Fridge / Spider-Man (PS4)

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Fridge Brilliance

• Why are there a maximum of 5 "Crime" activities per faction for each district? Because the perpetrators come to realise that any grandiose plans they conjure (rooftop ambushes for the Demons, storefront robberies for the Thugs) will be rendered useless once Spidey catches wind of them. Crime is still being committed, but at a level that the NYPD can take care of things without being shot at every time.
• Spider-Man’s alternate costumes have an In-Universe explanation for existing when you remember that Peter Parker in this continuity is an inventor at this point in his life and considering it’s implied in the game that he has some sort of relationship with Tony Stark, each of the costumes he probably made to deal with different threats. It’s outright confirmed in one of the trailers by Peter himself.
  • Each suit has its own story to tell.
    • Noir Suit: If Peter is anything like the Peter from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he may have been Genre Savvy enough to know the cliche of bad guys bringing their boys in to deal with intruders. Hence, he made it to capture specific targets for interrogation or to have a private conversation with them. In fact we are unsure when Spider-Man or Yuri became friends which implies that Peter uses this to talk to Yuri without her sending her cops to arrest him.
    • Scarlet Spider Suit: The suit was probably based on Mysterio who worked on movie special effects. It may have come in handy to handle Rhino who won't resist attacking a taunting Spider-Man.
    • MK II: This is the result of Peter knowing he is the Fragile Speedster. The suit's purpose is to handle small-time robberies who robbed grocery or jewelry stores.
    • Secret Wars: Spider-Man had to handle tech-based villains such as Scorpion, Shocker or Vulture. He made it to help him disable their technology allowing for a easier victory.
    • Stark: If Spidey did have adventures of his own with the Avengers, the Stark Suit may had been given by Tony Stark as a gift which also lends the credibility that Peter and Tony had some sort of relationship.
    • Negative: The suit was most likely made from his adventures with the Fantastic Four in the Negative Zone. Or he has begun finding new ways to counteract Mr Negative and his Demons.
    • Electronically Insulated: If Hydro-Man did appear before the first game, Spidey based the suit out of Electro to deal with him.
    • Spider Punk: Based on Shocker to deal with the Sandman if he did appear before the first game.
    • Fear Itself: This is also the result of collaboration between Spider-Man and Iron Man, particularly based on designs for the "Bleeding Edge" Iron Man Armor. Most likely to handle stronger opponents like Rhino or Tombstone.
    • Big Time: An upgrade to the Noir Suit which allows Spidey to sneak into enemy territory without getting spotted.
    • MK III: This was made when he handled more big-time crimes such as bank robberies.
    • 2099 Black: Based on Graviton.
    • Iron Spider: Idea from Tony Stark and most likely the reason for the construction of the octopus arms for Doc Ock.
    • Velocity: Car Chases.
    • MK IV: Created to deal with larger organizations like AIM or HYDRA.
    • Spirit: Based on Ghost Rider
    • 2099 White: Based on Black Panther's Vibranium to handle mobs of enemies overwhelming him.
    • Vintage Comic Book: Peter being a troll.
    • Last Stand: Made to be a quick change suit - all he has to do is put on gloves and the mask and turn the jacket inside out to become Spider-Man.
    • Home Made: The prototype.
    • ESU: Spidey can show off his love for his alma mater.
    • Anti-Ock: To take down Doc Ock
    • Dark: This one is pretty clearly stated in the game to be a gift from Felicia to Peter. Maybe as an example of what Spidey could be like if he joined the bad side with her instead of always playing the hero.
    • Undies: Peter just didn't have time to change into his suit in the morning.
  • Among the suits in the game are the Spider-Armors MK II-IV. Why isn't the MK I Armor in the base game? Because, in its one and only comic appearance,^note Web of Spider-Man #100 the suit slowed Peter down and made him less agile which would interfere with his web swinging.
  • Also, the reason why the Homemade Suit, the Dark Suit, and the ESU Suit don't have special powers? The Homemade Suit is just Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's just a low-cost costume Peter hastily put together during the very beginning of his superhero career, where the only powers and gadgets he had were web-shooting and wall climbing. The ESU is just a normal uniform, and the Dark Suit is made by Black Cat in this continuity, who probably wouldn't know how to make the suit accustomed to Spidey's abilities and even if she knows, she won't let it come back to bite her later by giving him another special power that could be used to bring her in before her next big heist, so the suit she made for Spidey is just for show. Also, the Joke costume "Naked"'s power is that everyone goes down in one hit, including Spidey. Of course, Spidey would go down in one hit, he's not wearing anything to protect him except his mask and boxers! And the reason everybody else goes down in one hit as well is that Spidey needs to resolve the fights as quick as possible. Fighting dangerous combats in a pair of boxers is pretty impractical.
