In addition to the film's plot, the game adds a number of additional storylines and enemies for Spider-Man to face.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Deviation: Besides the extra villains and subplots, some elements from the movie play out differently in the game; notable examples including that Norman Osborn doesn't become the Green Goblin until just before the Unity Day Festival and that Uncle Ben's killer is depicted as a gang leader.
- Adaptation Distillation: Some elements from the movie are skipped entirely or their placement is altered, likely to make room for the other villains' subplots.
- Green Goblin trying to make Spider-Man join him, which in the movie was the former's way of a heart-to-heart in a less action-packed scene, is integrated into the Unity Day Festival levels mid-fight.
- Spider-Man and Green Goblin never fight inside of a burning building, and their final battle stays entirely on the bridge rather than moving into an abandoned building.
- Adaptation Expansion: Spidey recovers jewels heisted by Shocker and the Vulture, rescues the Scorpion before fighting him in the sewers, has to disarm several bombs set across New York by the Green Goblin, and infiltrates OsCorp before fighting a Giant Mecha. There's also his confrontation with Kraven The Hunter, but that's an Xbox-exclusive sub-plot.
- Adaptational Badass: Uncle Ben's killer actually puts up a fight, unlike in the movie.
- Adaptational Villainy: Norman Osborn doesn't seem to be struggling quite so much with his split personality here as he does in the film. He even shows some sinister qualities prior to becoming the Goblin, as he seeks to abduct Spider-Man and Scorpion so as to conduct presumably inhumane experiments on them.
- Ambiguous Situation: Unlike the movie, it's never stated if Norman actually knew about Spider-Man's identity as the game never states this.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Beating the game on various difficulties unlocks different costumes. Playing on Hero difficulty, however, lets you play the whole game as the Green Goblin, but as Harry Osborn trying to investigate his father's disappearance. Who the actual Goblin is when he fights him is left unresolved.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Although it's unclear if it's intentional, the game only checks the final mission (which is a cutscene) when it comes to unlocking the "beat the game" unlockables, which can't be unlocked with cheats. As long as you don't mind using cheats, just 1) start a new game on either hard difficulty and quit the first level, 2) type in the "all levels" cheat and play the final "mission" and 3) start a new game again but don't reset your bonus rewards. Voilà, enjoy your extra costumes and extra character without having to bother with the
Nintendo Hard playthrough you'd usually need! - Anti-Villain: Scorpion. Unlike the others, he just wants to be (1) left alone and (2) free of his Blessed with Suck/Cursed with Awesome Powered Armor. However, his Paranoia (unfortunately reinforced by Oscorp's drones constantly hounding him) inevitably drives him to attack Spidey out of perceived self-defense.
- Apologetic Attacker: In the OsCorp levels, Spider-Man apologizes when he first knocks out one of the security guards, acknowledging that they aren't evil and are simply just people doing their jobs.
- Battle in the Rain: The fight with Vulture takes place in a driving thunderstorm. In fact, it's possible to get yourself killed by climbing to the top of the Chrysler Building and catching a lightning bolt.
- Black Comedy: After Pete saves Mary Jane, they become too distracted to each other, but neither notice the panda parade balloon falling behind them as a crowd starts screaming.
- Bowdlerise: Later versions adapted out the infamous Girl-on-Girl kiss.note
- Clown Car: Just how many goons did Shocker have in his van?
- Colon Cancer: Sometimes the game is referred to as Spider-Man: The Movie: The Game.
- Completion Mockery: Beating the game has Peter Parker's last bit of ending narration urging you to go outside and play.
- Compressed Adaptation: The Goblin's attack at the parade and his attempt to enlist Spidey come one after the other here.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Scorpion accuses Spider-Man of working with the spider robots who attempted to take him in despite the web slinger having just rescued him, never mind the fact that the robots were programmed to capture Spider-Man as well.
- Death by Falling Over: The outdoor levels have a minimum height limit to them. Makes sense that falling too far would kill Pete, but it's also possible to trigger just by swinging too low.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In both the comic and the 2002 film, the Green Goblin does himself in by accidentally ramming the Goblin Glider into his torso and impaling himself. The game follows this, but the glider just rams into Gobby with no stab marks and gets knocked out before dying. He also dies on the road of the bridge rather than in a building.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The game is developed by Treyarch, so most of the combat is roughly based of the Spider-Man (2000). The web slinging mechanic retains the "web shoots in the sky" before Spider-Man 2 and other games evolved into webs sticking to the nearest building as a mechanic. It's also broken up into levels, instead of the open world game play Spider-Man games have become famous for.
- Easter Egg: Wearing the Alex Ross concept suit (unlocked by beating normal difficulty) also changes the Green Goblin's costume into a Ross design that resembles the comic version more.
