Western Animation / Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spoilers from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

"Anyone can wear the mask... but how you wear it, that's what matters."

Miguel O'Hara: You have a choice between saving one person, and saving an entire world, every world.
Miles Morales: I can do both! Spider-Man always...
Peter B. Parker: Not always.

Let's do things differently this time. Like, so differently.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a computer-animated superhero film, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos (Voltron: Legendary Defender), Kemp Powers (Soul), and Justin K. Thompson from a screenplay by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings). A co-production between Sony Pictures Animation and Marvel Entertainment, the movie is a sequel to 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the second in the Spider-Man: Spider-Verse trilogy, and the tenth Spider-Man film to be released in theaters.

Set a year after getting his powers and learning to balance his social and home lives with being Earth-1610B's Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is pulled into yet another adventure by Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), who has joined a large community of inter-dimensional Spider-People called the Spider-Society, who have neglected to let him join the elite team due to circumstances they're strangely reluctant to disclose. On what seems like an average day of do-gooding, he finds himself fighting The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a seemingly incompetent villain who soon reveals himself to be capable of traveling The Multiverse. Following Gwen as she goes to stop him, Miles now finds himself pulled into the multiverse in a race to stop the Spot's rapidly escalating power. But he also finds that he's earned the ire of Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac), the Society's leader, who brings down the power of every Spider in the Society on him when they clash on how to stop the Spot's plan.

Rounding out the film's rather packed voice cast is Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker/Earth-616B's Spider-Man, Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Velez as Jefferson and Rio Morales, Shea Whigham as Captain George Stacy, Issa Rae as Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, Daniel Kaluuya as Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk, Andy Samberg as Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider, Karan Soni as Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India and Amandla Stenberg as Margo Kess/Spider-Byte.

While planned to be a two-part movie, Across the Spider-Verse was subsequently revised into a standalone sequel, with the third film now titled Beyond the Spider-Verse. Both films have the same creative team. Across the Spider-Verse was released on June 2, 2023, while Beyond the Spider-Verse has no confirmed release date.^note It was originally scheduled for March 29, 2024, but the 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike would cause the film to be delayed indefinitely.

Across the Spider-Verse is Sony Pictures Animation's first theatrical release since The Angry Birds Movie 2 in 2019, with four intervening features^note The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Wish Dragon, Vivo, and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania having released on streaming services due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. With a runtime of 140 minutes, it is the longest animated film ever produced by an American studio.

Previews: First Look, Trailer, Trailer 2, International Trailer, Trailer 3, Spider-Man India Trailer.

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse provides examples of:

