mean, I realize in terms of filming it was probably just easier to reuse the logo-printed bags, but really!? Is there only one bank chain in Movieverse New York? And how do they keep getting clients when supervillains are constantly getting away with their money?!
    • I never noticed, but now that you mention it I assume it's something of a subtle joke that it's always the same bank. Kind of like in the Back to The Future movies, not only does Biff or the Biff relative always crash into a manure truck, but it's always the same family's manure as evidenced by the branding on the side of the manure trucks.
  • Why does the movie version of Doc Ock have a blade in one of his tentacles? They were originally designed as research aids--why would he need a blade? Maybe he could have modified it before he robbed the bank, but how? He didn't have money/equipment yet.
    • Don't you ever need to cut anything when you're assembling or crafting something?
  • In Spider-Man 2, where the hell was that train headed? We don't see it switch tracks or pass any stations. It's a good thing Doc Ock chose it as a distraction, because for all we know, it was on its way to the unfinished track anyway.
    • I'm pretty sure it passed through at least one station.
    • It definitely passed through a couple of stations before Spidey stopped it.
  • Am I the only one who was sure Bruce Campbell was going to end up playing Quentin Beck? Like Mysterio would have been all the cameos for the sole purpose of screwing with Spidey because he'd worked out who he was in the first movie?
    • That...would have been hysterical. And awesome.
  • In the third movie, what were Gwen and Captain Stacy doing at Harry's funeral? At no point do either of them interact with Harry, or even make indication that they know him.
    • Well Gwen got to know Peter... so she may have come to support him after his friend died, with Captain Stacy coming along out of kindness.
  • When and how did Peter built that finely detailed suit in the first film? Did he ace home ec or something? (Although if you could bet on a guy who would be an ace at home ec, it would be Peter)
    • In the mainstream comics, some ballet theater was throwing out a bunch of old uniforms, so he found one that fit him and added the designs himself.
  • Spider-Man 3: Where the hell did Peter learn how to play the piano?
    • In Spider-Man 2, Aunt May tells the banker that she was going to start teaching the piano again to earn extra money so she could qualify for a loan. If she knows the piano, it stands to reason that she taught Peter when he was a kid.
  • Spider-Man 3: The part of the jazz club scene where Gwen first notices Peter playing the piano: who the hell uses a mirror to apply perfume?
    • Maybe she's a little ditzy?
    • Checking make-up. Applying perfume. Multitasking your make-up is not hard when you are an actress. It's not hard period, honestly.
  • This applies to all three films: Why does Spider-Man not talk all that much when in costume, when in the comics one of his defining traits is his motor-mouth? That seems like a pretty odd change.
    • No, it seems like a perfectly reasonable change, seing how one of the major Spider-Man H Ss is "how the hell can nobody recognize Spider-Man as Peter by his voice?" So, they finally rectified it. Good for them.
    • Because Talking is not a free action in real life.
      • There's a reason that, in sports, most signals and calls are monosyllabic shouts signalling previously-agreed-upon moves rather than lengthy, explicit instructions. You ever try talking while doing something legitimately strenuous (like running, weight lifting, flipping around like a madman while trying to avoid seven different varieties of painful death at once)? If you're doing that kind of acrobatics, you're breathing heavily, and unfortunately for reality, turns out you talk and breathe through the same system.
    • Except, they did keep some of his wit, just turned it down a little. I agree, it would've made the film better to have more jokes, but luckily that's making a comeback in the Amazing Spider-Man. As for the above explanation, Peter can effortlessly dodge bullets and flying cars. Who's to say he didn't develop stronger breathing patterns when he gained super strength? If his muscles have developed better, who's to say he didn't develop stronger lungs? Which would allow him to talk and swing around. And then, there's the fact he tends to stand still to quip, so that's not even an issue.
    • I believe it's been explained that his Spider Sense lets him think much faster than a normal person, and he turns on the jokes to keep from thinking of how frightening the situation is when he's not planning his next several moves.
  • In Spider Man 3, when Gwen shows up at the restaurant where Peter intends to propose to Mary Jane, what bothers me is Mary Jane seems to completely miss Gwen mentioning that Peter talks about Mary Jane "all the time". Yet Mary Jane continues remaining pissed off at Peter with the whole, "Are you trying to push me away" Wangst.
  • Spiderman's origin story. Originally it was a radioactive spider-bite, which makes no sense but at least this explains why it doesn't happen again, because it was a freak accident and the spider probably died from the radiation shortly afterward. But the movies changed it to a "genetically-engineered" spider. This means that someone or someones designed that spider to give superpowers. Surely this plot point should have come up again? Maybe one of the scientists that worked on the spider gets a little suspicious once a spider-powered superhero starts making headlines? Tries to duplicate the results? No?
    • I was under the impression that the power-granting bite was an unintended trait. The scientists just sounded like they were trying to make a cool hybrid spider. The Ultimate comics also used a GE spider, and they explained the lack of other Spider-Men by having it stepped on shortly after it bites Peter.
  • In the second movie, we see how much Peter is struggling financially since it's too hard to go to school, hold a part-time job and save the city. Why doesn't he just swing into the mayor's office and negotiate a salary while explaining his situation? Those in charge would probably be more than happy to pay a superhero for drastically reducing the amount of crime.
