Characters / Amazing Fantasy: Izuku Midoriya

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Izuku Midoriya - Spider-Man II

Quirk: Ghost Spider (Officially), Quirkless (Actuality)

Debut: Issue #1: What If?

^{Click here to see his hero costume}

The story's protagonist and primary viewpoint character. Izuku was originally of the unlucky 20 percent of the population to be born Quirkless, meaning that he didn't have any superpowers to his name. Despite this, he always wanted to be a Hero like his idol, All Might, and clung to his dream even when everyone thought it was impossible. In a twist of fate, he gains the proportionate abilities of a spider when he ventures down an alleyway instead of a shady underpass. Now armed with the powers he needs to achieve his dreams, he's set to become one his world's strangest and greatest Heroes, Spider-Man!

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A-D

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Downplayed. Izuku doesn't become rude or obnoxious, but he goes on a little power trip during the U.A. Entrance Exam because of his continued success, bouncing around with a smug little grin on his face and soaking in the oohs and aahs of the competition he's running circles around. He even stops punching robots to chat with Jirou and Sero, which Iida calls him out on as insulting to the people who are trying their hardest.
• Adaptational Badass: Zigzagged. He doesn't have the raw power of One For All at his disposal, but Izuku's spider powers have none of the drawbacks his Quirk-using counterpart faced. He's just as fast and agile as when canon Izuku is using One For All: Full Cowl, but he can't simply be knocked out of it because it's a natural part of his biology. In addition, he's far stronger than canon Izuku when the latter isn't using 100%, easily lifting a fridge and carrying a maximum of ten tons when One For All-using Izuku struggled to lift a single steel beam with one hand.^note The average steel beam weighs about 400 pounds.
• Adaptation Personality Change: He's more of a Deadpan Snarker here and more obviously resentful of the people around him who mocked him for being Quirkless, in large part fueled by having Peter Parker, one of the kings of snark, as his mentor. This isn't always a good thing, as he talks back to Iida on reflex when the latter calls him out just before the practical part of the U.A. Entrance Exam and worries about alienating a future classmate.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Izuku was never attacked by the Sludge Villain due to turning down the alleyway, so he never spoke with All Might. Because of this, the two of them are strangers at the start of the story. While All Might does arrive to give Izuku a nice pep talk that spurs Izuku to accept Peter's tutelage, neither of them know the other's greatest secret.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Izuku doesn't receive One For All in this story. Instead, he's bitten by a spider and gains the proportionate strength, speed, agility, and toughness of one as well as Intangibility, a Spider-Sense, and his Venom Strike.
• A Darker Me: Izuku's Venom Strike requires him to dredge up all of his worst feelings, particularly his buried desire to lash out at those who mistreated him, in order to get it to work. This can get into his head, making him do and say things that he wouldn't think of doing otherwise, like taking some pleasure in pounding Bakugou during combat training and wanting to see him writhe and convulse on the ground. He's sickened by this and tries to shake off those feelings even though he knows they're a part of him.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: Downplayed. Izuku is a Japanese Spider-Man when compared to his Caucasian mentor, Peter Parker. As comic readers know, Izuku is far from the first Japanese Spider-Man in the multiverse.
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: He's keenly aware of how strong he is relative to most people after crushing his desk completely by accident. As a result, he's almost always holding back, lest he cause severe injury to friends and foes alike.
• All of the Other Reindeer:
  • As the only Quirkless kid in class, Izuku is horrendously bullied or at best pitied by his classmates. Even when he nearly dies from a spider bite, Izuku knows they only sent him cards and visited him out of politeness, not even giving him the time of day once he returns to school. After he accidentally starts a fight with Bakugou, they're quick to let Izuku take the heat even if Bakugou started it and they egged them on.
  • This is swiftly averted by the time he gets to U.A., as he has already made fast friends with Sero and Jirou. He also makes friends with Uraraka after helping her at the entrance exam and his powers impress everyone enough to draw their attention.
• Alternate Character Reading: As per canon, Bakugou's Malicious Misnaming for Izuku, "Deku", is derived from an alternate reading in the first character of Izuku's name. It means "wooden figure" or a "puppet" who can't do anything on his own, referencing Izuku's Quirklessness.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: As if the name Spider-Man isn't obvious enough.
• All Webbed Up: Izuku develops his own web-fluid formula with Peter's help and builds some prototype web-shooters to practice with. They're bulky and clunky-looking compared to Peter's due to being made from spare parts, but they're functional and get the job done.
• Appropriated Appelation: Uraraka calls him Deku before she learns his real name, thinking it an Affectionate Nickname because it sounds like "dekiru"^note To be able to do something, giving it a "can do it" vibe". Izuku ends up embracing it after hearing this.
• Ascended Fanboy: A Quirkless, nerdy kid who wants to become a Hero more than anything gets his wish when a spider bite gives him the power to chase his dreams.
• Asian Speekee Engrish: Justified. English isn't Izuku's first language and he's never had to use it to actually talk to someone before. So his attempts to speak to Peter in English are somewhat stilted, broken, and awkward due to his lack of practice. He's also extremely apologetic in their first meeting because he electrocuted Peter a few minutes earlier. Izuku also lampshades this, cursing himself when he misses an article or says something wrong. It's also downplayed, since Izuku is mostly intelligible, even if he has to speak and listen slowly. The two decide to teach other their respective native tongues to overcome this. Izuku becomes almost completely fluent by the end of their ten-month training session, but Peter still corrects him from time to time, telling him to say "That's easy" instead of "Most easy".
  Izuku: I am most sorry, sir! [bows apologetically] I have just received my Quirk, and have struck you without thought! I most humbly apologize!
  Peter: [holding Izuku's phone] Kid, you don't...
  Izuku: I humbly request for phone! We must notify hospital for your recovery and...
• Atomic Superpower: He gives off intense amounts of unknown radiation while using his phasing powers. This is what tips off U.A. and proves that his powers aren't just a Quirk.
• Awesome by Analysis: Having spent his whole life studying the Quirks of others, he can easily pick apart the mechanics of a Quirk and all of their uses with only a little bit of information. He's also memorized all of Bakugou's moves, which lets Jirou get the drop on him.
• Badass Adorable: An adorable young man who struggles to talk to girls and nerds out over superheroes also has the Super-Strength to crush robots like tin cans and tear them apart with his bare hands.
• Bad Liar: His mom quickly sees through most of his lies about where he's going at night, but doesn't bring it up with him until the night before the U.A. Entrance Exam because she wants to trust him and not hang over his shoulder all the time.
• Bad Powers, Good People:
  • Izuku's Venom Strike is activated by his feelings of resentment and desire to lash out at others for years of mistreatment. He's disgusted with himself when he realizes this, but Peter assures him that it's okay so long as he only uses it to help others.
  • His blood is slightly irradiated with Marvel's brand of gamma radiation. While it's minute enough to be harmless, continued study led one scientist to nearly open the door to the One Below All. As such, Izuku nearly allowed the most evil being in the Marvel multiverse to breach his world, albeit indirectly.
• Bait-and-Switch: He uses this to get the upper hand against Peter while training to enter U.A. After getting his butt kicked for the past half hour, Izuku decides to change his strategy and charges straight at Peter, only to use his arm as a pivot once Peter catches it to kick him in the face.
• Beta Outfit: Much like Miles in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Izuku purchases a cheap Spider-Man costume to wear while practicing with Peter. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit well thanks to his new musculature. He can't zip up the back, it's tight around his crotch and rear, and the gloves are too small to be usable. Despite how silly it looks, Izuku feels proud to wear it as a super suit... until Peter doubles over and can barely keep himself from laughing at the sight.
  Izuku: [gloomy and thoroughly humiliated] I-I look most silly, do I not?
• Big Eater:
  • Inko is concerned when Izuku starts devouring plate after plate for breakfast on his first day back at school when he used to barely touch it. When he's done with everything she gave him, he proceeds to knock off the leftover eggs in the pan with a piece of toast. He downed four bowls of katsudon along with all the toppings and sides the night before. Izuku is equally surprised and worried about this development, but he tries to reassure his mom (and himself) with a grin before heading out. His new appetite is foreshadowing for his Super-Strength and other mutations. It also has basis in biology.^note The average spider eats about 10 percent of its weight daily, meaning that the 150 pound Izuku would need to eat fifteen pounds of food to maintain his body's needs. Even excluding the spider aspects, muscle by definition uses additional calories, which is why human bodies are naturally inclined to limit muscle growth to conserve energy. Izuku's new Heroic Build would require far more calories than his old Geek Physique to sustain itself.
