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    Doctor Curtis Connors / The Lizard 
For tropes applying to his appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, see MCU: Multiversal Villains

Dr. Curtis "Curt" Connors / The Lizard

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/CurtisConnors_7596.png
Click here to see Connors as the Lizard

Played by: Rhys Ifans

Voiced by: Steve Blum (first console game), Adam Harrington (first iOS game), Germán Fabregat (Latin-American Spanish dub), Naoya Uchida (Japanese dub), Christian Gonon (European French dub), François Sasseville (Canadian French dub)

Appearances: The Amazing Spider-Man | Spider-Man: No Way Home

"Like the Parkinson's patient... who watches on in horror as her body... slowly betrays her, or the man with macular degeneration... whose eyes grow dimmer each day, I long to fix myself. I want to create a world without weakness."

One of Oscorp's leading scientific minds and Gwen's mentor. He used to work alongside Peter's father, Richard Parker, and they were engineering a revolutionary serum to re-grow limbs and human tissue, which would change the lives of millions — including that of Connors himself, who lost his right arm. Richard, however, disappeared and was found dead taking a good part of the research with him, rendering Connors unable to finish the project by himself — until Peter entered the scene.


  • Absurdly Sharp Claws: Sharp enough to cut through metal doors, or Captain Stacy's stomach.
  • Adapted Out: His family. In the comics, he is Happily Married to Martha Connors prior to his transformation into the Lizard. They also have a son, Billy. In the movie, his family is neither seen nor mentioned, implying Connors being single or at least divorced in this version of the character. Billy does appear in a deleted scene.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: Commonly depicted as dark-haired, but blond-haired in the movie.
  • Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In a deleted scene from the film, he says that he heard about Ben Parker's death, and consoles Peter. This is absent from the theatrical cut, making it confusing how the Lizard knew that Ben was dead when he mocks Peter.
  • Adaptation Origin Connection: Like most villains in the TAS-movie franchise, Connors is an employee of OsCorp. This isn't the case in the comics.
  • Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: This version of the character was friends and colleagues with Peter´s parents. In the comics, there is not such a connection. There, he befriends Peter after the latter already is Spider-Man and their Intergenerational Friendship isn't depending on Connors knowing Peter's parents. This comes to be as Connors seems to be Composite Character with Eddie Brock Sr. from the Ultimate Spider-Man-series.
  • Adaptational Nationality: This version of Curt Connors is English instead of American.
  • Adaptational Skimpiness: In the comics, the Lizard wears purple trousers, a black shirt, and a white lab coat when he transforms. Here, Connors goes about completely nude, though with no visible private parts.
  • Adaptational Sympathy: He became the Lizard in the comics trying to regrow his own limb, with a lot of his characterization stemming from a Jekyll & Hyde situation. This Connors is stuck working under a corrupt corporation that sees the work he's doing as a means to an end, and their unwillingness to play things safe leads him to become his alter-ego.
  • Alliterative Name: Like many characters that were introduced during the initial run of the comic.
  • Anti-Villain: Connors works in genetic engineering for the betterment of humanity's medical conditions and dreams of restoring his missing arm. He seems to be a genuinely good man, only working for the shady Norman Osborn. He only becomes the Lizard when his lizard-based serum is slated for public testing without his consent. He tests it on himself to spare others the danger and suffers transformation into the Lizard, which turns him insane. Even as the Lizard, his first action is to go after the scientist who's about to test the serum on aged veterans. Upon being cured his first thought is to save Peter's life, and his second is a concern for Captain Stacy as he realizes he fatally wounded him.
  • The Atoner: Implied after the final battle, where he saves Peter and willingly turns himself in to the police. The Stinger reveals that there is a precedent for this - several characters have implied he was more involved in Richard and Mary Parker's death than he lets on, and it's stated that he at least knows why they were killed.
  • Ax-Crazy: As the Lizard. Though he ultimately means to do good, he will stop at barely anything to bring his plan to fruition and becomes quite mentally unhinged.
  • Badass Bookworm: Even as a hulking lizard-man, he's still an intelligent and dangerous individual.
  • Badass Labcoat: Occasionally worn as the Lizard, but mainly worn as a scientist.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: As the Lizard, though considering the anatomy of most reptile species, this isn't all that surprising. Reptilian reproductive organs tend to be mostly internalized, thus Connors's, ah, lack of visible anatomy in that area.
  • Beast Man: As the Lizard.
  • Big Bad: The main villain of the first film, as his Lizard persona attempts to turn all of New York into reptilian monsters.
  • Body Horror: The way Connors first regenerates his lost arm is rather disgusting, being covered in dead reptilian flesh and scales. The regenerated arm itself is (initially) far from pretty, with translucent skin, visible veins, and no fingernails. However, his reaction is one of joy.
  • Composite Character: Like Eddie Brock Sr. from Ultimate Spider-Man, he was Richard Parker's partner. He also takes the role of Doctor Octopus as Captain George Stacy's killer.
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Venom of the previous Spider-Man film. Unlike him who's powers come from an alien lifeform while lacking any redeeming qualities due to caring only about what he can get, the Lizard is sympathetic as everything he did was in the actual belief he could help humanity. Even in his Lizard form he didn't mutate people out of malice and after being cured he regretted his actions and saved Spider-Man.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: The first Lizard fight is a long and very painful beatdown on Spidey's end: the most he can do is delay him for a moment at a time and stop innocent people from getting hurt, but once it turns into a straight fight Peter is very outmatched. It only ends in his favor because he delayed Connors until the police came.
  • Deadpan Snarker: He's normally pretty serious and straightforward, but he still shows shades of this, such as his joke about being a southpaw.
  • Death by Secret Identity: Averted. He finds out who Spidey is, but remains alive. And discreet.
  • Death of Personality: As Dr. Connors, he's a benevolent figure, but the serum erases this good personality and replaces it with that of The Lizard. The Lizard is defeated in the same manner—the antidote destroys the evil Lizard persona, restoring Dr. Connors.
  • Disabled in the Adaptation: In addition to the missing arm, Connors requires glasses, in contrast to his mainstream counterpart.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Actor Rhys Ifans has likened Connors' use of the serum to drug addiction, and it's easy to see why. He injects the serum into his arm by means of a hollow needle, it makes him feel fantastic (to the point of feeling and acting like another person entirely), and he keeps using more and more of it to negate going back to normal. And once he finally does go back to normal, Connors shows withdrawl-like symptoms such as restlessness and changes in mood, making it clear he's desperate to return to his previous state as soon as possible.
  • Everyone Has Standards: He is horrified that his colleague would test the formula with unwitting Military amputees as Guinea Pigs, which is the reason why he uses the untested serum upon himself. Too bad that didn't work out.
  • Evil Brit: As the Lizard.
  • Evil Is Bigger: He towers over Spider-Man and other people as the Lizard.
  • Evilutionary Biologist: While he has traces of the Lizard virus in his system, he proclaims that humans are weak and must be enhanced in order to achieve their true potential.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: His voice is a lot deeper as the Lizard.
  • Foil: The Lizard is one of a sort to Peter. Both are cross-species originating from humans who are very intelligent but are on opposite sides of the moral spectrum and operate to completely opposite ends.
  • Face–Monster Turn: One done to prevent other amputees from being tested upon.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: As the Lizard, when not wearing his Badass Labcoat.