Tropes A–C

• Achievements in Ignorance: Spot fights Miles to a standstill even though he doesn't really understand his abilities. This is partly fueled by Miles being distracted by his responsibilities as a high school student.
• Achilles' Heel: The Spot's Thinking Up Portals ability makes him tricky to combat, especially since he himself starts out with a poor grasp of how they work and technically defeats himself with his own Power Incontinence, but the black hole portals he creates effectively means he can redirect any damage or attacks away from himself, and once he starts to get better at using them, can even forcibly reject objects inside them, such as a fist or a kick, as a violent Counter-Attack. However, the blank white "canvas" that makes up his entire body is still technically physically human, and can be touched and hit to knock him down if one figures out how to bypass his portal defenses. The moment he goes from a beatable opponent with difficulty to borderline unstoppable multiverse menace has his entire body be subsumed by the Dark Matter of his holes, resulting in an eldritch, warped appearance as his whole being effectively becomes a "Black Spot", with no discernible weakness.
  • Spot's portals appear to be exhaustible. Midway through the movie he winds up "out of spots" and must secure more dark matter to fuel the continued use of his abilities. Theoretically, he can be worn down and/or outlasted. However, given how dangerous and versatile his powers make him, it would be far from easy.
• Acoustic License: The movie climaxes on the outside of a space-elevator-train. Headed for the moon. Characters have no problem chatting with each other from any range, in any direction, and Miles can even hear the announcement that's inside the train. Even accounting for Super-Senses or some kind of atmospheric tunnel, there's a remarkable lack of wind. And a random civilian in a car that's moving at about the same speed as the train, in a semi-enclosed tunnel, seems to have no problem hearing Miles on his windshield.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Donald Glover, the man who inspired the creation of Miles Morales, has a short live-action cameo as his version of the Prowler. He briefly interacts with Miles when the latter visits the multiversal prison.
  • Scarlet Spider sarcastically calling Miguel "dad" is from a well-known Cold Open from Samberg's Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
  • Pavitr speaks dismissively of Americans "coming to India to discover themselves" in the middle of his fight with Spot — who is voiced by Jason Schwartzman, who starred in The Darjeeling Limited, a film where he and his brothers do just that.
  • While trying to hide his identity as Spider-Man from his parents, Miles says that Spider-Man seems more Dominican than Puerto Rican. Miles' Alternate Self from Earth-42 is played by Dominican-American Jharrel Jerome.
• Adaptational Abomination: While the Spot has always been skirting the line between a petty incompetent thief and an actual threat, this version of Jonathan becomes a Transhuman Abomination who can travel between realities and needs the whole Spider-Society to stop him. His look is even more otherwordly, looking like a living void splattered with black holes
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Mayday, being still months old during the film's events, already has powers, whereas in the comics they wouldn't manifest until she was a teenager.
  • The Spot is sometimes portrayed as a Not-So-Harmless Villain, but here it can not only travel through different realities, as opposed to just having portals through its body, but is a borderline Cosmic Flaw Brown Note Being who poses a threat to the entire multiverse.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Mayday Parker has red hair like her mother, as opposed to brown hair like her father in Spider-Girl. Her initial concept art also shows her eyes as having heterochromia unlike her comic counterpart — who had blue eyes — with her left eye being brown like Peter's and her right eye being blue like MJ's. However, this would be scrapped come the final release, as she is shown to have her comic counterpart's blue eyes.invoked
• Adaptation Name Change: An odd example with Spot. Since the film's Spot comes from 1610, he's technically an adaptation from the Ultimate universe where Spot's name is Frank. The film instead uses the main universe's name of Johnathon Ohnn.
• Age Lift: In Spider-Girl, Mayday was a teenager. She's in fact older than Anna-May. In this film, however, she's shown to be a baby.
• Alliance of Alternates:
  • The Spider-Society is a group of hundreds, if not thousands of alternate-dimensional Spider-beings charged with protecting the multiverse, led by Miguel O'Hara a.k.a. Spider-Man 2099.
  • At the end of the film, Spider-Gwen creates a new "band" of Spider-People to counter Miguel and rescue Miles.
• All Part of the Show: When Gwen, Miguel and Jessica stop the police helicopter from landing on innocent people in the Guggenheim, one of the spectators comments, "I think it's a Banksy."
• All There in the Manual:
  • While they share the same name in the film proper, The Art of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse labels the Prowler of Earth-42 as "Miles G. Morales" ("G." standing for Miles' middle name, Gonzalo) to distinguish the two, in the same vein as Peter B. Parker.
  • The dramatic cliffhanger of the film is Miles being trapped by his alternate self, who is that universe's Prowler and thus gives the impression of being an outright villain along with his uncle Aaron. However, the artbook describes that after his brother died, Earth-42's Aaron "shook off his life of crime to become Miles' surrogate father figure", and that in a New York overrun by criminals, Miles G. and Aaron are "the only heroes". If this idea is kept for Beyond, it leaves the implication that the reason they trapped Miles and acted so intimidating towards him is either due to mistaking him for some elaborate deceit by one of the city's supervillains, or they ironically suspect "our" Miles to be the Evil Doppelgänger, and that he was possibly out to harm Rio when Aaron found him with her.