• One of the most overpowered Suit Powers the player can acquire is also one of the earliest: "Web Blossom", a screen-clearing spam of web shots that can easily take down an entire allotment of thugs all around Spidey. And the suit you can make to unlock it as soon as the prologue is over? His Iconic Outfit of the Classic Suit, symbolizing that this is an Experienced Protagonist that has reached the point of being more than capable in fighting crime after eight years. A surprisingly subtle case of Gameplay and Story Integration.
• It has been confirmed that no other heroes will appear in the game. This makes sense when you take into account that Norman Osborn is running for mayor and if he’s like almost every other incarnation of Norman Osborn, it’s very likely that the other heroes are tiptoeing around him themselves and so can't afford to help out Spider-Man. The Avengers are also implied to be very similar to the MCU Avengers (the tower is lifted straight from the MCU) and so as a pseudo-government organization, they can't just gainsay an American mayor willy-nilly.
  • It’s also entirely possible that they are off dealing with other threats, or, especially in Thor’s case, have some other off-world business to take care of, and had enough trust/faith in Spider-Man to know that he can deal with whatever problems arise in New York.
    • It's actually mentioned by Peter when photographing the Avengers Tower landmark that he thinks the Avengers are "somewhere on the West Coast", supporting the idea that maybe the other heroes are just all busy with their own thing at the moment.
• The Avengers are handwaved as being elsewhere, but what about other heroes based in New York? There is a fleeting reference to the Fantastic Four. Steven Strange, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Danny Rand, and Matthew Murdock all have landmarks associated with them in the game. Murdock definitely exists and has some powers, enough to seek out Spider-Man and offer his services.
  • The Four and Strange could be elsewhere just as easily as the Avengers. Strange might be in his sanctum but oblivious to the goings on, as it's not mystical. Black Panther has a Wakandan embassy in New York and Peter is aware of T'Challa's powers but there's no reason to believe he left anyone who can fight on a high level there.
  • As for the four street heroes - they may be elsewhere for a few weeks while this is happening, they may not be superheroes yet, or maybe they're present and active but Peter hasn't really, formally met them and can't ask for help. Maybe none of them have a Friend on the Force as well-placed as Yuri, so they may be ignorant of a lot more of the goings-on. Additionally Spider-Man is more powerful than most street heroes and much more mobile, able to quickly reach and then defeat higher-tier villains; even if any of the other street heroes knew what Electro and Vulture were up to, what could they do about it? It's very possible that all four are there fighting ground level Mooks and treating Sable agents and Demon Swordsmen like those are boss fights.
• In the opening cutscene, Peter's toast pops into the air, and he webs it to pull it to him. You think "wouldn't that leave web on the toast"? Well, there's two options; he breaks off the parts with web, or he does the same thing real spiders do; he eats it.
  • Spider-Mans' webbing is edible? Why doesn't anyone else eat their way out? What does it taste like?
    • Maybe, who would think to try?
  • Fridge Logic: Spidey's webbing isn't actual spider webs, it's an artificial chemical formula designed to mimic them.
    • Who's to say it isn't edible?
    • Check the social media feed on the map screen. At one point, there's a post by someone who got a bit of Spider-Man's webbing, and decided to eat it. It was apparently edible, but awful. The poster states Spider-Man needs to start seasoning his webbing.
    • That's a lot of extra time and money expended for no reason.
    • Think of it like an elmer glue. Elmer glue is technically safe to consume, but that's not its intended purpose. Same with Spidey's webbing. It's a high quality adhesive agent that happens to be safe if ingested.
• Why does Peter try to defend the Daily Bugle from Yuri's diss? That's because MJ works there.
  • And it's also his own prior place of employment.
• How does Doc Ock figure out Peter is Spider-Man? Well, aside from seeing him with Spider-Man's suit, Spider-Man also knows where Otto's neural-interface is.
  • Well, Peter could have told Spider-Man where it was. Not difficult to instruct him to pull it out. It's likely he always knew and just played coy.
  • After one of the failed experiments, Otto gets angry at Norman and scares Peter, which causes him to joke about it. With the broken suit, similar voices and their tendency to joke in tense situations, Otto threw 2 and 2 together and realized something.
• Despite being a print reporter, MJ is suddenly seen on TV covering the Devil's Breath outbreak. No explanation is given, but it actually makes sense. With Manhattan quarantined, and possibly many seasoned reporters ill, a news outlet might well put a photogenic newspaper reporter with a big scoop on air.
• The post-credits stinger has a bit of extra foreshadowing regarding The Green Goblin. When Norman opens Harry's Tank, his face is bathed in green light.