  • Genius Bruiser: As the Lizard, he's quite capable of thinking on his feet and improvising weapons, such as mixing chemicals together in a science lab to create an improvised explosive.
  • Genius Cripple: Being down one arm does nothing to stop his intellect.
  • Gollum Made Me Do It: While he claims that he was pushed into becoming the Lizard in his trial, he states that he feels he is not personally responsible for the crimes his insane alter-ego was accountable for - even though he clearly regrets what occurred. His defense fails to win over the jury.
  • Green and Mean: His reptilian form has green scales and is not a friendly character.
  • Healing Factor: The whole point of the lizard formula, but it also extends to bullet wounds.
  • Humans Are Flawed: The starting point of his research. At the height of his insanity, he comes to the conclusion that humans are so imperfect that it's not right to leave them unevolved.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: In a deleted scene, he bites Rajit's head off. This is done less as Horror Hunger and more for the sake of delivering a Karmic Death.
  • Immune to Bullets: Double Subverted. He goes down from gunfire and is seen hurt by it... then his Healing Factor kicks in.
  • Jekyll & Hyde: And the latter comes through more and more as he becomes increasingly addicted to the serum.
  • Just Think of the Potential!: He believes the perfect Lizard formula could change millions of lives for the better.
  • Kick the Dog: The Lizard hits Spider-Man himself where it hurts in their final battle after seemingly gaining the upper hand.
    Lizard: Poor Peter Parker. No mother... no father... no uncle... All alone.
  • Large Ham: As the Lizard.
  • Lightning Bruiser: In his own words, he's faster, stronger, and smarter than Peter is.
  • Lizard Folk: No, really? He also (briefly) turns a number of police officers that got into contact with his evolutionary weapon into this.
  • Logical Weakness: The Lizard, being cold-blooded, becomes sluggish when chilled. Captain Stacy uses it to his advantage during the final showdown by blasting him with liquid nitrogen.
  • Mad Scientist: Invoked: Dr. Connors says that he and Richard were called this for their fascination with genetic experiments.
  • Manly Tears: He cries after being cured and watching his right arm fall apart again.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: As the Lizard, or under its influence.
    Lizard: I sought to create a stronger human being, but there's no such thing! Human beings are weak, pathetic, feeble-minded creatures... why be human at all, when we can be so much more?
  • Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Played with. He's absolutely moral as Connors and even injects himself with the serum for a moral reason (to keep other amputees from being used as test subjects, considering the serum is potentially lethal).
  • Nice Guy: As Curt Connors. Best shown in a deleted scene where he visits Peter and offers very sincere condolences for Uncle Ben's death.
  • No Ontological Inertia: Whenever he turns back to a human, he loses his new arm.
  • Noble Demon: When the Lizard finds Gwen hiding with his Ganali device, he merely takes the device from her and lets her go.
  • One-Woman Wail: Whenever the Lizard is about to emerge or wreak havoc, the soundtrack invokes this trope to make his appearance all the more unnerving.
  • Papa Wolf: When he's not in his Lizard form he is extremely protective of Peter. He even threatened Gustav Fiers in The Stinger, if said guy didn't leave Peter alone.
  • Parental Substitute: He acts as one for Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man. They share a love of science and it becomes clear that Peter desires Connors' approval, something he never really got from his dad. In a deleted scene, he even gives Peter his sympathies for the death of his Uncle.
  • Prehensile Tail: One that's able to regenerate in seconds.
  • Professor Guinea Pig: He tests the Lizard serum on himself in order to prevent Dr. Ratha from testing it on unknowing veterans. And, well...
  • Put on a Bus: He's sent off to Ryker's Island after being tried.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: As, you guessed it, the Lizard.
  • Sanity Slippage: The more he uses the Lizard serum, the blurrier the line gets between both personalities, whether he's transformed or not. It's only after he's exposed to the antidote that his original personality truly resurfaces.
  • Secret-Keeper: Since he still knows Peter is Spider-Man after being cured and averts Death by Secret Identity.
  • Slasher Smile: The Lizard always has one.
  • Smart People Wear Glasses: Ditched, obviously, as the Lizard.
  • Split Personality: Develops one after the first Lizard incident.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: That takes over more and more as the serum settles into his blood.
  • Super-Strength: As the Lizard he easily overpowers Spider-Man, who is unable to even budge one of the Lizard's arms with both of his. Between throwing armored men dozens of feet one-handed with enough momentum left over to dent cars, tossing cars themselves like shotputs, and clawing through centimeter-thick metal doors, he's probably the single physically strongest being in either movie.
  • Super-Toughness: He can take punches from Spider-Man with little damage. Also, while he's not bulletproof and would've been killed by a SWAT team without his healing powers (and gets incapacitated for a while even with them), bullets don't penetrate anywhere near as deeply into his flesh as they would a normal animal his size, which is helpful for said powers.
  • Superior Species: Connors believes his Lizard form is a superior creature devoid of human weaknesses.
  • Talking to Themself: Before the attack on the school, we hear a voice talking about the plan to spread the formula and not letting Spidey get in the way of it. Whether this is the Lizard who has taken on a mind of its own or Connors' own thoughts is up to interpretation.
  • Thinking Out Loud:
    • There is a break in the feverous inner tirade when Connors sits down and speaks out loud: "That, changing like the snake, I might be free, to cast off flesh wherein I dwell confined."
    • This is an Enforced Trope due to heavy re-cutting of the scene after a plot about Peter's father was taken out of the film. In the original version, Peter was present as well, and most of the inner monologue was actually part of a dialogue between the two.
  • This Is Your Brain on Evil: He's not a bad guy at all. Having the Lizard in his system makes him crazy.
  • Tragic Villain: In this version of the story, he was forced into becoming the Lizard. What's worse is that, in spite of the tragedy he caused, things would have been infinitely worse if Ratha had his way and used the serum on dozens of subjects.
  • Transhuman: Dr. Connors' views on human nature are reminiscent of Transhumanism's principal tenets - that the limits of the human body can be overcome through science.
  • Uncertain Doom: His appearance in No Way Home leaves his fate after the first film uncertain. While he survived his original film and was cured much like Sandman, in No Way Home he was brought to the MCU prior to his defeat like the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and Electro, all of whom died after being defeated by Spider-Man. This implies that Connors passed away after the events of the first film for whatever reason.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: He honestly believes he's doing all mankind a favor, even if he must force them to accept it.
  • Visionary Villain: Dr. Connors is driven by a vision of a "world without weakness" where humanity's physical flaws are corrected by science.
  • Wall Crawl: He climbs up Oscorp Tower with his bare hands, complete with an allusion to King Kong.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Connors longs to create a world in which everyone is equal, a world in which illness and weakness don't exist. Injected with the Lizard serum, he comes to the conclusion his vision can be made a reality by making everyone like him, even if that means forcing the change upon everyone against their will.
    Lizard: All these souls, lost and alone. I can save them! I can cure them! There's no need to stop me, Peter!
  • Western Terrorists: The Lizard's Evil Plan is referred to as a "terrorist plot" in a news flash.
  • Wicked Cultured: In addition to being an awesome scientist, and the Lizard, Connors can quote incredibly appropriate poetry, in this case from Michelangelo's "The Silkworm".
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The injection of the Lizard serum not only has transformed Dr. Conners but has made him very insane.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He just wanted to overcome his disability, and help other people overcome their own.