    Inko: I'm actually surprised. [scoops eggs and ham onto her plate and Izuku's] You used to barely touch your food and now you're devouring it. I mean I heard of growing boys but honestly this is a shock.
    Izuku: [nods] Yeah, for me too. [continues eating as Inko looks on worriedly]
    Inko: Are you sure you're alright, Izuku?
    Izuku: [pauses as he thinks it over] Yeah. I am.
  • After the U.A. Entrance Exam, he and Peter visit a Big Bang Burger and go for the eating challenge to save cash. The two of them easily wolf down a burger that's normally a challenge to finish in half-an-hour in minutes.
• Bizarre Human Biology: After arriving at U.A., he learns that his Venom Strike is derived from a series of cells running along his spine that act like the battery of an electric eel. There's also the setules growing out of his hands and feet that Peter jokingly calls disgusting.
• Blessed with Suck: Downplayed. Izuku's Spider-Sense is incredibly useful for getting him out of danger, but the headaches it gives him can be debilitating if the danger is severe. In one case, Aoyama has to catch Izuku before he collapses from agony when Shigaraki shows up at USJ.
• Body Horror: Any organic thing Izuku phases with him will fuse into a warm gelatinous blob with hairs growing out of the bones. He and Peter are lucky they tried this on ground meat first and not while Izuku was trying to rescue someone. The same goes for any organic things he phases through.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: A rare heroic example. When he and Jirou ambush and tie up Bakugou with webbing, Izuku monologues about how he's going to be a hero and is not going to shrink under him anymore. While that's fine and dandy, all it does is piss Bakugou off enough to free himself shortly after Izuku and Jirou turn tail to get to the bomb when they could have simply wrapped the capture tape around him.
• Born Unlucky: Izuku is a literal case of this, being one of the relatively rare 20 percent of people to be born without a Quirk, leading to years of torment and derision from his classmates.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Even after getting superpowers, Izuku's initial attempts at fighting amount to wild flailing that Peter can dodge with a completely bored look on his face. After months of hand-to-hand combat training, Izuku proves to be at least equal, if not superior to Bakugou in close combat, using a variety of punches, kicks, and acrobatics along with his Super-Strength and webbing to match Bakugou's explosive firepower.
• Bring It: Izuku tells the Nomu "Let's dance." when they're about to square off. In this case, it's less a sign of his confidence and more him trying to push down his own fears when facing a monster able to break him like a toothpick.
• Building Swing: Izuku starts practicing how to web-swing after completing his own web-shooters. While he's hesitant at first, it soon comes naturally to him and he has the time of his life somersaulting and soaring through the air for the first time. At least until Peter knocks him out of the air with a well-placed rock to prepare him for incoming drones.
• Bully and Wimp Pairing: This was his dynamic with Bakugou for years until Izuku's new spider powers shook things up.
• Butt-Monkey: He’s on the receiving end of several gags involving his powers and is the butt of all sorts of jokes and slapstick. Even after being endowed with Super-Reflexes, improved balance and flexibility after the spider bite, he's still something of a klutz who constantly gets himself into embarrassing situations.
• Cannot Talk to Women: Izuku isn't used to talking to girls because most would avoid him because he was Quirkless or because they thought he was weird because of his Fan Boy tendencies. He's at a loss for words when Jirou strikes up a conversation with him.
  Jirou: Uh… you okay, man?
  Izuku: [thinking] Oh, crap, she must think I'm weird! Okay Izuku, you need to be cool! Say anything before she starts backing away! [out loud] S-sorry. This is the first time I've talked to a girl! [thinking] You idiot! [out loud while sweating bullets] A-Ah! I-I didn't mean that! I mean, of course I've talked to girls but this is… um… I… [bows his head in shame] I-I'm sorry.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: The first joke Future Izuku cracks in the story is an awful Pun on web-swinging. It's implied to evoke a Lame Pun Reaction from his listener(s). His teenage self also has a tendency to take Peter's jokes at face value.
• Cassandra Truth: Bakugou refuses to believe that Izuku's powers manifested out of nowhere and thinks Izuku has been hiding them for years despite his insistence otherwise.
• Cast from Calories: Izuku finds that his appetite has greatly increased after getting his spider powers, leaving tons of dishes for his mom to clean. He can also easily devour a burger designed to be eaten in 30 minutes in a fraction of that.
• Centipede's Dilemma: Izuku is hampered by his focus on the minute details of his powers while training with Peter, particularly when he's learning to use his web-shooters. Once he manages to relax and go with the flow, it begins to come to him more naturally.
• Character Development: He's shy, nervous and constantly unsure of himself at the start of the story. After getting spider-powers and accepting Peter's tutelage, Izuku gradually becomes more social and cheerful despite his awkwardness. He also develops a propensity for snark and learns to stand up for himself when pushed, whether it's appropriate or not. His darker feelings of resentment and competitiveness come to the surface as well, telling himself that he's not going to hold back just to appease Bakugou's ego.
• Character Narrator: The story is primarily told from Izuku's point of view. He provides direct, first-person narration during lulls in the action and while transitioning between scenes.
• Character Tics: Izuku tends to sweat when he's nervous and loudly but unintelligibly mumbles to himself when he's excited and/or deep in thought.
• Chick Magnet: Discussed and Played for Laughs. Given his own prolific dating life, Peter notes that if Izuku is going to be Spider-Man, he'd better be prepared to be popular with the girls. The thought of it makes Izuku's head spin as he fervently denies the possibility, but he's already made friends with Uraraka and Jirou, who are both demonstrating interest in him.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Izuku runs in to save Peter from the Prowler when no one else would. Even as his brain screamed at him to stop, he dodged all of the Pro Heroes' attempts to keep him away because he couldn't bear to watch someone die in front of him. He gets chewed out for this reckless stunt, but also gets praised for his wall-crawling and intangibility "Quirks". All Might also meets up with him to tell Izuku that this trait is what will make him an amazing Hero. Deconstructed when the Prowler manages to nab him and threatens to run him through with her Wolverine Claws for intervening.
  • His first instinct when seeing the zero-point robot is to run as fast and far away as he can. But when he sees Uraraka pinned under rubble, he immediately makes an about face to run-in and help her.
  • After Peter is hospitalized by Stain and subsequently placed on constant watch, Izuku is tempted to break the law by trying to sneak him out of there. He's only talked out of it by Peter, who points out that it would land him in juvie and dash his hopes of becoming a Hero.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Izuku is shy, nervous, scrawny, clumsy, and Quirkless at the start of the story. No one, not even himself, truly believes that he can become a Hero at first. His self-esteem is in the pits from years of bullying and he's frequently the laughingstock of everyone in class for wanting to become a Hero despite his Dream-Crushing Handicap. Lampshaded by his future self in his narration.
  Izuku: [while discussing his Training Montage] I could've taken out a few self-help books to work through my deep-seated insecurities, crippling lack of self-esteem, and nonexistent social skills… But no. I decided to put that on the back burner and focus on some more practical things.
• Color Motif: Green. Green hair, green eyes, green name, green bio-electricity, green costume e.t.c.
• Combat Parkour: Peter teaches Izuku this over the course of their ten month training session. By the night before the exam, Izuku is effortlessly moonsaulting, spinning, Wall Running, Wall Jumping, and soaring over each and every obstacle Peter can throw at him. He makes great use of this against Bakugou during combat training, frustrating the latter and making him think that Izuku was showing off.
• Combo Platter Powers: He has the proportionate strength, speed, durability, and agility of a spider, Wall Crawling, as well as the ability to emit bio-electric shocks powerful enough to briefly stun Peter. He later discovers his ability to bleed through objects by turning into static and builds his own web-shooters. He also possesses incredible stamina, barely breaking a sweat when most others are panting and aching from exertion.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Peter is surprised to learn that Izuku has long since learned this lesson and is excited to learn how to help people as a superhero rather than trying to enrich himself.
• The Comically Serious: Izuku sometimes has trouble taking a joke, taking Peter's comment about how gross his setules are at face value and apologizing for them. His future counterpart can spout lines like this:
  Izuku: Side note, but I found out that Peter's 'incoming drone' exercise was pretty useful in the long run. Those mechanical monstrosities are truly the bane of the modern Hero's existence.
• Cool Mask: The mask of his costume is equipped with an HUD that provides GPS and a Bluetooth connection as well as monitoring his web fluid levels. Unfortunately, it doesn't automatically adjust for light until Izuku remembers to set it up, which is long after he's made a fool of himself while running late to class.