• Regarding Silver Sable: while her change of heart at the end appears to be completely sincere, there's also a more pragmatic reason she's leaving her PMC and returning on her own, making sure a well-reputed hero knows about it: Sable International is fucked. After the city becomes a war zone, they started blatantly infringing the civil liberties and even human rights of innocent citizens, which even J. Jonah Jameson thought was uncalled-for, and victims and bystanders were being encouraged to document all of it. Even if some of the soldiers escape prosecution, the legal fees alone are going to put the company in the hole. Sable is washing her hands of all this; if she shows up in a sequel, she might be leading a PMC named the "Wild Pack" this time just because her previous company was rendered insolvent.
• It makes sense that Electro and Vulture get along so much better as a pair than Rhino and Scorpion do - in the comics, the two were in the original Sinister Six way back in 1964.
• Looking at the Dark Suit, it's very obvious that Black Cat designed it. The primary color being black is a given, but the spider emblem is shaped like two diamonds. And the base design of it is very similar to Felicia's suit from what we've seen. Basically, Cat wanted her and Spidey to having matching outfits.
  • Plus, if you look closely, the suit has claws on the finger tips.
• There is also another reason why Peter has to make the Anti-Ock suit to take down Doc Ock aside from practicality: Doc Ock was the person who created Peter's suit in this game, so he would know all the weaknesses it has.
  • Also, regarding the above and how until Turf Wars, there wasn't a Spider Armor MK 1 suit. In this game's canon, this is the first time Spider-Man has ever fought Doc Ock and the Anti-Ock suit is worn like a overlayed armor covering the Advanced Suit. Now, think back to the PS1 Spider-Man games and how Spider Armor was used in that game: Armor that was put on over the normal Suit, giving you a second health bar. So in a way, one can think of the Anti-Ock suit as this game's version of a Spider Armor MK 1 suit, even if there's no second health bar just like in the PS1 games.
• Otto's words after his defeat are a deliberate perversion of Peter's "with great power comes great responsibility" creed. Like Peter, Otto says he's obligated to help people with his talents but only because he's better than them and it doesn't matter if they approve of his 'help' because he knows better than them. Small wonder this prompts Peter to start screaming at him in anger.
• Mary Jane Watson and Felicia Hardy intentionally contrast each other; Mary Jane is friendly and approachable, and looks like the Girl Next Door. Felicia is standoffish, teasing, and a manipulator. Her hair is silver - probably dyed like in 616 - and it sometimes◊ looks kind of like she's had some plastic surgery done. Even their clothing contrasts; MJ wears natural fabrics - notably her signature brown leather jacket - while Felicia wears a fancy high-tech suit. On the other side of the foil setup, both women wear their hair in a high ponytail, with some of it coming down over their face.
• What 2 suits do people most want that we aren't getting in the game (at least unless it's in the DLC)? Miles Morales' suit and the Black Suit. Why? Well, in Miles' case, he has yet to become Spider Man (Or Kid Arachnid) so the suit will be coming in the sequel for him, thus it wouldn't be right to steal it for Peter before Miles could use it. In the symbiote's case it is clearly being set up as one of the big bads of the sequel, so the suit would be put in that one as a mythology gag, or perhaps it could end up more story relevant than that...
• In Turf Wars, we learn Sable had some kind of underground, mining, troop deployment APCs they never used. Why not? Probably because, a) they cause a lot of collateral damage, and b) none of their foes were slow-moving and confined to a single, ground-based location. The machines would not have been useful in the first place. In a more conventional war, with good intel, it would come in handy for raids.
• The Gut Punch portion of the ending very much plays into a core element of Spider-Man's mythology, showing how much Peter has grown as an individual. Peter was tired of being told what to do, so he didn't bother stopping the robber that would kill Uncle Ben because he was selfish. When faced with a Sadistic Choice to save either Aunt May or hundreds of people afflicted with the Devil's Breath, her life ends once he chooses to be selfless.
• One of the podcasts from J. Jonah Jameson has him call the caller a sick creep for boasting that his girlfriend wears a Spider-Girl costume and how the costume enhances their love life. On the surface, it's simply Jameson making it clear how disgusting he finds people fetishizing a vigilante that he despises with a passion. However, considering that Spider-Girl is also the name used by Spider-Man's teenage daughter in an alternate continuity (who has yet to canonically become 18), Jameson's rebuke can also be interpreted as a dig towards fans who draw lewd fan art of Mayday Parker even though she is canonically underage.
• In hindsight, it makes sense that Dr Isaac Delaney was dressed as the Lizard over Vulture and Mysterio. Delany was part of the Devil's Breath project, a bio-engineering project that was intended as a cure but had side effects that did more harm than good, a description that could equally be used to describe Curt Connors' efforts to 'cure' limb loss through the use of Lizard DNA, and therefore fits Delany's role in the story far better than Vulture and Mysterio.
  • Furthermore, the stinger of Spider-Man: Miles Morales reveals that Connors is, in some capacity, working on Norman's efforts to cure Harry, if Delany was aware of Connors' involvement it may be a nod to his colleague.
