Film / Spider-Man: No Way Home

This page contains unmarked spoilers for the Spider-Man Trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man Series, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe until Spider-Man: Far From Home.

"Be careful what you wish for, Parker."

"That little spell that you botched where you wanted everyone to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, it started pulling in everyone who knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man, from every universe into this one."

— Dr. Stephen Strange

Spider-Man: No Way Home is a 2021 superhero Science Fantasy film directed by Jon Watts, which serves as an Intercontinuity Crossover between the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Spider-Man Trilogy, and The Amazing Spider-Man Series. It is also the direct sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home, the 27th theatrical film and 32nd overall installment of the MCU, the 9th installment of its Phase 4 slate, the third co-production between Disney's Marvel Studios and Sony's Columbia Pictures division, the ninth installment of the Spider-Man film franchise overall, and the conclusion to the Spider-Man: Home Trilogy.

Picking up immediately after the mid-credits scene of Far From Home, Peter Parker's life has been thrown into chaos after Mysterio not only framed him for his death and crimes in a posthumous message, but also revealed his Secret Identity to the world. New York City, once unified behind the web-head as its local superhero, has now become increasingly divided about his presence, with many falling for Mysterio's deception. Desperate to return things to normal for the sake of his friends and family after running into trouble with law enforcement and tanking their reputations by association, Peter enlists the help of Stephen Strange to restore his secret identity using a powerful, dangerous spell.

But when the spell goes horribly wrong, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange must contend with a multiversal crisis as an entourage of supervillains who faced off with other Spider-Men appear, putting their own universe at risk. Peter must come to terms with what it really means to be both Spider-Man and the man behind the mask, as he debates whether or not he can really save everyone — including his enemies. Peter also learns that other versions of himself have made their way to his universe, and it becomes clear that only together can they stop the sinister visitors from wreaking havoc.

Along with Tom Holland as Spider-Man, MCU mainstays like Zendaya as MJ, Jacob Batalon as Ned, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, and Benedict Wong as Wong return, along with Charlie Cox in his first official appearance as Matt Murdock in an MCU film via a cameo. The film also sees the return of other characters from the previous two Spider-Man film continuities — Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin from Spider-Man, Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2, Thomas Haden Church as Sandman from Spider-Man 3, Rhys Ifans as the Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man, and Jamie Foxx as Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as their respective versions of Spider-Man — just in time to commemorate the character's 60th anniversary, as well as 20 years of the film franchise.

The film is also confirmed to be part of a spiritual tetralogy along with WandaVision, Loki, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

The film was released exclusively in theaters on December 17, 2021. While this film wraps up the Spider-Man trilogy that began with Spider-Man: Homecoming, it will not be the last Spider-Man project set in the MCU, as a second trilogy is planned with Holland returning as the webslinger. Sony has also indicated that Spider-Man will be able to appear in their own franchise with Spider-Man-related characters, Sony's Spider-Man Universe, as he briefly did during the post-credits scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

An extended cut of the film, subtitled The More Fun Stuff Version and containing approximately 13 minutes of additional and deleted scenes (including a new stinger), was announced in June 2022. It was released in theaters beginning August 31, 2022 in Indonesia, followed by the United States and Canada among other countries on September 1, and released for several other countries through September and October. Interestingly, this cut would also see a Netflix release alongside the original cut of this film throughout the latter quarter of 2023 in some countries, under the title of "Extended Cut".

Previews: Teaser, Trailer, First 10 Minutes

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Spider-Man: No Way Home provides examples of:

Tropes A–D

• Achievements in Ignorance: In Doctor Strange, Strange took a lot of training to be able to cast spells, since the Ancient One points out that he must let go of his preconceptions about performing magic. Ned, meanwhile, has no preconceptions — no idea he was capable of magic outside his lola mentioning magic ran in the family — and so he conjures (part of) a portal by accident. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to close them.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Raimi-verse Peter takes a moment to stretch out his back, with Webb-verse Peter lending a hand. Tobey Maguire has long had back problems, including a flare-up during the filming of Seabiscuit that put the production of Spider-Man 2 in doubt.
  • Happy's extended interaction with Matt Murdock may have been intended as a throwback to the 2003 Daredevil film adaptation, where Jon Favreau played Matt's best friend and legal partner Franklin "Foggy" Nelson.
  • Tom Holland has long stated that he wanted Tobey Maguire to play his Peter's Uncle Ben. That obviously didn't happen. However, the camera angles on the Raimi-verse Peter as he is lying on the ground after being backstabbed by Green Goblin are eerily similar to Uncle Ben's iconic death scene from the first Spider-Man.
  • In the Japanese dub, MCU Peter's Japanese dub actor Jun'ya Enoki voices Yuji Itadori, who, like MCU Peter, got enraged at an Ax-Crazy character killing his loved ones that he delivers a beatdown on him.
  • When MCU Peter and Raimi-verse Peter talk about having fought aliens, Webb-verse Peter says the last enemy he faced was a Russian with a rhino suit and puts himself down. Raimi-verse Peter tells him to have more confidence, calling him "amazing".
  • Norman Osborn wears green and purple throughout the film and responds to Peter punching him repeatedly by laughing maniacally, not unlike The Joker. This could be a reference to how Willem Dafoe was one of the actors considered for the part of the Joker in Batman (1989) before Jack Nicholson was cast.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Flash Thompson, who had black hair in the previous movies in this trilogy, now has bleached-blond hair, making him more physically similar to his comic book counterpart.
  • After his first few seconds, Electro lacks his blue coloration from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in favor of looking like a normal human with yellow electricity.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: When Peter calls J. Jonah Jameson to lure all the villains to one place, Jameson asks him, "What pernicious propaganda are you peddling?" Later, during the broadcast, Jameson calls Spider-Man a "vile vigilante".
• All for Nothing: May's attempt to inject the Green Goblin with the cure during his first fight with Peter proves to be pointless as it ends up having absolutely no effect on him. This unfortunately leaves her right in the crosshairs of the Goblin's glider and one of his pumpkin bombs, leading to her death.
• Alliance of Alternates: All three cinematic Spider-Men cross into the MCU and join forces.
• Alternate Self: The Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Spider-Men are counterparts to MCU Spidey. Doc Ock explicitly points this out when he has MCU Peter in his grasp and sees his face, saying, "You're not Peter Parker."
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version uses SixTONES' "Rosy" as the theme song.
• Alternative-Self Name-Change: As the Spider-Men of the Spider-Man Trilogy and The Amazing Spider-Man Series return to team up with the MCU Spidey, they remedy the confusion of all three being different versions of Peter Parker by addressing themselves as Peters "1" (MCU), "2" (Raimi-verse), and "3" (Webb-verse).
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Initially, it's believed that the villains Peter has to capture are all dead, raising questions about what to make of the Lizard and Sandman, who unlike the other three members did not die fighting Spider-Man. With the Lizard, it turns out to be a metaphorical death, as he reverted to Doctor Connors, but it's uncertain as to what happened with Sandman, who appears to be older than he was at the end of Spider-Man 3. Is he from a universe where he did die fighting Spider-Man at some point? Or was Sandman just pulled from the timeline years later like the other Spider-Men — along with Eddie Brock and Venom? Sandman does not seem to remember dying to Spidey either, confusing matters further. As it turns out, he was never in any danger. It was Sandman himself who informs everyone of the fates of his fellow Raimi-verse inhabitants. Between this and Electro realizing he was about to be killed and not knowing whatever happened to Connors, everyone jumps to conclusions about Sandman. He himself never seems convinced, though. Moreover, Electro isn't able to answer Connor's question as to what happened to him before Doctor Strange interrupts.
  • Given that the botched spell explicitly brought people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man to the MCU's universe, it's not clear why Eddie Brock, who never heard of Peter or Spider-Man before his displacement, was affected. While Venom stated that the Symbiote hive mind has knowledge from across universes, Venom doesn't demonstrate any explicit knowledge of either Peter Parker or Spider-Man. All that he did was react with Tranquil Fury towards seeing the boy on screen, but nothing is ever made clear as to why.
• And Starring: Marisa Tomei receives a "With" whilst both Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire receive "And" credits. This is notably the first MCU film to have two "And" credits.
• And the Adventure Continues: The movie ends with Peter donning a new suit and continuing his vigilantism.
• Apocalypse How: The risk presented by the broken spell as a result of the villains of the other universes, specifically the fact that as long as they're there, the spell will exist. Because it ended up being reversed in its nature, rather than erase the existence of knowledge that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, it will bring the knowledge that Peter Parker is Spider-Man from every possible instance in the Multiverse, and since there are an infinite number of theoretical universes, there is thus an infinite number of people who will be brought into their reality, resulting in a Metaphysical Class X-4 Reality-Breaking Paradox that will shred the fabric of spacetime. As Strange succinctly puts it in his battle with Spider-Man:
  Strange: Parker, don't you realize that in the Multiverse, there are an infinite number of people who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man! And if that spell gets loose, they're all coming here!
• Arc Number: The film emphasizes the Rule of Three a lot.
  • This is the MCU's third standalone Spider-Man film.
  • Peter, MJ, and Ned's friendship is the film's backbone.
  • This is Webb-verse Peter Parker's third outing on screen.
  • The movie features three Spider-Men.
  • Peter loses the most important person in his life — Aunt May — for the third time after Uncle Ben and Tony Stark.
  • Peter gets three new suits.
  • There are three primary antagonists (Green Goblin, Lizard, and Electro).
  • Three of the five returning villains came Back from the Dead (Norman Osborn, Doc Ock, Electro).
  • The film features three visiting film franchises (Spider-Man Trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man Series, and Sony's Spider-Man Universe).
  • The film's ending theme is "The Magic Number" by De La Soul (a song in which the titular number is 3), a three-man Hip-Hop group, off of their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising.
• Arc Welding:
  • The prior cinematic incarnations of the Spider-Man franchise — and their respective Spider-Men — were never intended to crossover with one another despite talks between Marvel and Sony throughout the years to get the Web-Head and his rogue's gallery into the MCU. This film brings back almost every villain from both previous continuities as the culmination of twenty years of storytelling across several different universes, all going up against a still relatively wet-behind-the-ears Peter Parker before his confirmed second trilogy of films.
  • invoked The inclusion of Matt Murdock, once again played by Charlie Cox no less, is the first time the films have acknowledged the Netflix TV shows, and while they were always technically a part of the same universe, it was long assumed by fans that due to legal issues, they were in a form of Exiled from Continuity. This is the first film where this has been proven otherwise, and something fans of the movies and the shows have wanted to see for a long time. Interestingly enough, a week prior, Vincent D'Onofrio reprised his role as Kingpin in Hawkeye, from the same Netflix show Murdock comes from.
• Argument of Contradictions: A short and fast-paced argument ensues between MJ and Webb-verse Peter Parker when he states that sticking to the ceiling is enough to prove he's Spider-Man, while she insists he should crawl around.
  Peter: Why do I need to crawl around?
  MJ: 'Cause this is not enough.
  Peter: This is plenty.
  MJ: No, it's not.
  Peter: Yes, it is.
  MJ: No, it's not.
  Peter: It is.
  MJ: Nuh-uh.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Played for Laughs when Flash appears to show off his MIT sweater at the worst possible time.
  Flash: Wait, you guys didn't get into MIT, too?
  Ned: Yeah, because we're actually friends with Spider-Man!
• Art Evolution: All multiverse characters except Venom have had slight alterations in their designs to distinguish them from their non-MCU appearances.
  • Green Goblin initially wears the exact same outfit as he did in his debut movie, before he smashes his mask and wears a purple hoodie overtop his armor. He later dons flight goggles and a satchel, cobbles an arm blade out of pieces of his armor, and keeps the now-tattered hoodie to evoke his classic comic appearance (although it more accurately resembles the various Hobgoblins).
  • Doctor Octopus is now wearing a darker trench coat and a black turtleneck, and he switches his sunglasses from opaque lenses to more translucent ones after his Heel–Face Turn, not unlike the Glasses Off moment in his film that preceded his Redemption Equals Death.
  • Sandman is now incapable of assuming his regular human form and looks like a walking sand sculpture, albeit with Flint Marko's facial features.
  • The Lizard now has a more reptilian appearance, with a narrower snout and a set of ridges on his scalp instead of the relatively human face and smooth dome he originally had.
  • Electro has the most radical redesign — he first appears with his blue sparkly appearance, before the more pure and powerful energy from the MCU (compared to his home universe) gives him an Adrenaline Makeover. He's now muscular with a sidecut and goatee, instead of being a gangly nerd with "bad teeth, glasses, and a combover." He also switches to green and yellow electrician's clothing with waterproof boots and a harness that helps him better absorb the energy from the arc reactor he stole instead of a black rubber bodysuit, and his now yellow lightning briefly forms a star shape reminiscent of his classic mask around his face.
  • The alternate Spider-Men's costumes are identical to their last appearances, but under their masks they have both visibly aged, with Raimi-verse Peter now sporting a buzz cut and Webb-verse Peter having visible stubble.
• Ascended Meme: The film has many of these regarding the multiversal visitors.
  • A Time magazine cover discussing Peter's identity reveal features the title "Iron Man Jr.", poking fun at a criticism laid against the MCU iteration of Spider-Man for having several connections to the Iron Man film franchise, its cast, and certain technologies rather than being about a more self-sufficient version of the character.
  • When offering Peter his help with making cures for the other villains, Norman quotes his famous "You know, I'm something of a scientist myself" line from the first Raimi film, in almost identical cadence.
  • The MCU and Webb-verse Peters, who both use web shooters, are fascinated by Raimi-verse Peter's natural webs, which has been a common joke with fans years before this Crisis Crossover was ever in development.
  • Also, while they don't say it outright, both of them obviously wonder if Raimi-verse Peter's webs can come out of other places besides his wrists — seemingly implying his butt, a common joke about actual spider biology that intensified when he introduced biological webbing, or out of another place on the male anatomy that produces a white substance...
  • Doubling as a Continuity Nod, when waiting at the Statue of Liberty for the villains, the Raimi-verse Peter complains about a back problem. Fans have long joked about his "MY BACK!" scene, along with how stopping a train with his body must have been hard on his back.
  • Like a lot of memes, MCU Peter brags about how he's a part of the Avengers. The other Spider-Men have no idea what it means.
  • A lot of fan-made videos used to depict the Raimi-verse version of Peter strutting through the sling ring portals into the MCU and doing the "Bully Maguire" dance. While he doesn't necessarily strut, he does walk into the MCU rather casually, dressed in normal street clothes. For added bonus, the channel that created these memes is the appropriately named "Tobey in the MCU".
  • While light-hearted, there are a couple of jabs at Webb-verse Peter not being as cool as the other Peters, reflecting that his series is considered the odd middle child of the film incarnations of Spider-Man.
  • The legendary "Spider-Man pointing at himself" meme from the Spider-Man cartoon (specifically with all three versions from the movies) shows up here, by having the three Peters pointing at each other when Ned is trying to get his Peter's attention. The official screenplay of the film even adds a "Memes!" after this moment is described.
    • The credits also briefly show two Spider-Men standing atop buildings doing the pointing.
    • As promotion for the film's home releases, a photoshoot of Holland, Garfield and Maguire in their suits without masks ended up producing this photo of them directly recreating the meme.
  • Raimi-verse Spider-Man being physically superior to the other versions^notehe quickly disables Webb-verse Spidey's web shooter, has organic webbing and in the climax stops MCU Peter from killing the Green Goblin except for his back problems may or may not be a reference to the "Bully Maguire" memes, where Maguire's version of Peter Parker/Spider-Man is portrayed as an unstoppable One-Man Army who only has some back problems (which only barely hold him back).
  • MCU Spider-Man saying that the villains are no longer his problem, when Webb-verse and Raimi-verse's Spider-Men come to him, may be a reference to the popular meme where Garfield and Holland's Spider-Men asking Maguire's Spider-Man for help has him turn them down with his iconic line "I missed the part where that's my problem", with Holland and Maguire's roles reversed.
• Assimilation Backfire: During their initial confrontation, one of Doc Ock's tentacles rips off a piece of the Iron Spider suit and incorporates the suit's nanotech into itself. However, this makes the tentacles a part of the suit's device network, allowing Peter to take control of them and incapacitate Ock.
• A-Team Montage: In the Undercroft, there is a montage of Ned, Peter and MJ preparing for Spidey's displaced-villains hunt, notably by turning the Spider-Man suit inside out and strapping a phone to it to use as camera. With the whole thing on the tune of the "Monster Mash" song.
• Awesome by Analysis: After some time fighting Doctor Strange in the Mirror Dimension, Peter notices that the landscape is resolving into a fractal pattern. He quickly works out the math on how to web up a snare on the moving landscape that soon encloses around Strange, entrapping him by surprise and allowing Peter to take the counterspell device.
  Peter: You know what's cooler than magic? Math!
• Back from the Dead: Norman Osborn, Doc Ock, and Electro, all of whom died fighting Spider-Man in their respective films, are brought back to life in the MCU. But since all of them left their own universes at the moment of their deaths, it takes them a while to realize they died at all.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Zigzagged. The villains get to live, and Norman, Otto, and Curt are freed of their villainous personae, but the big winner is Mysterio, whose revealing Peter's identity led to Peter's losing everything. He'd have loved it... if he weren't already dead. Even then though, Mysterio still fails as more people begin believing in Spider-Man as a hero again and even with everyone ever forgetting about Peter, it means he does get to indeed go back to anonymity, even if it's now total anonymity.
• Bait-and-Switch: The mid-credits scene serves as a bait-and-switch in conjunction with the post-credit scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage. In the latter, Eddie and Venom are transported to the MCU, and Venom expresses the desire to hunt down and pick a fight with Spider-Man after seeing a Daily Bugle broadcast denouncing Peter Parker as a murderer. In the mid-credits scene of No Way Home, however, Eddie is shown getting drunk at a bar while also getting brought up to speed on the events of the Infinity Saga. Mulling things over, Eddie suggests he and Venom go to New York and talk things out with Spider-Man... only for them to promptly be returned to the SSU by Doctor Strange's spell — leaving a tiny piece of the Venom symbiote behind as a sequel hook.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Otto shows up in the final fight to grab Peters 2 and 3, telling Electro to "Leave them, they're mine", only to reveal he's gone Papa Wolf on them and snag the reactor off of Electro and force the cure on him.
• Base-Breaking Character: In-Universe, after Mysterio exposes Peter's identity, he becomes a divisive figure amongst the public. Some see him as the hero he truly is, but others see him as a murderer and a fraud.
• Bathos:
  • The MCU is no stranger to it, but the first appearance of the two Spider-Men really takes it. Webb-verse Peter comes through a portal Ned made and is increasingly impatient with MJ and Ned's questions when Ned's grandma comes in and asks him to clean up a spot on the ceiling, which is what finally convinces them that he is an alternate Peter. Not to be outdone, Raimi-verse Spidey simply strolls in wearing street clothes. And this scene happens immediately after Aunt May is killed, the villains escape, and Peter goes on the run from the authorities as Jameson continues to smear him in the media.
  • Invoked In-Universe by Dr. Strange, in the climax, when he gets emotional and almost tearful after realizing Peter is willing to throw away his life for the greater good. He asks the boy to call him "Stephen" and when he does, he snarks, "Still feels weird" and cracks a smile, making Peter smile too. Once Peter is gone, he stops smiling and tearfully bids him farewell.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: Downplayed. While Peter has killed the nonsapient Outriders before and has been indirectly responsible for the casualties of Mysterio, Ebony Maw, and Cull Obsidian, those were either because he had no choice, or an accident partially brought about by circumstances out of his control. What makes this notable, however, is the fact that he is very deliberately and willingly trying to kill someone, specifically Green Goblin, in retribution for May's death.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Peter tries to erase the world's knowledge of his secret identity through Strange's magic... only for him to suddenly realize this would affect his loved ones as well. He attempts to modify the spell multiple times to avoid this, his last modification (when the spell's already obviously going catastrophically haywire) being "Basically everyone who knew [that Peter was Spider-Man] before should still know!" The resulting botched spell ends up pulling in some people from The Multiverse who "knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man" into the MCU. Doctor Strange even says this verbatim to him when he first begins seeing the effects of the spell going sideways.
  • No Way Home is also the culmination of the MCU Peter's attempts to emulate Tony Stark and be like his role model since Captain America: Civil War. Well, just like Tony, Peter's had his "I am Iron Man" moment and his identity's now-public knowledge, but unlike Tony, it wasn't his decision. And while Tony also had to struggle with the repercussions of outing his identity during Iron Man 2, at least he had the resources and experience to handle the pressure better than a working-class teenager from Queens.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Peter and MJ say their goodbyes before Doctor Strange's spell will wipe everyone's memories of Peter and share a passionate kiss, with the sun behind them and the music swelling.
• Big "NO!": Webb-verse Peter does this (although it, like most of the audio in the moment, is silent) when he sees MJ falling to her death just like Gwen did all those years ago. Thankfully, he's able to save her before it happens.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: The reason why Eddie and Venom don't appear outside The Stinger? They were too busy trying to learn the recent history of this universe — in other words, invokedthey spent the majority of the film trying to catch up with the MCU so they could make any sense of its present state.
• Bittersweet Ending: Possibly the most bittersweet across all the Spider-Man movies, which is saying something. Peter Parker is able to redeem the supervillains with the help of his alternate selves, who return to their home dimensions with their respective Spider-Men, and his secret identity is once again restored. However, our hero loses everything in the process — Aunt May is dead, meaning his emotional rock is gone and he has no means to financially support himself, the entire world forgets that he exists (including MJ, Ned and Happy), and he has to get a GED because he had to drop out of high school, now living alone in an empty apartment. Nonetheless, Peter reaffirms his motivation to do good for its own sake and soldiers on as he continues his journey as a superhero, starting all over again. As for the villains and their respective Spider-Men? Norman can go home to his son, but is forced to live with the guilt of the lives he took. Otto can finally have the clean energy machine he always wanted, but his wife is still dead and his crimes can never be undone. Flint can finally go home to his daughter, but he's still a wanted criminal. Connors is cured and won't have killed Captain Stacy, but he still will be arrested for his crimes. Max finally has a friend he can count on, but there's still a lot of damage he caused back home. And while Raimi-verse Peter and Webb-verse Peter can put the guilt they had of not being able to cure Norman and failing to save Gwen behind them, nothing in their lives has changed. And Eddie? He and Venom have to go back home and stay on the run as fugitives, unaware a small sliver of themselves has been left behind.
• Black Box: The Stark Industries device that can basically create anything it receives an input for (like the one in the jet in Far From Home, if not more advanced), which Peter uses to develop cures for the villains' conditions. And then the Green Goblin destroys the thing with only Doc Ock having gone all the way. Showing how advanced the machine was, similar results are only achieved through the combined efforts of three Spider-Men.
• Bookends:
  • At the film's beginning, Strange tries to establish a friendship with Peter by allowing him to graduate from formally calling him "Sir" to a warmer and more personal "Stephen". However, when Peter's carelessness causes the Mass Amnesia spell to botch, he calls him Stephen when apologizing, to which Strange snarls, "Call me SIR." After Peter earns his respect by proving he can save and redeem the villains from the Multiverse, and being willing to sacrifice all memory of his existence, Strange sadly asks the boy to "call [him] Stephen", as even he will no longer remember him once the universe is saved by the final Amnesia Spell.
  • The first movie in the Spider-Man Trilogy concluded with Peter visiting Uncle Ben's grave, tearfully breaking up with MJ to keep her safe and performing one last swing around New York City during sunrise, flying towards the camera from a building's flagpole. This film ends similarly, except the grave is Aunt May's, Peter deliberately doesn't mention his secret identity to an amnesiac MJ, and the final swing takes place in a snowy night, where he swings up and falls downwards into the camera.
  • In a broader stroke, as this film in part celebrates twenty years of Spider-Man films, and acts as a closing of sorts for the era. The Final Boss of the trilogy, and by extension the era, is that of the very first film: Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin.
  • Peter's first costume in the MCU was the Homemade, a self-made red-and-blue outfit which he wore during the first steps of his superhero career. At the end of the movie, he comes up with the Fresh Start suit: another red-and-blue outfit based on the classic comics costume and worn by Peter as he (re)starts his superhero journey.
  • The Stinger for Venom: Let There Be Carnage has Eddie and Venom being transported into the MCU, where Venom takes particular interest in Spider-Man. In this film's stinger, Eddie and Venom, stranded on a resort, are talking to a bartender and are trying to understand the MCU timeline and all the craziness that has happened, before being unceremoniously warped back by Strange.
• Boss Rush: The film sees the main antagonists of the first five Spider-Man live-action films getting dragged into the MCU and eventually fighting its Spider-Man along with their respective universes' Wall Crawler.
• Bowdlerize: Doctor Strange's "Scooby-Doo this shit!" line is watered down to "Scooby-Doo this crap!" in the trailer, using an exclusive alternate take.
• Breaking Old Trends: This is the first MCU Spider-Man film to not have a villain not to be created or influenced by Tony Stark.
• Brick Joke:
  • At the bridge scene, the MIT representative is reading the Flash Thompson-authored Flashpoint book before Peter knocks on her window.
  • The MIT representative notes how obvious it is that Peter came to her without rehearsing at all. When he plans to remind MJ and Ned who he is at the end, he definitely took her advice, and is rehearsing as much as possible.
• Broad Strokes: While the returning characters are essentially the exact same characters from the earlier films, there are some subtle differences. Some changes do get a Handwave, but not all of them.
  • The relationship between Norman Osborn and the Green Goblin is exaggerated; in his debut, it's somewhat ambiguous whether they're a case of Jekyll & Hyde or just Obfuscating Insanity, as the Goblin tended to focus on people Norman didn't like. Here, Norman is outright afraid of the Goblin, who spreads chaos For the Evulz.
  • Otto Octavius knows Norman Osborn was the Green Goblin — in their home universe, this wasn't commonly known (Norman's own son didn't know about it for a long time), and even if Otto just guessed it, you'd assume it'd have come up when he was interacting with both Peter and Harry in Spider-Man 2.
  • Curtis Connors has no problems recognizing Max Dillon, despite the latter's completely different appearance. However, Connors does mention that Dillon previously had "bad teeth, glasses, and a comb-over".
• Broken Base: In-universe. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, a newscast shows a debate about the inclusion of the Captain America shield on Lady Liberty.
• Broken-Window Warning: Someone hurls a brick through the apartment window while Peter, Happy, and May are discussing Spider-Man's case with Matt Murdock. Attached to the brick is a note that says, "We beleive [sic] Mysterio!"
• Call-Back:
  • Strange brings up how Peter aided him in restoring half the universe, which they did in Avengers: Endgame.
  • When Peter is requesting Strange to undo Mysterio exposing his identity, Strange sympathizes with him but mentions he doesn't have the Time Stone anymore (the only way to Time Travel without creating Alternate Universes) due to him surrendering it to Thanos in Infinity War and then Thanos destroying it before Endgame.
  • Doc Ock's assertion that he "should have killed [Peter's] little girlfriend when I had the chance," serves as a reference to the finale of Spider-Man 2, where Otto captured Mary Jane Watson to lure Spider-Man in. MCU Peter, however, misinterprets this to mean Michelle Jones and begins to fight in earnest.
  • Many of Doctor Strange's most potent spells call back to their use in Doctor Strange. Strange and Spider-Man plummet through a New York City collapsing in on itself in the Mirror Dimension, something Strange learned how to do after facing Kaecilius. Later, Strange pushes Peter's astral form out of his body, much like the Ancient One did to Professor Hulk and Strange himself.
  • When trading notes about villains they've all previously fought, the Raimi-verse Peter notes that he did end up fighting black alien goo in the past, which causes the MCU Peter to bring up the time he fought a purple alien in both space and on Earth. Webb-verse Peter sheepishly replies that he's lame for not having fought one himself, only recalling that the last major villain he's defeated was a Russian guy in a giant rhinoceros suit.
  • When Raimi-verse Peter reunites with a redeemed Octavius in the climax, a delighted Otto asks how Peter's doing. Peter's response ("Trying to do better.") is a call-back to their very first meeting in Spider-Man 2. Otto even recognizes the call-back in-universe and grins knowingly.