    Maxwell "Max" Dillon / Electro 
For tropes applying to his appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, see MCU: Multiversal Villains

Maxwell "Max" Dillon / Electro

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/4e5f88e5_f852_4ff4_9262_5d4d934ada1b.jpeg
"You know, Spider-Man saved my life one time. Out of all the people in the whole city, he saved me. He said he needed me."
Click here to see Max as Electro in Times Square
Click here to see Electro in his suit

Played by: Jamie Foxx

Voiced by: Michael A. Shepperd (second console game), Liam O'Brien (second iOS game), Salvador Delgado (Latin-American Spanish dub), Shido Nakamura (Japanese dub), Jean-Baptiste Anoumon (European French dub), Pierre Auger (Canadian French dub)

Appearances: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | Spider-Man: No Way Home

"But you better make damn sure you kill me this time. 'Cause if you don't, I'm gonna kill the light so that everyone in this city is gonna know how it feels to live in my world... A world without power... a world without mercy... a world without Spider-Man! Then everyone will be able to see me for who I truly am... Don't you know? I'm Electro!"

An Oscorp electrical engineer who felt ignored by the world and developed an unhealthy obsession with Spider-Man. After suffering an accident involving an electric wire and a tank of mutated electric eels, Dillon's skin turned blue and he gained the power to control electricity.