• Composite Character:
  • Izuku is this of his canon counterpart and Miles Morales as depicted in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. He's got the history, motivation, and mindset of his canon counterpart, but his role as Peter's student, his Venom Strike ability, and confusion regarding alternate universes is taken from Miles. Izuku also shows the same appreciation for hip-hop Miles has, albeit it's considered "classical" in Izuku's time.
  • This is also reflected in his hero costume, which is an amalgamation of various Spider-People as well as his canon counterpart's. His mask is inspired by Anya Corazon's, as he wants people to be able to see him smile. The differently colored shoulders and chest sections as well as the white Chest Insignia are derived from the the Spider-Man of Earth-1048, and his mask's features match the high-tech gear used by that Spider-Man. Lastly, his upgraded web-shooters are designed after the MCU incarnation while the hood is taken from his canon costume design.
• Contrived Coincidence: Izuku is astonished to learn that his great-great-grandparents had Quirks that would neatly explain his Wall Crawling and Intangibility powers. This makes it a lot easier for him to pass off his new spider-powers as a Quirk to his mother, but he doesn't want to push his luck by demonstrating any of his other abilities.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: While having superpowers is normal in Izuku's universe, having so many isn't, especially with how varied and seemingly unrelated his powers are. U.A.'s faculty takes note of this during the exam and immediately figures out that he doesn't have a Quirk when his phasing power gives off readings unlike any the proctors have seen before.
• Cowardly Lion: Izuku is naturally timid and easily startled, but he can be recklessly brave when other people's lives are on the line.
• Creepy Good: Calling back to Steve Ditko's horror days, the story's Fanfiction.net blurb refers to Izuku as the "world's strangest Hero" as Spider-Man. His wall-crawling and stunt where he nearly got hit by a car unnerved people present.
• Culture Clash: He's horrified when Peter describes Civil War (2006) to him and is astonished that Peter has had such a rough time with the police and the government. Having grown up in a world where superheroes were commonplace and widely-accepted, the miniature war the Marvel heroes started was unthinkable for Izuku.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Izuku's decision to investigate the purple-clad figure is what got him bitten by the spider. On one hand, he got spider-powers. On the other, he was put into a coma for two days and nearly died.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Izuku's green eyes match his hair.
• Deadpan Snarker: Izuku is genuinely sweet and polite, but he has his own streak of wittiness that he keeps to himself.
  Izuku: [referring to his punishment for ditching school] The fact that my 'Quirk' had just awakened probably convinced them to be more lenient. Lucky me.
• Depending on the Artist: Due to the language barrier between the author and the artist, several details went changed in the original version of the official art for his costume. For instance, his Spider-Chest Insignia is white in-story, but was black in the first edition. The web-shooters and belt pouches are also supposed to be red, and his skin is unusually pale in the artwork. These details were later edited in by another artist.
• Didn't Think This Through: Izuku's and Jirou's plan to defeat Bakugou during the exercise went off without a hitch and would have swung it in their favor... if they remembered to wrap capture tape around him. Because of this, he's allowed to rejoin the fight and discovers that he can melt Izuku's webbing, turning the tide of the fight.
• Dramatic Stutter: Izuku stutters when he's nervous and sometimes when he's excited. He also tends to stutter when he lies. He chastises himself for this, as people will think he's brain damaged if all he does is stutter in front of them.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap: Izuku has been tormented his whole life for wanting to be a Hero without a Quirk. On some level, he acknowledged that it really was impossible for him to reasonably become a Hero, but he didn't want to let it go. Luckily, one spider bite is all it takes to do away with this handicap.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength:
  • While dodging Bakugou's explosion in class, Izuku grips his desk hard as he ducks, accidentally smashing and crushing it to pieces. When Kamui Woods arrives to pick Izuku up, he accidentally puts the Hero's hand in a death grip before he's asked to ease up. After the Prowler incident, he accidentally pushes Bakugou all the way down the hallway while trying to avoid a fight and struggles to avoid snapping his pencils in half. Peter remedies this by making Izuku practice squeezing stress balls until he can grip one without permanently flattening it. He spends weeks destroying stress balls until he finally has a good grasp on his strength.
  • Later on, he notes that despite his efforts to treat everything like wet cardboard that spring, he accidentally smashed an alarm clock while trying to hit the snooze button one morning.
• Dork Knight: Izuku is sweet, kind, and polite to a T as well as horribly awkward in social situations. Even his future self, who has since become one of his world's greatest Heroes, has to beg the reader to stay when he starts to bore them with his Raimi-like opening.

E-M

• Emotional Bruiser: Izuku is a softie who cries whenever he's feeling emotional. Within a few minutes, he cried tears of shame for putting everyone in danger when he ran at the Prowler, Tears of Joy when All Might tells him that he's going to be an amazing Hero, and regret again when he apologizes for not accepting Peter's offer earlier. He's also got enough Spider-Strength to crush a desk completely by accident and lift ten tons of equipment.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • After realizing that he has gotten spider-powers from the spider bite, Izuku wonders if the spider was radioactive and comes to a reasonable (but wrong) conclusion.
    Izuku: B-But how could a spider bite do this!? N-No wait, there was something wrong with that spider! Was the reason Prowler was tracking it because her employer was doing experiments on it?! Oh god... was it actually radioactive like the one from Spider-Man?! [eyes widen] Do I have cancer now?!
  • Izuku is too shaken by all of the revelations Peter dropped into his lap to accept Peter's offer to mentor him right off the bat. He then places money on the table for their meal and for Peter to go get a bath before running out the door. When he finally stops, he wonders what Peter, who is homeless and lonely, must be thinking of Izuku for just ditching him. The answer?
    Peter: Kid's smarter than I was at his age.
• Expressive Mask: Izuku's mask has the same motors as Peter's so it can imitate his facial expressions in hopes of making him more reassuring to people.
• Expy: Izuku is one of Peter, a Born Unlucky scrawny nerd who was granted amazing powers by a stroke of luck and uses them to help others rather than himself. Kōhei Horikoshi, the author of My Hero Academia, has said in an interview that Spider-Man's philosophy was the major inspiration for Izuku's. This story takes it one step further by making him Spider-Man.
• Face Your Fears: He forces himself to go jump off the more than 2,000-foot-tall Bespi Tower to get over his fear of heights. It works so well that he's excited to start jumping off buildings in the future.
• Famed In-Story: Izuku becomes a local celebrity after the Prowler incident, getting called "Prowler Kid" on the street and people stop to take pictures with him. Izuku is unnerved by his new fame, as he's spent most of his life invisible when he's not being laughed at or beaten up. His fame at school only grows after he unintentionally humiliates Bakugou. He also understands that his newfound popularity is fleeting and is wary of people who want to use him for it. About ten months after the incident, his fame has died down considerably, but people can sometimes still recognize him while passing them on the street.
• Fan Boy: Izuku loves Heroes and wants to become one more than anything even though he's Quirkless.
• First-Person Smartass: Izuku is sweet and polite most of the time, but has a biting wit that he doesn't share with anyone else.
• First Time Feeling: He's ecstatic when he realizes he isn't dreaming and that these new powers of his are here to stay, rendering years upon years of derision for being Quirkless meaningless.
• Flat "What": Izuku's reaction to learning that the guy in the Spider-Man costume is Peter Parker.
• Foil:
  • Peter and Izuku were scrawny nerds who were given the chance to become Action Heroes and are both motivated by their Chronic Hero Syndrome. Peter is a veteran who has been in the business for decades and has been ground down by everything he's lost in his crusade to help people. He's motivated by his failure to stop the crook who killed Uncle Ben, but that mantra has become far more bitter in recent years and he sometimes wishes he could just stop. Despite this, he's confident and great at what he does, hoping to keep Izuku from stumbling on his own path towards becoming a Hero. Izuku just got his powers and has no idea what he's doing. He has always wanted to be a Hero, having been inspired by All Might's example rather than personal tragedy. He's jittery and unsure of himself, wondering if he'd just be wasting Peter's time by becoming his student. Peter is also a constant quipper and jokester, while Izuku Cannot Tell a Joke.
  • To Bakugou. Izuku is the Born Unlucky Nervous Wreck who dreams of being a cool Hero whose smile could make others feel safe like All Might, but was stuck with his Geek Physique and Dream-Crushing Handicap until the spider bite. Bakugou is a Born Winner with smarts, athleticism, and a powerful Quirk. He primarily wants to become a Hero to prove how strong he is, as he admires the indomitable strength of All Might.
• Foregone Conclusion: The first "issue" ends with Izuku declaring that he becomes one of the world's greatest Heroes as Spider-Man.
