Two gags for the price of one!
This animated Spider-Man adaptation has a significant amount of references to the comics and other versions.
- Many shots are based on or even directly taken from the live-action movies.
- As well as some to the fans. For example, lack of banter was a complaint about the movies, so when Doc Ock yells "Do you ever shut up!?" during a fight, Spidey responds with: "Sorry, no. My fans expect a certain amount of quippage in every battle."
- In "Reaction," Spider-Man stops a stolen truck using almost exactly the same technique that he did to stop a train in Spider-Man 2.
- Mary Jane wears the pink shirt and denim skirt she wore in Spider-Man.
- The Symbiote costume notably begins looking like it did in Spider-Man 3, and as it gradually begins exerting its influence over Peter, it begins looking more and more like it does in the comics.(The second Symbiote suit looks like the Spider-Man suit from the 1967 TV series)
- Many shots are also straight from comic book covers, including the famous Amazing Spider-Man #100 cover.
- The theme song features a newspaper headline with a photo of Spidey swinging through the city. It's pretty much identical to the cover of "Amazing Fantasy #15", Spider-Man's first appearance.
- "The Uncertainty Principle": Green Goblin dragging Spidey across the sky on his glider
- The season 2 episode "Shear Strength" has Spidey trapped into a situation similar to the comic books, where he had to save the life of a loved one despite being buried under a big fricking machine.
- Spidey uses one of The Thing's many Catchphrase "What a revoltin' development this is".
- Combining this with possible Foreshadowing had the show not been cancelled, Stan Carter complains that Spider-Man "doesn't go far enough" when dealing with criminals. The comic book version of Carter was actually the psychotic vigilante Sin-Eater, who went way beyond "far enough" including the murder of Jean DeWolff.
- Doc Ock had two girls on his arms in "Accomplices", and the blond one of them bears a resemblance to Stunner, one of Doc's in-comic girls. Some say the black haired one looks like Mary-Alice, his first fiance.
- When Spider-Man first gets ambushed by the Sinister Six in "Group Therapy", Sandman hits him and mockingly asks if he was supposed to wait his turn. The very first time Spider-Man dealt with them in the original Amazing Spider-Man comics, they did in fact take turns fighting him.
- As it happens in every animated series he appears, Mysterio battles Spidey in a movie lot. This also happens regularly in comic books; justified because of Mysterio's former job as stuntman and special effects expert.
- Spider-Man also fights Mysterio on a Wild West Saloon set on that lot. Hmmm...
- In "Opening Night", Montana resorts to his comic book weapon: a lasso, only in this case one made from sheets.
- The fact that Frederick Foswell was investigating Tombstone/The Big Man could be a reference to the fact that in the comics, Foswell was himself the Big Man.
- Peter flirting with Jameson’s secretary is a bit of an elaborate in-joke. Betty Brant was indeed a love interest of Peter's in the comics, but she was closer to his age, having dropped out of high school for her secretary job to support her family. High school dropouts joining the workforce is not nearly as common today as it was in the 1960s, so Brant is given an Age Lift and Peter's flirting with her is treated as very awkward for both of them.
- Ned Lee also briefly flirts with Betty, referencing their comic counterparts' (doomed) marriage.
- Kingsley Lampshading his Bait-and-Switch, also saying "the classics are the best." In the comics, Kingsley was the Hobgoblin and had multiple people to take the fall for it, and the Hobgoblin's intended identity had a habit of being changed fairly frequently. This is, of course, a classic storyline and Kingsley is a fan favourite.
- The story arc leading up to Mary Jane's reveal was done in the same vein as her original debut in the comics, with Peter being unsure of how she looks and assuming the worst before being proven dead wrong, capped off with this classic line:
- Mary Jane: Face it, Tiger. You just hit the jackpot.
- The field trip flashback in "Intervention" is an almost line-for-line, shot-for-shot recreation of the scene in the first movie, albeit with Gwen instead of Mary Jane. The rest of the flashback borrows a more iconic scene from both the movies and the comics, with a few of the lines changed to avoid a lawsuit.
- In "Survival of the Fittest," Peter tells himself that "Spider-Man's a wallcrawler, not a wallflower," before trying to ask out Sally Avril. This is a callback to Amazing Fantasy #15 (Spidey's first appearance in comics), in which Peter Parker was referred to as a "professional wallflower." He also tried asking out a girl named Sally, only to be rejected.
- A possible meta example calling back to the 1990s series; on that series, the Moral Guardians insisted that Spider-Man not disturb pigeons on rooftops, for fear they might get hurt. In the cartoon, not only does Peter disturb a group of pigeons just by walking past them (they get scared of his shadow) but he is also thrown into a stack of cages holding them. None are visibly hurt, but this seems like a Take That! to the censors for the previous cartoon.
- Gwen Stacy's black headband finally turns up in the last few minutes of "Final Curtain".
- The Black Cat teaming up with Spidey to stop the Chameleon in the first episode of the Symbiote arc is very likely a nod to the fact that in the original Symbiote arc in the comics the two were a couple at the time.
- Several of the villain's debut episodes are based on their first comic appearances or defeated in the same way as in the comics:
- Spidey beats Venom by surrendering himself to the symbiote and allowing it to try and take over his body again.
- Chameleon is defeated and apprehended while trying to escape by sea.
- Spidey first encounters Mysterio on a bridge, both versions ending with Spider-Man diving into the water below.
- Kraven the Hunter is defeated by getting trapped in webbing in Central Park.
- Vulture is beaten by Spidey smashing into the pack on his back.
- Norman Osborn disguising Harry as the Goblin to throw Spidey off his trail is a trick his successor in the comics Hobgoblin did with Flash Thompson.
- Majority of Gwen's characterization, especially her getting a makeover from Mary Jane, is taken directly from Mary Jane: A Novel.
- At the end of "Natural Selection", Eddie Brock lays into Peter for apparently being more interested in getting the Lizard story for the Bugle than helping Dr Connors. This is a reversal of the end of the Spider-Man: The Animated Series episode "Night of the Lizard", in which Brock blames Spider-Man for stopping him getting the story that Connors is the Lizard.