  • Also in this scene, the redeemed Otto looks at the Stark arc reactor and recalls his own experiments:
    Otto Octavius: The power of the sun...
    Raimi-verse Peter: In the palm of your hand.
  • Once again, Spider-Man's love interest falls from a significant height during a battle with the Green Goblin. After the MCU Spider-Man fails to catch MJ due to Goblin's interference, the Webb-verse Spider-Man, whose love interest died from a similar situation, swoops in and saves her instead.
  • In Spider-Man, the Green Goblin's presence is so evil and unnerving that Peter's Spidey-Sense goes haywire while he's in a crowd during the World Unity Festival, forcing him to look around for the threat even though the Goblin hasn't shown up yet. The same thing happens in this film, where the Goblin's mere presence sends MCU Peter's "tingle" into hyperdrive while he's in the midst of all the villains, which forces him to look around for the threat and narrow down likely suspects.
  • Raimi-verse Peter mentions that he often perches himself atop the Chrysler Building when he needs to think. Sure enough, this is the exact place Raimi-verse Peter heads to after hunting down and accidentally killing Dennis Carradine. Likewise, Webb-verse Peter mentions that he likes to go to the top of the Empire State Building, as depicted in a deleted scene from The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
  • When descending upon the final battle, the Green Goblin uses the exact line he once taunted Peter over the phone with:
    Green Goblin: Can the Spider-Man come out to play?!
• The Cameo:
  • Early in the movie, Matt Murdock, once again played by Charlie Cox, provides crucial legal advice to Peter Parker.
  • When the boundaries of the universe split open at the climax of the movie, countless silhouetted figures can be seen, about to be pulled into the MCU as a result of the botched spell. Among these are several classic Spider-Man villains, including Scorpion, Kraven the Hunter, and a more comics-accurate Rhino.
  • Eddie Brock and Venom appear as the centerpiece of the mid-credits scene, which itself serves as a follow-up to the post-credits scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
• Canon Welding: This movie reintroduces characters from the Spider-Man Trilogy by Sam Raimi and The Amazing Spider-Man Series by Marc Webb and establishes this movies' continuities as canon within the wider multiverse of the MCU. The Stinger also shows Tom Hardy's Venom briefly stranded in the MCU, also confirming that Sony's Spider-Man Universe is also part of said multiverse.
• Cassandra Truth: Peter tries to tell the police that Mysterio killed himself via the drones he was controlling, meaning that he is innocent. However, they counter that the drones were owned by Peter (which is true, as the sunglasses Tony gave Peter posthumously were registered to him).
• Casual Danger Dialogue: During the Final Battle, MCU Peter tries pitching the idea of teaming up to his variants by briefly boasting that he was in the Avengers. Neither of the other Peters know what that is, and Webb-verse Peter wonders aloud whether the Avengers are actually a band.
• The Cavalry: When it appears the Spider-Men are outmatched and the villains are going to win, Doc Ock arrives in time to shut down Electro's powers.
• Ceiling Smash: In the apartment battle, Lizard throws Peter through a window where he is caught by Osborn and smashed into the ceiling.
• Celebrity Paradox: Doctor Strange telling the kids to "Scooby-Doo this shit" is one, since Linda Cardellini (the live-action Velma) plays Laura Barton in the MCU.
• Central Theme:
  • Forgiveness, towards those who have hurt and wronged you, and more importantly towards yourself. Peter's friends are understanding of him turning to Strange to try and erase all knowledge of who he is from the universe so they can have their lives back, making them True Companions to the end. Thanks to Matt Murdock, Peter is legally forgiven, but isn't socially forgiven by a public who believes Mysterio is the true hero. And Peter isn't willing to forgive Green Goblin when he kills Aunt May, or himself for letting it happen, but the other-universe Peters warn him that not doing so can lead down a dark path, especially seeing as they took a long time to forgive themselves for losing their Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy respectively.
  • The second theme is how those with power should act, featuring Aunt May, Doctor Strange, and the Green Goblin as The Good, the Bad, and the Evil respectively, counseling Spider-Man on what he should do. Aunt May is most moral of the three and tells Peter he should always help others no matter what, Doctor Strange is ruthlessly pragmatic and preaches The Needs of the Many, and Goblin believes that superhumans shouldn't be constrained by morality and should do whatever they want.
  • Second chances, both In-Universe and out. The crux of the conflict between Peter and Stephen is that Spider-Man wants the villains to have a chance to redeem themselves while Doctor Strange wants to send them back to their certain deaths for the sake of the Multiverse. At the climax, Peter explicity chooses to take the fight to "a place that represents second chances": the Statue of Liberty. Furthermore, mostly everyone involved in the battle gets a second chance: Webb-Verse Peter gets to save MJ after having failed Gwen Stacy, Raimi-Verse Peter manages to cure Norman instead of having him impaled with his own glider again and the villains get cured and are sent back with another shot at a righteous life. On a meta example, Andrew Garfield gets a second chance to make a good impression as Spider-Man after his series got the weakest reception out of all the theatrical live-action incarnations of the character. As well as Tom Holland, who gets another shot at being the Spidey fans expected him to be in the first place: more mature and independent.
• Chekhov's Gag: Ned tells Doctor Strange early in the film that his family is acquainted with magic. This is treated as a joke. Then, Peter manages to snag Strange's Sling Ring from the good doctor during their battle, and gives it to Ned for safekeeping. And then he starts opening portals...
• Chekhov's Gun: Matt Murdock notes to Happy that he is under investigation by the FBI for missing Stark Industries technology, which Peter discovers to be a fabricator while trying to clean paint off of his suit. The fabricator becomes the key to curing the five villains, before Electro steals the arc reactor powering it.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The Spider-Men from the villains' respective universes are frequently mentioned in their earlier scenes.
  • The Raimi-verse Peter mentions his universe's Venom when sharing Rogues Gallery tidbits with his fellow Spider-Men. While it isn't resurrected and transported into the MCU like the main villains, its Alternate Self from another universe did and it left a part of it in the MCU.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Peter has this in abundance, given that it would be far easier to let the supervillains all die instead of helping solve their afflictions. It costs him dearly, but he ultimately succeeds in this goal.
• Coincidental Broadcast: Back at home when Peter tries to hide the bad news about his identity reveal from May, the TV running in the background shows a live broadcast with footage of their building.
• Collapsible Helmet: The collapsible nature of the Iron Spider nanotech suit becomes a plot point during the fight against Doctor Octopus. After ripping off the nanobots covering Spider-Man's chest and integrating them in his tentacles, Doc Ock goes for a deadly strike to the heart. The Iron Spider armor reconfigures to provides protection, but it's clearly low on nanomachines at this point and thus takes away those that were constituting Spidey's mask in the process. This ends up as a Dramatic Unmask for Octavius, who now realizes that the superhero he's fighting is not "his" Peter Parker.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: It's a subtle detail, but the lights inside the pincers of Doctor Octopus's tentacles are red at the start (while they are in control), then turn blue as Spider-Man gets control of them through nanomachines, and finally are white after the control chip is repaired and Otto Octavius is back to his true self.
• Comical Coffee Cup: Doctor Strange is holding a mug saying "Oh for [...] sake" with a drawing of a fox after "for" when Peter arrives at the Sanctum to ask for his help.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Doctor Strange expresses frustration that Peter tried to change an extremely dangerous spell six times, Peter insists that it was only five.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: While Flint briefly calls Norman and Otto by their supervillain names when explaining their deaths, and Flint is called Sandman by both Max and the Spider-Men in the final battle, for the most part all of the villains are called by their real names (even Connors, who is stuck in Lizard form for 90% of the film). Norman is the exception — due to his status as a supervillain being dependent on his Split Personality, he is called both Norman Osborn and the Green Goblin, but which name is used depends on which of those two personalities is in control.
• Compartment Shot: When Ned looks into the fridge at the Undercroft, only to find it filled with living specimens in jars.
• Connected All Along:
  • This film retroactively establishes that Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius were acquainted with each other in their original continuity. Amusingly, despite an earlier scene of Octavius expressing confusion about the Peter native to the MCU and it being established he knew his universe's Curt Connors, neither he, nor the Peter he and Norman dealt with, express confusion about the Connors of The Amazing Spider-Man Series being a British, lizard monster.
  • Speaking of the Lizard of the Amazing Spider-Man film, it's also shown Curt Connors and Max Dillon not only worked for their universe's Oscorp, but also likewise personally knew each other — and similarly neither of them (and in Connors' case, given the nature of his work, probably knew their Norman Osborn personally) or even their Peter Parker, whose father works with Connors and Osborn, express confusion about the Spider-Man Trilogy Green Goblin not looking like their Osborn. Or given the Green Goblin being subjected to the Decomposite Character treatment, why the Peter of that universe doesn't express confusion over the Goblin not looking like Harry Osborn.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Multiple items from Tony Stark's past make a return in Happy's apartment, such as Dum-E, the Stark Expo display from Iron Man 2, and the New Element Arc Reactor, which powers a Stark Tech fabricator.
• Continuity Nod: Has its own page.
• Conveniently Empty Building: For whatever reason, Happy Hogan's condo is devoid of any people outside of the multiversal villains and the Parkers that are visiting it. It becomes particularly egregious when the Green Goblin begins smashing Peter through its walls and floors and not a single person is seen in any of the other rooms, much less reacting to what's happening.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: While Peter manages to avoid getting any legal charges for what transpired in his previous film thanks to Matt Murdock, a good portion of the public still believes that he's guilty of murder. The backlash against him is severe enough that none of the colleges he applied to will admit him or his friends as students.
• Cosmic Retcon: The goal of the spell is to erase everyone's memory of Spider-Man's secret identity, and it going wrong leads to the greater conflict in the story. It later succeeds, but in so doing, everyone forgets who Peter Parker is.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: After the initial memory spell fails, Doctor Strange asks Peter why he didn't just call the admissions department at MIT and ask them to reconsider MJ and Ned's applications before coming to ask for magical assistance. Played with in that the one in charge of these applications only reconsiders after Peter saves her life from a supervillain, and MIT refusing their applications was just one of many problems that arose from Peter's secret identity being revealed.
  Dr Strange: I'm sorry. Are you telling me that you didn't even think to plead your case with them first before you ask me to brainwash the entire world?
  Peter: Well, I mean when you put it like that then...
  [Dr. Strange kicks Peter out]
• Creative Closing Credits: The credits are shown in Homecoming-esque notebook sketches with Alien Geometries such as the Penrose Triangle while De La Soul's "The Magic Number" plays. Once it gets to the cast, it's either drawings of their faces or graphic representations of the characters.
• Creator Cameo:
  • A variation. When Peter and M.J. are lying on the school roof, on the wall higher up on the roof is a graffiti tag that reads "DITKO". Similar grafitti also appears on the side of the white van with the Lizard inside. Steve Ditko was the artist who co-created Spider-Man along with Stan Lee.
  • One of the apprentices shoveling snow in the Sanctum Sanctorum is played by Emily Fong, an associate producer on the film.
• Creepy Basement: When Strange tells the trio they can work in The Undercroft, Ned looks joyful at the prospect. "... The Undercroft?". Subverted when it turns out the Undercroft is just a regular basement, with washing machines and stored junk, just like any other. Double Subverted when Ned still acts amazed. Then played straight when, at the far end of the Undercroft, we find Doctor Strange's improvised prison.
• Crisis Crossover: The film features all three live-action-movie Spider-Men teaming up against a Legion of Doom consisting of most of their villains.
• Crossover Finale: The film is the finale of the first trilogy of Spider-Man films in the MCU, and is a crossover with the Spider-Man Trilogy and The Amazing Spider-Man Series.
• Cross Through: Like with Hawkeye, this movie has the 2024 Christmas holidays in New York as a setting, with Peter even swinging by the Rockefeller tree that would eventually be knocked down by Clint and Kate during their scuffle with the Tracksuit Mafia. That said, the two stories don't meaningfully intersect with each other (outside of a mutual inclusion of characters from Daredevil) due to them being rooted in different circumstances, one being a massive Intercontinuity Crisis Crossover, and the other being a grounded, light-hearted Christmas-themed action series.
• Cue the Sun: The sun rises during the Final Battle.
• Darker and Edgier: Easily the darkest Spider-Man film to date. After his identity is exposed, Peter and his loved ones are in greater danger than ever before. When the multiverse villains get involved, their tragic lives and inevitable downfalls are discussed in detail, and Peter's attempt to prevent their fates eventually results in the death of Aunt May. To make matters worse, Green Goblin very nearly causes Peter to cross the Thou Shalt Not Kill line in a blind rage, only being stopped by Raimi-verse Peter. Even when the day is saved, Peter's situation doesn't get much better, as he has to let his remaining friends forget ever knowing him, and is completely alone by the end of the film.
• Darkest Hour: May has been murdered by the Goblin, all the villains are on the loose, Happy has been arrested, the Bugle has taken the opportunity to drag Peter's name through the mud even further, MJ and Ned have no clue where Peter is, and Peter is at his lowest point and has given up hope, until his alternate selves come to convince him to carry on.
• Dead Man's Switch: Peter hands the Macchina di Kadavus to MJ and tells the villains that she would push the button and send them back to their home dimensions if anything happened to him.
• Death by Adaptation: Aunt May, who is fine in the comics and most of the other media, is killed by the Green Goblin.
• Death Glare: Once MCU Peter crashes Green Goblin's glider with one of his pumpkin bombs, the webslinger shoots a chillingly dark one at the villain when he taunts him about May's death. Cue him going apeshit on Osborn and trying to impale him with his own glider.
• A Death in the Limelight: May Parker's relationship with Peter is given far more attention compared to their previous films and she receives her longest screentime to date. She dies halfway through the film.
• Decomposite Character: It is not in fact Uncle Ben who taught MCU Peter that "with great power comes great responsibility", even though it's heavily implied that Peter learned that lesson from his uncle based on his line in Captain America: Civil War. It's in fact Aunt May, who appropriately dies soon thereafter.
• Deconstruction:
  • The MCU has become famous for breaking the trend in superhero films of making the secret identity part of the movie. No Way Home shows some of the worst consequences that can come out of that aspect. Peter is publicly shamed and treated as a monster by news outlets and mobs from his framed crime and finds himself in legal trouble and losing opportunities for his future, with his friends receiving the same punishments. Even the people that continue to hail him as a hero still overcrowd him, ignoring his socially awkward personality, and give him little room to breathe. While it works for Tony's forward and extraverted personality, Peter's shy and introverted personality makes it a living hell.
  • The movie posthumously calls out Tony Stark's tendency to put little thought into his actions and grand gestures to the people he likes. While giving E.D.I.T.H. to Peter showed how much he cared and trusted Peter, it was never a good idea in the first place to just hand over what amounts to a Weapon of Mass Destruction to a teenager and not tell anyone besides Nick Fury about it. Even with the charges dropped, Peter has to deal with the ramifications of how he allowed such a thing to fall into Mysterio's hands and Stark Industries finds itself in hot water because of its late CEO's actions.
  • The MCU Spider-Man movies have a reputation of being much more lighthearted than the previous iterations with fight scenes using heavy CGI. In this movie, Peter's inexperience in dealing with "heavy" subjects leaves him a bit out of his depth with trying to handle the villains' legitimate problems and fates. His inexperience with handling anyone who can match him blow for blow allows for the Green Goblin to utterly pummel him during their first fight, leaving Peter too injured to save May.
  • The concept of the classic lab accident villain trope that makes up many of Spider-Man's villains is put under the microscope by focusing on the humanity of the villains. Norman Osborn when he manages to regain control isn't a manic villain to be feared but a scared, lost man living in fear of when the Goblin will resurface and Max Dillon who was previously victimized has come to place a lot of his self worth in his powers as a means to give himself some control over his life. Peter realizes that they're people in need of help and resolves to help them be rid of their demons, especially given that they're set to die if they return in their current state.
• Demoted to Extra: Much of the trilogy's recurring cast have their roles cut down significantly due to the plot getting much, much bigger with other characters to service. Betty Brant, Coach Wilson, Mr. Harrington, and Mr. Dell all appear in only one scene towards the beginning of the film (Harrington was notably Peter's most prominent teacher in previous films, and Betty had a supporting role as Ned's girlfriend in the prior film). Flash also disappears from the movie after serving a brief role in the first thirty minutes. That said, the Extended More Fun Stuff edition gives Betty in particular a bigger role; one scene shows her interviewing people about the revelation that Peter is Spider-Man, and a post-credits Stinger shows her giving her final news report to Midtown High before graduation.
• Dented Iron: Related to Feeling Their Age, both Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peters talk about they've got health issues including low-back pain. Justified as even with spider-powers, they're two men who aren't teenagers anymore and can't bounce back like they used to.
• Description Cut: After Peter muses his secret identity being exposed might not be a big deal, the scene immediately cuts to Jameson further dragging his name through the mud (with placards protesting to arrest Peter) along with him slandering MJ and Ned's names as well for being his (supposed) cronies.
• Desperate Object Catch: When the Goblin throws one of his pumpkin bombs at May, Peter jumps after it and barely diverts it away in time before it explodes. Sadly, the Goblin's glider stabbing May was already enough to kill her, making the act pointless.
• Destination Defenestration: Subverted. The Goblin throws Peter through the window of Happy's apartment but the latter is able to pull himself back in using his webbing skills.
• Destructive Savior:
  • Defied after Peter captures Electro and Sandman. After making sure that Flint and Max got through safely, Peter makes sure to repair the damage done to the electricity towers/lines, as he fears that leaving them in their wrecked state would cause the media to blame him for more senseless destruction again.
  • Downplayed with the Statue of Liberty in the climax. While Peter and his variants do cause the renovations added to the Statue to be destroyed, the statue itself is relatively untouched.
• Detect Evil: The Green Goblin's evil personality is apparently so dangerous, Peter's Spider-Sense goes off the moment it surfaces, Peter carefully scoping out the room before correctly deducing that it was Norman causing it.
• Deus Exit Machina:
  • Wong is shown leaving the Sanctum Sanctorum to parts unknown fairly early in the story, as his more advanced expertise in magic compared to Strange would've likely averted much of the plot. Later invoked by Strange after the spell goes awry, as he really doesn't want Wong to find out how badly he and Peter screwed up.
  • Doctor Strange himself gets trapped in the Mirror Dimension midway through the film, leaving only Spider-Man and his alternate selves to stop the multiversal villains. He later returns for the climax, only to be occupied with holding back the multiversal spell after the Green Goblin unleashes it.
• Did Not Get the Girl:
  • Webb-verse Peter mentions he didn't have anyone special at home, meaning he didn't get or stay together with his universe's version of Spidey's canonical love interests such as Mary Jane Watson or Felicia Hardy since Gwen died — or at the least, he didn't get together with either yet.
  • Peter having Strange wipe everyone's minds results in MJ completely forgetting everything that they ever went through. When Peter goes to her to fill her in, he decides to let MJ live her life instead rather than upend it and ask her to sacrifice everything for him — even though she demanded he find her again.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • A Fatal Flaw of Peter comes through in that he rushes so quickly to try a solution or fix his mistakes that he doesn't actually think through a plan, which regularly backfires on him throughout the film.
    • Peter seeks out Strange's help in removing the world's knowledge of his secret identity. It's only when Strange begins to cast the relevant spell that Peter learns this will also affect his loved ones, something he doesn't want to happen, and his inability to stop asking Doctor Strange to modify the spell to exclude them while Strange is casting the spell is what causes the entire film to happen (in Peter's defense, this is more Strange's fault, as Strange should have been absolutely crystal clear with Peter about exactly what the effects of the spell would be before he even started).
    • Peter's first choice when faced with the possibility of being denied entry to university along with his friends was to ask Strange to remove everyone's memories of him being Spider-Man, as opposed to appealing to the school admissions board, as Strange himself points out.
    • Peter's first acquaintances with Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, and Electro are with them attacking him with intent to harm or kill. Furthermore, later on he even learns that each of them was in the middle of a battle to the death with the Spider-Man of their native dimension respectively, moments before they were transported to his dimension (and would've died if they were not). This, in conjunction with their overall behaviour, should've told him to be careful and watchful about them. Yet, without first even creating any means of immediate control over them, or even restricting their freedom of movement (e.g. by tying their hands), he decides to not only free them all from their cells, but even bring them to Happy Hogan's apartment, where they are free to interact with his aunt and be potential sources of danger to her. This gets lampshaded by the Green Goblin after he takes back control of Norman Osborn's body, who points out on several occasions how stupid and poorly planned Peter's actions were: "I may have struck the blow. But you? You are the one that killed her."
  • The consequences of Tony Stark gifting Peter Parker E.D.I.T.H. as a grand gesture continues in this movie as it not only ruins Peter's life but also puts Stark Industries, his own company, in legal hot water.
  • As MJ points out, Dr. Strange immediately rushed to cast an extremely dangerous and complex spell when Peter came to ask him for help. Had Strange bothered to actually try to talk to Peter about the problems he was facing, he could have pointed out that Peter could simply plead his case with the person handling admissions for MIT before any magic happened and the entire film could have been averted. Relatedly, once deciding magic is the way to fix this problem, Strange could have explained the spell and its effects before starting to cast it, allowing Peter to add his list of who should forget and who shouldn't before casting, instead of during.
• Dies Wide Open: Aunt May dies with her eyes open, with Peter slowly realising that she's gone.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: When Ned is interrogated by an agent of Damage Control over his involvement in Peter Parker's career as Spider-Man, the agent accuses Ned of staying quiet when he learned from MJ about Spider-Man's true identity, prompting Ned to immediately correct him that he knew Peter was Spider-Man way before MJ did and that he even helped Peter out in his fight against Adrian Toomes/The Vulture. The agent then turns this around by saying that this would make Ned an actual accomplice in Peter's "crimes" instead of just a suspect as he initially assumed.
• Digital De-Aging: Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius and Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn receive nearly 20 years of de-aging each.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": Zig-Zagged. Strange assures Peter that he can drop the formalities thanks to them having saved the universe together. Peter decides to adopt a First-Name Basis, which Strange reluctantly agrees to. After Peter pisses him off with the botched spell, Strange retorts that Peter should call him "Sir" instead, but upon realizing that everyone, including him, will forget Peter's identity, Strange accepts the First-Name Basis one last time.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: After Goblin convinces the other villains to seize their future, Electro requests Peter to hand him the spell so that he doesn't have to kill him to do it.
• Double-Meaning Title: "No Way Home" is both true of the multiversal characters who do not have a way to return to their own worlds, and in the case of the villains their lives, and Peter himself. At the end of the movie, he literally has no home to go back to at all.
• Downtime Downgrade: After the somewhat ambiguous nature of their relationship at the end of Far From Home, Aunt May and Happy break up in their first scene in this movie.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Dr. Octavius easily realizes what happened to Norman Osborn, calling him a "ghost", but has much more difficulty realizing the exact same thing (dying during his encounter with Raimi-verse Spider-Man and being resurrected many years later in MCU) has happened to him as well.
• Dramatic Curtain Toss: When Peter pulls the sheet to uncover the fabricator in Happy's home.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Peter is surprised when Matt Murdock catches a brick thrown into the Parkers' apartment, unaware of his special abilities or his superhero career.
  • When Tobey Maguire's Raimi-verse Peter Parker steps through his second portal, Ned disappointedly remarks that it's "just some random guy", unaware that he's face-to-face with the first cinematic Spider-Man and that the audience is no doubt reacting very differently to the sight of him.
  • After being depowered and receiving a pep talk from his Spider-Man, Max Dillon admits that he assumed his Peter (a working-class hero from Queens) would be black, and further wonders aloud that there must be a black Spider-Man out there in the multiverse.
• Dramatic Shattering: The first time we see Norman Osborn (just after we first see the Green Goblin), he's tormented by his evil counterpart speaking once again through his mask. This time, Norman's had enough of the Goblin and smashes the mask to pieces.
• Dressed in Layers: Raimi-verse Peter's introduction has him dressed like a "cool youth pastor" (in the words of Webb-verse Peter) instead of a Spidey suit, and he's even mistaken for a random guy by Ned. When asked by Webb-verse Peter whether he needs a suit to fight the villains, he pulls the collar of his shirt, revealing that he always has the suit on under his street clothes.