• Formerly Fit: Inverted. Izuku went from scrawny nerd to muscled and athletic after the spider bite. He goes from being almost dead-last in P.E. to easily outpacing the naturally athletic Bakugou in almost every activity. His new physique also comes with stamina and energy he never had before, turning exercise that would have left him completely winded into a light workout. He needs to really push himself for him to feel tired at all, like carrying literal tons of equipment or lapping the city several times in a row.
• Geek Physique: Izuku's mom used to complain about how skinny he was and how he'd never touch his food. He was always one of the worst people in P.E. and Izuku himself acknowledges this. One spider bite is all it takes to give him a rock solid body that turns exertion that would have left him a sweaty mess into a light workout.
• Genius Bruiser: Peter schools Izuku in the ins-and-outs of being Spider-Man, making him absorb college-level material to design his own web-shooters and come up with his own web fluid formula.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Downplayed. Izuku is rather jealous and resentful of people with Quirks after being ostracized as the only Quirkless kid around for years. He buries this resentment underneath his admiration for Heroes, but it leaks out in his internal dialogue until he gains his spider-powers. Bonus points for having actual green eyes.
• Grin of Audacity: His lips wobble into a grin when he's left to face the Nomu alone so Bakugou could get Todoroki to safety.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Has this relationship with Jirou while they're paired up in the Heroes vs. Villains exercise. His spider-powered physical abilities make him the frontline brawler even with his ability to tie up people and get around quickly with his web-shooters. Meanwhile, Jirou's relatively little training in hand-to-hand combat and powerful ranged Quirk make her the "shoot" of the pair.
• Happily Married: Implied, given that Future Izuku insists that his wife is fine after his teenage self wonders if he has cancer or if his blood is radioactive.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Played straight then subverted. Izuku acknowledges that no matter how studious he was, he simply wasn't strong or fast enough to be a Hero without a Quirk. After the spider bite and accepting Peter's tutelage, Izuku throws his all into preparing to become Spider-Man, staying well into the night to cram college-level material into his head and slowly getting the hang of his new powers.
• Harmless Electrocution:
  • Discussed and played straight. When Izuku's Venom Strike activates for the first time, he's horrified and worries that he fried Peter's brain, racing to call a hospital until Peter stops him.
  • This also contributes to Izuku's hesitation to use it during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise. It's one thing to use it on a guy with Super-Toughness and a Healing Factor, it's another thing to hit someone without either of those things with enough voltage to shock them unconscious.
  • After the USJ Incident, Nedzu realizes during a test that the Venom Strike has only induced paralysis because Midoriya subconciously directs the energy to his opponents's brain, while leaving everything else untouched.
• Heroes' Frontier Step: While he wasn't powerless at the time, his decision to rush in to help Peter when none of the Heroes could once again inspires All Might to save the day and give Izuku the pep talk he needed to chase his dreams.
• Heroic Build: When Izuku comes to in the hospital, he's surprised to find that he's now built like an acrobat with noticeable pecs, pumped up arms and legs, and six-pack abs. He can't stop gawking at himself in the mirror a week later and admires how his middle school uniform looks less baggy on him and commissioned fanart shows it clinging to his shoulders and chest. It becomes inconvenient when he discovers that the Spider-Man costume he bought to wear while training with Peter doesn't fit him well because of his new muscles, chafing around his crotch and rear.
• Heroic RRoD: Izuku suffers from intense nausea and vertigo while using his phasing powers, limiting his usage of it because he has to fight to not blow chunks while passing through a single wall.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • Izuku doesn't know what to say when Peter offers to teach him. He's excited and honored that a veteran Hero would take interest in him at all. At the same time, Izuku worries that he isn't worth Peter's time and could be impeding him from finding a way home. He ends up asking for more time to think about it.
    Izuku: [biting his lip nervously as he looks at the ground] B-But am I really worth it?I was Quirkless… I was just a fanboy who couldn't let go of his impossible dream. I haven't even had these powers for a full day. Can I really do it? What if I mess up and just keep him from finding a way home?
  • After this, he begins berating himself for bailing on Peter, since he'd been given the chance of a lifetime and just slinked away. He wonders if he was really capable of becoming a Hero if he suffers this kind of indecision, especially since Peter does it every day with an infinitely harder lifestyle.
  • Peter warns Izuku against this, reminding him that the only person he needs to prove himself to is himself. He shouldn't care about meeting the expectations of his peers if it just makes him unhappy.
    Peter: I made a lot of mistakes, but one of the biggest was thinking I had to prove myself to anyone and everyone I've ever met. From Jameson to Captain America, and sometimes that gave me a lot of grief. [pokes Izuku in the chest] So don't think you have to go above and beyond just to impress others or prove that you're 'good enough' for them. The only person you have to prove yourself to… is you.
  • Later on, he heavily apologizes to Jirou for dragging her into his fight with Bakugou, as she was injured enough that it was painful for her to stand, let alone walk. He proceeds to berate himself for all of his mistakes even as she brushes them off.
• Hero-Worshipper:
  • Izuku is one of All Might's biggest fans. His bedroom is plastered with All Might's merchandise and All Might's heroics are what inspired Izuku to want to become a Hero in the first place. He even started learning English just to listen to All Might's Christmas album. This also extends to Heroes in general, giving Izuku nearly-encyclopedic knowledge of the capabilities and equipment of Heroes and Villains. He feels scandalized when Peter calls All Might a show off for his Big Damn Heroes moment. When All Might arrives to speak with him one-on-one, Izuku accidentally blurts "I love you!" while trying to work up the nerve to say something. It holds him back while learning to fight with Peter, as Izuku naturally tries to imitate his lifelong idol. It isn't until Peter points out that Izuku isn't All Might and doesn't have the same powers does Izuku start trying to think and fight like Spider-Man. When it comes to design his costume, Izuku insists on having a hood resembling All Might's hair even though Peter points out the impracticality of it.
  • Izuku is also this to Bakugou, constantly admiring Bakugou's achievements and following him around in hopes of becoming just as strong and brave as him. Izuku's refusal to let his mom call Mitsuki about Bakugou's behavior allowed everyone to feed Bakugou's ego even more. They've since drifted apart, with Future Izuku even pitying what Bakugou was at the time.
• Hidden Depths: Izuku is sweet guy with a natural inclination to save people. But on some level he's envious and resentful of people who have Quirks when he didn't, as shown by some of his bitter internal snarking and cursing how everyone is constantly reminding him that he's Quirkless. Even after gaining spider powers, the snark doesn't truly go away and he's disturbed by how frequently he lets these thoughts come to the surface now that he doesn't have to take anyone's crap anymore. During his fight against Bakugou, the dark feelings dredged up by his Venom Strike spill over, resulting in a blistering "The Reason You Suck" Speech where Izuku deconstructs Bakugou's worldview.
• Honor Before Reason: During the Heroes vs. Villains exercise, he's fixated on fighting and beating Bakugou in order to prove his merit and fulfill his promise to Mitsuki to be there for him. Jirou calls him out on this, as things could have been much easier if they had simply avoided him, but helps Izuku come up with a plan to take him down without a huge fight.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Izuku struggles to control all of his new spider powers when they start developing one after the other on his first day back at school. He makes a fool of himself when his Wall Crawling powers stick a kendo club flyer to his hand, waving it around while trying to shake it off. In class, he accidentally destroys his desk with his new Super-Strength while dodging one of Bakugou's explosions. While fleeing school, he slams almost face-first into a wall after he jumps twenty feet in the air to avoid an oncoming truck. After that Izuku's Venom Strike power electrocutes Peter when Izuku mistakes him for a mugger.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: He's spent most of his life as an outcast because of his Quirklessness and is excited when people start treating him like he's a normal person instead of a Quirkless loser. He breaks down the moment it seems like it will be taken all away when U.A. reveals that it knows he doesn't have a Quirk and Peter believes Izuku is terrified of going from "outcast" to "freak" after having a taste of the normalcy he craved for years.
• I Just Want to Be Special: All his life, Izuku wanted to have a Quirk of his own so he could chase his dreams of becoming a Hero. He gets what he asked for when he's bitten by the spider, giving him powers on par with even Bakugou's Explosion.
• I Just Want to Have Friends:
  • Zig-zagged. Izuku is ecstatic when he realizes that people are talking to him as a "normal person" and not "Quirkless Deku" when people wouldn't even give him the time of day. But he's not so desperate for companionship that he'd just go along with his former tormentors since he knows they aren't being genuine.
  • After an exhausting first day at U.A., Izuku is just happy to finally fit in, watching his new friends chatter away with a smile on his face.
    Izuku: So this is what it's like...
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: Izuku felt ice-cold after being bitten by the spider just before he collapses. He survives, but the threat of death was there for him.