  • Abusive Parents: In a deleted scene, his mother treats him cruelly and insults him despite the fact that he is working hard to take care of her. Since this wasn't included in the final cut of the film however it's not clear whether it's canon.
  • Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Part of Max becoming evil is that he feels rejected by his idol Spider-Man, who saved him previously in the movie. Such a relationship between Max and Spidey doesn't exist in the comics, where they're just casual and occasional enemies with no personal connection.
  • Adaptation Origin Connection: Like most of the villains in the TAS movie franchise, Max Dillon was an employee of OsCorp where the accident that leads into him getting his superpowers happens. Dillon's transformation in the comics is completely unrelated to OsCorp.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy: At least pre-Electro. In the original continuity, Max was a Jerkass with few morals long before even becoming a supervillain. Here, he's a nice guy (if somewhat unstable) before turning into a Tragic Villain.
  • Adaptational Sympathy: His sufferings in this film, being a relentlessly bullied electrician instead of the victim of a freak accident, make his turn to villainy more understandable than in the comics.
  • A God Am I: By the end of the film, his powers have expanded to such a degree that he declares this of himself.
    Electro: You're too late, Spider-Man. I designed this power grid. Now I'm gonna take back what is rightfully mine. I will control everything and I will be like a god to them!
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: He gets blue skin after gaining his powers. He turns redder when fully using his powers.
  • Anti-Villain: He was a powerless nobody who was constantly ignored, exploited, and abused by the people around him. When he finally gets his powers, multiple misunderstandings cause him to snap and lash out against the world that has wronged him.
  • Ax-Crazy: Started off as a Loony Fan to Spider-Man, then he got his powers and... well, the rest is history.
  • Badass Boast: Tends to give out a lot of these as the quotes above will indicate.
  • Badass Bookworm: Much like Peter, though he's more skilled in things relating to electricity.
  • Bald of Evil: Post-transformation. Before it, he sports a truly hideous combover.
  • Body Horror: The transformation really took a toll on his appearance.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: Max Dillon really liked Spider-Man at first, because Spidey helped pick up Max's work blueprints and said something mildly encouraging. Unfortunately, that scene meant way more to Max than it did to Peter, who couldn't immediately recall the meeting when super-powered Electro tried to bring up their 'friendship'.
  • Being Tortured Makes You Evil: He's noticeably more villainous after being "examined" by Dr. Kafka.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: Eventually forms a partnership with Harry after being freed from Oscorp, though he's ultimately fighting Spider-Man for his own separate reasons.
  • Big Bad Slippage: Even after becoming Electro, he doesn't become antagonistic until he sees Spidey get admired by the crowd. And then Dr. Kafka tortures him, leading to a Big Bad Duumvirate with Harry.
  • A Birthday, Not a Break: His horrible transformation happened on his birthday.
  • Black and Nerdy: Initially. Not to mention unusual.
  • Black Eyes of Crazy: Develops these as Electro.
  • Breath Weapon: During his last fight with Spider-Man, he pins him down and shoots electricity at him out of his mouth by shouting.
  • Broken Pedestal: He sees Spider-Man as his enemy once a police officer tries to snipe him while Spider-Man’s trying to talk things out with him, making him think Spider-Man was just distracting him so the cops could shoot him, when Spider-Man was just trying to calm Electro down. Nicely reinforced by the lyrics to "My Enemy".
    He lied to me, he shot at me, he hates on me, he's using me, fragility, electricity, afraid of me! He's dead to me! He lied to me! He shot at me! He hates on me! He's using me! He's dead to me! That Spider-Man, HE IS MY ENEMY!!
  • Bullying a Dragon: On the receiving end of this from many after gaining his powers. It never ends well for them.
  • Butt-Monkey: His status as this is partly what makes him snap.
  • Cardboard Prison: In Electro's own words, Oscorp thought it was a brilliant idea to place him in a harness that runs on electricity, the very substance he's made of and can control. Electro all but lampshades how stupid that was. And he later proves this to be true when he breaks out of it during Harry's visit.
    Electro: You do realize you locked me in a prison that runs... on electricity? I can feel it in the walls. I can feel it in my veins. No matter what you do, doc, you can't contain it. It's a force of nature. Like me.
  • Childish Tooth Gap: Has a notable gap in his teeth as a part of his characterization as someone nebbish. It visibly closes as he gains his powers.
  • Climax Boss: The climax of the second film centers around stopping Electro from taking over the city. However, he's not the last enemy, as Harry confronts Peter and Gwen soon after his defeat for a lower stakes (yet far more emotional) final confrontation.
  • Composite Character: Of several previous Electros.
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
    • While both Dillon and Connors worked at Oscorp, Dillon is essentially the Butt-Monkey while Connors was a highly respected scientist. Also while Connors mutated himself on purpose and became a lizard creature that acted as a more physical threat to Spider-Man, Dillon was mutated by accident and became a Energy Being with far more power than Spider-Man could fight without outsmarting Dillon.
    • As he appeared in the last film before his series was rebooted, he contrasts Sandman from Spider-Man 3 as the main threat in his film before Spider-Man confronts the second villain (Venom for Sandman and Harry for Electro). Both himself and Sandman are elemental beings with a weakness for water and their origins involve them falling into things, but Sandman had a personal connection to Peter Parker and was sympathetic as he simply wanted to look after his sick daughter while having only accidentally killed one person prior to getting his powers. Meanwhile, Electro was obsessed with Spider-Man, killed after getting his powers and was only sympathetic since most of his villainy was caused by how he was treated and experimented on after getting his powers.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: His second fight with Spider-Man starts off even at first until Electro gets his second wind, at which point the fight turns into a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown with Spidey on the receiving end.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: His body explodes after being force-fed with electricity to the point of overloading.
  • Demoted to Extra: He doesn't play as big a role in the second console game as he did in the film.
  • Desperately Craves Affection: He's an Extreme Doormat with No Social Skills and possibly an Abusive Parent (if the deleted scene is canon), so the second he has a positive interaction with someone, he becomes obsessive. He is deeply touched that Gwen remembers his name barely a minute after meeting him and learning it, and after Spider-Man saves his life Max starts calling him his best friend and obsessing over him to the point of imagining what he would say if Spider-Man visited him on his birthday. The closest he's ever come to having an actually friend is with Harry Osborn, who he saves after Harry tells Max that he needs him and ironically, it's due to him being more suspicious of people by the time they meet so they settle into being polite allies.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: To a pre-Goblin Harry in the final act of the film, helping him reclaim Oscorp after he's kicked out.
  • Driven to Villainy: He had poor control of his powers at first, and clearly just wanted somebody to help him. Then the police attacked him.
  • The Eeyore: He's had a miserable life and as a result, he's rarely happy except when he thinks he's made a connection with another person.
  • Electric Black Guy: Since he's played by Foxx.
  • Extreme Doormat: Prior to the accident, he had no self-confidence and therefore everybody at Oscorp took advantage of him. This led to nobody caring whether he was safe when making repairs and Oscorp not giving him credit for the power grid he designed. After getting his powers, he quickly shows everyone why this was a mistake.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: He gains a sinister bass-baritone voice upon gaining large quantities of electricity.
  • Evil Wears Black: He later wears a black skintight suit in the second film.
  • Flight: He learns to levitate in the air in the second half of the film.
  • Forgotten Birthday: Which kicks off a string of really unfortunate accidents that culminate in him becoming Electro.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: He transformed into a super-powered freak of nature all because he had to work an extended shift.
  • Going to Give It More Energy: How Spider-Man and Gwen ultimately defeat him.
  • The Heavy: While Harry's actions as he tries to cure himself drive the plot, Electro's rampage is a far more prominent and direct threat.
  • Humanoid Abomination: He ultimately ends up as a Doctor Manhattan-esque thing made of electricity that occasionally takes on human form to communicate with or punch Spider-Man.