Tropes E–H

• Earn Your Happy Ending: The film somehow exaggerates and downplays this trope at the same time. This film is able to serve as a Grand Finale to every live-action Spider-Man film released this century. All of the supervillains are "cured" and left in a place where they will be more well-adjusted upon returning to their worlds, presumably to avoid their deaths in their respective movies, and the other two Spider-Men have gained a sense of closure, being able to either symbolically or literally fix their greatest mistakes. The Downplayed part comes in the form of the Heroic Sacrifice of this continuity's Spider-Man voluntarily becoming un-personed, to the point that he would no longer need to hide his Secret Identity because no one has any memory of meeting Peter Parker.
• Eldritch Location: Once again, the Mirror Dimension, warping the surrounding space like a kaleidoscope and enabling Doctor Strange to make a train fold in on itself. Strange pulls Spider-Man into it after Spidey steals a box containing the spell that will return the visitors to their home dimensions. That said, its nature as "eldritch" is subverted as Peter realizes that the mirror world may not obey conventional laws of physics but it does obey the laws of math as the warped scenery is fractal, which allows him to get the upper hand on the infinitely more powerful Doctor Strange.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Sand is a terrible conductor of electricity, so Sandman can use his Sand Blaster powers to stop Electro's rampaging lightning.^note No word on whether or not fulgurites are generated, though.
• Enemy Mine: While Marko doesn't like Spider-Man, he has no qualms against this version of Peter Parker, and helps him contain Electro. When Electro is transported into the Sanctum, Marko turns on Peter, believing he just executed the guy, forcing Peter to send him over, too.
• Establishing Character Moment: The other Peters each get one in their shared first scene.
  • Webb-verse Peter hops through the portal in full costume, geeks out about the mechanics of the multiverse, and has to jump through some hoops to prove he's really Spider-Man. He's the most enthusiastic and emotional of the Peters, but also something of a No-Respect Guy.
  • Raimi-verse Peter casually steps through the portal in street clothes, gets the better of Webb-verse Peter in a quick web-slinging duel, and expresses a desire to help the MCU Peter along with providing the idea that lets Ned and MJ find him. He's a grounded but skilled and experienced Spider-Man and acts as a Big Brother Mentor to the others.
  • For both of them, they obscure one aspect of their identities, Webb-verse Peter not carrying ID proving he's Peter Parker and Raimi-verse Peter not introducing himself as Spider-Man, and defend the idea using the exact same phrase, that doing otherwise would "defeat the whole anonymous superhero thing". This shows that despite their differences, the Peters are very similar people.
• "Eureka!" Moment: When Wong teases Strange by telling Peter that Strange is good at forgetting things, the latter gets the idea about the Spell of Forgetting.
• Evil Is Easy: Downplayed to the effect of "Cynical Pragmatism Is Easy". Early conflict between Spidey and Strange consists of Spidey wanting to help everyone while Strange prefers to stay out of their business and send them home. Considering the cost Spidey has to pay for it, there's no doubt cynical pragmatism is a lot easier.
• Exact Words:
  • The amnesia spell Dr. Strange prepares for is to make everyone forget "Peter Parker is Spider-Man," and he makes it clear that he himself will be included. Peter is shocked by this and, instead of asking Strange to start over, he interferes and asks to have each person in his inner circle still keep their memories.
    • Peter's wording that "everyone who knew that I was Spider-Man before should still know" during Strange's amnesia spell ends up pulling in everyone across the multiverse who "knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man" into the MCU, which kicks off the main conflict of the film.
    • During the climax, Peter asks Dr. Strange to redo the original amnesia spell to make everyone, even his friends and family, forget that "Peter Parker is Spider-Man," but Strange says they've passed the Point of No Return. Peter then asks him to create a fresh spell to negate the old botched one: "Make everyone forget Peter Parker." When the spell is completed, there are implications that the events of the movie still exist in one way or another, but as far as Peter Parker is concerned, no one knows he's Spider-Man because he doesn't even exist in people's eyes.
  • Among the people who were pulled in were the Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Parker, since they obviously know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man by virtue of the fact that they are the Peter Parker/Spider-Man of their universe.
  • Ned uses the Sling Ring to "find Peter Parker". However, he doesn't specify his Peter Parker, and thus he connects to both Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Parker instead.
  • As Peter and Happy commiserate at Aunt May's grave, Happy asks Peter how he knew her. He answers, "Through Spider-Man."
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Happens first to Otto and then Electro when each begins to detail their battles with Spider-Man...and then it slowly sinks in for them that they were about to die.
  Flint: They both died fighting Spider-Man. It was all over the news. Green Goblin, impaled by the glider you flew around on. And a couple of years later, you, Doc Ock, drowned in the river with your machine.
  Otto: That's nonsense! Spider-Man was trying to stop my fusion reactor, so I stopped him. I had him by the throat, and then... I was right here.
  Max: Oh, please! Let me tell you something, I was whupping Spider-Man's ass — he'll tell you! And then he caused an overload. I was stuck in the grid absorbing data, I was about to turn into pure energy, and then, then the... oh, shit. I was about to die.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Delivered by Spider-Man to Norman in their final battle. What starts as a fight quickly turns into MCU Peter savagely beating a defeated Norman, and would have ended with Norman impaled if Raimi-verse Peter hadn't intervened.
• Face Framed in Shadow: Raimi-verse Peter before emerging from the ring portal.
• Face/Heel Double-Turn: Doc Ock starts the movie as the most antagonistic of the multiversal villains, resisting Peter's attempts to cure him and continuing to struggle after he's been captured, while Norman Osborn is the friendliest, willingly turning himself in and actively helping Peter's efforts in the hope of being free of the Goblin. Over the course of the sequence in Happy's apartment, these roles are reversed, as Peter fixes Octavius's inhibitor chip, allowing him to take control of his mind back from his arms, while the Goblin takes back control of his body from Norman, and becomes the Big Bad for the rest of the film.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Flash, on his phone, is so shocked by the news that Peter Parker is Spider-Man that he fails to notice Peter and MJ dropping into a subway through a grate a couple of feet behind him.
  • In The Stinger, after Eddie Brock and Venom are send back to their universe by Doctor Strange's spell, the bartender Eddie was talking to can only grumble about his customer disappearing without paying for his drinks, all the while failing to notice that a part of the Venom symbiote has been left behind on the counter...
• Failed Attempt at Drama:
  • Upon getting the rejection letter from MIT, MJ shows that she's moving on from it by ripping it up. Ned attempts to follow this behavior by ripping his letter up as well, but then he gets second thoughts and gathers the scraps to show to his parents.
  • When Doctor Strange shows up in his mansion, he regally flies down the stairs thanks to the Cloak of Levitation... only to slip on the icy floor and struggle to maintain his balance on landing.
  • During the final battle, when the three Spider-Men have trouble coordinating since two of them have never worked in a team before. MCU Peter steps up as leader, as he decides to briefly brag that he was in the Avengers. This falls flat as his two variants come from universes where they're the only known superheroes, meaning the Avengers don't exist.
• Fanservice:
  • MCU Peter Parker gets an obligatory Shirtless Scene in the beginning of the film.
  • Later, when Electro regains his human form, not only has he gone from a nerd with a balding head to a muscular man with nice hair, but he is left completely naked, though only his upper torso is visible.
• The Farmer and the Viper:
  • Aunt May convinces Peter to not go through with sending the supervillains back home without curing them, which would condemn them to die, after she meets Norman Osborn. Green Goblin thanks her by killing her in order to drive Peter to villainy.
  • Raimi-verse Peter saves Green Goblin's life by stopping an enraged MCU Peter from impaling him on his own glider. Green Goblin repays the act by literally backstabbing him.
• Fearful Symmetry: Briefly. When Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peters meet, they immediately fire webs at each other at the same time while doing a flip to dodge the other's attack. Raimi-verse Spider-Man then demonstrates faster thinking by firing with his other hand to disable Webb-verse Spider-Man's web shooter.
• Feeling Their Age: The Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peters complain that their superhero careers have started to cause back pain (also serving as a bit of a gag, reflecting Tobey Maguire's back problems after filming his first Spider-Man movie).
• File Photo Gag: A broadcast uses a photo of Happy Hogan from the 90s when he had a horrible mullet. He visibly cringes at the picture when he sees it.
• First-Name Basis:
  • When Doctor Strange tells Peter that they saved half the universe together and as such are past formalities, Peter calls him "Stephen". Peter loses that privilege after screwing with Strange's spell multiple times, but once he's proved that he can redeem and save all the displaced villains from other universes and is willing to let the world forget Peter Parker, Strange allows him to use "Stephen" again.
  • Raimi-verse Peter refers to Doc Ock as "Otto" when they meet instead of the usual "Dr. Octavius".
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Four of the five returning villains are explicitly mentioned as being plucked from the past on their respective universe. While Sandman is obviously from a time post Spider-Man 3, he still looks very much the same as he looked during that time. A downplayed examples since Villains Blend in Better and there is actually hiccup resulting from their displacement.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • Before Matt Murdock is revealed to be Peter's lawyer, we see a white walking stick.
  • Anyone who knows about college admissions can immediately tell Ned, Peter, and MJ were all rejected from MIT because they all have small envelopes. Students who have been accepted to college usually receive a big packet including brochures about the school and enrollment paperwork, leading to a "big envelope."
  • Stephen Strange is explicitly not the Sorcerer Supreme, with Wong instead getting the position (Strange attributes that to him having been Blipped for five years). However skilled he may be, he still doesn't know everything. Indeed, upon being distracted by Peter's constant second-guessing, he botches a very dangerous spell that Wong warned him about.
  • Just before Doc Ock appears on the bridge, his Leitmotif from Spider-Man 2 can faintly be heard as Peter's Spider-Sense goes off.
  • When Peter thinks he is tracking Green Goblin (but actually finds Electro) the dirt is seen moving around in odd ways as if something is burrowing in it. Peter even asks if MJ and Ned saw it. When Electro shows up, Sandman defends him soon after.
  • When Octavius, with a newly replaced inhibitor chip, tells Osborn that his darker half is about to be erased, the latter responds, "Just me?" in a much darker, gravelly tone than before. Soon, Peter's Spider-Sense kicks in, indicating to him that the evil Green Goblin persona has taken over Osborn.
  • During the aforementioned Spider-Sense scene, the Goblin's laughter can quietly be heard as Peter is trying to figure out where the threat is, indicating that it's him causing the sense to go off.
  • May delivers Uncle Ben's classic power-and-responsibility line about thirty seconds before Peter realizes she's bleeding out.
  • The Spider-Man Ned and MJ see through a portal that Ned opened looks a little too giddy for a guy who saw his aunt die less than an hour ago, along with having noticeable differences to his costume. He's also taller than the Peter we know, we even have a nearby dumpster for reference. It turns out this Spider-Man is from another universe. And considering who this Spider-Man is, everyone in the audience knows who's coming next the moment MJ tells Ned to keep searching for Peter.
  • In the climax, when Strange takes back the box from Green Goblin, we get a reaction shot for each Spider-Man. The reason? Their Spider-Sense went off, because Goblin slid a Pumpkin Bomb into the box.
• Fly-at-the-Camera Ending: The film concludes with Peter swinging upwards in his Fresh Start suit and falling towards the camera.
• Foil:
  • Doctor Strange serves as a foil for Peter in the movie's second act. Once the villains have been captured, Strange and Peter's mistake (botching the spell) has now been fixed. The pragmatic Strange is happy to send all the villains home to take their chances fighting Spider-Man (and likely die), since they're all villains and since sending them back makes sure there'll be no universal destruction. However, the idealistic Peter wants to save everyone, the villains included, so he prevents Strange sending them back and takes them away to cure them. It shows that those two are different kinds of superheroes.
  • Raimi-verse Peter and Webb-verse Peter are this to each other. The first is visibly older, has seemingly managed to keep a healthy balance between his civilian and superhero lives, and is implied to have married his world's Mary Jane. Webb-verse Peter, on the other hand, doesn't look much older from when he was last seen, and the death of his world's Gwen has caused him to fully commit to being Spider-Man as a way of coping, meaning he hasn't grown much as a person. This is even reflected in their respective entrances; Webb-verse Peter jumps through the portal into Ned's house fully costumed, while Raimi-verse Peter walks in wearing civilian clothing.
• Foreshadowing:
  • After Matt Murdock informs Peter that the charges against him won't be pursued, he goes on to tell Happy that he's under investigation due to some Stark Tech going missing. Peter winds up finding a Stark Industries fabricator hidden in a back room in Happy's condo.
  • When Peter first proposes to the supervillains that they let him fix what happened with them to make sure they don't get killed when they return home, Norman momentarily adopts a narrow-eyed squint with an oddly disapproving look on his face. Anyone who has seen the first film of the Raimi trilogy knows that expression is a Character Tic meaning the Goblin is currently in control, and an early notice that he knows what they're up to, and he's not going to let it happen uncontested.
  • Strange scolds Peter for ruining his spell six times, but only results in five villains. Later, when comparing rogues galleries, the Raimi-verse Spider-Man tells the MCU Spider-Man about his universe's iteration of the Venom symbiote from Spider-Man 3. The Sony's Spider-Man Universe iteration of Venom had been warped to the MCU at the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and while he returns home before he can do much of anything, a piece of the SSU Venom symbiote is conspicuously left behind.
  • When Ned meets Strange, he asks him about his magic, saying his grandmother always told him that magic ran in their family and that he always had "these tinglings in his hands", before Strange dismisses him. Later in the film, while Ned and MJ are lamenting being unable to see Peter after Aunt May dies, he realizes that he can open sling rings when he waves his hands. By doing that and saying "I wish I could see Peter," he is able to summon the Webb-verse and Raimi-verse incarnations of Peter Parker. Moreover, when he and Peter do their Secret Handshake — while Ned has a Sling Ring in his hand — there are magic sparks.
  • In Spider-Man 2, when Otto gets hit with electricity to the extent that his inhibitor chip is destroyed, we get a close-up shot of it happening. That was the very moment Otto became a villain. But in this movie, after Electro shoots lightning at him in Happy's apartment, none of the bolts are seen hitting his new inhibitor chip, nor do we get a repeat of that close-up shot. This observation actually foreshadows Otto's confirmation of his Heel–Face Turn in the final battle.
  • It's subtle, but one of the first things Doc Ock says to Peter when he first shows up is "I should've killed your little girlfriend when I had the chance." When Peter gets up, he asks, "What'd you just say?" in a tone eerily similar to the one he uses later when he tells the Goblin he wants to kill him himself for killing Aunt May. Foreshadowing that killing or threatening to kill one of his loved ones is enough to push him over the edge.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Mr. Harrington shows the Peter exhibit the students (or just Mr. Harrington) made, you can see a picture of Peter, MJ, and Harrington... except Harrington clearly just took a poorly cut/ripped out photo of him and put it in the frame on top of the original picture.
  • When the spell goes awry, an eye can be seen in the center of the screen.^note This ultimately goes nowhere. It could have been an Early-Bird Cameo of Gargantos, but even then, it is killed by Strange in the first act of the movie.
  • When Strange pushes Peter's Astral form out of his body, Peter's head has transparent versions of the classic wavy Spider-Sense lines.
  • Just before Strange chases Peter into the Mirror Dimension, he runs past a newsstand selling copies of People magazine. The current issue features an exclusive interview with Liz Toomes regarding Peter's outing and calling him a liar.
  • When Otto uses one of his tentacles to stop the Green Goblin from escaping with the magic box, Strange conjures a magic whip and takes back the box. Look closely during Strange's counterattack, and you'll see Otto briefly turn around in shock. Although he saw Strange test a magically-enhanced webshooter from a prison, this is the first time he's seeing magic up-close.
  • The last frame as Peter dives toward the camera replaces him with an image made of comic book Ben Day Dots.
• Freudian Trio: The Rule of Three being the film's Arc Number, it's no surprise different incarnations of this relationship exist.
  • The Peter Parker Trio:
    • MCU Peter is The Id — young, dreamer.
    • Raimi-verse Peter is The Superego — wise, stoic.
    • Webb-verse Peter is The Ego — comical, balanced.
  • Peter and his friends:
    • Peter is The Id — heroic idealist.
    • MJ is The Superego — pessimist.
    • Ned is The Ego — grounded.
  • The returning Raimi-verse villains:
    • Green Goblin is The Id — Ax-Crazy sociopath.
    • Doc Ock is The Superego — prideful, skeptical.
    • Sandman is The Ego — pragmatic.
• Friendly Enemy: Doctor Octopus greets Spider-Man like they're old friends, despite approaching him ominously. Later, Doctor Octopus is surprised that it's not his version of Peter.
• From Bad to Worse: Peter's attempt to magically reestablish his secret identity post-outing ends up causing a crisis of multiversal consequences, causing threats from other realities to get pulled into the MCU.
• Fully Absorbed Finale: The film serves as one to both of the previous Spider-Man film continuities by providing additional narrative closure to those versions of Peter Parker. Webb-verse Spider-Man in particular benefits from this, given his cinematic run was cut short after The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
• Funny Background Event:
  • At F.E.A.S.T., as May takes Peter aside to discuss with him about Norman Osborn, who just showed up, the man in question is shown behind them slowly putting food in his pockets.
  • In the lab scene, when Peter is making one of the antidotes to cure the villains, Webb-Verse Peter is walking erratically from one direction to another, accidentally bumping into Raimi-Verse Peter in the process.
• Fun with Homophones: Peter keeps changing Doctor Strange's spell mid-cast, to an increasingly frustrated Strange. After MJ, Ned, and May, Peter names Happy; Strange responds, "No, I'm annoyed."
• Geometric Magic: A new shape for Doctor Strange's magic is introduced — the dodecahedron in which he seals the amnesia spell, which is the ancient Greek symbol for the universe.
• Ghost Butler: Just as Peter is about to ring the bell of the Sanctum Sanctorum, the doors open up by themselves. And then they close behind him as he enters. It is the dwelling of the Sorcerer Supreme, after all.
• Given Name Reveal: MJ's legal surname turns out to be Jones-Watson rather than simply Jones, this being new information justified by her aggressive statement of "I don't go by Watson," suggesting a grudge against the Watson side of her family. That this makes her "MJ Watson" cements her status as the MCU's version of Mary Jane Watson, something which a couple of inhabitants of the Raimi universe note as an interesting curiosity.
• Glove Snap: As part of the montage of Peters preparing to engineer cures, Webb-verse Peter is shown snapping a disposable glove as he puts it on.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Peter wanted Doctor Strange's initial spell to wipe everyone's memory of him, except for his friends and loved ones. It ends up creating dimensional rifts that summon two Spider-Men, five villains and Venom from different universes, and threatens to destroy the MCU universe if it goes out of control.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: A variation. The Damage Control agent conducting the interrogations plays both roles depending on who he's interrogating, leaning heavily into the "good cop" role while interrogating Ned in order to get him to spill. In spite of Ned knowing he's not supposed to say anything, it works.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: When MCU Peter tells the other Peters he's been part of the Avengers, they have no idea what he's talking about, and Webb-verse Peter immediately starts to think it must mean he was part of a band.
• Good vs. Good: Spider-Man and Doctor Strange fight over the contained spell, with Peter advocating for saving the villains, and Doctor Strange taking the position that the spell is too dangerous and must be undone immediately. They're both right: the Spider-Men are able to cure the villains, but the spell nearly breaks the multiverse and the only way to undo the damage is to erase any trace of Peter's existence.
• Grand Finale: Of the Spider-Man: Home Trilogy, as while a second trilogy is in development and Spider-Man is confirmed to play a role in other non-Spider-Man films, this concludes Peter's life as a high-school student and his character development into a superhero of his own right outside of Tony's shadow.
• Grave-Marking Scene: Towards the end of the movie, Peter visits May's grave and lays a white rose upon it.
• Gray Rain of Depression: A prominent shot late into the film shows a bruised Peter on the verge of tears while it's pouring in the background.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: The very memory of Peter Parker ever having been born is wiped from every living person on Earth and presumably the entire MCU, to prevent the cataclysmic collapse of the entire universe.
• Group Hug: After the final battle, Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peters are leaning on each other when MCU Peter goes to them and grabs them both in a tight hug, thanking them for what they did for him.
• Hallway Fight: Peter and Osborn fight in the hallway of Happy's apartment building and smash their way through the floors into another hallway.
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: In The Stinger, Eddie Brock, displaced from his dimension, is at a bar in Mexico, and his outfit consists of a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Once Peter hits on his idea to cure the villains as a way to avoid their fated deaths in their own universes, only Norman Osborn is fully onboard as he genuinely wants to be free of the Goblin persona. Sandman is distrustful but wants to go home and be with his daughter, while Electro and Lizard are much more grudging and are only persuaded to go along with it because the only other option is to die when they're returned (with Lizard even noting it's not really much of a choice, and fully admits he expects it to end badly). Doctor Octopus is outright hostile to the idea as he's still under the influence of the tentacles but as Peter is still controlling them, he has no say in the matter. Once Peter and Norman are able to make a new inhibitor chip that returns Octavius to the man he was, his Heel–Face Turn becomes complete and genuine, but it's right around this moment the Goblin is able to seize control of Norman. One breaking speech later, the Goblin has turned Electro against the plan to be cured who uses his power to wound Octavius, while Sandman pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here, and Lizard wastes no time in taking his leave either, once he sees Jameson's TV crew pull up and hears that a lot more cops are on the way.
• Headbutt of Love: During the scene in the high school lab, Peter and MJ have a moment where they assure each other things will be fine and press their foreheads together.
• Heel–Face Turn: Doctor Octopus is immensely grateful when Peter frees him from the corrupting influence of his tentacles' advanced AI by repairing his damaged inhibitor chip and is the first to convince the others that Peter can really help them. Later, however, Electro deliberately fries his chip, complete with a crack about liking the old him better... but it turns out the effect is permanent, and Ock plays along until he outs himself as The Cavalry during the final battle by restraining several baddies.
• Heroic BSoD: After watching his Aunt May die in his arms, being subsequently attacked by Damage Control, and J. Jonah Jameson continuing to blame Spider-Man for everything that has happened thus far, Peter completely crumbles emotionally, and is clearly on the brink of giving up all hope. He's thankfully convinced to soldier on by his fellow variants, though it takes them quite a bit of convincing.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Peter makes a non-lethal one; to stop the multiversal incursions, Peter has Doctor Strange cast a spell that erases all memory of Peter Parker, depriving the young Spider-Man of all of his friends and loved ones, forcing him to go on alone.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • Peter calls himself "the dumbest person in the world" for letting MJ and Ned get involved with his Spider-Man mission in Europe, ruining their chances of getting selected in MIT.
  • Upon hearing that the other Spider-Men have fought aliens from space, Webb-verse Peter says the last villain he was faced with was a Russian in a rhino suit and puts himself down as "lame". Raimi-verse Peter assures him that he's "amazing", even making him repeat it.
  • In The Stinger, Eddie Brock calls himself an idiot and asks the bartender to help him understand the basics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe again after he has already explained everything and has been doing the same for hours, according to Venom.
• Hero of Another Story: Several appeared in the film.
  • The biggest ones are the previous two cinematic Spider-Men, who even share some of their adventures with their MCU counterpart and provide him wisdom.
  • Doctor Strange, the eponymous protagonist of his standalone film and (at the time of this film's release) upcoming sequel, is an important ally to Spider-Man here.
  • Matt Murdock, the eponymous protagonist of Daredevil, appears as Peter's lawyer.
  • Eddie Brock and his symbiotic accomplice Venom, the eponymous protagonist of his standalone film and its sequel, appear in The Stinger.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Once bad press about Spider-Man gets out, a substantial amount of people think of him as a menace (much like in the comics) who betrayed the Avengers rather than a local celebrity and hero as seen in his previous appearances. This time, his secret identity is also affected, something that Peter understandably fears will adversely affect his friends and family.
• History Repeats:
  • A multiverse-spanning example, but like in Spider-Man with Mary Jane and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man's love interest falls from a great height and the hero tries to save her. Luckily for MJ, while the MCU Peter is attacked by the Green Goblin before he can reach her, the Webb-verse Peter is able to save her.
  • In the final battle of Spider-Man, Raimi-verse Peter continually pulled the Green Goblin up again so he could beat him back down. MCU Peter does the same thing here as he tries to kill the Goblin, which Raimi-verse Peter sees.
  • As in Captain America: Civil War, one hero stops another from killing an antagonist who isn't in full control of their actions for the death of a guardian. Unlike Tony attempting to kill Bucky for his actions as Winter Soldier escalating into a full-out brawl with Steve, MCU Peter does the right thing and spares Osborn.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark gave his life to save the universe from Thanos. Here, his protégé Peter Parker gives his life (albeit metaphorically) to stop the multiverse from collapsing in on itself. The key difference is that where Stark was remembered as a hero, no-one remembers who Peter is anymore.
• Hope Spot:
  • Aunt May is struck from behind by the Goblin's glider and gets caught in the explosion of a pumpkin bomb, which should have ended her right there and then. Surprisingly, despite her injuries, she's able to get back on her feet, but it doesn't last as she soon collapses and dies in Peter's arms from blood loss.
  • After the Green Goblin grabs the magic box and tries to fly away, Doctor Strange and Doc Ock manage to stop him momentarily and pull it back... unfortunately, he has stuck one of his pumpkin bombs inside it, which explodes, worsening matters.
  • After being declared as fugitives, Venom and Eddie Brock realize they can start over again in this universe full of superheroes. Unfortunately, the moment they make this decision, they are dragged back to their home universe.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Ned discovers that he's able to create sling-ring portals, and while he's exceptionally good for a beginner, he does have trouble with them, usually taking multiple tries to open a portal. During the climactic battle on the Statue of Liberty, he and MJ find themselves in danger when he's unable to close a portal despite numerous attempts.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Ned showing up on the roof of the school, saying, "Finally, some privacy!"... just as Peter and MJ are about to kiss, killing the moment.
  • MCU Peter, MJ, and Ned laughing at Otto Octavius' name is this, considering the existence of other established Marvel characters and the fact that this movie itself has a character that Peter knows is named Stephen Strange.