• In a Single Bound: Izuku easily clears a ten-foot gate while fleeing from class. He leaps twenty feet into the air while dodging an oncoming truck the same day. At the U.A. Entrance Exam, he leaps to another building on the other side of the street.
• Innocently Insensitive: During the U.A. Entrance Exam, he stops smashing robots to chat with Sero and Jirou, who were struggling to keep up while he continues on effortlessly. Iida calls him out for this with a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Izuku gets called "Deku" meaning a "wooden puppet" with connotations of being worthless for not being able to do anything on his own without a Quirk, by Bakugou and his cronies.
  • He gets the moniker "Prowler Boy" and "Prowler Kid" when he tried to save Peter on live television.
  • Mitsuki affectionately calls him "Izu-kun", making a Pun off his name.
• Irony: In the manga, Izuku gains One For All after trying to save Bakugou and eating All Might's hair. Here, Izuku gets bitten by a spider and has to be saved by Bakugou. His One For All-wielding counterpart is also infamous for injuring himself to use his Quirk, while Spider-Izuku has a degree of Super-Toughness, Intangibility, and a Spider-Sense to mitigate or avoid harm.
• Intangibility: While running to save Peter from the Prowler, Izuku discovers that he can turn his body into multi-colored static that bleeds through objects, letting the Prowler's net and oncoming debris pass through him harmlessly. The downside is that it makes him nauseous and it fills his hearing with the sound of TV static. In addition, any electronics he passes through will explode, while organic objects will fuse into a mutated mess ala The Fly (1986).
• Intergenerational Friendship: 14-year-old Izuku strikes up a friendship with the 47-year-old Peter Parker.
• In the Hood: His costume includes a hood styled after All Might's hair despite Peter's insistence on "no capes" for practical reasons. They compromised by making it detachable, allowing it to break away easily should it get snagged or someone grabs a hold of it. It ends up saving his life when it breaks away after the Nomu grabs it mid-fight, allowing Izuku to get away.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: Izuku would have never been bitten by the spider if he hadn't turned down that alleyway that day.
• It Only Works Once: Downplayed. Izuku can only use his Venom Strike once a day, meaning that he's limited to one use of it per fight at most. However, after a day's rest, he can use it again.
• It's All My Fault:
  • He blames himself for Prowler attacking Peter, reasoning that if Peter hadn't extended a hand to him, then he wouldn't have been tracked down on social media. He also blames himself for not accepting Peter's offer right off the bat, but Peter disabuses him of that notion by saying he'd need to be worrying about Izuku's well-being on top of staying alive.
  • He also blames himself for the fight between Katsuki and Mitsuki in the car, as Izuku's new "Quirk" is what's causing Katsuki's irritable behavior. But some part of Izuku's subconscious tried to reassure him otherwise.
• Jack of All Stats: Within his class, he's the physically strongest, but lacks the wide-reaching devastation that Bakugou and Todoroki can cause. He has a measure of Super-Toughness, but he's not bulletproof like Kirishima. He's also superhumanly fast, but nearly as quick as Iida. He's bright, but not as smart as Yaoyorozu. He's stealthy, but not outright invisible like Hagakure. All-in-all, he's strong in many fields, but not the strongest in any of them.
• Japanese Politeness: Izuku's English is initially formal and stilted due to a combination of his rock-bottom self-esteem, his guilt over electrocuting Peter, and his discomfort in actually using English. He also refers to Mitsuki as "Mitsuki oba-san" or roughly "Auntie Mitsuki", which is customary for children when referring to women older than them.
• Jumped at the Call: Subverted. Izuku wants to do this when Peter offers to teach him, but he's so unsure of himself and Peter's situation that he ends up asking for more time to think. Then it's played straight with Izuku's clear excitement over getting the chance to chase his dreams and help people, both of which surprise Peter, who wanted to monetize his powers at first.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks:
  • Izuku feels horrible about all the lies and half-truths he's feeding his mother to keep her from worrying about him or potentially calling the cops on Peter.
  • He panics when he learns that U.A. has figured out he doesn't have a Quirk, breaking down while begging Peter for a solution to his predicament. Izuku is so scared that he forgets his usual Japanese Honorifics.
    Izuku: [whispering] P-Peter... please, I’m scared. I don’t know what to do... I-I can’t lie about this anymore...
• Kid Hero: Izuku is just 14 when he first gets his spider-powers and plans on entering U.A. at 15.
• The Klutz: Going along with his Butt-Monkey tendencies, Izuku remains klutzy even after he gains Super-Reflexes. He repeatedly slams into a wall while trying to get his phasing powers to work, gets his foot tangled in wires while trying to leap away from Bakugou, and has all the grace of a rock when he leaps from the top of a ferris wheel to start web-swinging for the first time. After finishing his web-swinging session at Bespi Tower, he realizes that he hasn't worked out his landings and has to roll onto the platform and down the stairs before he comes to a stop. Even after ten months of training, it takes fifteen attempts at Peter's obstacle course for Izuku to stick the landing, each one more painful than the last.
• Language Barrier: Subverted. Peter immediately assumes that Izuku won't be able to understand a word he says and tries to communicate through charades. He didn't count on Izuku responding in broken, but intelligible English. Of course, there are still plenty of words that Izuku doesn't know and he can't keep up if Peter speaks too quickly, but the language divide is far from insurmountable. While training to get into U.A., he and Peter decide to completely bridge the gap by teaching each other English and Japanese respectively.
  Izuku: I can tell and hear English, sir.
  Peter: You can understand...? [sighs and facepalms] Smooth, Peter. You just made yourself look like an ass in front of a teenager.
• Legacy Character: Izuku is set to become Peter's student and his universe's version of Spider-Man. This motivates him to work even harder, as he wants to live up to Peter's and All Might's faith that he'll become a great Hero. This is also deconstructed, as donning the uniform and identity of his mentor means that he also inherits all of Peter's enemies, as shown when Kangaroo, Frog-Man, and Shigaraki all single him out as a target at USJ.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's faster than any Olympic athlete, can flatten robots with a single punch, and is tough enough to take just as well as he can give. While his durability is mainly limited to blunt impacts, almost nothing in the U.A. Entrance Exam could even slow him down. During Aizawa's Quirk Apprehension Test, Izuku manages to score in second, ahead of Katsuki, thanks to his raw physical ability.
• Little "No": His reaction to learning that Peter has been hospitalized.
• Luminescent Blush:
  • Izuku turns bright red when Peter starts alluding to the effects of puberty and his new spider-powers. He turns even redder after he accidentally blurts "I love you!" to All Might, who laughs it off. He blushes again when he's too embarrassed to tell Peter about the rashes he's been getting on his thighs, joints, and crotch from his Spider-Man costume.
  • He turns red from his head to his toes when he realizes that he pressed a girl against his chest while rescuing her and is later caught by Jirou in a Bridal Carry.
• Messy Hair: His curly hair is never combed. Iida even refers to him by said hair.
• Missed the Call: It's implied that Izuku could have been All Might's successor if they had just met a few days earlier.
• Mistaken for Masturbating: Izuku beats around the bush while trying to explain that his training costume is giving him rashes on his thighs, joints, and crotch. Peter is led to this conclusion and tells Izuku to talk to someone else until Izuku clarifies himself.
  Izuku: [motioning to his thighs] Um, Peter-san? Do you normally... become red? [blushes deeply]
  Peter: Huh? Um, kid, that's kinda not a thing you should be talking about with me.
  Izuku: [turns even redder] N-No!
• Momma's Boy: Because his father works overseas, Izuku is especially close to his mom, calling her the best mom ever. He hates to worry her and can't wait to tell her about his new powers, but dreads of thought of explaining why he ditched school. After the Prowler incident, he comes home to see his mom in tears and instantly feels terrible about how worried he made her. He feels even worse about having to lie to her constantly about his powers and his activities but doesn't want to worry her more than he already has.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Played for Laughs. As shown by the quote under This Is My Story, Izuku tries to be super dramatic and deliberate in his opening narration, only for it to fall apart into comedic begging as his audience stops caring and starts to leave.
  • Played for Drama when All Might tells him that U.A. knows that Izuku doesn't have a Quirk. He goes from overwhelming joy to hysterics and complete terror, frantically calling Peter for advice while fighting the urge to scream.
• Motor Mouth: Izuku mumbles to himself when he's nervous or deep in thought, spewing out a Wall of Text until he's cut off or asked to stop.
  Izuku: [muttering in class] T-the possibilities of this Quirk are limitless! With these I can be able to hold myself onto fast-moving vehicles without much trouble... n-no wait I'll probably need to train my body to handle the velocity. Oh! Wait, recon! Scouting out a villain's location and observing the situation is also a possibility for this Quirk...!