  • Hydro-Electro Combo: In what is likely a Shout-Out to The Spectacular Spider-Man, this version of Electro was mutated after falling into a water tank filled with genetically-engineered electric eels.
  • I Just Want to Be Special: He wants to be able to save the day with Spider-Man.
  • I Just Want to Have Friends: What Max ultimately and desperately desires is to have friends, genuine human bonding, and not be an invisible nobody that no one even cares about. As an effect, he easily latches onto people when they show some amount of decent human interaction towards him. Even the simple act of acknowledging his first name makes him latch onto people such as with Spider-Man, and Gwen for a brief moment. After becoming Electro, this desire takes on a more dangerous level. Also as shown when he teams up with Harry, his desire is so desperate that he is willing to unknowingly allow himself to be used just because he was needed and acknowledged as a friend.
  • The Informant: He would like to act like this for Spider-Man, at least. Spidey suggests that he is this, but only meant it as a pep-talk; he didn't realize Max would take it so seriously.
  • In the Hood: In his first appearance as Electro, he wears one in an attempt to conceal himself.
  • Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: He goes from unwittingly being a danger magnet to going out of his way to be a threat after he's convinced that Spider-Man set him up to be shot.
  • Large Ham: Despite the more grounded tone of The Amazing Spider-Man films, his scenes are played up to be extremely hammy.
  • Laughably Evil: Electro can be pretty goofy at times with how he acts.
  • Leitmotif: The electronic dubstep piece My Enemy, and its longer variation The Electro Suite. Both of these are implied to be representations of Electro's obsession, paranoia, and growing mental instability.
  • Lightning Can Do Anything: It can even level Times friggin' Square!
  • Logical Weakness:
  • Loners Are Freaks: Why it later drives him into villainy after becoming Electro.
  • Loony Fan: He develops an obsessive fixation on the wall-crawler.
  • Mickey Mousing: Electro's Theme contains a lot of Dubstep, which usually cannot be heard by the characters in the movie themselves - however, during the final standoff between Spidey and Electro, the latter converts himself into his energy form and starts jumping between the coils of the power plant and punching Spidey in between. Every time he switches from one coil to another, he makes them emit one tone at a time, creating a tesla-coil rendition of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider". Spidey himself isn't particularly thrilled.
    Spider-Man: I hate this song!
  • My Suit Is Also Super: Despite constantly shifting between solid form and streams of electricity, whenever he reforms in his physical body his shorts, and later his Oscorp equipment, reform with him.
  • Near-Villain Victory: He manages to trap Spider-Man in a lightning tether created from his powers and could've slowly fried him to death if it wasn't for Gwen ramming him with a stolen police car.
  • Never Found the Body: Though it seems like he died in his last fight with Spider-Man, his ability to manipulate electricity leaves his fate ambiguous - especially considering that he phases in and out via particles a handful of time through the movie. Jamie Foxx himself even lampshades this by saying that "electricity cannot truly die", implying he might have made a return. Subverted in Spider-Man: No Way Home in which Max laments he was minutes away from death, though Foxx's claim could still leave it up in the air to whether or not he actually was.
  • No Body Left Behind: He explodes after being overloaded with electricity with no trace of his physical body.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He designed the plans for the city's power grid. How does karma repay him? By having those designs stolen by Alistair Smythe who then forces him to work an extended shift which would lead to the fateful accident that turns him into Electro.
  • No Social Skills: Due to being an Extreme Doormat, he has no friends and doesn't know how to interact with people, with most of his interactions with others being awkward.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: He straps Dr. Kafka into the same harness that had been used to contain him.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: He causes considerable collateral damage to Times Square alone in his first confrontation with Spider-Man and that was before he learned to control his powers. When he gets a better handle on his abilities, he causes a city-wide blackout that endangers several people at a hospital and nearly causes two planes to crash in midair.
  • Psycho Electro: What's unique about this case is that it's shown that he was always kind of off. Having super-powers only made it worse.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: While more or less harmless before the accident, once he gets powers he is no longer the Extreme Doormat he's been his whole life and finally acts on the fantasies he has when people anger him. His obsession with Spider-Man, born from one interaction after the hero saved him, means that when he believes the wall-crawler has betrayed him, he becomes determined to kill him.
  • Race Lift: Electro is traditionally white in the comics and other adaptations. Here, he's played by African-American Jamie Foxx.
  • Sanity Slippage: Again, he was a Loony Fan to Spider-Man with a Room Full of Crazy, but not outwardly malicious. Getting superpowers just made it worse.
  • Scary Black Man: Though his skin isn't actually black by the time he gets scary.
  • Shadow Archetype: He's a lot like Peter and possibly represents what he could have become without Uncle Ben and Aunt May.
  • Shock and Awe: Aside from being able to zap things at will, he can make quick transit between objects that use electricity.
  • Sidekick: Except not really. He deludes himself into thinking that he's Spider-Man's sidekick.
  • Stalker Shrine: He has a room filled with pictures and reports of Spider-Man, as well as cut-out messages he probably wrote himself. There is also a photo of Spidey placed next to a mirror so that Max can pretend he is Spider-Mans' best buddy.
  • Stalker without a Crush: His defining trait. Due to his extreme loneliness, Max is desperate for any type of companionship. Thus, being treated without the contempt or indifference he's used to will cause him to instantly latch on to that person such as Spider-Man or Gwen.
  • Stereotypical Nerd: Before his transformation, the movie does its best to make Jamie Foxx look like an unattractive nerd by giving him a combover, glasses, fake bad teeth. He's also a nervous, Extreme Doormat with No Social Skills, and no friends.
  • Tempting Fate: He remarks to Spider-Man of Didn't See That Coming after trapping him in a lightning tether with his powers while slowly frying to death, and didn't expect Gwen Stacy driving a stolen police car straight into him.
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: He was just a Butt-Monkey that nobody gave a damn about, then he got his powers and was taunted and jeered as a freak of nature, next to a series of tragic misunderstandings involving Spider-Man plus being tortured by Dr. Kafka, making him finally decide that if the world wanted a monster, he'd give them one.
    Electro's thoughts: They lied to me, they shot at me, they hate on me, they're using me, afraid of me, they're dead to me! They lied to me, they shot at me, they hate on me, they're dead to me, and now they're all my enemy!
  • Took a Level in Badass: His freak lab accident turns him from a meek nerd to a powerful electric being.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: He goes from being a sympathetic nobody to a deranged murderer after he loses faith in Spider-Man, deciding to establish himself as a force to be reckoned with.
  • Tragic Villain: Being a Butt-Monkey, he wanted to have friends and be accepted in society. When he turned into Electro, everyone starts calling him a freak, and it pushed him over the edge.
  • Troll: During their final battle, Electro rams Spidey through tesla coils, creating a rendition of the Itsy-Bitsy Spider song just to taunt the guy.
  • Un-person: Oscorp deletes his personnel file after his accident because they feared their stock would crash if an employee died on their watch; this was even before they found out they've created yet another supervillain.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Again, to Harry during the later parts of the movie. Harry only needed Max because he was desperate to get back into Oscorp to obtain the cure for his disease. After serving his role, however, Harry still keeps his end of the bargain by giving him access to the power grid.
  • Villainous Friendship: Starts one with the Green Goblin.
  • Volcanic Veins: Develops glowing blue veins as Electro.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The only villain in the Duology to actually die at Peter's hands, he's also a being of electricity, so no moral implications are talked about despite being The Mentally Disturbed.
  • Who's Laughing Now?: Being a victim of bullying for most of his life meant that once he got his powers, things didn't go so well for everyone else.
    Electro: Soon everyone is this city is gonna know how it feels to live in my world. A world without power. A world without mercy.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Again, it's not hard to feel sorry for Maxwell Dillon after he becomes Electro.
  • Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Electro's lightning is primarily blue in color.