• The means through which the spider that bites Miles gets to the position where it could bit him is actually a broad strokes adaption of how it originally happened in the Ultimate Comics; in the comics the spider latched onto Prowler when he broke into an Oscorp lab, before getting off in his apartment, where it bit Miles when he came to visit, by contrast in the game it latched onto MJ, before jumping off at F.E.A.S.T where it bit Miles while he was working.
  • Furthermore, subtly, it references how Ultimate MJ missed an opportunity to get spider powers, in the comics the spider landed on her after Peter threw it off him when he was bitten but it got brushed off before it could bite her, while the spider could've bitten her in the game, at any time before it jumped off her at F.E.A.S.T
• Frequently, random crimes pop up just when you've reached something you want to do. This shows exactly why Spidey is always late for everything through game mechanics. You could ignore the crimes, but then you wouldn't be behaving like Spider-Man!

Fridge Horror

• Within Norman's secret research and penthouse, he has a Symbiote-bonded Harry in a healing tank and several containers with radioactive spiders. One of these gave Miles identical powers to Peter. If Norman realized just how successful at least part of his research was, he could create Spider-Men easily - but even worse, if the Symbiote breaks out of there, what if it potentially bonded to or assimilated any or even all of the spiders?
• All of the mini-games that Peter can do at Octavius' labs are helping improve the neural interface and materials for the prosthetic limb research they're working on, and you can do them for fun little optional challenges and bonus XP and tokens. They're also improving, but not perfecting, the very systems that would go on to corrupt Octavius' mind into inevitably becoming Doctor Octopus since Otto's rage at Osborn and rush to get a functioning system completely prevented Peter from truly finishing it all. You helped design the unperfected tech that made your own worst enemy.
• Spider-Man doesn't break his no-killing rule when the player makes him throw an enemy far of a building, by automatically letting the character (somehow) web the guy to another building. The thing is, his webs dissolve after an hour. And those people are stuck on a wall several stories above the ground. So they should hope someone rescues them from their position in time.
  • The webbing dissolving may not be true for this version of Spider-Man. All of the recovered backpacks are webbed up, and several of the comments that go with them indicate they've been there for some time.
  • Developer's Foresight: For the first two-thirds of the game, every outdoor combat ends with the sound of distant sirens or a phone call confirming cops are on their way. The cops have probably gotten pretty good at recovering webbed-up crooks in time over eight years. As for the last third of the game, Sable guys are probably rescued by their buddies in time. Criminals still fall into this, but since they were waiting on rooftops with high-powered weapons, it's possible webbing them precariously is less of a risk than Murder by Inaction when they shoot someone later. Remember, that's how Spidey lost Uncle Ben.
• Taskmaster introduces himself and immediately explains his powers to Peter. Bond Villain Stupidity, right? Well, no. Spidey is smart; if he knows Tasky is Power Copying, he's going to innovate and try new tactics. Which can also be copied. Taskmaster even says "I pick up more of your moves every time." and Peter really can't afford to lose. If he does, that proves Taskmaster's learned enough.
  • Also we never find out for sure who hired him...
• I just had a thought about the potential sequel, If/When we get it, it's clear the symbiote will play a key role. How did Miles' mother die again?
  • Also if he does lose both his parents, what will happen, will he live with Peter and MJ... or will his Uncle Arron take him in.
• Why does Harry Osborn get the same fatal genetic illness his mother died from at such an early age? Look at the research stations he sets up throughout the city. Most of them deal with monitoring and stopping different forms of toxic pollution and other dangerous chemicals that Osborn tech is causing throughout New York city. As a result, he was likely exposed to many of these dangers while setting up the stations to deal with them. Meaning, his exposure to dangerous elements throughout the city caused his illness to develop a lot sooner than it would have otherwise, or possibly not at all, which is Truth in Television. People whom have a family history of developing a disease later in life can get it early if they don't properly take care of themselves, and doing so with luck can lead to prevention of the illness.
• Which villains does Peter have newspaper clippings of in his workplace? Kingpin, Rhino, Electro, Vulture and Scorpion. All of whom (barring Kingpin) are recruited into Otto's Sinister Six, implying that by keeping their pictures, Peter accidentally gave Otto the idea to recruit them.
• It is noted that "ESURhinoBro" played a role in the death of Dr Delaney by delaying Peter when he finally got to the dance floor, but there's someone else who shoulders blame; Dr. Stratton, who dressed as Mysterio at the party. When Peter finds her in the mirror maze, beyond the display of gymnastic prowess he blatantly used a web line to yank her helmet off, and yet she fails to note this and brushes him off when he asks about Delaney; if she had so much as simply noted that he was dressed as Lizard, Spidey could've saved at least a minute, which theoretically could've allowed him to get Delaney away from the Demons, saving his life.

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