  Bakugou: Deku...
  Izuku: But wait, I'll also need to train my upper body before I go to U.A.... t-that shouldn't be a problem now! I'm pretty sure there are tons of training programs online for people with Quirks that allow them to scale buildings!
  Bakugou: Deku...!
  Izuku: Man, I need to tell Mom as soon as possible! T-This Quirk probably came from someone in her or Dad's family and I can get advice from them! Yes, that's it! I...!
  Bakugou: SHUT THE HELL UP!
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Zig-zagged. Sure, Izuku is ripped for a teenager thanks to the spider bite and it shows his increased strength and athleticism, but his lean, acrobatic physique isn't indicative of how he can lift refrigerators with one hand and carry a maximum of ten tons.
• Mundane Utility: Izuku quickly finds that his new "Quirk" comes with a lot of perks. His Spider-Sense let him avoid getting clocked in the head in the middle of a busy crowd, Wall Crawling proved handy for escaping bullies by sticking to walls and ceilings out of sight, and Super-Speed is a huge help when he's rushing to get a katsu bun before the school store runs out.
  These Spider-Powers sure were handy at times…
• Must Have Caffeine: Izuku ends up putting a coffee machine in his room while trying to cram college-level physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering into his head in time to build his own web-shooters.
• My Suit Is Also Super:
  • Izuku's costume is temperature-controlled so he doesn't bake in the summer sun or freeze in the winter time while crawling up buildings. His Cool Mask also comes with a helpful heads-up display, a Bluetooth connection, and monitors his web-fluid levels. It can also adjust for different kinds of light, though this isn't automatic by default and Izuku only remembers to activate that option shortly after he embarrasses himself while running late to class.
  • His costume also holds up considerably better with the Support Department's additions to it, as it's blackened but otherwise intact compared to his canon counterpart's first costume being torn to shreds (though his ability to dodge via Super-Reflexes and a Spider-Sense certainly helped).

N-Y

• Nerd Action Hero:
  • He's a Hero nerd to the nth degree and is gifted with the powers of Spider-Man. He even lampshades it, saying that his life became something out of an action movie after getting his powers.
  • Prior to the U.A. Entrance Exam, Izuku is surprised when Bakugou doesn't call him a nerd for ten minutes. He immediately lampshades how sad that sounds.
• Nervous Wreck: Izuku is easily startled and sweats constantly from nervousness. He can't help but quiver while standing in front of U.A. even after ten months of training with the real Spider-Man.
• Nice Guy: Izuku is sweet, honest, and polite, dreaming of the day he can devote his life to helping others as a Hero. He almost always puts others before himself and is extremely empathetic to people in trouble.
• No Hero Discount: Once Izuku begins training with Peter, he starts buying up all the things he needs to make it as Spider-Man: chemicals to develop web fluid, textbooks to guide him through the process, amenities to help Peter live at Jakuri Park more comfortably, and so on. He soon finds that being Spider-Man is more expensive than he thought and he has to give up some of his hobbies and luxuries to make sure he has enough money to keep himself and Peter afloat.
• Ocular Gushers: Izuku and his mom sob uncontrollably after he wakes up from the coma the spider bite put him into. Peter is taken aback by how much Izuku can cry in one day.
• Oh, Crap!: Izuku panics when his Spider-Sense flares up to warn him of the impending villain attack at USJ while pleading for his teachers to get them out of there.
• Only Friend: In a way, Izuku is the only one in Bakugou's social circle to actually care about him as a person, promising Mitsuki that he'll stand by him when the rest of their peers abandoned Bakugou. He's also the universe-displaced Peter's only confidant.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the climax of their brawl during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise, Izuku calls Bakugou by his first name instead of Kacchan, the first time he'd done so in years. In fact, Bakugou freezes because of how rare this is.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Izuku has the ability to dissolve into colorful static not unlike that seen in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to become intangible. Any electronics he passes through in this state will short circuit and potentially explode and passing through biological matter results in a serious case of Body Horror for the other thing involved. It isn't pleasant for Izuku either, as his vision swims and is warped into psychedelic colors while in this state, exhausting him and making him more and more nauseous the longer he uses it.
• Painful Transformation: The spider bite was excruciating to Izuku, who felt as though he'd been stabbed by an icicle before every one of his nerves lit on fire. He felt ice cold before emptying his lunch on the street and collapsing, waking up covered in sweat with a hoarse throat after spending two days in a coma.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Downplayed. After an Imagine Spot gives Izuku a Raging Stiffie, he desperately tries to get it to go away by trying to Think Unsexy Thoughts. One of the images he brings up is his parents kissing.
• Personality Powers: A Shrinking Violet Hero Fan Boy who enjoys reading comic books gets the powers of one of the most famous comic book heroes of all time. He also developed Intangibility, going along with his Cowardly Lion tendencies and how invisible he was to the world until he got his powers.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: He isn't especially tall, coming up at 5'5'', but he's strong enough to carry ten tons of appliances before faltering and can crush a desk to pieces completely by accident.
• Power Incontinence: Izuku struggles to use his phasing and Venom Strike powers at first because he can't figure out the trigger. While he manages to learn that the former could be activated through a fight-or-flight response, the latter continues to elude him during the first half of his ten months of training for the U.A. Entrance Exam. He also can't control his new Spider-Strength at first, going through dozens of stress balls while trying to learn how to limit it so he doesn't break anything he doesn't want to.
• Power Misidentification: Unwilling to believe that the spider bite gave him the powers of Spider-Man, Izuku initially tries to rationalize the hairs growing on his hands as a latent Quirk awakened by the spider bite. But when he discovers his Spider-Sense, Super-Strength, and Wall Crawling powers, he quickly realizes that there's no way this could just be a Quirk. After the Prowler incident, he continues to pass off his abilities as a strange Quirk to avoid unwanted attention. The faculty at UA however realise it is not a quirk. Peter for his part is insulted as that just further highlights how incompetent his own world's institutions are compared to that of Izuku's. UA agrees to keep the secret on a need-to-know basis but insists they put something in the Quirk Registry. Izuku ends up referring to his abilities as "Ghost Spider" while sending in his Quirk registration forms.
• Power Of Hate: Izuku's Venom Strike is activated by his long-repressed feelings of resentment and desire to lash out at others for grinding him for all his life.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Izuku says one before finishing off Katsuki with the Venom Strike in Issue 10.
  Izuku: Today... I go beyond you, Kacchan!
• Precision F-Strike: Izuku sometimes curses with "damn" or "crap", but keeps it to himself rather than aiming the curses at anyone else. It's only when he's truly pissed that he calls Bakugou an "asshole" for his behavior.
• Projectile Webbing: His web-shooters work identically to Peter's, producing lines of spider silk-like thread that instantly bind to whatever they hit and can make webs on impact.
• Psychoactive Powers: Izuku discovers that his less-spidery powers are tied to his emotions, managing to activate his phasing power at will by latching onto the terror he felt when running at the Prowler. He later learns that his Venom Strike is activated by his desire to strike back and hurt others out of feelings of frustration and resentment, which troubles him until Peter assures him that it's alright as long as he channels those feelings towards helping others.
• Puberty Superpower: Izuku's powers are mistaken for these because of how long it took for him to get his so-called "Quirk".
• Rage Breaking Point: Izuku blames the Quirk-obsessed nature of society for Bakugou's relationship with him and continues to rationalize his behavior until the Heroes vs. Villains exercise. Bakugou continues to deride Izuku throughout it, saying that even with his new powers, Izuku is still the same worthless nobody he was before. After a certain point, Izuku snaps, immediately punching Bakugou hard enough to make him nearly puke before giving him a blistering speech about how much of an asshole he is.
• Raging Stiffie: Izuku has an Imagine Spot of Jirou with his arms around him, her body pressing against his and him feeling every part of her through his skintight costume while he climbs up a building. Then, while trying not to think about it, he remembers how skintight Uraraka's costume is. He's implied to have gotten a hard-on and has to Think Unsexy Thoughts to get rid of it, being thankful that male superheroes like him wear groin protection while out in the field.
• Required Secondary Powers: Peter points out that Izuku's arms would pop off if he didn't have the Super-Strength and Super-Toughness to handle web-swinging. Izuku also finds that he's more flexible after the spider bite, which makes it a lot easier for him to learn how to move like Spider-Man and pull off moves that could have broken his back if he attempted them before the bite.
• Running Gag:
  • Izuku has a bad habit of slamming into walls or being faceplanted into the ground for one reason or another. Lampshaded in the first issue.