Tropes I–M

• Iconic Attribute Adoption Moment: At the end of the movie, Peter creates a new suit with his own resources that is his most comic-accurate outfit yet.
• Idiot Ball: Dr Strange grabs it firmly when he immediately starts casting a spell that's listed as "so dangerous that you should never use it under any circumstance" just because Peter asked him for help. If he had taken a few minutes to talk to Peter about what the spell will actually do, why he wants it cast, and how it could be altered, Strange could have cast the spell safely and the entire plot of the film could have been avoided: Peter, MJ, and Ned could have gotten into MIT like they wanted to, reality would never have been endangered, and May would still be alive.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: A variation occurs in the climax when MCU Peter attempts to impale Osborn on his own glider and is stopped by Raimi-verse Peter.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die:
  • The death of Aunt May motivates Peter to fight the Goblin.
  • Shortly afterwards, the other Spider-Men mention their respective failures (Uncle Ben for Raimi-verse Peter and Gwen Stacy for Webb-verse Peter) in explaining how they understand what MCU Peter is going through now.
• Immediate Sequel: The opening scene of the film picks up immediately after J. Jonah Jameson outs Peter Parker as Spider-Man at the end of Far From Home.
• Imperfect Ritual: The plot of the movie is kicked off by Peter seeking mystical help from Doctor Strange on getting his life back. Strange decides on using a powerful spell to erase everyone's memories of Peter's secret identity, but realizing the full implications of erasing all his loved one's memories, Peter keeps requesting exceptions for them. This disrupts the casting of the spell for each request, the last straw being "anyone who already knows should stay", which causes it to break down the walls between realities and drawing everyone aware of Spider-Man's secret identity to their universe. Strange managed to contain it but, when released at the climax, massive rifts in reality begin breaking open.
• I'm Standing Right Here: After Ned accidentally opens a portal leading to them meeting the Webb-verse Spider-Man, MJ suggests Ned should try again so that they find "the real [Peter]." Webb-verse Peter responds to this with an "Ouch," to which MJ quickly says, "No offense." Might double as a bit of Leaning on the Fourth Wall, considering some of the mixed opinions about Andrew Garfield's films and/or his take on the character.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Eddie Brock's reaction when he finds himself in another universe is to get drunk while the bartender fills him in about The Avengers, Thanos and The Blip.
  Venom: EDDIE! We are drunk! Let's go skinny dip!
• Internal Reveal: Downplayed. When Peter insists to Damage Control that Nick Fury can reassert his innocence, he is informed that Fury has been off-world for a year. However, he isn't made privy to any further information about the Skrulls or S.W.O.R.D., just leaving him confused about what's all going on there.
• Intra-Franchise Crossover: The movie is one between the MCU, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy, and Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man Series, bringing back cast members from those films. It's also one to Sony's Spider-Man Universe, with Eddie Brock and Venom appearing briefly in the middle of the credits.
• Ironic Echo: As Otto Octavius finds himself imprisoned in one of Doctor Strange's magic cells, he mockingly asks, "What is this, a birthday party?" But then, as he's flabbergasted the first time he sees the sorcerer actually performing magic, Doc Ock asks how he did that, and Strange retorts, "Lots of birthday parties."
• Irony:
  • Peter wants just four people worldwide to remember he's Spidey — in order to protect them — and this screws up Doctor Strange's mass amnesia spell. By the end of the film, none of those people remember Peter Parker exists, while everyone knows Spidey. And Aunt May dies because he failed to protect her.
  • One of Tony Stark's posthumous legacies being intended for Tony's chosen successor (Stark handing Peter the E.D.I.T.H. goggles) is ultimately seized for good by Damage Control, which was created by Stark himself to prevent the misuses of such gadgets.
  • After someone throws a brick at Peter through May's apartment window, she decides that they need to find a safer place to live. The Parkers relocate to Happy's condo, where May ends up being killed by the Green Goblin.
  • Peter admits to Strange that the reason he asked for the amnesia spell was to increase his and his friends' chances at going to MIT so they can go together. By the end of the film, Peter has to drop out of high school and get a GED while Ned and MJ go to MIT not knowing who Peter is.
  • Strange brings up the simple solution of just talking to MIT about getting Ned and MJ accepted, but given how his poor rehersal skills put his impressions on the adminstrator extremely low and how it took stopping Octavius to change her mind, it ironically took Strange's help (and the botching from Peter) to accomplish it.
  • When all the multiverse villains are captured and Sandman explains how Osborn and Octavius die, The Lizard asks them all how he ends up dying. He doesn't in his story, but the other Webb-verse villain, Electro, does.
  • Peter's plan to cure the villains to avert their deaths is enthusiastically embraced by Norman Osborn, who really does want to be free of his split personality, and is most vehemently opposed by Doctor Octopus, who is still being influenced by the tentacle AI. Osborn helps Peter build a new inhibitor chip that restores Otto to the man he was, who then enthusiastically begins assisting in the efforts to cure the others... only for the Goblin to manage to gain control of Norman shortly thereafter, who very much does not want to be purged from Norman's psyche.
  • In Homecoming, May (not knowing her nephew was Spider-Man) warned Peter that if he ever encountered danger, to turn and run the other way. In this movie, when Peter is being throttled by the Green Goblin, he warns his aunt to run, but she understandably can't bring herself to abandon Peter and prepares to take the fight to the villain. This ends up costing May her life, as the Goblin summons the glider which impales her and causes her to bleed to death a few minutes later.
  • During the moment where Peter's Spider-Sense goes off in the condo, May can be seen waving burnt sage around to ward off negativity. What follows is one of the worst moments of Peter's life, as the villains defect and May dies because of the Green Goblin.
  • The Webb-verse Spider-Man unfavorably compares himself to his Spider brothers, calling himself lame for not doing anything significant. He is actually the very first superhero from a separate film continuity to appear in an MCU film.^note Eddie Brock and Venom technically did it first when they got transported into the MCU during The Stinger of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, but that film isn't part of the MCU and they were not active participants of the events of No Way Home.
• I Say What I Say: When MJ and Ned ask Webb-verse Spider-Man and later Raimi-verse Spider-Man to prove their identities, they say the same thing word-for-word.
  Webb-verse Spider-Man: I don't carry an ID with me, you know? Kind of defeats the whole anonymous superhero thing.
  [...]
  Raimi-verse Spider-Man: I generally don't go around advertising it. Kind of defeats the whole anonymous superhero thing.
• It's All My Fault: Said verbatim by Peter once he realizes how big the consequences of having Strange do the spell has caused.
• I've Heard of That — What Is It?: The Raimi-verse Peter reacts this way when the MCU Peter mentions that he was part of the Avengers, saying "That's great!" before asking what the Avengers are.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Continuing the MCU tradition, though here it's slightly downplayed. Peter, MJ, and Ned all plan to attend MIT, though they also have backup schools in the Boston area so they can still be together. None of them get in to any of their choices due to the sudden controversy around Spider-Man, but Flash Thompson gets in. Played straight further in the ending where MJ and Ned are both going to MIT now that Peter Parker is wiped from everyone's minds. It is slightly justified as Midtown High in this version is now a school for academically gifted students.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Invoked by Peter in the epilogue — despite promising MJ and Ned that he would find them and restore their memories after they forget he exists, Peter ultimately chooses to leave his friends in the dark. After hearing them discuss being accepted into MIT and seeing a bandage above MJ's eye from the previous battle, he realizes that he's caused them enough harm and reintroducing himself would only put their lives and futures in danger once again.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Spider-Man calls Jameson and announces that he has the box the villains want, so they come after him. And that he's at the Statue of Liberty. Jameson berates that he will destroy the statue, and he does have a point. That's a very likely consequence of starting a massive superpowered fight in its vicinity, and Peter did have the luxury of being able to choose the place of the fight.
• Jump Scare: The Lizard suddenly roaring and lunging at Peter from the darkness after he's transported back to the Sanctum. His Spider-Sense kicks in and he's able to jump away — but it ultimately proves unnecessary, as the Lizard is locked behind a magic barrier.
• Juxtaposed Halves Shot: At the beginning, when Spider-Man's secret identity is revealed to the whole world, the iconic picture using half of Peter Parker's face and half of Spider-Man's mask is prominently displayed, including on New York's jumbo screens and Flash Thompson's smartphone.
• Kick the Dog:
  • There is a very minor one in which Strange briefly traps Peter in one of the containment cells. He does let Peter go seconds later, but there was no point to it other than to mess with Peter in retaliation for messing up the spell.
  • On a much bigger scale, the Goblin murders Aunt May with a pumpkin bomb just to show off his brutally nihilistic worldview of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. He later on taunts Spider-Man that it was his fault that Aunt May died since she was only there because of what he did. It's little wonder that Peter actually tries to kill the Goblin.
• Lampshade Hanging: The movie hangs a lampshade on the fact that Raimi-verse Peter can just shoot webs organically where Webb-verse Peter and MCU Peter had to construct web-shooters.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Strange knows of a spell that can erase a specific piece of knowledge (in this case, the fact that the world knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man) from the entire world's minds simultaneously. Problem is, it's difficult to pick and choose who can remember in the middle of casting the spell, which leads to everything going sideways.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • The teaser wastes no time in showing the big cliffhanger from Far From Home: that Spider-Man's secret identity as Peter Parker has been revealed to the public.
  • invoked The film spoils that Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus die in their respective films, with Sandman explaining how. The film continues to leave it ambiguous whether Electro truly died at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, though it does describe the moments leading up to his apparent death, Electro himself concludes that he truly was going to die, and Webb-verse Peter's behavior indicates he hasn't seen Electro since then. The Lizard's defeat, Sandman's Heel–Face Turn and various events from both of the other Spider-Men's lives, including Gwen Stacy's death, are all referenced.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • When talking about their respective rogues galleries, the Webb-verse Peter puts himself down for having a comparatively crappy set of villains (whereas they fought aliens, he fought a guy in a rhino suit), a tongue-in-cheek reference to the less than stellar critical reception of his film series. The Raimi-verse Peter then reassures him that he's "amazing" nonetheless.
  • Norman remarks that in this universe someone's living in his house. The place used for his home is the same one used for the Bishop family in Hawkeye.
  • Doc Ock telling his Peter on how the latter has grown up since he last saw him could easily be interpreted as a lovely nod to now adult fans of the Spider-Man Trilogy.
  • The mid-credits Stinger gives a meta-commentary on the invokedContinuity Lockout of the MCU, as Eddie spends the entire movie trying to catch up on the events of the Infinity Saga.
  • Just before the climax, MCU Peter calls in to The Daily Bugle to broadcast a message to the villains. He says "World, if you're watching..." To which Jameson quips "Oh, believe me, the world is watching." Considering how big this movie is and the reception it got, it's safe to say he's not wrong.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: Doctor Strange is stunned to learn that Peter never tried to simply appeal his rejection from MIT before resorting to attempted planet-wide Mass Hypnosis.
  Strange: I'm sorry... Are you telling me that you didn't even think to plead your case with them first before you asked me to brainwash the entire world?
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • Doctor Strange is featured in the movie, and in old comic book-tradition the movie involves a fight between him and Spidey over the box that can return the villains back to their home dimensions. Spidey defeats Strange so that the latter has to free himself from the Mirror Dimension in time to be Back for the Finale.
  • Upon seeing each other, the Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peters have a very brief spat where they shoot their webs at each other, ending with Raimi-verse Spider-Man webbing up one of Webb-verse Spider-Man's web shooters.
• Living Lie Detector: It's implied that Matt Murdock's ability seen in his Netflix show is retained, since while he gladly represents Peter as his lawyer, he doesn't offer the same to Happy regarding some Stark tech that went missing, since Happy's answer suggests he is lying — and he is lying.
• Lonely Piano Piece: A somber piano plays over the scene at Ned's place after May's death.
• Long Bus Trip: While one villain from each of the Raimi and Webb films returns, three additional villains who meet the in-universe criteria of knowing that Peter Parker is Spider-Man are nonetheless absent: Raimi's Harry Osborn (James Franco), Webb's Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) and Raimi's Eddie Brock (Topher Grace).
• MacGuffin: The Macchina di Kadavus, a mystical box which contains the botched spell that brought the villains and the alternate Spider-Men to the MCU and contains a trigger ready to send them back to their respective universes. Peter gives it to Ned and MJ with the explicit instruction to activate it in the event he fails to rehabilitate the villains, and it comes close to being activated twice (when Ned and MJ don't receive any word from Peter — who at that point in time just lost the villains and saw Aunt May die, and when Peter in his Heroic BSoD comes close to just leaving the villains to their fates but is stopped by his counterparts). The villains primarily seek to destroy the box so that they can avoid their fates (aside from Sandman, who wants to activate and go home regardless of what happens to the others) Green Goblin succeeds at destroying it at the last second, causing a rift in the multiverse that begins to drag every person who knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man into the MCU, and the only way to have it patched up is for Doctor Strange to cast a spell that wipes out the entire MCU's memory of Peter to prevent the Marvel multiverse from falling apart. Visually, the box is practically its own lampshading: it's a literal magic box with a big red button on top that will solve everything for them if pressed.
• Magitek: To help Peter capture the multiversal villains, Strange takes the nanotech that makes up the Iron Spider suit from him and modifies it with magic so that it shoots webs that teleport anyone they hit to his Crypt.
• Major Injury Underreaction:
  • Played for Drama when May is hit by the Green Goblin's glider. She gets back up and says that she's fine to Peter, and the audience is also led to believe this — but then May collapses while repeating that she needs to catch her breath, and passes away seemingly unaware that her injuries were fatal.
  • After getting stabbed in the back by the Green Goblin and getting up, Raimi-verse Peter puts on a smile and barely says anything as the Peters have a group hug. Once MCU Peter walks away, Webb-verse Peter remarks that he can see through the façade, and the older Peter says with a straight face that he's in a lot of pain.
• Manly Tears: Wept by Webb-verse Spider-Man when he symbolically saves Gwen by stopping MJ from falling to her death, finally redeeming and forgiving himself for failing to save the love of his life.
• Marquee Alter Ego:
  • Electro now resembles regular old Jamie Foxx in both the looks and (a much more bitter version of) his personality. He's also not blue (as Foxx was promised), barring a few CGI seconds. Lizard and Sandman, on the other hand, stay in their transformed states until very briefly in the end.
  • The Green Goblin's mask is destroyed early in the film, giving audiences lots of opportunities to appreciate Willem Dafoe's menacing expressions.
  • With his identity exposed, Peter only really needs his mask during battles, and spends much of the film with it off.
• Mass Hypnosis: As Strange explains, the spell he's using to make people forget Peter Parker is Spider-Man is a spell that brainwashes the entire population of Earth into forgetting a specific thing.
• Meaningful Background Event: As May and Peter talk at FEAST about the villains that crossed over, Norman can be seen slipping donuts into his pockets as, in the MCU, he has no resources and realizes that he doesn't know when he'll next have access to basic necessities like food and shelter.
• Meaningful Echo: "It's what we do." First said by Aunt May to Peter when he expresses doubt about trying to help Norman to reinforce the "great power, great responsibility" idiom, and later reiterated by both Raimi-verse and Webb-verse's Peters about the responsibility they and MCU Peter share as Spider-Men.
• Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: Both MCU Peter and Webb-verse Peter are shocked to learn that the original cinematic Spider-Man had organic webbing instead of web shooters. They spend a moment asking questions about it out of both genuine curiosity to know how it works and jealousy due to how complicated making web fluid is for them. MCU Spider-Man is also surprised to learn that neither of his counterparts have the Avengers in their universes, and briefly attempts to explain who they are before giving up.
• Mental Shutdown: Doctor Octopus seemingly gets "turned off" when Peter administers his cure. It gives everyone a scare that they're in the hands of someone who'll accidentally kill them until he jolts back into consciousness with a more optimistic attitude.
• Mistaken Ethnicity: Electro admits to Webb-verse Peter that he always thought he was black, and initially seems a little disappointed to learn otherwise (to which Peter actually apologizes). He gets over it, musing that with the multiverse there probably still is a black Spider-Man out there.
• Moment Killer: Ned unknowingly interrupts a kiss between Peter and MJ.
• Monumental Damage: One of the many things Jameson takes Spider-Man to task for is his apparent hatred of monuments, given his last two movies resulted in damage to the Washington Monument and Tower Bridge. The final battle of the film is a fight on the Statue of Liberty being refit with Captain America's shield as a tribute to the Avenger. Needless to say, the effort gets stalled by what happens, but the Statue itself is left mostly intact, and only the shield ends up falling off.
• Morality Chain: The Green Goblin believes that Aunt May's "holy moral mission" is what tethers Peter down despite having great power. So he decides to "free" Peter by killing her right in front of him, causing the young teenager to be filled with such rage and grief that he'll forsake his morals just to murder the Goblin. And he would have succeeded had the other Spider-Men not been there to help their younger counterpart at his lowest point.
• Moral Disambiguation: In the original Spider-Man, Norman was more willing to go with Green Goblin's plans, making it harder to tell where Green Goblin ends and Norman begins is ambiguous. In this film, it's a lot more obvious that they are separate individuals with the same body, with Norman wanting to get as far away from his other half as possible.
• Mortal Wound Reveal: When Peter discovers the blood on his hand signifying his aunt being mortally wounded.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: Doctor Octopus wears a dark trenchcoat (much like the Ultimate Marvel version of the character who served as the inspiration for that design), rather than any of the more colorful suits he's worn in the mainline comics. The trenchcoat is actually darker than the one in Spider-Man 2, funnily enough.
• The Multiverse: Doctor Strange attempts to cast a spell that would erase everyone's knowledge about Peter Parker's secret identity. Due to his inexperience and Peter's interference, the spell goes awry and pulls villains from other universes into the MCU, penetrating the borders between individual realities within the multiverse.
• Mundane Utility: Webb-verse Peter uses his wall-crawling ability to help Ned's grandmother get rid of some cobwebs on the ceiling corner that she can't reach.
• Musical Nod:
  • Michael Giacchino's Doctor Strange theme plays when Peter decides to seek Doctor Strange's help to make everyone forget that he is Spider-Man. The theme also plays later when Strange pursues Peter into the Mirror Dimension.
  • Countless ones to the other Spider-Man films:
    • Doctor Octopus's arrival is punctuated with the return of his theme from Spider-Man 2.
    • The Green Goblin's theme makes an appearance when he shows up on the bridge.
    • During Electro's first fight with Peter, a few dubstep-heavy notes from "My Enemy" play.
    • Both "Responsibility" and "Promises", the key leitmotifs of the two previous iterations of the Spider-Man film franchise, appear together before leading into the MCU's theme for the character.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Norman Osborn is finally freed of the Green Goblin, and he sees a bloodied MCU Peter and a (non-fatally) wounded Raimi-verse Peter, all he's able to muster is a whispered "What have I done?"
• My Greatest Second Chance:
  • The Webb-verse Peter Parker never moved on from failing to save Gwen Stacy from falling to her death, thanks to unintentionally snapping her neck with the sudden inertia of snatching her mid-fall with his web. He finally receives a closure of sorts when he saves MJ from a similar fate falling from the Statue of Liberty by leaping forth and catching her in mid-air himself, weeping Manly Tears as he finally forgives himself.
  • The Raimi-verse Spider-Man similarly never forgave himself for letting the Green Goblin be impaled by his own glider... and hence he simply could not allow himself to stand by and watch his MCU incarnation literally beat Osborn to death with the same weapon to avenge his Aunt May's murder. Though he is knifed in the ribs by the crazed scientist for his troubles, this gives Webb-verse Peter time to help cure him of his madness and earn a chance to live, thereby finally allowing him to forgive himself also for the deaths of Norman and Harry.
    Raimi-verse Peter: I think I can make an anti-serum for Dr. Osborn. Been thinking about it a long time.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.