    • This is the same superhero who the cops were ordered to arrest on sight partly because of the smear campaign the Bugle's been running, remember? And getting a salary from the government is not a simple thing. It would involve, for starters, Spidey revealing his identity, which would put it in the public record eventually, and have to be approved by the city council, in public hearings, etc...
    • There were a lot of solutions to his problem that he never considered. For one, he apparently never sought a research assistant position with Doc Connors, which would pay more than a pizza boy job and keep him on campus. Or, he could have moved to a rougher neighborhood which would have given him lower rent (he's not in real danger anyway) and lowered his Spidey commuting time.
    • He's already regularly late for or flat out missing classes. Dr. Connors, if he's giving out research assistant positions, is probably gonna want someone he knows is reliable. As for moving, he's not Spider-Man when he's asleep, so yes, he'd still be in some danger, plus it'd extend his Peter Parker commuting time.
      • And, he did get a research assistant job for Doctor Connors, in the first film its specifically mentioned that he was late again for that exact same job and got fired because of it. Remember, employment is very difficult for young people right now and has been for quite some time. And, he's A) A student, which limits the amount of working hours and resulting sallery, B) a super hero, which also limits how much time he could work and resulting pay check, and C) He's living in a very rundown apartment with a very greedy landlord sucking him dry. He's got a lot of reasons to be dirt poor.
  • So... Why exactly did Peter lose his powers in the second movie and why did they come back?
    • Are you asking for something besides the explanation that Peter and the doctor clearly discuss on screen?
    • I had a Fridge Brilliance moment about this plot hole a few years back. Peter's powers return when Mary Jane is in trouble. Earlier in the film, this line was given:

Doctor Octavious: Love should never be a secret. If you keep something as complicated as love stored up inside, it can make you sick.

    • And, it may not be so much him losing his powers as subconsciously supressing them. Psychology can do a lot to a person.
  • Who is the toughest opponent Spider Man has ever fought?
    • I don't see how that's a headscratcher. These are for questioning plotholes or fridge logic, and explaining plot points some may not get. That, is a matter of opinion to be saved for a forum. But, in my opinion, Green Goblin due to his wider range of atributes. Super powers on the same level as Peter, advanced technology that's far superior to all his other villains, is just as if not smarter than Peter, knows his/knew his secret identity, is completely amoral and insane, and has a second persona of that of a multi-millionaire industrialist who can get a PR campaign that allows him to get away with terrorism and murder and look like a philanthropist. Depending on the time period, there's a good reason he's considered his archnemesis.
  • In the first film, Peter gets revenge on the guy who cheats him out of a prize money by allowing the robber to escape. The guy then gives him a 'what the hell?' type question. Surely he must have known the reasons why Peter did what he did and how we would respond, he definitly can't get indignant about it.
    • Simple enough. He was selfish and thought he could get away with it. Peter's mistake was not recognizing two wrongs don't make a right.
    • He's a brazen hypocrite, obviously. He had no problem with cheating Peter out of the prize money even though he knows it's morally wrong, but he expects Peter to do the morally right thing and stop the thief.
  • In Spider Man 3, Eddie begs Peter not to out him as a fraud after he cheated to get a job that he knew Peter wanted. Obviously the matter of Peter knowing that Spider Man wouldn't commit a crime is moot as Eddie isn't aware that he is Spider Man, but did he really think Peter would be content to let the false photo thing fly?
    • In both cases, they're self-centered assholes. Why is it a headscratcher when they act self-centered?
  • After Spider Man 2, it becomes apparent that Peter did not go back and explain to Harry what happened. Would it have been so difficult for him to say: "I didn't kill your father, I'll explain later but right now the entire city is endanger from Octavious."
    • Yeah, it doesn't make much sense, but it's possible Peter was still feeling guilty, and thinking he was responsible for Norman's death. From a more meta perspective, the filmmakers needed Harry to keep angsting about it so he'd have a motivation to put on the Goblin suit.
  • Are we truly expected to believe that ALL FIVE major villains from the movies had a personal connection to Peter Parker? Green Goblin was his best friend's father, he met Doc Ock a few times and he definitely remembered him, Sandman killed his uncle, New Goblin was his best friend, and Venom was a rival whose girlfriend he stole. Even the mugger (Caradine?) was present for his uncle's murderer and was originally believed to be responsible. Broke my Willing Suspension of Disbelief, at least.
    • The two Green Goblins and Venom have personal connections to Peter in the comics as well.
  • Why isn't SM wanted by the police for the murder of Norman Osborn, or at least for interrogation on the circumstances of his death? Harry surely didn't make a secret out of his accusations, so what's the deal? Why isn't Bugle screaming about it?
  • Doc Oc's tentacles take almost as much space as his whole body does. How the hell does he hide them under a trenchcoat without looking like a Hulk?
  • Speaking of the tentacles, they look quite sturdy and heavy and he looks like a guy who barely ever exercises. How the hell does he manage to support them. Or at any rate support anything with them without breaking his legs or spine?
    • For the last, he uses 2 of the tentacles to brace himself, as for the first, do you really think Doc Ock would create a bunch of mechanical tentacles that were too heavy to actually use? They're probably either made out of very light metals, or designed to evenly distribute the weight so his body can support it.
  1. ↑ This was pre-Civil War, even, so Cap's record and public rep was still 200% squeaky-clean.
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