    This wasn't going to become a thing, was it?
  • Izuku laments that his Spider-Sense tends to fail him at the worst of times. It never triggers while he's sparring with Peter, allowing him to get repeatedly faceplanted by his mentor. It also doesn't trigger when Bakugou waits in the hall for Izuku in school, despite the former's loudly announced desire to beat the crap out of him.
    Izuku: Spider-Sense, you have failed me again.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Izuku is utterly terrified of the Prowler, but he rushes in anyways when he sees that no one else was going to help Peter.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After destroying a desk with his newfound Super-Strength, Izuku bolts from class when he sees the absolutely livid expression on Bakugou's face. He has the same reaction when Bakugou declares his intention to make mince meat out of him the day after. He spends the next few weeks ducking into classrooms and hiding on walls and ceilings to avoid Bakugou.
• Sensual Spandex: As shown by his official costume art, his skintight costume goes a long way towards showing off the shapely muscles◊ he got from the spider bite and cultivated through training.
• Shock and Awe: Izuku possesses the same Venom Strike power as Miles Morales, accidentally electrocuting Peter and sending him flying backward. However, it's much more limited, as he can only use it once a day and it's only powerful enough to stun someone for a few minutes rather than render them unconscious.
• Shrinking Violet: Izuku is shy and awkward after more than a decade of being ostracized and bullied by his peers. He's constantly unsure of himself and shrinks underneath his own fame after the Prowler incident. Despite his timidity, he isn't spineless and is offended when Peter calls All Might a show off. He later angrily shouts at Peter for throwing a rock at him to test his Spider-Sense.
• Sleep Deprivation: Izuku stays up all night while trying to learn about the chemistry and physics behind making his own web fluid and web-shooters.
• Socially Awkward Hero:
  • Izuku doesn't have much social experience thanks to being bullied or ignored by his peers for most of his life without a single person he could really call a friend. Peter happens to be the first one he's had in years. He also stumbles over himself when he's speaking to a girl for the first time.
  • While sitting down at a bubble tea cafe with his new friends at U.A., Izuku muses that he hasn't hung out with anyone in years, only watching others do it or seeing it on TV or in the movies. As a result, he's laughably bad at making small talk.
• Something Person: He's Spider-Man, of course!
• Spider-Sense: Izuku's powers come with the classic Spider-Sense, alerting him when Bakugou was sending an explosion at him and ensuring that he managed to jump out of the way of an oncoming truck. It doesn't work when the person doing it is someone Izuku trusts unconditionally, like Peter, and will only activate when Izuku is in serious danger of harm. Getting hit by a rock in the shoulder might hurt, but it's not going to leave him reeling in the way an explosion to the face would. Izuku's Spider-Sense seems to be weaker than Peter's in general, as it refused to activate even as Peter repeatedly faceplants Izuku during their sparring sessions nor does it go off when Bakugou waits for Izuku in the hallway.
• Squee: Izuku's default response to meeting anyone on the long list of Heroes he admires is this.
• Starstruck Speechless:
  • Izuku meets All Might after the Prowler incident and is totally tongue-tied. He desperately tries to work up the nerve to say something, only to blurt out "I love you!", to his intense embarrassment. He's finally able to speak properly after All Might starts asking him questions.
  • Izuku can only gasp and Squee when he learns Present Mic will be proctoring the exam before rattling off everything he knows about him in a hushed squeal.
• Sticky Situation: He embarrasses himself on his first day back at school when he desperately tries to shake off the kendo club flyer off his hand after his Wall Crawling powers develop. A few hours later, he accidentally destroys his desk and a few pieces of it are still sticking to his palms. He gets the hang of it soon enough and lets go as he bolts for the door.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Izuku finds himself in this predicament after his second day at U.A. Luckily, he isn't in any danger. In accordance to his deal with Nezu, he's stripped to his underwear and strapped to a table while scientists barrage him with CT scans and other scientific tests to determine the origins of his Venom Strike. He's not allowed to move the entire time and is hit with constant flashing lights. The experience was frightening enough that he still feels the phantom sensations of the suction cups placed on his cheeks. Given that the alternative was getting vivisected by the Japanese government, he doesn't complain much.
• Superheroes Wear Tights: Compared to his canon counterpart who wears a formfitting but still somewhat loose jumpsuit, Izuku's costume has to be skintight to keep it from interfering with his setules and to be more aerodynamic when jumping around.
• Superpower Lottery: Within the context of his universe, his powerset is remarkable considering that most people only have one or two powers. He's incredibly strong, fast, and tough, has a Spider-Sense and Intangibility, and his Venom Strike to quickly end fights. On top of this, he has his web-shooters to greatly increase his mobility and bind his foes. Any one of these powers would make him Hero material, and Izuku has them all.
• Super-Speed: Downplayed. Izuku isn't able to run like Ingenium or All Might, but he can still run faster than an Olympic sprinter while also performing all sorts of death-defying acrobatics to get around even more quickly. He outpaces everyone in his group at the U.A. Entrance Exam except for Iida and still ends up at the head of the pack thanks to being able to run along a nearby building.
• Super-Reflexes:
  • Izuku's powers come with a boost to his reflexes, ducking under one of Bakugou's explosions as if it were in slow motion and jumping out of the way on an oncoming car in a split second. They aren't infallible, as he fell flat on his face after Peter webbed him by accident while being blown backward by Izuku's Venom Strike.
  • At USJ, he's the only one on site fast enough to be able to face the USJ Nomu and not get instantly pulped. As a result, he is able to distract him and keep him busy long enough for help to arrive.
• Super-Strength:
  • Izuku is strong enough to accidentally smash his desk to pieces while trying to dodge one of Bakugou's explosions. He later shoves Bakugou all the way down a hallway when he meant to lightly push him and begins snapping his pencils in two. He also notices that exercise that would have left him utterly winded before the spider-bite feels like light exercise with his new abilities. Peter decides to test Izuku's strength by throwing kitchen appliances and old roller coaster cars at him and webbing them together, estimating that Izuku can lift a maximum of ten tons before keeling over from the strain. Peter tries to increase Izuku's strength further by slowly piling on additional weight over the course of their ten-month training session.
  • By the U.A. Entrance Exam, Izuku is easily crushing the robots with his punches and tearing them apart with his bare hands. His punches and kicks leave small craters in concrete floors, walls, and ceilings.
• Super-Toughness: His powers come with a measure of this, which is why he's in pain but otherwise uninjured after running into a wall over and over while trying to get his phasing ability to work. He's also convinced that he could probably survive a fifty-foot drop onto hard asphalt if he didn't land on his neck, but he's also aware that it would hurt a ton. He's also perfectly fine after swinging down from a streetlight and punching a robot hard enough to flatten it like a tin can.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Subverted. After he and Jirou tie up Bakugou, Izuku goes on a short speech about how he's not going to shirk under the name of Deku anymore. But this just wastes time they could have been using to get to the bomb, and in their haste to leave they forget to tie the capture tape around him, which lets him reenter the fight.
• Take Our Word for It: Izuku tells the reader that the less they knew about the pork chops he phased through, the better.
• Tender Tears: Izuku cries easily whenever he's feeling particularly joyful or sad. He has to fight back tears while thinking about how pathetic his own problems were when compared to Peter's tortured personal life. He also gets teary eyed when Peter is telling him how Thor sacrificed himself for the sake of Earth and his daughter, Torunn.
• Teach Me How To Fight: Well, more like "Teach me how to become a Hero", but Izuku's acceptance of Peter's offer comes across like this.
• Technicolor Lightning: The electricity Izuku emits is green to match his Color Motif, just like in canon.
• Tempting Fate: After hearing about his admission to U.A., Izuku feels like nothing could bring him down now. Then he learns that U.A knows he doesn't have a Quirk and wants to question him about it.
• Theme Naming: After realizing that he has the powers of Spider-Man, Izuku starts referring to his new abilities as Spider-X, including his Spider-Sense and Spider-Stamina.
• They Would Cut You Up: After All Might informs him that U.A. knows he doesn't have a Quirk, Izuku quickly flies into a panic about whether he'll be dragged away to a lab and never get to attend U.A. According to Nezu, this was definitely a possibility.
• Think Unsexy Thoughts: After an Imagine Spot of having Jirou's arms around him while he climbs up a building (and accidentally remembering how Uraraka felt and her costume), Izuku quickly thinks of All Might giving a speech, his parents kissing, and finally Nezu in a bikini to get his Raging Stiffie to go away.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • Izuku's initial response to discovering the full breadth of his spider-powers is that it was completely impossible for him to have the powers of a fictional character. He has the same reaction when he runs into Peter Parker not long afterward.