- Expy: The droids that Norman Osborn sends out to hunt Spider-Man down are essentially the Spider-Slayers in all but name.
- Funny Background Event: While Spider-Man and MJ are talking after the former saves the latter, the balloon that she was stuck on falls to the ground behind them, with the sound of screaming accompanying it.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Spidey can run out of webbing, despite the fact that in this universe, his web shooters are organic. Not to mention that you can throw enemies from rooftops and/or into electrified water.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: During the fight against the Spider-Mechs, Scorpion yells about how much he hates his suit, and how much he longs to get rid of it someday.
- Kinder and Cleaner: Compared to the movie, there is no profanity whatsoever.
- Large Ham: The Vulture, The Scorpion, The Goblin... Pretty much every villain is having a blast.
- Lemony Narrator: Bruce Campbell is not going to let doing his job get in the way of his lunch, and he will not hold back the sarcasm just either.
- Lighter and Softer: The game has no blood and no profanity and sexual themes whatsoever compared to the movie it spawned from.
- Losing Horns: More like "Losing Strings", but with the same effect whenever you get a game over. Also inverted, as you get a horn theme when you beat a level. Both tracks are also heard in the PSP version of Spider-Man 2, with the same purpose.
- Mini-Mecha: The Oscorp guards.
- Mythology Gag: In the Xbox-exclusive Kraven missions, Spider-Man jokingly asks if mental illness runs in his family. This harkens to the Arc Words of Kraven's Last Hunt: "They said my mother was insane."
- Named by the Adaptation: The Burglar is named "Spike" here, though that could just be an alias.
- Nerf: As mentioned this game uses many of the mechanics from Spider-Man (2000). In that game however, you could actually defeat basic enemies by webbing them up. Here, you can only temporarily immobilize them.
- No Ending: In addition to missing a lot of details to better line up with the Spider-Man storyline, the Green Goblin story just sorta...stops. You never find out who the other Goblin is, what his connection to Norman Osborn is or why he's doing all these bad things. You just beat him and it cuts to black.
- No Fourth Wall: As far as The Narrator is concerned.
- No Honor Among Thieves: After being defeated by Spider-Man, the Shocker willingly gives up the location of the Vulture, whom he had just performed a heist with earlier, reasoning that, "If I'm not getting mine, Vulture's not getting his..."
- Overheating: When playing as The Green Goblin, the weapons on his glider will overheat and become useless for several seconds if used too often. This prevents you from simply using the glider to gun down all mooks in your path.
- Rapid-Fire Name Guessing: When Spidey first confronts Shocker, he attempts to guess the villain's name, throwing out "Quilt-man," "Padded Pete," "Mr. Triple Ply" and "The Cushion."
- Run or Die: One level has Goblin attack Spidey with dozens of razor bats. You can only defeat so many of them before the game tells you to run and fight another day.
- Secret Character: Beating the game on Hero mode unlocks the ability to play as Harry Osborn using the Green Goblin gear, complete with a new moveset and dialogue options, on a quest to find out what happened to Norman.
- Selfcest: If you use a cheat to play as Mary Jane, the game's final kiss is somewhat different...
- Too Dumb to Live: In Shocker's first level, that single civilian who not only fails to notice that there is a robbery going on, he also misses the fact that the building has been evacuated, and that one of the two masked men fighting is trying to crush him with a giant pillar right above him. Spidey does lampshade this, but still.
- Truer to the Text: The characterizations are a little more faithful to the comics than the movie. Spider-Man is far more quippy and Norman Osborn lacks any of the sympathetic qualities his film version has, putting him back into the manipulative and psychotic mindset of his comic counterpart.
- Version-Exclusive Content: The Xbox version has two missions centered around Kraven the Hunter.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can use your web to yank mooks off rooftops and watch them fall to their deaths on the street below.
- Video Game Physics: Like the 2000 game it has a uniform swinging system where Spidey shoots his web directly upwards regardless of if there's anything there to attach it to. In indoor levels this isn't too bad, but in outdoor levels it means "swinging" is really just flying with a swing animation.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The Green Goblin makes his escape after his first fight with Spider-Man, distracting him with the threat of several gas bombs.
- Villainous Friendship: Both the Shocker and the Vulture briefly form an alliance to perform a heist together, and split the shares afterwards.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Scorpion's fate after running away is never resolved in the game. However, this is resolved in the Spider-Man 3 tie-in game, where he reappears.
- You Fight Like a Cow: Well, it is Spider-Man. That said, Tobey Maguire embodies Spidey's trash-talking attitude a lot more here than he did in the movies. Harry Osborn does this too.