Tropes N–R

• Naked First Impression: After Electro is returned to human form, he meets Peter and Marko fully nude. After a couple of minutes, Max points out that the two of them are just standing talking as if he wasn't "butt-ass naked". While Peter panics and looks away, Marko confirms that he is deliberately ignoring this fact.
• The Needs of the Many: Strange brings it up as the reason to send the villains back to their universes to die, stating that their lives are not more important than the countless others that would be at risk from the further tearings of the fabric of reality brought forth by the Imperfect Ritual.
• Never My Fault:
  • Invoked by the interrogator. Peter insists that a drone killed Mysterio, not him. The interrogator counters that all the drones belong to Peter, apparently not knowing that Mysterio had been in control of the drones at the time.
  • Doctor Strange initially doesn't accept blame for the spell going awry because Peter's inquiries made him mess it up, despite the fact that he was advised not to do so in the first place and also failed to explain the parameters of the spell to Peter beforehand. MJ later gets him to agree to help by calling him out on this.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • In the trailer, Strange goes behind Wong's back and casts the spell against his wishes. In the movie, while Wong does not want Strange to cast the spell, he eventually relents after learning it's to help Peter and just tells Strange to leave him out of it. However, in the second stinger, which is a teaser for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the audio of Wong telling Strange not to cast the spell can be heard, implying that that part of the trailer took place in an alternate universe.
  • The trailer heavily implied that Strange is going to be Peter's new mentor after Tony Stark's passing. Strange is instead Put on a Bus in his own Mirror Dimension for a good chunk of the movie, while the mentor role is actually filled by Aunt May before being passed on to the two Alternate Self Peters that also ended up in the MCU. Strange is also more annoyed at Spidey than the trailer let on, mainly when he realizes that Peter hadn't thought to call MIT before coming to him.
  • Several regarding Doctor Octopus:
    • Promotional material emphasizes Doctor Octopus the most out of all the villains, implying that he's the Big Bad, when the main threat is actually the Green Goblin, whose presence in the advertising was comparatively minimal.
    • The initial trailer featuring him frames the scene thusly: Doc Ock arrives, says "Hello, Peter," and then Peter activates the Iron Spider suit to face him. In turn, this insinuates that Alfred Molina reprising the role is more just an allusion rather than being the same incarnation of Doc Ock from Spider-Man 2. In the film itself, Peter senses Doc Ock approaching well in advance and suits up then, making him fully covered when Doc Ock gets there, which leads to his later surprise when he realizes that this isn't his Spider-Man.
    • You would think from the trailers and posters that Doc Ock's tentacles now having Tony's nanotech will make him much stronger. The minute Octavius absorbs them, the battle is decided in Peter's favor, as now the Iron Spider suit has full control over the doctor's artificial limbs.
  • Twofold in regards to the villains' fates in their own worlds.
    • The trailers imply that Doc Ock knew of his death, telling Peter he's essentially fighting ghosts. In the film proper, he says Peter is going to fight a ghost. He is referring to Osborn, who Doc Ock knows is supposed to be dead. He isn't aware of his own death until later, as described below.
    • The trailers also have Doctor Strange be the one to tell Peter that the villains will die. In the film, the villains talk amongst themselves while imprisoned and figure it out on their own, with Peter bearing witness. Strange isn't aware until Peter tells him, though he still says it's their fate when he does learn of it.
    • This has the side effect of clarifying matters on Sandman and Lizard. The way it was said in the trailer made it seem like they would die, even though they survived their films. But in the actual film, it's never stated that they are doomed to die, only that Osborn, Doc Ock, and Electro are.
  • Then there's the one trailer scene that no one ever trusted: MCU Spider-Man facing Electro, Sandman, and Lizard alone. Just as everyone suspected, the film has Raimi-verse Spider-Man and Webb-verse Spider-Man join their MCU counterpart in this scene. In particular, eagle-eyed fans noticed that in select versions of the trailer, the Lizard appeared to get hit by something or someone (his head reeling back as if struck) despite MCU Peter being nowhere near him. Of course, the other Spider-Men being there is the big twist of the film to the point that neither of their actors were advertised until release, but the edit seems to have been made in a rush to remove them from the footage.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Peter being able to No-Sell Strange's palm-strike-forced Astral Projection move by having his physical body dodge the sorcerer's attempts to grab the box with the Spider-Sense before going back inside his own body, which is something no other non-sorcerer character has been able to do before. Strange is dumbfounded and even lampshades that he shouldn't be able to do this.^note This might not be a new power so much as Peter's body automatically avoiding danger in response to his Spider-Sense. Several comic stories, as well as Far From Home, have had Peter have to stop thinking too hard about what he's doing and mentally relax, letting his Spider-Sense and autonomic reflexes carry him through attacks.
  • Ned is suddenly able to cast teleportation portals much like Strange's and Wong's, with only one line from Ned mentioning how his Lola said that their family has magic and him bringing up how he gets occasional tingles in his hands as foreshadowing that he was capable of such a thing. This does mean the heroes are able to use this ability to their advantage without involving the film's trained magicians, but the newfound ability is also subject to How Do I Shot Web?, making Ned and MJ targets for the villains.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • A retroactive one for Far From Home: Nick Fury spending the past year in a S.W.O.R.D. space base and having Talos masquerade as him on Earth means Peter loses out on a valuable alibi for the drones actually being under the control of Mysterio and thus completely clearing his name when he's told (much to his confusion, certainly) that Fury was off-world during the entire ordeal.
  • Strange agrees to help Peter out of a tight spot and do a spell that Wong said was dangerous and that is hard enough to cast for minor loss of concentration to make it go awry. Moreover, Strange himself states that he knows "frighteningly little" about the multiverse, so he is tampering with matters above his comprehension.
  • Peter gets cold feet during Strange's spell to wipe the collective minds of the world of his true identity when he learns that everyone will be wiped clean. He interferes and this messes up the spell, causing the multiverse to collide in on itself.
  • Peter is revolted that three of the villains are fated to die and opts against returning them to their world, fighting Strange so he won't do it. All hell breaks loose, from Aunt May dying to the Multiverse nearly breaking.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • May's kindness towards Norman Osborn ends up indirectly causing her own death, as it convinces the Goblin that she is the source of Peter's moral code, leading him to murder her to torture Peter. The Goblin actually quotes this trope verbatim before killing May.
  • Peter's determination to save the displaced villains costs him everything. While he successfully saves all five villains, Peter ends up losing May and has to be completely forgotten by the world to save it, leaving him totally alone at the end of the film.
  • Raimi-verse Peter stopping MCU Peter from killing Green Goblin is repaid in seconds by Goblin stabbing him in the back. He survives but is clearly in pain from the wound.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Peter 1 delivers one to Green Goblin at the end of the film, prompting Peter 2 to jump in and prevent him from killing the man.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Webb-verse Spidey's increasingly annoyed attempts to deflect MJ's continued demands to prove he's Peter Parker, even after demonstrating his powers.
  MJ: [unimpressed] Crawl around.
  Webb-verse Peter: [incredulous] "Crawl around"?! Mmmmno.
• Non-Answer: When Peter asks how Matt Murdock was able to easily catch a brick thrown through the Parkers' kitchen window behind his back, Matt replies, "I'm a really good lawyer." While it's both true and a call-back to him having referred to Happy needing a "really good lawyer" earlier in their conversation, it doesn't cover the real answer to Peter's question.
• Noodle Incident: The first time Stephen used the memory-erasing spell was at a party in Kamar-Taj. Wong has no memory of it happening (obviously), but it convinces him that he can do the spell for Peter as long as he is left out of it.
• No-Sell:
  • During their fight, Goblin demonstrates one of the many reasons why he's such a deadly enemy: He reacts to Peter's punches by simply grinning maniacally. Peter starts punching harder? Goblin starts laughing. Then he piledrives Peter through every floor of Happy's apartment building down to the ground level.
  • A Downplayed variant occurs when Strange astrally projects Peter out of his body. The last few times this happened it was basically an Instant-Win Condition for the instigator, with the target's physical form collapsed helpless on the ground and their astral form unable to interact physically, but thanks to Peter's Spider-Sense, he's able to move his body around automatically in response to Strange's attempts to pull the box away from him, despite having no conscious control over his physical form. Notably, Strange is baffled at how he's able to keep up with and even exceed Strange's own physical reactions in that state.
• "Not So Different" Remark: In MCU Peter's darkest hour after Aunt May's death, the other universes' Peters manage to reach him emotionally by sharing their own litanies of trauma, talking about the horrible things that happened to them as well as how they felt and responded. It culminates with the three sharing the defining Spider-Man line: "With great power comes great responsibility."
  MCU Peter: How do you know that?
  Webb-verse Peter: Uncle Ben said it.
  Raimi-verse Peter: The day he died... Maybe she didn't die for nothing, Peter.
• Oblivious to Their Own Description:
  • J. Jonah Jameson considers people who support Spider-Man to be the deluded followers of a murderous liar... a description that much better fits the people who buy into Mysterio's version of events, like Jameson himself.
  • Octavius initially is the least willing to receive a cure from Peter while Osborn is the most supportive. At one point, Octavius retorts to Osborn that he isn't going to listen to "the reckless fool who turned himself into a monster!" Osborn can only return a dumbfounded look.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Barkeeping: In The Stinger, the Mexican bartender who helps Eddie Brock getting up-to-date with the current MCU is seen cleaning a glass. Though since Venom implies they've been doing this for hours, and Eddie is apparently his sole client, he was probably just keeping himself busy.
• Offscreen Inertia: When Raimi-verse Peter and Webb-verse Peter talk about their superhero careers with MCU Peter, they imply that even though they continued to be Spider-Men for many years afterwards, nothing as interesting as the events of their movies ever happened to them again.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Early in the film, Matt Murdock manages to get Peter cleared of any charges that might be pressed against him.
  • Around the time Spider-Man subdues Doc Ock, Doctor Strange has already captured the Lizard (who, judging from the cuts on Strange's face, did not come quietly). Strange also spends a large swath of the second act scouring mystic realms off-screen in search for a solution to the villains coming through, after which he returns with the ominous-sounding magical device called "The Box of Kadaver" that he claims is the only thing that can solve the problem. Where he got it from (and under what circumstances) is unaddressed.
• Oh, Crap!: After Peter tries to halt Strange's spell, the spell seems to implode and wreck the magical pocket dimension they were in before Strange manages to cancel it out, Peter worriedly asking him what just happened once he does.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: When Peter is dropped into the Mirror Dimension by Strange, the music in the background includes a chanting chorus atop blaring trumpets.
• Once per Episode: Like the previous MCU Spider-Man movies:
  • Peter teams up with another big-name hero, but a combination of his inexperience and their own flaws (in this case, Strange's casual use of powerful magic) creates an easily avoidable disaster.
  • Peter does something irresponsible and pays for it dearly.
  • A member of the Parker family blurts out "What the fuck?!" only to be cut off in some manner (this time with a car honk).
  • A villain hijacks Tony Stark's technology for their own ends, with Electro stealing an arc reactor to use as a personal power source.
  • Someone walks in on Peter in a state of undress while a third party is present in the room.
• One Head Taller: When MJ and Ned first contact Webb-verse Peter, thinking he's their Spider-Man, they instantly realize something is wrong due to how tall he is. Even though Andrew Garfield is only 5'10, he's still the tallest of the Spider-Men and becomes "the tall one" when the three are together.
• The Oner: The 90-second sequence starting with May accidentally walking in on Peter and MJ and ending with everyone in the living room with the TV on a news broadcast about Spider-Man's identity is in one long take.
• Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: MJ lampshades this trope — and how slimy it is — during her interrogation by Damage Control. As they're being brought into the station, she and Aunt May simultaneously yell at Peter not to say anything until he gets a lawyer.
• Only the Leads Get a Downer Ending: The MCU version of Peter Parker ends up with the absolute worst resolution of everybody else in the cast: Despite the events of the film, MJ and Ned get into MIT. Happy loses his apartment and his love, and his job is still at risk because of the government investigating Stark Industries, but there is a chance he will bounce back. Doctor Strange did exactly what he wanted to do, exiling the people who incurred the MCU and only getting a few bruises and annoyance from it (he did show some respect in the end to Peter, but it's peanuts). The villains and the other Spider-Men returned to their respective universes with the implication that they resolved their plights (and for the villains, did not die). Meanwhile, Peter is magically Unpersoned, Aunt May dies, and he is still despised as Spider-Man while losing everyone and everything he had over the course of the previous films. He doesn’t even want to repair his relationship with MJ and Ned for fear of dragging them back into his own misery. By the film’s end, he still soldiers on, because with great power...
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • Neither Peter or Strange were expecting the Multiversal Villains to appear as a result of a memory spell going wrong, with Strange even saying that it should be impossible for them to be here while Peter was surprised to learn that the multiverse was even real after what happened with Mysterio. While the concept of the multiverse had been explored in Loki and What If...? as well as the danger it posed, this is officially the first time the consequences directly affected the main MCU universe.
  • Peter and Strange are also this from the perspective of the villains and the alternate Spider-Men as they all come from fairly grounded worlds with apparently no sorcerers and gained their abilities through science. Not only that but with the exception of Sandman they were experiencing the events of their original films before the spell brought them to the MCU, completely derailing whatever they had planned and forcing them into a new situation.
• Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: Peter and MJ make it back to Aunt May's apartment through Peter's bedroom window and are in a hurry to inform her of the world learning Spider-Man's identity. Happy and May accidentally walk in on Peter with nothing but shorts on and MJ hastily helping him undress. The moment is so awkward that Happy and May stop paying attention to all the news helicopters and noise outside.
• Person as Verb: Doctor Strange tells Peter and his friends that they need to "Scooby-Doo this shit", an informal way of saying that the three teenagers need to catch all the meddling villains.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Three people escorting Peter into school following the identity reveal: his girlfriend MJ, his best friend Ned, and Flash Thompson, of all people. Flash, of course, acted like a dick to Peter in the previous two movies, so it seems like the fact that he's a fan of Spider-Man won out over his rivalry with Peter. It's later to be revealed he's exploiting it, as he published a self-penned autobiography about him being friends with Spidey.
  • Contrary to what the trailer implies, when Sandman first appears, he actually protects MCU Spider-Man against Electro and is trying to be the Only Sane Man.
• Platonic Declaration of Love:
  • The Webb-verse Peter tells his two alternate counterparts he loves them in the climax.
  • Doctor Strange has an implicit one towards the MCU Peter when he asks him to Unperson him in the climax. He says that everyone who knew and loved Peter, including himself, will forget of his existence.
• Playing the Victim Card: In the opening scene as the crowd begins to harass Peter and MJ, one of the bystanders reaches out and tries to take off Peter's mask. When Peter swats her arm away, she begins yelling to everyone that Spider-Man hit her.
• Please Wake Up: Peter begs Aunt May to wake up after she succumbs to her wounds from the Goblin's glider and the Pumpkin Bomb.
• Plot Hole:
  • Flint knowing Norman is Green Goblin goes against the Raimi trilogy, as Harry's motivation in those films is finding his father's killer while being Locked Out of the Loop as to his true identity and how he died. If news was everywhere about it, then he would have had a lot more answers much sooner. Similarly, Otto knowing Osborne and Goblin were one in the same is not something that could be said in the original trilogy, as Goblin's identity was never known except by three people, and Osborn and Octavius are never mentioned to have any relation to one another beforehand.
    • Then again, it may be that Flint is from a point some time after the battle with Venom, creating the possibility that such information became more public knowledge after Harry's death.
  • Dr. Strange says that the malfunctioning spell is pulling people who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man from other universes into the prime MCU universe. However, Max Dillion never learned Spider-Man's identity in his own movie. While it could be a Handwave that he somehow learned the information from the grid, it's never addressed until the last act of the movie, when Dillon admits he had no idea Peter was a white man.
  • Eddie and Venom's cameo similarly makes no sense, as they come from a timeline where Spider-Man isn't even a thing, which is the basic requirement to be pulled into the MCU. Even when the spell changes to pulling in everyone who knows Peter, they still logically shouldn't have been affected. The Stinger of Venom: Let There Be Carnage explains that symbiotes have knowledge expanding across alternate universes, though it is still a big stretch.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: The Iron Spider's nanotech integrates itself into Doc Ock's arms after he tears its chestplate out. However the nanobots are still linked to Peter's suit, which allows him to win their fight by remotely disabling the tentacles.
• Poor Communication Kills: The events of the whole movie (and all the drama that ensued) are kickstarted thanks to a double miscommunication:
  • Strange would probably not have bothered to cast such a dangerous spell in the first place if Peter had explained precisely why he thought he needed it (getting his friends admitted to MIT) and mentioned that he had not even thought of appealing about their admission.
  • Strange's spell would not have gone awry if he had taken the time to explain to Peter what it was going to do before trying to cast it, and to ask if there were any parameters he wanted to change first (if nothing else, he should have made certain that the Avengers would remember Peter's secret identity).
• Present Absence:
  • Peter's Secret Identity ordeal in the entire film is thanks to Mysterio's a posthumous video framing him up as his murderer.
  • The only villain from the previous Sony Spider-Man movies to not appear or get a mention is the Webb-verse version of Harry Osborn/Green Goblin, presumably to keep things easier to follow. ^note The Raimi-verse Green Goblin is the main antagonist, Harry is mentioned by Norman Osborn and Raimi-verse Peter, while Raimi-verse Peter also briefly mentions Venom and Webb-verse Peter mentions Rhino when the three Spider-Men are comparing the weirdest villains they ever fought Nevertheless, the consequences of his actions — specifically the death of Gwen Stacy — form the core of Webb-verse Peter's arc.
• Pyrrhic Victory:
  • Peter manages to redeem the villains and give them their second chance, proving that idealism wins over cynicism. But he loses virtually everything in the process, including Aunt May and the entire world's memory of who he is.
  • Whatever victory Mysterio intended to get with his final act to expose Peter and/or ruin Spider-Man ends up hollow too: Spider-Man slowly regains his reputation with most people at least, and while everyone forgets who Peter is, he no longer faces the personal pressure of his two lives clashing anymore either.
• Race Lift:
  • As it was with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, African-American actor Jamie Foxx portrays Max Dillon / Electro, who is Caucasian in the comics.
  • This trope is also discussed when Max and his Peter make amends at the end. Max says he expected Spider-Man, a working-class hero from Queens, to be black, and that if a multiverse exists, "there's gotta be a black Spider-Man somewhere out there." Obviously, it's a sly nod towards Miles Morales, but when Marc Webb's reboot was first announced, there was an online campaign to get the studio to cast a black actor to play Peter to reflect the current demographics of Queens. That whole discussion was what led to the creation of Miles as an Affirmative-Action Legacy character in the first place.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: In spite of having lost everything and with his very existence forgotten by the entire MCU, while visiting the grave of Aunt May, Peter happens upon an also-mourning Happy Hogan, whom although no longer knowing who Peter is, is somehow still able to hold onto the warmth and love he felt for the boy through the lingering memories of his friendship with Spider-Man. So although Peter may seem to be alone in a cold, uncaring world for the rest of his life, there is still that tiny, precious glimmer of hope for him to be reunited with those he holds dear to his heart one distant day.
• Real After All:
  • Mysterio told Spider-Man about the Multiverse in Far From Home, but that turned out to be an elaborate ruse so he could convince people that he was a superhero. The Multiverse is very much a real thing, as Peter soon learns.
  • To a lesser extent, one of his fake monsters was the Sandman. An actual Sandman, though not combined with Earth, is one of the multiversal visitors.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: Ned's grandmother speaks to him in unsubtitled Tagalog. Ned translates for the benefit of the other characters in the scene.
• Re-Cut: The More Fun Stuff version includes 15 minutes of additional and deleted footage not shown in the original theatrical run.
• Red Herring: In the first post-credit scene, Eddie Brock and Venom are shown at a bar contemplating what their next move in the MCU should be. Instead of following through with them hunting down Spider-Man for supposedly murdering Mysterio — which was set-up in the post-credit scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage — they're promptly teleported back to the SSU by Doctor Strange's spell, leaving a small drop of the Venom symbiote behind.
• Red Skies Crossover: Doctor Strange's spell causes Eddie Brock and Venom to accidentally teleport into the MCU as seen in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. That said, the two of them don't get involved with the events of this story due to them being all the way in Mexico, and are more interested in learning about the new world they're in while getting wasted at the bar they're at. Eventually, Strange's second spell causes them to return to their home universe before they can even do anything... though not without Venom leaving a part of him behind.
• Retcon:
  • Minor example, but The Stinger of Venom: Let There Be Carnage showed Peter standing maskless when his identity is revealed to the world. Here, he doesn't take his mask off until he reaches home.
  • Electro had black shorts in The Amazing Spider-Man 2; here, he is left naked, although it could be explained that the electrical energy burned them off.
• Reveling in the New Form: Max Dillon / Electro is very pleased with how much more good-looking he becomes after absorbing the electricity from the MCU, compared to both the gap-toothed nerd and blue mutant he was before. His handsome new appearance is actually one of the reasons why he wants to stay in this new universe.
• Riches to Rags:
  • Norman Osborn is plucked from a universe in which he's a billionaire scientist. In this universe, he and his son, along with their family company, do not exist. He ultimately goes to May's F.E.A.S.T shelter to take refuge and ask Spidey for help.
  • Peter's situation at the end of the movie. He went from living in a cozy apartment attending the special science school to living in an empty apartment by himself and having to get his GED due to dropping out of high school.
• Riddle for the Ages: We never do find out how Peter is able to remotely puppeteer his physical body even after Doctor Strange separates his astral form from it, though it's highly implied to be as a result of the physical body's Spider-Sense. If you look closely you can see the trademark wavy lines.
• Rogues Gallery: An entire multiverse of supervillains from other Spider-Man franchises appear following Doctor Strange's spell going horribly wrong. Doubles as a Rogues' Gallery Transplant from the previous Spider-Man film continuities, as there's one supervillain from each movie before the MCU. (Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2).
• Rule of Symbolism: In the final battle:
  • It is appropriate and powerful that the final battle of the first MCU Spider-Man trilogy should literally occur upon a gigantic replica of Captain America's shield, wherein he is about to murder the Green Goblin in cold blood as vengeance for taking Aunt May's life; further hammering home how far Peter will fall from grace if he follows through with avenging her, the battle occurs upon the reverse side of the shield, symbolizing how vengeance and murder is the very opposite of the justice and kindness that superheroes should stand for. It also references how Captain America wielded his shield to stop Spider-Man's mentor Iron Man from murdering the innocent Bucky for the Winter Soldier's crimes, just as Spider-Man will also kill Norman as collateral.
  • It also takes place at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, the world's most famous symbol of second chances, and it's one for Raimi-verse Spidey. The fight also resembles what Steve Rogers almost did to Tony Stark in Civil War and John Walker did to a Flag-Smasher in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and it's the spot for a confrontation between various "exiles".
  • Peter's introduction as Spidey during Captain America: Civil War was the now-famous shot of him stealing Cap's Shield. So, it's fitting that his cinematic journey (up to this point) concludes with (or in this case atop) the Shield (albeit a replica).
  • For one before the final battle: Webb-verse Peter spends the entire length of his screentime in his Spider-Man costume, while Raimi-verse Peter waits until it's time for the final battle to even confirm that he has the costume with him. This can be seen as representative of the general audience consensus of their strengths in the role: that Tobey Maguire was awkward, nerdy, and angsty like Peter, and that Andrew Garfield was cool and quippy like Spider-Man, and so neither really captured both sides of the character. Hence, the Webb-verse version spends the whole movie as Spider-Man while the Raimi-verse version spends as much of it as Peter as he possibly can. Tom Holland, on the other hand, is often praised for perfectly capturing both sides accurately, hence he spends the majority of the movie wearing the Spider-Man costume, minus the mask.
• Rule of Three: MJ says, "If you expect disappointment, then you can never really get disappointed" three times. The first time, she says it when she, Peter and Ned are discussing their college applications. The second time, she says it when she receives her rejection letter from MIT. The third time, Peter finishes the sentence for her when she has forgotten who he is and he asks her whether she is excited about being accepted into MIT.
• Running Gag:
  • Characters lampshading just how easy it is to accidentally create a Meta-Human from No OSHA Compliance, be it Flint/Sandman's falling into a collider experiment, or especially Max/Electro's falling into a pool of electric eels.
    Max: Goddamn eels.
  • A large number of the multiversal immigrant characters also go into utter disbelief over hearing that magic is real in the MCU and is the apparent source of how they were brought over.
    Doc Ock: How did you do that?
    Doctor Strange: Lots of birthday parties.