    Harry Osborn / Green Goblin 

Harry Osborn / Green Goblin

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/5fb362cc_2484_4015_b437_b4ed2e38cc53.jpeg
"I don't know how and I don't know why, but he can do everything a spider can, including self-heal. I need to find him. I need his blood."
Click here to see Harry as the Green Goblin

Played by: Dane DeHaan

Voiced by: Kevin Dorman (second console game), Nolan North (second iOS game), Alejandro Orozco (Latin-American Spanish dub), Julien Allouf (European French dub), Xavier Dolan (Canadian French dub)

Appearances: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

"You don't give people hope, you take it away! Now, I'm gonna take away yours!"

The 20-year-old son of Norman Osborn and a childhood friend of Peter. Introduced in the second film, he's dying of a genetic condition that runs in the family—and only Spider-Man can help him.


  • Adaptational Curves: Inverted. He lacks the large muscular frame of his comics self, and not only shares Peter's Geek Physique but comes off as having an even smaller frame than him.
  • Adaptational Dye-Job: He has brown hair in the comics while here he has Dane DeHaan's dark blonde hair.
  • Adaptational Hairstyle Change: This Harry has a straighter, slicked hairstyle with side bangs as opposed to cornrows.
  • Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
    • He and Peter are childhood friends instead of meeting in college like in the comics.
    • Harry and Felicia Hardy have no connection in the comics, but here, Harry is her Benevolent Boss and she serves as his Number Two in OsCorp.
    • Harry and Norman Osborn have a very abusive relationship in the comics. While they still are not at all close in the movie, this is because Norman sends Harry away as a child instead of abusing him physically and verbally. Due to the near decade they spent apart and the different circumstances of Norman's death, Harry doesn't care about seeking his father's praise or avenging him in his crusade.
    • In the comics, he was close friends with Gwen Stacy since high school, and they even dated for a while before she met Peter. Here, he only knows Gwen as Peter's girlfriend and an employee at OsCorp. Thus, after becoming Goblin, he has no qualms killing her to hurt Peter.
  • Adaptational Early Appearance:
    • The Harry Osborn Green Goblin is a Legacy Character to his father Norman in the comics and most adaptations. Here, he is the original.
    • Also, like in many adaptations before (including the predecessor trilogy), Peter and Harry know each other long before college while in the comics, Harry was introduced in Spidey's college years.
  • Adaptational Sympathy: To a degree. He doesn't become the Goblin to avenge his father's death because of his Irrational Hatred of Spider-Man like in the comics, but because he's dying and Peter wouldn't help him.
  • Adaptational Villainy: As opposed to Electro's Adaptational Nice Guy above, Harry is notably less sympathetic than he was in the comics, being the Big Bad of the second film, and the Green Goblin that's responsible for Gwen Stacy's death, rather than his father. In the comics, Harry and Gwen were friends and he was greatly upset by her death.
  • Anime Hair: Transforming into the Green Goblin automatically brushes up his hair in a jagged manner.
  • Arch-Enemy: Killing Gwen Stacy makes him this to Peter and he's creating a team to take over New York and kill him.
  • Ax-Crazy: Starts off with relatively decent behavior, but grows progressively insane as the movie continues, culminating in him, well, becoming the Goblin.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Though he is arrested at the end of the movie, Harry managed to get back at Peter for his apparent "betrayal" by killing Gwen.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: Becomes one of the main antagonists of the second film as he attempts to find a cure for his illness, putting him in conflict with Spider-Man and straining his friendship with Peter before he releases Electro and becomes the Green Goblin.
  • Big Bad Friend: To Peter, his best friend when they were kids.
  • Big Bad Slippage: He actually starts out as a friend to Peter, but as his illness gets the better of him he loses his sanity. He goes full villain after being seized from Oscorp.
  • Body Horror: His disease becomes increasingly apparent as time goes by, with his skin falling apart. He later painfully mutates into a goblin-like creature with patches of green skin, longer ears, a longer, pointy nose, yellowed teeth, and discolored Wild Hair after being given the spider venom. The alternate cut of this scene is much more gross and disturbing.
  • Both Sides Have a Point: He's terminally ill and wants Spider-Man's blood, believing it to be his only hope of survival; however, Spider-Man refuses, believing it might harm or kill him, or even turn Harry into a monster like the Lizard. While Spidey makes a valid point, Harry also does when he points out to Spidey that he's already dying, so he's got nothing to lose either way.
  • Childhood Friends: With Peter Parker. This is notable in that Peter was the only friend he had who wasn't after his money.
  • Cold Ham: The character of Harry Osborn seems to have been written for a more dramatic actor, but Dane DeHaan is more restrained than is necessary... until he becomes the Green Goblin, and then throws all restraint out the window.
  • Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Never calls himself the Green Goblin, only named as such in the credits. In fact the word goblin isn't spoken by anyone.
  • Composite Character:
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
    • To the Lizard, who was a scientist at Oscorp who mutated himself using science he had helped to create for the purpose of regrowing physical injuries. Harry meanwhile was the son of the company's owner and used science developed by others to try and cure himself of a genetic illness.
    • To Venom of Spider-Man 3, as Harry appeared in the last film before his film series was rebooted. Like Venom he is the last villain to appear in their respective films, and use a more powerful but sympathetic villain to fight Spider-Man. However Eddie Brock was a self-serving photographer who bonded with an alien symbiote, and as Venom was incredibly petty and selfish in his desire to kill Spider-Man. Harry however was a wealthy young man who used science to mutate himself into the Green Goblin while also using Oscorp weapons, and while cruel he was motivated from the desire to survive the illness that killed his father. Harry also serves as a Evil Counterpart to the version of Harry who appeared in Spider-Man 3 who sacrificed himself to save Spider-Man.
  • Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: He develops shadows under his eyes due to the stress of his condition, which remain after his transformation.
  • Deducing the Secret Identity: After becoming the Green Goblin and arriving at the Oscorp power plant, Harry figures out that Peter is Spider-Man when he sees that Gwen is there with him.
  • Demoted to Extra: He doesn't play as big a role in the second console game as he did in the film.
  • Disabled in the Adaptation: Much like his father in this universe, this Harry suffers from an illness that'll eventually kill him and is ultimately the impetus for him becoming the Green Goblin.
  • Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: Harry's anger and desperation for a cure leads him to lash out at anyone he deems unhelpful to him. This becomes a lot more noticeable when Peter and Spider-Man (before Harry finds out they're one and the same) try to warn him that a blood transfusion from the latter would be too risky and Harry refuses to listen. When Peter points out how Dr. Conners became the Lizard because of the Cross-Species research, Harry calls Conners "weak" and acts like he can handle it. When Peter turns around to think about what to do, Harry accuses him of "turning [his] back on [him]”, forcefully grabs him by the shoulder, and pleads with him in a way that comes off as guilt-tripping. When Spider-Man warns him that a transfusion could kill him and refuses to give him his blood, Harry throws a tantrum and calls Spidey a fraud. Turning into the Green Goblin just makes Harry worse, as he blames his best friend for making him do it even though Peter offered to help him find another solution and he rejected it, and it leads him to murder Gwen Stacy, an innocent bystander, just to spite Peter.
  • Driven to Villainy: He was only looking for a way to cure his disease, and being kicked out of Oscorp certainly didn't help matters.