    Izuku: N-No. That's... that's... [bolts out of class out of fright and unease] This is impossible... it's impossible!
  • All of his unease is replaced with giddiness as he realizes that what's happening can't be impossible because he's not dreaming as he climbs up the building.
    Izuku: This isn't a dream. This isn't an impossibility. This is... This is actually happening!
• This Is My Story: Parodied. Izuku tries to be dramatic and deliberate when his narration opens the story, but he quickly bores his audience and he has to beg them to stay with his usual dorkiness, as shown by the opening lines.
  Izuku: Do you want to know my story? Are you sure you want to know? The tale I'm going to spin isn't for the faint of heart and... Wait! Wait, don't go! O-Okay look, this is the first time I've told anybody what happened like this, so please be patient! Our story begins like a lot of manga and comics do... in middle school.
• This Is Reality: Izuku initially tries to dismiss his budding spider powers as just a latent Quirk because he lives in reality, not a comic book. He thinks the phrase again when he dismisses the idea of Taking the Heat for Bakugou, as the "showing the bully who is the bigger man" argument is something that only works in cheesy high school dramas.
• Thinking Tic: Izuku mumbles loudly but unintelligibly to himself when he's thinking hard.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Izuku is forced to make this choice when Peter is hospitalized and subsequently arrested by the police. If he decides to break into the hospital to sneak Peter out, he'd be aiding and abetting a criminal, dashing his dreams of becoming a Hero. But doing nothing betrays his Chronic Hero Syndrome instincts. Peter ultimately convinces him not to, but it was clearly an agonizing decision for him.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Issue 10, Izuku has had enough of Bakugou's behavior and unleashes his experience while declaring that everyone hated him and only stayed by him because they were too afraid to stand up to his explosive attitude. He then finishes Katsuki off with the Venom Strike.
• Training from Hell: Getting powers and a naturally fit physique from the spider bite doesn't mean Izuku is excluded from this. Peter puts him through the wringer to prepare him for U.A., making him carry tons of appliances around, lap the entire city several times, and refine his Spider-Sense by leaving rusty nails and other dangerous objects lying around that he could step on. Izuku admits it wasn't fun, but since he was trying to get into the greatest Hero school in the world, he had to make sure he deserved to be there.
• Underwear of Power: Invoked. Izuku is fully aware that many heroes wore their underwear on the outside of their costume just in case the costume tore. He decides to slip a pair of exercise shorts over the ill-fitting Spider-Man costume he bought in case he has an "accident."
• Un-Sorcerer: On Izuku's Earth, 80% of people are born with a superpower called a Quirk. He's one of the unlucky 20% to be born without one. It doesn't stick, because he develops spider-powers in his last year of middle school after a spider bite, but he's still technically Quirkless.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Justified. When Izuku dodges an oncoming truck by leaping twenty feet into the air, the crowd at the crosswalk merely brushes him off for worrying them when he had a "Quirk" like that. Of course, they had no way of knowing that he was Quirkless just a few days ago. Then it's subverted when Kamui Woods says that Izuku's stunt is making people nervous and they called for a Hero to get him down.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: After coming to U.A., his radioactive blood gets studied by a young scientist hoping to get her big break. Little does she know that the trace amounts of gamma radiation in his blood is also the same kind of radiation that created the Hulk, linking it to the One Below All. If she hadn't burned her notes and killed herself, Izuku would have served as the unwitting door to the evil god.
• Voice of the Legion: If Izuku tries to speak while phasing, his voice is distorted to sound like four people are speaking at once: one close, one far away, one loud, and one soft.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The spider bite makes Izuku so nauseous that he ends up puking on the street before collapsing. He pukes again after using his phasing power for the second time, this time all over the floor Peter just mopped.
• Waif-Fu: Despite being incredibly strong, Peter teaches Izuku to be light on his feet and to spend most of his time dodging before mixing in counterattacks. This is seen during his brawl with Bakugou, as he somersaults over one of Bakugou's attacks before grabbing his arm to judo throw him onto the ground. He also throws in elements of Capoeira with whirlwind kicks and is generally extremely hard to hit unless he's occupied with something else.
• Wall Crawling: Izuku has tiny hairs growing on his hands and feet that he can use to stick to walls and other things at will. He first discovers this when he accidentally sticks a kendo club poster to his hand and later climbs up the building he slammed into after dodging an oncoming truck. Unfortunately, it doesn't work if his clothing is too thick to not let the hairs through. He finds this out the hard way when he tries to run up a wall with his sneakers on. He's dismayed that he has to practice his new power by climbing on dirty old buildings with just his socks on, squirming when he feels the dirt and moisture seeping in. His setules can also retract unconsciously if he ever spaces out, forcing Izuku to practice until it comes as naturally to him as breathing so he doesn't fall off a building at an inopportune time.
• Wall Run: He demonstrates his Wall Crawling powers to his mom this way. He later uses this (after shaving the bottoms off his sneakers) while navigating the obstacle course Peter set up for him the night before the exam. He decides to not take any risks and takes off his shoes right before the practical portion of the U.A. Entrance Exam.
• Walking Techbane: Any electronics Izuku passes through while using his phasing powers will short circuit and potentially explode. Luckily, stuff he has on his person when he turns intangible are unaffected, allowing him to carry his cell phone and web-shooters without an issue. During the U.A. Entrance Exam, his powers crash a computer hooked up to a sensor that's destroyed when Izuku passes through it.
• Weirdness Magnet: Izuku happens to turn down just the right alleyway to see the Prowler railing at her client over the phone when she was hired to steal something. Then he gets bitten by the same spider she was looking for and gains spider-powers. On his first day back in school, his spider-powers develop and he ends up running into Peter Parker, who Izuku thought was completely fictional.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Downplayed. While they aren't related, Izuku is determined to make Peter, his mentor and the first person to ever put stock in his dream, proud of him. At the same time, Peter is already impressed with Izuku's work ethic and heroic impulses and tells him that he doesn't need to prove himself to anyone but himself.
• Willfully Weak: He's appropriately wary of his new Super-Strength and learns to control it so he doesn't hurt others too badly when fighting. Because of this, Bakugou is taken completely by surprise when Izuku hits his Rage Breaking Point and suddenly jumps ahead of him in raw power and agility.
  • A few days after the USJ Incident, Nedzu realizes while studying Izuku's Venom Strike that Izuku subconciously directs the bio-electricity to his targets's brain to induce paralysis without causing further harm, leaving everything else untouched.
• With Friends Like These...:
  • Izuku continues to admire Bakugou despite years of torment and is the only one in Bakugou's social circle to actually care about him as a person. He's deeply hurt when Bakugou declares that Izuku isn't his friend and promises Mitsuki that he'll continue to stand by him.
  • Jirou refers to Bakugou as a dick when he shoves past the two of them and points out that "Deku" doesn't sound like a friendly nickname. Izuku continues to call Bakugou his friend and doesn't hold any ill will towards him.
• With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Izuku's physique was transformed from a scrawny nerd's to that of a muscled acrobat after being bitten by the spider.
• Worf Had the Flu: Downplayed. He struggles in his fight against Yaoyorozu during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise as he was already injured and winded after his fierce brawl with Bakugou. His attention was also occupied with getting to the bomb hidden among her decoys and the increasing pressure of him running down the clock. Even then, he notes that he could probably defeat her if he went all-out, but he decides against that as he wouldn't be able to properly regulate his Super-Strength to avoid seriously hurting her.
• Workaholic: Once he starts training with Peter, Izuku works his hardest every day while studying well into the night. Inko finds him snoring over an open chemistry textbook at 2:00 a.m. and has to remind him to head back to bed. He complies, only to collapse right on top of it and instantly go back to sleep. By the end of his ten months of training, he begs Peter to let him practice more until Peter points out that it would be detrimental for Izuku to exhaust himself the night before the exam. He then goes onto say that it's weird hearing this kind of work ethic from a teenager.
• Wrong Context Magic: He's unique in his universe as the only known person with superpowers that don't involve a Quirk, but he continues to pass them off as one anyways to avoid unwanted attention. When U.A. finds out, they call him in before classes to interrogate him on the origins of his abilities, but continue to allow him to masquerade his power as a Quirk called "Ghost Spider".
• You Are Not Alone: Double Subverted. He tells Bakugou that he is alone, as everyone around him hated him for his behavior and only tagged along out of fear. After tearing down Bakugou's need for gratification and his horrible ego, Izuku ends his "The Reason You Suck" Speech by admitting that he always admired him and is his friend.
• Youthful Freckles: He has a cluster of four freckles on each cheek just under both of his eyes.

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