Tropes S–Y

• Sassy Black Woman: The MIT administrator who Peter saves actually chews out Octavius afterward. Hard to beat that for sass.
• Save the Villain: Doctor Strange informs Peter that all the villains are fated to die fighting their respective Spider-Men. Peter takes a moment to process this, then steals the magical object Strange is going to use to send them back to their own dimensions. At the end of the movie, the villains are redeemed and are able to live better lives in their worlds.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Both Sandman and Doctor Octopus end up hauling ass into the night after the Green Goblin convinces Electro and the Lizard to accept their gifts and wreak havoc upon the MCU. They come back later, albeit with Sandman fighting against the heroes and Doc Ock helping them.
• Sequel Adaptation Iconic Villain: After Peter fought Vulture and Mysterio in the previous two films, he faces off against some of the villains of the previous movies - including the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus, his two Arch-Enemies in the comics.
• Sequel Hook: After Eddie Brock and Venom are forced to return to their world, a drop of the symbiote is left in the bar they're whisked away from. And it begins moving...
• Serial Escalation: While prior comic-book adaptations have struggled under the burden of having three villains, this one has five. It manages the juggling act by counting on previous movie knowledge, minimizing a couple of characters (specifically, The Lizard and Sandman) and having one of them (Doc Ock) undergo a Heel–Face Turn.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Strange specifically states that after the spell went terribly wrong, what brought the Spidey rogues from other universes was the fact they know Spider-Man is Peter Parker, which makes Electro's inclusion for that reason alone seem odd since Max never found out who his Spider-Man was in their original final encounter. There's clearly no retconning going on either, as bits of Electro's dialogue throughout the film make it clear he's not overtly familiar with his Spider-Man's identity. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Gwen does actually call Spider-Man "Peter" within Electro's earshot and Peter Parker is known to be Spider-Man's photographer, so it is possible Electro had at least considered the two were one and the same without knowing what he looked like.
  • Apparently, Norman being the Green Goblin became public knowledge in his own universe after his death, with Flint Marko offhandedly mentioning that Norman's death became a big news story on TV, and Otto even recognizing Osborn in full Goblin getup, despite the fact that in the original trilogy proper, Harry only discovers Norman's secret after Otto's death, with it never becoming public knowledge. Might be justified in Marko's case since he comes from after the events of Spider-Man 3, meaning Norman's identity wasn't revealed until then.
  • Despite both of them having a close relationship with the man in their home universe, neither Dr. Octavius nor his Peter Parker seem to recognize or comment on the Webb-verse Curt Connors being the Lizard, especially when Max explains the Lizard's identity to Otto.
  • Downplayed. Webb-verse Peter excitedly confirms that the multiverse exists when he meets Ned and MJ. However a tie-in to the 2014 Spider-Verse event implies that both the Webb-verse and Raimi-verse Spider-Men were involved with the battle against the Inheritors, meaning both should know about the multiverse already.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong:
  • Averted at first, as when Peter asks Doctor Strange to turn back time and make it so nobody ever found out his secret identity from Mysterio, Doctor Strange reminds Peter that even if he wanted to rewrite time to help Peter with his problems, he no longer has the Time Stone.
  • But played straight (of the foreknowledge of what will happen variety) when Strange's miscast spell brings in Spider-Man villains from the multiverse and Peter quickly figures out that most of them will die while fighting Spider-Man upon being returned to their own respective times and continuities. Doctor Strange warns Peter that You Can't Fight Fate in the grand calculus of the multiverse, but Aunt May convinces Peter to help each villain cure their respective issues before returning them to their home universes to give them a second chance to change their fate. Incredibly, the plan works — the Peters are able to collectively repair Doc Ock's cybernetic enhancements, return Sandman, Lizard, and Electro to human form, and even restore Norman Osborn's sanity before sending them back — but at tragic cost to MCU Peter's own life.
  • This trope also applies to the alternate versions of Peter Parker who are transported into the MCU because both help their MCU counterpart avoid the tragic mistake which defined them in their own stories. Webb-verse Spider-Man successfully saves MJ from a lethal fall which would have killed her like his Gwen Stacy died in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Raimi-verse Spider-Man stops the MCU Peter from killing Norman Osborn for revenge and ultimately being responsible for the death of his aunt's murderer as he was with his Uncle Ben's killer in the Spider-Man trilogy.
• Shoo Out the Clowns:
  • Comic relief high-school teachers Mr. Dell, Mr. Harrington, and Coach Wilson appear for a brief scene to bring some levity to Peter's situation before being swept aside for the rest of the movie to show how it has really affected his life. Same goes for Betty Brant and Flash, who don't appear again once Peter meets Doc Ock.
  • MJ and Ned are absent when the Green Goblin resurfaces and murders Aunt May.
• Shot/Reverse Shot: This technique is used at least twice in conversations between characters who aren't in any other shots from that scene together. This could be one of the many effects brought upon this movie by a certain pandemic that was in full swing during its production.
  • When Spider-Man and Doctor Strange talk about the ramifications of the spell by the Statue of Liberty, the camera cuts to each of their faces without cutting to a wider shot of the Statue itself. Even as Stephen gets a little emotional to Peter, you don't see the two facing each other.
  • There is also a prominent example of this trope between two characters hidden from the marketing. The choice not to have them be on-set together may have been made to make it easier to hide their appearance from the public. Andrew Garfield is clearly on the Ned's House set with Zendaya and Jacob Batalon, but the scene never cuts wide again once Tobey Maguire's character shows up.
• Shout-Out:
  • Two for DC Comics:
    • Flash Thompson's memoir is titled Flashpoint.
    • At one point during their fight in Happy's apartment, Peter has the Green Goblin pinned against a wall and is pummeling his face — and the Goblin only laughs.
  • Flash announces his MIT acceptance to Peter, MJ and Ned in part by briefly singing "No Sleep Till Brooklyn", swapping the city of the song title out for Boston.
  • After Matt Murdock advises Happy to lawyer up in preparation for the feds investigating Stark Industries' ties to Mysterio, Happy gives a panicked Motor Mouth spiel of his alternate options, specifically citing (and likely misremembering) a line from GoodFellas as an example of pleading the fifth.
  • At one point of the film, Ned can be seen wearing a shirt with a very familiar moth on it. It bears a striking resemblance to Mothra from the Godzilla franchise.
  • Doctor Strange tells Peter that an episode of The Equalizer was shot in the undercroft of the Sanctum Sanctorum in The '80s.
  • Doctor Strange's order to Peter, MJ and Ned to "Scooby-Doo this shit".
  • When the villains all realize they were fighting Spider-Man prior to being sucked into the MCU, mentally unwell Electro quotes fellow mentally unwell electronic artist Wesley Willis thus: "I whipped Spider-Man's ass."
  • Max also describes Doctor Strange as "a guy dressed like Dungeons & Dragons."
  • "The Magic Number" is De La Soul's cover of a song that originated from Schoolhouse Rock!
  • The end credits sequence makes several allusions to artworks by M.C. Escher.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: After their climactic fight, the Green Goblin attempts to break Peter one last time by blaming him for the death of Aunt May. As he lets out an evil cackle, Peter furiously jabs the anti-Goblin serum into his neck, vanquishing the Goblin persona for good.
• Single Tear: Aunt May is shown shedding a tear as she dies, after Peter begs her to wake up and talk to him.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer:
  • Thomas Haden Church as Flint Marko / Sandman and Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors / The Lizard were both confirmed for the movie, but their respective characters only appeared in the trailer and teasers in their transformed states. And not to mention that unlike the three other villains, they didn't have voiceovers in it and notably didn't appear in cast interviews. In the film itself, they're never actually shown in their human forms except for brief moments of Stock Footage from prior films, because they couldn't physically reprise their roles due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions.
  • The Raimi-verse and Webb-verse versions of Spider-Man didn't appear in any of the pre-release marketing at all, despite their prominence in the final third of the film, in order to save the surprise.
• Sitting on the Roof: Peter and MJ start hanging out on the roof of the school to avoid the attention of the other students. After Aunt May's death, MJ works out that he's gone back to that roof based on his comment about staying up there all day. Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peters both admit they like to sit on top of skyscrapers to get some alone time; the former likes the Chrysler Building, while the latter thinks the Empire State Building has a better view, to which the former agrees.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • After the world learns Spider-Man's identity, Peter and MJ hurry back to May's apartment. She accidentally walks in on Peter in only his underwear and MJ helping him undress and assures them that sex is a normal thing. As they all move into the living room, Peter ignores the news helicopters outside and the broadcast on the TV screen and tries to turn the subject to May and Happy breaking up.
  • When Doctor Strange tells Peter to catch the other multiversal villains:
    Doctor Strange: I need you to capture them and bring them here, while I figure out how to get them back before they destroy the fabric of reality, or worse, Wong finds out.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Initial conflict between Peter and Strange stems from this. Peter wants to give everyone a second chance, while Strange leans more towards 'not our business, if that's their fate, so be it'. In the end, the idealism wins and manages to impress the cynic, but only at a great personal cost.
• Slow-Motion Fall: MJ's fall from the Statue of Liberty and her subsequent rescue by Webb-verse Peter, a Call-Back to his failed attempt to save Gwen from her own slow-mo fall in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
• Smack on the Back: MCU Peter gives a parting hug to the two other Peters at the end as they're about to leave, which they gladly reciprocate, except Raimi-verse Peter, who has been stabbed, admits shortly afterward that his wound hurts a lot.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Daredevil's titular protagonist ends up getting all of Peter's legal charges against him dropped after making a few phone calls. Had Matt not been able to do that, much of Peter's story likely would've been spent behind bars.
• Smash Cut: After Strange realizes just how little thought Peter put into his plan to fix his life, we get this exchange:
  Strange: I'm sorry, are you telling me that you didn't even think to plead your case with them before you asked me to brainwash the entire world?
  Peter: ...Well, I mean, when you put it like that, then—
  [cut to Peter outside the Sanctum Sanctorum, getting the door slammed in his face]
• Soft Reboot: By the end of the movie, the status quo for the MCU's Spider-Man is almost completely reset, with the superhero being known in-universe, but Peter Parker's allies not knowing who he is, and with Peter lacking the potential support of the Avengers.
• Some Kind of Force Field: Doctor Strange imprisons the villains in cells closed by magical forcefields that glow a faint blue when touched. Except when Strange himself is sent in the same cell as Sandman; he just walks through it while Marko bumps against the field.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: The last shot of Peter saying "What the fu—" from the mid-credits scene of Far From Home is shown in full in the opening scene, although now a car horn drowns out Peter's voice as he finishes the swear.
• Spanner in the Works: With the sling ring in hand, Ned makes the gesture to open a portal while wishing to see Peter Parker. Doing so brings in the Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peters into his home and they help Ned and MJ figure out where their Peter is hiding out. Without this, Green Goblin and the rest of the villains would've reigned terror in the MCU unopposed.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Thanks to MCU Peter going the extra mile to Save the Villains from their demises in their respective universes, the villains that perished in their original storylines survive in better shape than before: Norman is cured of the performance enhancer that awakened his "Green Goblin" persona, Otto is given a new control chip to free himself of his tentacles' malevolent AI, and Dillon is Brought Down to Normal instead of being destroyed by his own powers, in addition to getting the validation he desperately sought from his universe's Spider-Man.
• Speak in Unison:
  • Upon being arrested by the FBI and arriving at their office, both Aunt May and MJ tell Peter, "Don't say anything without a lawyer!" at the exact same time (and in the exact same urgent tone).
  • In the lab, the three Peters responds in unison to Ned calling "Peter".
  • In the climax, when the Webb-verse Spider-Man tells his alternate universe counterparts that he loves them, both the Raimi-verse Spider-Man and the MCU Spider-Man awkwardly say "Thank you" in unison.
• Spider Limbs: Both Doctor Octopus and the Iron Spider suit are Multi-Armed and Dangerous, and the irony isn't lost on Octavius.
  Doc Ock: [to his tentacles] Looks like we got competition.
• Split-Screen Phone Call: A modernized version; when MJ and Peter are talking to each other with their smartphones, we see a split screen... focused on the phones, thus showing both their faces on the other's respective screen.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad:
  • Out of the returning villains, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Electro get the lion's share of publicity in pre-release marketing, whereas Sandman and Lizard have only explicitly appeared in the official trailer.
  • Subverted with the Raimi and Webb-verse Spider-Men on the request of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. They were asked to return as their Spider-Men, but will do it on the condition that Tom's Spider-Man can stand on his own feet so that both Tobey and Andrew's incarnations don't overshadow Tom's.
• Stacked Characters Poster: The poster shows all main characters stacked upon each other with Spider-Man on top.
• Stating the Simple Solution: After the spell goes awry, Strange casually mentions his assumption that Peter already tried just calling MIT to discuss Ned and MJ's exclusion because of their association with him. To Strange's immense annoyance, Peter didn't even know that was an option.
• Stealth Pun: The interactions between the three Peter Parkers means they're literally talking to themselves. What's more, Webb-verse Peter expresses love for his fellow Peters, showing some self-love.
• The Stinger:
  • Mid-credits: Eddie Brock and Venom are in a bar learning about what's going on in the MCU. Just when they suggest being a hero there, Strange's spell sends them back, but not without leaving a tiny drop of the Symbiote behind...
  • Post-credits: The first trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
• Stock Footage: Some from Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man is utilized for when Sandman reverts into Flint Marko and the Lizard reverts into Curt Connors, instead of giving the characters in question the Digital De-Aging treatment.
• Story-Breaker Power: Why Doctor Strange spends most of the film unavailable, first by trying to contain the spell while Peter hunts down the other villains, then getting trapped in the Mirror Dimension until the final battle, where he's then forced to focus on stopping the cracks in reality created by the broken spell from getting too big and overwhelming the universe. If he was actually allowed to fight the villains directly, the battles would end in seconds.^note While Lizard was apparently able to put up a fight, it should be noted that Strange said he tracked him into the sewers, where Lizard has the environmental advantage, while Strange himself likely had no idea what he was dealing with. Yet despite Lizard being in the best terrain for himself and likely having the element of surprise, Strange was still able to send Lizard back to the Sanctum while he only suffered a few scratches for his trouble. This is even shown by the fact that all the villains end up getting locked in the Sanctum's dungeon roughly halfway through the movie either directly because of Strange or indirectly due to him giving Peter a magically enchanted web shooter that teleported them right into the cells.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: When pressed by a doubting MJ whether he really is Spider-Man, Webb-verse Peter explains that he doesn't carry an ID on his person because "that kind of defeats the anonymous superhero thing". When Raimi-verse Peter appears and Ned asks why he just didn't say he's Spider-Man (instead of demonstrating by shooting at the other Peter), he answers that he can't just advertise that because it kinda defeats the anonymous superhero thing. Both Webb-verse Peter and MJ are astonished.
  Webb-verse Peter: I just said that...
  MJ: That's what he just said...
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: When beaten against the ropes and helpless before an enraged MCU Peter, the Green Goblin spitefully decides that he can "win" anyways by making the boy kill him in cold blood, daring MCU Peter to impale him with his glider by mockingly accusing him of being directly responsible for Aunt May's death. MCU Peter is within a hair's breadth of becoming a murderer were it not for the timely intervention of Raimi-verse Peter, who in forgiving Green Goblin, finally also learns to forgive himself for the death of the Osborn father-and-son.
• Stunned Silence: Flash watches a video of Spider-Man being outed and stops dead in shock, oblivious to Spider-Man and MJ dropping into the sewer behind him.
• Stylistic Suck: In the extended edition, Betty Brant's interviews for the school news are intentionally of poor quality, notably with "Exclusive Interview!!!!!!!" in Comic Sans MS (and that many exclamation marks), and using a painfully obvious and badly aliased green screen.
• Suddenly Shouting: Doc Ock, when Peter asks him too many questions.
  Octavius: We grow tired of your questions, boy!
• Suddenly Speaking: It takes a while for the Lizard to open up and start talking to people. Everyone is stunned to hear him do so. It is more of a shock in-universe, as out-of-universe viewers had seen him fully capable of speech in his own film.
• Superhero Movie Villains Die: A Deconstructed Trope. Three of the invading villains are said to have died while fighting their Spider-Men, effectively making them into vengeful "ghosts" that will cease to exist upon returning to their universes. The MCU Peter, an All-Loving Hero, is unsettled by the implications, and his unwillingness to allow the villains to die again results in conflict with Doctor Strange. The film ends with Peter managing to redeem the multiversal villains against all odds, sending them back to their worlds to hopefully lead better lives.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Played With, as while Peter goes to see Strange for help, for some reason there is no mention of any of the Avengers coming to Peter's defense, implying that they all decided it wasn't their business.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Briefly, the three Spider-Men have trouble hearing each other over their earpieces, a self-aware riff on the Acoustic License which is ubiquitous in all MCU team-up films.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Ned tries to get the attention of Peter (the one he knows) to attend to his computer, and all three Peters answer. He attempts to first clarify "Peter Parker" and then "Spider-Man", and the three just keep talking and pointing at each other. Ned gives up and instead points to the laptop.