  • Entitled Bastard: Harry becomes this in his anger and desperation while searching for a cure to his disease. Even when Peter warns him that a blood transfusion from Spider-Man would be risky, Harry ignores him.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: While it's before he really slips, he's noticeably upset that Oscorp is experimenting on human subjects in Ravencroft.
  • Evil Counterpart: As the Green Goblin, he is even more obviously this to Peter than his father was in the comics. In addition to being the same age as Peter, he's pushed into his Start of Darkness by the sudden death of his father figure, and he gets his superpowers from a self-inflicted dose of the same spider venom that gave Peter his abilities.
  • Evil Former Friend: Becomes the Green Goblin. Killing Gwen cements this.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Once he turns into the Goblin, all restraints are off. His very introduction has some wordless overacting even before delivering an over-enunciated "Peter...".
  • Evil Laugh: Pulls an impressive one before the final battle.
  • Expository Hairstyle Change: Harry is introduced with his hair perfectly coiffed. Over the course of his Sanity Slippage, his hair, most noticeably his bangs, looks more disheveled due to him neglecting his appearance as his illness progresses. After he becomes Goblin, his hair becomes scruffier, jagged, and completely windswept.
  • Eye Scream: When Spider-Man appears in person to inform Harry that he won't hand him his blood, Harry is so enraged that he hurls a glass of scotch at the wall. The shattering glass is so dramatic that it can be hard to notice Harry scream and clutch his face right afterwards, as if some of the tiny shards of glass flying everywhere had found their way back to him.
  • Fatal Flaw: Impatience and Wrath. Harry's desperation for a cure to his terminal illness has made him too impatient to take Peter and Spider-Man's warnings about the risks of a blood transfusion seriously, and when Spidey offers to help him find another solution, Harry ignores him and lashes out because he's too dead set on using the venom from the spider that gave Spider-Man his powers. Once he becomes the Green Goblin, he immediately targets Spider-Man out of revenge for supposedly leaving him to die, and after realizing he's Peter, decides to murder Gwen Stacy out of spite.
  • Frameup: The accident that creates Electro is passed off as an experiment which is then pinned on Harry, which gives Oscorp's Board of Directors the excuse to kick him out of the company.
  • Hiding Behind Your Bangs: His bangs partly cover his left eye when let loose.
  • Icy Blue Eyes: Which add to his sinister presence, even before he officially becomes the Green Goblin.
  • Involuntary Shapeshifter: Is last seen in his normal human form, but he says his condition "comes and goes". A nod to the comic version (and the first trilogy) where being the Goblin was a mental illness rather than a physical change.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Harry wants Spider-Man's blood for its healing abilities as his only hope of survival. Spider-Man refuses as it could harm or kill him, but Harry points out he is already dying and has nothing to lose.
  • Knight of Cerebus: The moment Harry becomes the Green Goblin, people start dying...
  • Laughing Mad: Develops a tendency towards maniacal laughter after he becomes the Green Goblin.
  • Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Thanks to the assistance of Mr. Fiers, he's currently overseeing the formation of the Sinister Six from his cell at Ravencroft.
  • Never My Fault: Harry exclusively blames Spider-Man's refusal to help him for his transformation and mutation, never mind that Spider-Man and Peter (from Harry's perspective) each gave valid points that there was no way of knowing if Spider-Man's blood would help or make things worse with the limited time they had, and Harry even rejected his offer to help him find another solution.
  • Nice, Mean, and In-Between: From a multiversal point of view in regard to Peter Parker's best friend, this Harry Osborn is the mean to the nice of Earth-199999's Ned Leeds and the in-between of Earth-96283's Harry Osborn. He starts off as Peter Parker's best friend, but when Parker as Spider-Man refuses to give him his blood out of concern for his safety, he snaps and becomes the Green Goblin, leading him to kill Peter's girlfriend Gwen Stacy, becoming his arch-enemy and shattering their friendship forever.
  • Not His Sled: He becomes the Green Goblin before his dad, unlike the comics and other incarnations (such as Spider-Man 3 and unlike The Spectacular Spider-Mannote ).
  • Painful Transformation: Turning into the Green Goblin hurts.
  • Pet the Dog: In a deleted scene, he spares Felicia during his rampage at Oscorp.
  • Post-Climax Confrontation: The climactic battle against Electro is over, the villain is gone, the city is saved and it seems everything is just fine — then suddenly Green Goblin appears, as one final challenge before the day is done.
  • Power Armor: The Goblin suit is a battle armor which also heals the wearer. Harry puts it on as a last resort after his attempt at a cure makes his condition worse.
  • Power Dyes Your Hair: After transforming into the Green Goblin, Harry's hair gets a green-ish hue.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Wasn't mentioned in the first film, but established in the second as Peter's childhood friend before he was packed off to boarding school.
  • Revenge: After Oscorp kicks him out, Harry breaks Electro out of custody in exchange for Electro breaking him into Oscorp so he can cure himself. He encourages Electro to fight Spider-Man because he didn't help him earlier (though Electro is already spoiling for a fight). More directly, after he turns into the Goblin, Harry confronts Spider-Man and blames him for his current state.
  • Revenge by Proxy: Once Harry deduces that Spider-Man is Peter upon seeing him in the same place as Gwen, he decides to kill the latter in order to spite Peter for not giving him his blood, thus completing his descent into villainy.
  • Sanity Slippage: While he loses it in extreme situations before, he still manages to stay composed and competent right up until he has the Spider-venom injected into him, which causes him to lose his grip on sanity.
  • Secretly Dying:
    • He discovers he's inherited the genetic disorder that killed his father and takes the Goblin formula in an attempt to cure it.
    • It is in fact the same altered spider-venom that turned Peter into Spider-Man but due to it being coded to only Parker DNA it goes wrong. Horribly wrong.
  • Sequel Adaptation Iconic Villain: After the first film focused on lesser-known Spider-Man villain The Lizard, Harry provided the sequel with this franchise's incarnation of the Green Goblin, and he would have formed the Sinister Six had the series not been Cut Short.
  • Slasher Smile: Sports one of these as the Goblin.
  • That Man Is Dead: Declares that "Harry is dead!" to Gwen after he takes her hostage and she tries to talk him down as Harry.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: While there were already signs of unpleasantness coming from Harry, Spider-Man's refusal to give him his blood out of concern for the possible consequences has made Harry lash out angrily, and after losing control of Oscorp and being callously told he'll die with no one to care for him, Harry decides to take matters into his own hands by threatening Donald Menken into giving him the spider venom. The injection leads Harry to become the Green Goblin and take a turn for the worse, eventually culminating in him murdering Gwen Stacy just to spite Peter for supposedly refusing to help him.
  • Villainous Friendship: With Felicia and Electro.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: With Peter back when they were kids.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: He grew to adulthood feeling his father never much cared about him. However, unlike his comic book counterpart and other versions, he never tries to gain his father's approval.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Neglected by his father as a child, taken away from his friends, and dying from a genetic condition, he gets betrayed by his subordinates at Oscorp and denied a possible cure by Spider-Man, leading to his descent into villainy. Just how much of a Woobie he is after he causes Gwen's death is debatable.
  • Young and in Charge: At 20, he's named by Norman Osborn to succeed him as head of Oscorp. The Board of Directors are not pleased.
  • You See, I'm Dying: He had the bad luck to inherit his father's genetic disease.

