Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse References Old Spider-Man Game

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has a pretty direct reference to an unexpected old Spider-Man game. Spider-Man is one of the most beloved superheroes of all-time, possibly even one of the most beloved characters in fiction. He has stood the test of time courtesy of decades of comics, cartoons, movies, video games, and more, there are countless interpretations of him and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has leveraged that as the basic premise for its story. Miles Morales is sucked through the multiverse where he meets what seem to be near infinite other Spider-People and learns that they all, more or less, have experienced very similar lives and the road to being Spider-Man is one of fate to a degree.

Spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse follow from here on out. Click away if you don’t want to be spoiled or haven’t seen the movie.

With all of that said, once Miles Morales is welcomed to the headquarters that holds all of these Spider-People, he is properly introduced to Miguel O’Hara AKA Spider-Man 2099. O’Hara is essentially in charge of ensuring the multiverse remains stable and no one disrupts the fabric of time and space. O’Hara tells Miles that he disrupted what is known as a “canon event”, which can cause irreparable damage to the timeline. Canon events are crucial moments in the lives of Spider-Man where something happens that forever shapes them, such as the death of Uncle Ben. Miles is then shown footage of Uncle Bens dying from across the multiverse including Tobey Maguire’s, the one from the Spectacular Spider-Man, and others. However, there is one that stands out a bit more than the rest because it’s almost strange for it to be there: Uncle Ben’s death from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 video game which released in 2014. This game was critically panned, holding a brutal 46 out of 100 score on Metacritic. The scene is also a flashback/recreation from The Amazing Spider-Man movie which released in 2012, so it’s almost a little puzzling that the live action scene with Andrew Garfield wasn’t used.

Given we see Tobey Maguire’s scene and we even see Andrew Garfield mourning the loss of Captain Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man during this same scene, it’s a bit weird to see them use footage from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 video game. However, one could argue that because that game is pretty loose with the story of the movie it is adapting, it is actually a totally different version of Spider-Man that exists in the multiverse and isn’t the Andrew Garfield one. The multiverse is weird!

What did you think of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.