• Take My Hand!: MCU Peter jumps to try and catch MJ as she's falling to her doom away from the Statue of Liberty, and there's a shot of their hands reaching for each other. The Green Goblin intercepts Peter before he can save her... but Webb-verse Spider-Man, determined to prevent this Spider-Man from losing the love of his life like he did, comes in for the save.
• Take That!: J. Jonah Jameson and The Daily Bugle are depicted here as rather unflattering parodies (respectively) of Alex Jones and InfoWars, with Jameson being a loud pundit who spreads false and sensationalized news, initially broadcasts from a dumpy basement, and advertises supplements of questionable quality.
• Take That, Critics!: In the scene where Peter and May are watching the news in their apartment, there is a montage of a knee-jerk reaction to Spider-Man filled with lies and attempts to discredit him, including a Time Magazine cover named "Iron Man Jr", poking fun at all the fans on the internet consistently labeling Tom Holland's Spider-Man as an "Iron Boy" or "Iron Man Jr".
• Team Mercy vs. Team Murder:
  • Upon discovering that the villains brought to the MCU were pulled at the moment of their death, Peter wants to make sure they aren't being sent straight to their death when the inciting spell is undone. Dr. Strange on the other hand is completely ambivalent to this, rationalizing that "It's their fate," and "In the grand scheme of the multiverse, their sacrifice means infinitely more than their lives." This conflict causes a fight to break out between Peter and Strange when the villains are about to be sent home.
  • After Green Goblin ruins the rehabilitation plan and kills Aunt May, Peter starts to question the value of life when it comes to villains, admitting that he wants nothing more than to kill Green Goblin. He gets his chance during the climax, where he is absolutely clobbering Goblin and is about to crush him with his own glider. Ultimately, he is stopped by Raimi-verse Peter, and in a moment of silent understanding, convinces him not to kill Goblin.
• Teetering on the Edge: The MIT Vice Chancellor's car is teetering over the edge of the bridge. It eventually tips over, but Peter comes to her aid in time before the car hits the ground.
• That Came Out Wrong: Peter tries to plead MJ and Ned's case to an MIT representative, but ends up insulting MIT in the process.
  Peter: So please don't let MIT be dumb like me.
  Vice Chancellor: MIT is dumb?
  Peter: No, I'm saying don't let MIT be dumb. I mean, like the dumber version of me that wouldn't have let them help...
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!:
  • Peter presents Norman Osborn to his friends as "Mr. Osborn", but Osborn then insists on being called "Dr. Osborn".
  • Doctor Strange's form of address is an indicator of how he's feeling about Spider-Man at any given moment. When they first reunite, he's friendly due to having saved the universe with him and insists on not being called "sir". After he and Peter botch the spell, he demands to be called "sir" because he's pissed with him. During the final battle, after making peace with Peter's decisions, he goes back to accepting a First-Name Basis.
• This Cannot Be!: Done twice.
  • First by Octavius when Peter hijacks his tentacles and rescues the MIT representative.
  • Second when Strange forces Peter out of his body to retrieve the spellbox, only for Peter's unconscious body to evade him subconsciously.
• This Is Gonna Suck: After Peter explains his plan to cure all the displaced antagonists, Octavius grumbles, "He's gonna kill us all."
• Three-Point Landing: MCU Peter lands in this position several times, most notably in the big money shot of all three Spider-Men stopping together in a separate heroic pose.
• Throwing Out the Script: At the end, Peter is seen rehearsing a letter with which he intends to reintroduce himself to MJ and Ned, but backs down when he sees they got accepted to MIT and how MJ is still recovering from the final battle.
• Thwarted Coup de Grâce: During the denouement, MCU Peter has the Green Goblin dead to rights and is about to impale him with his glider, the same way the character originally died and the way Goblin killed Aunt May. Raimi-verse Peter interrupts at the last second, silently communicating to the other Peter that this is the wrong way to go about it. He gets stabbed by Goblin for his efforts, but MCU Peter gets the message.
• Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: Type 1. All of the multiversal characters are based in New York in their respective universes, and also end up in the MCU's New York after Doctor Strange's spell goes awry. Meanwhile, Eddie and Venom, who had fled the U.S. during the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, are still in Mexico after warping to the MCU, which prevents them from participating in the action.
• Time Skip: The bulk of the movie takes place in early November 2024, but the final scenes jump ahead a few weeks or so to the Christmas season, with snow and the tree at Rockefeller Center. In the very least, the ending takes place before the last episode of Hawkeye, as the tree ends up getting knocked down during a scuffle the titular hero has with the Tracksuit Mafia.
• Token Trio: Peter, MJ and Ned can be seen like this. Peter is Caucasian while his Love Interest is African-American and his Best Friend is Asian-American.
• Tonight, Someone Dies: The official trailer implies a major Character Death, opening with Peter amidst a Gray Rain of Depression and putting emphasis on his line of not being able to save everyone. Aunt May, Happy, and MJ are all depicted in peril; Aunt May is ultimately the one who dies, courtesy of Green Goblin.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Subverted. Flint Marko starts out friendly toward Spider-Man and even lends a hand in subduing Electro. When things go south, he pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here and returns during the Final Battle on the side of the villains. However, he's only trying to get back home and doesn't care about the Peters' plans to cure the villains or even the other villains themselves.
• Traintop Battle: Part of Doctor Strange and Spider-Man's scuffle involves the two superheroes going at it on top of a train, which is then warped and mirrored due to the effects of the Mirror Dimension.
• Trapped in Another World:
  • While this applies to all the villains accidentally summoned by the screwed-up amnesia spell, this rings especially true for the two other Peters who were accidentally brought over as well, whose presences wandering the MCU for a while weren't made known nor do they have a means of going back themselves until Ned accidentally made contact with them.
  • This trope also heavily applies to Eddie Brock and Venom, who had fled to Mexico after the events of their last movie, thus leaving them in a foreign country in another universe.
• Trauma Conga Line: God, poor Peter. He's framed for murder by a man he never wanted to kill, gaslit and hated by most of New York because of it, his best friend and girlfriend's futures are ruined because he was defending himself, he gets beaten until absolutely bloody and bruised, his Aunt May dies as he cradles her face, and then he's wiped from the minds of every single person in the entire universe. And all this was after being psychologically tortured by Quentin Beck a mere few weeks ago. Yet he goes right back to protecting NYC, because that's just who Spider-Man is.
• Truer to the Text:
  • Despite the famous line being generally remembered as "With great power comes great responsibility" in the annals of popular culture, the original line written in Amazing Fantasy #15 was "With great power, there must also come great responsibility."^note This is referred to as "a subtle, but profound difference" in Spider-Girl: The End! This version of the line is spoken by Aunt May, moments before her death.invoked
  • After spending most of his history in the MCU wearing high-tech suits with nanotechnology and fancy gadgets, all made for him by Tony Stark, the ending sees Peter return to his roots by hand-crafting a mundane spandex costume that skews much closer to the classic Spider-Man look, as well as to the costumes worn by the other Peters in their respective timelines.
  • A rare example where the change happens in the line of the narrative. After all knowledge of Peter Parker is erased, Jameson's rants now perfectly line up with his classic self's rhetoric of "If Spider-Man isn't evil, why does he wear a mask?"
  • Two of the villains get a makeover that makes them more comic accurate. Electro, though not getting the actual costume, gets a suit with a lot of green and the electricity he emits is yellow instead of blue, along with the electricity coming out of his face taking on the star shape of his original comics costume. Meanwhile, Green Goblin's outfit is given significant changes; the purple hoodie he wears to hide his costume gets damaged and along with some purple gauntlets and pieces to repair his suit, it give him a more comic accurate color scheme, along with a satchel to carry his weaponry.
• Trying Not to Cry: Having come to respect Peter's bravery and kindness, it was all Doctor Strange could do to fight back the tears and choke out, "Call me Stephen" when Peter willingly lets all memory of his very existence be wiped out to save the universe from being destroyed by an interdimensional cataclysm.
• Uncertain Doom: Electro and Doc Ock realize that they were brought into the MCU just before they were going to die in their home timelines and Doctor Strange phrases his declaration to Peter as if all the villains are fated to meet their ends at the hands of a Spider-Man. The three Peters manage to cure all the villains and even redeem some of them before correcting the timeline, but what exact fate awaits each of them when they return home is left in the air.
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: In ainvoked Deleted Scene readded to the extended "More Fun Stuff" cut, Aunt May, Peter Parker, Norman Osborn, Max Dillon, Flint Marko and Otto Octavius are taking the elevator together to Happy's apartment, making for quite the awkward ride. Especially since Doc Ock, front and center, is still wrapped in his own tentacles, and even one tentacle tip seems to be following the unspoken protocol.
• Unfortunate Names:
  • Upon asking Doc Ock for his name and hearing "Otto Octavius" in return, Peter, Ned, and MJ burst into laughter and think that he's just messing with them.
  • In The Stinger, upon learning who the Avengers are, Venom remarks of the Hulk's name, "And you thought 'Lethal Protector' was a shit name!" Eddie Brock's response is that he still does.
• Un-person: Doctor Strange attempts a spell with a minor version of this, people forgetting that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but Peter mucks things up. It ultimately only gets fixed by getting straight into the trope, and people forget about Peter Parker altogether — only Spider-Man remains in their memories.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In The Stinger, the bartender is totally unfazed as he recaps the events of the MCU to a drunk Eddie Brock who's behaving very strangely, even pointing out matter-of-factly that the Avengers' enemy that Eddie is trying to dismiss killed his whole family. When Eddie suddenly vanishes, the bartender is just unhappy that he didn't pay his bill beforehand.
• Unwanted Assistance: As Spider-Man is swinging on power lines trying to avoid Electro's lightning bolts, Ned and MJ, who are watching the whole thing through a cell phone strapped to his chest, try to provide assistance by giving directions with a bit of Your Other Left thrown in — finally prompting Peter to shout "THIS IS NOT... HELPING!"
• Vertigo Effect: The effect appears when Peter's Spidey Sense kicks in as the Goblin takes over Norman Osborn.
• Villain of Another Story: A Deconstruction. The movie's villains are enemies of different Spider-Men from two separate universes/film franchises, but it doesn't make them any less of a problem for this universe's Spider-Man and a danger to the people here. Hell, Green Goblin murders Aunt May For the Evulz to illustrate this.
• Villain Team-Up: Green Goblin from Spider-Man, Electro from Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sandman from Spider-Man 3, and the Lizard from Amazing Spider-Man all face off against the three Spider-Men.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Peter has to balance his real-life problems of getting into MIT with the fantastic problem of saving the world from supervillains on the loose.
• Walk of Shame: After Peter's identity is revealed and rumors about him having murdered Mysterio spread, he enters his school and walks down a corridor with numerous other students surrounding him and taking pictures. Watch the scene here.
• Wham Episode: Spider-Man's life is drastically altered by the events of the film. To wit, Aunt May gets killed, leaving Peter an orphan, Peter allows Doctor Strange to erase him from the entire world's memory, and a piece of the Venom Symbiote is left as a Sequel Hook for the next MCU Spider-Man outing. And of course, this is also the first MCU Intra-Franchise Crossover.
• Wham Line:
  • "With great power, there must also come great responsibility." Not for the line itself, but rather for who says it: Aunt May says this to Peter just before her death, signifying her role as the MCU's equivalent of Uncle Ben, the character most often associated with the famous quote.^note Interestingly, no-one actually says the quote in the original comic — there, it appeared in a text box that said that Spider-Man had learned the lesson.
  • At the end, reality itself is on the verge of collapsing to the point that Doctor Strange cannot fix it since there's infinite numbers of people who know who Peter Parker is, all of them trying to enter the same timeline. Then MCU Peter suggests the only solution to fix this that will subsequently change his own future:
    Peter: What if... everyone forgot who Peter Parker is?
• Wham Shot:
  • The first thing we see of Peter's lawyer is a hand on a white cane. The shot pans out to reveal Matt Murdock from the MCU's discontinued Netflix branch, making his way into the larger MCU mere days after his nemesis the Kingpin did likewise in Hawkeye.
  • After Ned's wish to see Peter again opens a sling ring portal, he and MJ see Spider-Man in the distance. They call out to him, and as he approaches it slowly becomes clear that he's taller than MCU Peter and sports the distinctive gigantic eyes of the Webb-verse Spider-Man. He then promptly unmasks to reveal the face of Andrew Garfield.
  • A few minutes later, Ned tries again, and the next portal opens to inevitably reveal Tobey Maguire, the Raimi-verse Peter Parker.
  • The mid-credits scene mostly seems like an extended gag... until the final shot, which shows that a spawn of the Venom Symbiote stayed behind... and it starts moving.
• Which Me?: With three different Peter Parkers in the same film, this was bound to come up. After a few instances of confusion over which Peter people were referring to, they eventually decide to call themselves Peter 1 (MCU Spider-Man), Peter 2 (Raimi-verse Spider-Man) and Peter 3 (Webb-verse Spider-Man).
• "Will Return" Caption: Due to the post-credits scene being the trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the caption is titled "Doctor Strange will return."
• With Due Respect: May says this when she first starts speaking during her time being interrogated.
  May: With all due respect, and I mean that very insincerely...
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Said verbatim in a Spider-Man film for the first time since the Spider-Man Trilogy.
  • It starts with May's encounter with Norman at F.E.A.S.T. — she knows he's an interdimensional interloper, but his quavering and panicky mannerisms make him seem for all the world like another homeless person who needs help from the charity, and she encourages Peter to offer the imprisoned villains more help than just sending them back where they came from. When this goes badly, Peter regrets it, but May sticks by it, telling him, "With great power, there must also come great responsibility," which is the exact wording of the line as it was spoken by the narrator at the end of the very first Spider-Man comic.
  • When Peter starts the line later on, Raimi-Verse Peter finishes it with "...comes great responsibility", the more famous variant of the line as it comes from Uncle Ben, including the one from his own trilogy. Webb-Verse Peter recognizes the sentiment but doesn't quote it outright, as his own Uncle Ben phrased it very differently.^note "[Your father] believed that if you could do good things for other people, you had a moral obligation to do those things. That's what's at stake here. Not choice — responsibility." (Also worth noting is that this line is lifted verbatim from the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man.) MCU Peter's first appearance had him deliver a Buffy Speak version of the idea.^note "When you can do the things I can do, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you." As the MCU version of Uncle Ben has never been mentioned outside of a fleeting name-drop in What If...?, it's unclear if the current Peter ever had this message delivered to him in the manner his predecessors did, at least before now, although he seemed to recognize the sentiment after hearing it worded to him directly.
• A Wizard Did It: Why does Doctor Strange's spell pull Green Goblin, Doc Ock and Electro out of their timelines just as they're about to die, but the Lizard was pulled from a point before he was cured, and Sandman from some time after his movie when the truth about Norman and Otto's lives became public knowledge? Why do the Spider-Men come from the "present day" of their timelines, 10-20 years after fighting these villains? Who cares? A wizard literally did it, and the process went out of his control.
• The Worf Effect: Downplayed. In close-quarters combat, Doc Ock remains a formidable opponent to Peter just as he was in Spider-Man 2. However, once he absorbs some of Tony Stark's nanomachines, this only puts his arms under the control of the Iron Spider suit (which easily disables them within seconds).
• Wrestler in All of Us: Green Goblin hits Peter with both an elevated powerbomb and a spinebuster during their fight. Peter later returns the favor with a powerbomb in the climax.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Eddie Brock and Venom are both open to the idea of becoming superheroes in the MCU. Then Doctor Strange's spell sends them back to their home dimension.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: When he first manifests, Electro starts off as the blue electricity from his previous outing, but pretty quickly changes into a more traditional-to-comics yellow and stays that way for the rest of the film. It gets a Hand Wave away that the energy in this reality he's absorbing is different to that in his previous one, due to Tony Stark having a large influence in building the current world's energy infrastructure.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • When MCU Peter and Raimi-verse Peter talk about having fought aliens, Webb-verse Peter says the last enemy he faced was a Russian with a rhino suit and puts himself down. Raimi-verse Peter tells him to have more confidence, calling him "amazing".
  • After Electro is depowered, he admits that he didn't want to give up his powers because he believes he's just a nobody without them. Webb-verse Peter assures him that he's not.
• You Can't Go Home Again: As the title implies, by the end of the movie Peter is completely alone in the world and having to rebuild all his relationships from scratch, with Aunt May dead and nobody knowing who he is.
• You Killed My Father: MCU Peter is out for the Green Goblin's blood after the Goblin kills Aunt May.
• You're Insane!: Said by Osborn when Octavius claims that Osborn died years ago.

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"I promise I'll fix this."