    Aleksei Systevich / Rhino 

Aleksei Systevich / Rhino

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/280px-the_rhino_750.jpg
"Say hello to Aleksei Systevich!"

Played by: Paul Giamatti

Voiced by: Fred Tatasciore (second iOS game) Andrés García (Latin-American Spanish dub), Miglen Mirtchev (European French dub), Guy Nadon (Canadian French dub)

Appearances: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

"I am the Rhino! I told you I would be back!"

A Russian crook that leads New York's Mafiya. Though he gets arrested by Spider-Man at the beginning of the sequel and subsequently incarcerated, he is eventually freed by Gustav Fiers and given a Rhino-shaped mech suit to squash the Spider with.


  • Adaptation Origin Connection: Like with most villains of the TAS-movie franchise, his villain origin is connected to OsCorp here as his suit was built there and given to him by Harry Osborn and Gustav Fiers. In the comics he got his suit and powers by some random scientists.
  • Adaptational Superpower Change: In the comics his suit is permanently tied to his body giving him his strength and powers. In the movies, he is just a guy in a Powered Armor.
  • Advertised Extra: The trailers and other promotional materials spoke of him like he was going to be a prominent villain, with his actor even receiving And Starring citations. The reality is that he gets about five minutes total screentime between the start and end of the film, and vanishes between those points.
  • Animal Mecha: His Rhino armor. It's interesting in that it can switch from bipedal to quadrupedal.
  • Ascended Extra: In the second iOS game, he gets a more prominent role, serving as a middleman for the Russian mob in its dealings with Oscorp, and he even gets to be the Final Boss.
  • Ax-Crazy: Not to the extent of Electro or Goblin, but he's still pretty unstable.
  • Badass Driver: He's evidently a greater threat to Spider-Man when he's behind the wheel. It's probably why he was put in a vehicular suit later on.
  • Bald of Evil: Made all the more evil by his tattoo.
  • Book Ends: Spider-Man enters and exits the film confronting him.
  • The Bus Came Back: He's thrown into prison early on in the movie, but he finally becomes the Rhino at the end during the Post-Climax Confrontation.
  • Car Fu: His truck literally plows through traffic.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: This exchange between him and Spidey.
    Spider-Man: So, not much of a hugger?
    Rhino: [pulls out machine gun] Ah! I am killer!
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
    • To the Lizard, who was a scientist who mutated himself into a lizard creature. The Rhino is instead a criminal given an Animal Mecha and is nothing more than a henchman working for Harry Osborn and the Gentleman.
    • As he appeared in the last film before his series was rebooted, his acts as one to the New Goblin from Spider-Man 3 for the sole reason that both are only villains for a small amount of screen time. Harry Osborn was a billionaire who used a serum created by his father to gain enhanced physical abilities to get revenge on Spider-Man while also using advanced weaponry, but eventully came to see that his father was responsible for his own death and sacrificed himself to save Spider-Man. Rhino is a Generic Doomsday Villain and a criminal who has no personal connection to Spider-Man and his happy to try and kill him.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Downplayed slightly, but when a child runs into a police shootout to stand up against him, he stops firing as soon as he notices. He mocks the kid and shoots at the police to prevent them from interfering, but ultimately allows him to leave unharmed once Spider-Man shows up.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The very first scene with him is him literally plowing through traffic on a truck loaded with explosives, screaming the above quote at the top of his lungs and laughing maniacally.
  • Final Boss: In the second iOS game, he’s the final villain Spider-Man faces, having come back in the Rhino armor to seek revenge against him.
  • Gatling Good: His armor comes with machine guns.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: While Green Goblin and Electro at least get enough screen time to have established motivations, the same cannot be said for The Rhino.
  • Humiliation Conga: He tries to shoot Spidey and misses every shot, Spider-Man knocks the gun out of his hand, webs him up, and pulls down his pants. And as he hammily swears revenge, Spider-Man leaves just in time for his gun to fall on his head and knock him out, all in a span of a minute.
  • Husky Russkie: A massive thuggish Russian criminal. That said, his surname sounds nothing like an actual Russian one but like a mangled Polish surname.
  • Jobber: His role in the sequel is to get his ass kicked by Spider-Man at the beginning of the movie and stay in prison for the rest of it (until he comes back at the end in his armor); he's mainly there to add a little depth to the cinematic world than to pose as a serious threat to Peter. This goes hand-in-hand with his role in the comics where he's functionally the same - The Brute for any villain needing muscle.
  • Large Ham: He has a pretty hammy accent, as admitted by his actor.
  • The Last Of These Is Not Like The Others: The only supervillain who didn't have a prior connection to Oscorp before becoming a villain.
  • Mini-Mecha: His Rhino armor is big enough to fit a cockpit for him in its chest, but not quite humongous enough to fit in the Humongous Mecha category.
  • No Indoor Voice: He's pretty much locked in a perpetual state of screaming at the top of his lungs.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: He wasn't much of a threat when he was your average criminal and was quickly dealt with by Spider-Man. But when he gets into The Rhino Suit, he becomes much more dangerous and formidable.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The film ends just as Rhino and Spider-Man engage in a fight in the streets of New York. While the outcome isn't shown onscreen, Peter confirms in Spider-Man: No Way Home that he did succeed in defeating Rhino.
  • Powered Armor: Interestingly enough, it's able to function as a bipedal mech or a quadrupedal one.
  • Rhino Rampage: Through the use of Power Armor to boot.
  • Soviet Superscience: The Rhino armor's shoulders have a red Star and some barely-visible Cyrillic writing, meaning the armor is of Russian (if not Soviet) origin.
  • Starter Villain: The first villain to be defeated in the sequel, though he comes back in the final scene.
  • Tattooed Crook: He has a tattoo of barbed wire on his forehead.
  • Walking Tank: The Rhino suit is armed to the teeth and extremely durable.
  • We Will Meet Again: "This is not end, Spider!"
  • Wouldn't Hurt a Child: His sole redeeming factor - he stops shooting at the police when a child steps in front of him. It doesn't stop him from taunting the kid, though.

    Man in Shadows / Gustav Fiers / The Gentleman 

Gustav Fiers / The Gentleman

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mr_fiers_asm2.png
"Did you tell the boy the truth about his father?"

Played by: Michael Massee

Voiced by: Ismael Castro (Latin Spanish dub)

Appearances: The Amazing Spider-Man note  | The Amazing Spider-Man 2

"I've identified several worthy candidates. Now that Spider-Man's gone, this city will never be the same."

Appears in The Stinger of the first film, asking an imprisoned Dr. Connors if he told Peter the truth about his father. He can be seen wandering through Oscorp's secret tech in the sequel.


  • Aborted Arc: Whatever plans he had for Peter wound up being cancelled along with the series. Nothing relating to him or his plans are brought up by this Earth's Spider-Man in Spider-Man: No Way Home, indicating that they didn't pan out In-Universe either.
  • Adaptation Origin Connection: In The Stinger of the first movie, he implies he knows very well what happened to Peter's parents, implying he could have been involved in the accident. Even more so, he seems to be somehow involved with OsCorp as he's the one coming up with what seems to be meant to be this universe's Sinister Six. In the comics, he didn't have anything to do with OsCorp or the Sinister Six.
  • Affably Evil: Imposing he may be, but he's quite reserved and polite in conversation. He isn't called "The Gentleman" for nothing.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • In the sequel, he actually does something plot-important: providing the foundation for the Sinister Six.
    • Also in the more traditional sense. Gustav Fiers hadn’t appeared in comic books at all at the time that he had made his appearance in the movies; his only prior appearance is as the Big Bad of a trilogy of Sinister Six prose novels. They were very well-received, which probably won him his spot in the films.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: As indicated by his conversation with Dr. Connors, and later, Harry Osborn.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: His appearance in the first film was just that - a man who appeared in the shadows.
  • Face Framed in Shadow: As his (initial) name indicates, his face is always obscured in shadow and we never get a close-up.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: His appearances in both the mid-credits scene of the first movie and his scene at the end of the second movie seem to imply he would have played a large role in potential sequels or spin-offs of the movie as he seems to be meant to be the one coming up with the foundation of the Sinister Six. However, due to the cancellation of the third sequel, these plots did not end up being explored and he never made it to the Big Bad of any film.
  • Mysterious Stranger: When he first appears, we know literally nothing about him. By his second appearance we are given his name and a few more tidbits for characterization, but still very little is known about him.
  • No Name Given: In the first film his name is not revealed, with him only being credited as "The Man in the Shadows". The second film has him being addressed as "Mr. Fiers", with his first name "Gustav" only being provided in the credits.
  • Sixth Ranger: Of the Sinister Six, as he's the guy who gets them all together. Technically speaking, this makes him the Seventh Ranger.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: He is able to mysteriously appear and disappear from within Dr. Connors' cell.
  • The Team Normal: He intends to help Harry form the Sinister Six, a team of superpowered villains. But he himself possesses no obvious powers or superhuman abilities.
  • Walking Spoiler: Mentioning him reveals a good portion of The Stinger, along with a major plot thread in the sequel.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Due to no more films in the series being produced, we never find out what Gustav Fiers planned to do with Peter Parker nor why he wanted to fund the Sinister Six. Spider-Man: No Way Home makes no mention of him, so it can be implied that Fiers ultimately didn't go ahead with his plans.

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