• Alternate Species Counterpart: Spider-Cat is an orange calico cat with the powers of Spider-Man.
• Alternate Tooniverse: All recent live-action movie continuities appear as alternate universes:
  • Clips from Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man appear when Miguel explains how Canon Events happen.
  • Miguel complains about Doctor Strange from Earth-199999 and we get a cameo from a live-action Prowler played by Donald Glover from Spider-Man: Homecoming, though it's unknown if this is the same one from the MCU.
  • Spot briefly stops in Sony's Spider-Man Universe and has a conversation with Mrs. Chen.
• Alternate Universe: In keeping with the previous film, Miles travels to many parallel worlds, such as the massive India-inspired metropolis Mumbattan and Nueva York in the year 2099. As noted in Freeze-Frame Bonus, this film establishes that while the film uses the same reality designation as the comics, they are in fact different as one Spider-Society member comes from Earth-1610A (as in the reality of the Ultimate Marvel comics) while Peter B. comes from Earth-616B, implying that Miles' home reality is Earth-1610B.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese dub has an exclusive theme song, "REALIZE" by LISA.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: When Miles introduces Gwen to his parents as "Gwanda from school", his mother teases him with uncomfortable comments about their relationship. Miles is not amused.
  Rio: Haha. Don't take him from me. [Beat] Just kidding. He's grounded, so you can't. [Beat]
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Miguel is adamant that any deviation to a universe's canon event will result in the wholesale destruction of that universe, something that he has seen firsthand. Except... we know that that isn't true. Miles was, according to Miguel himself, never supposed to become Spider-Man, as the spider that bit him originated in Earth-42, which as a result never received its own Spider-Man and devolved into societal chaos. Both universes are structurally fine, surviving even after major alterations to their canon events. This begs the question of what actually caused the destruction of the timeline Miguel was in: Was it really because he disrupted canon, or due to circumstances that he is unaware of? Even Gwen's own universe survives an alteration to Canon Event ASM-90: Captain Stacy doesn't die during Renaissance Vulture's attack, thanks to the Spider-Peoples' intervention. Then this alteration becomes permanent when he gives up his position as captain.
  • By extension, Peter B. never would have gotten back with MJ and had Mayday if he hadn't met Miles, whom he mentored (therefore giving him a new outlook on the idea of having kids) and who encouraged Peter to take the risk and repair his relationship, and Miguel seems to (begrudgingly) tolerate Mayday; is she an anomaly too?
  • On a similar note, Miles saves Inspector Singh from what would have been his death, and in the same moment the damaged Alchemax building crashes into the ground and creates a rift in reality which the Spider-Society attempt to seal. Miles is blamed for this since he interfered in the "canon", but Miles points out it's equally probable that the nature of the Spot's powers caused the damage, and the timing is simply coincidental.
  • How did the MCU's Prowler end up in the Spider-Society's prison? Will he ever make it back home? Is this even that Prowler? This is all left up in the air for now.
  • Likely for legal reasons with Warner Bros., but it's not explicitly made clear if the briefly-seen Built with LEGO universe is meant to be the actual world of The LEGO Movie, or merely a reference to it on Lord and Miller's part. The universe designation given is that of the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes games, but LEGO Spidey isn't voiced by his actor from that game, James Arnold Taylor, and it uses the stop-motion aesthetics of Lord and Miller's LEGO movies.
  • When Gwen and Peter B are climbing the bullet train towards Miguel and Miles, are they aiming to stop Miguel or capture Miles? Do they themselves even know?
  • Miguel is ostensibly Spider-Man of Earth-928, also known as Spider-Man 2099. Yet both he and the world he's in bear very little resemblance to their comics counterparts. Earth-928 is supposed to be a cyberpunk Crapsack World where corporations can order public assassinations of random civilians without issue, but is practically depicted as a Crystal Spires and Togas world in the film. Miguel himself in the comics has two living brothers, a stepfather, mother, and father, all of whom are alive, yet in the film he claims he took the place of a dead Miguel because he lacked a family. Comics Miguel has fangs that secrete a paralytic venom, which would have been ideal for subduing Miles when Miguell literally had him pinned and was whispering in his ear on the bullet train, yet he doesn't use them. Comics Miguel's mutation is also stable, as a result of obtaining spider powers by literally rewriting his DNA at a cellular level, so why is film Miguel receiving regular injections? Comics Miguel also has organic webshooters similar to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, but film Miguel appears to have technological laser webs. Finally, Comics Miguel's suit is made of unstable molecules, which is depicted as a spandex-like material with a webbing cape, while Film Miguel wears some kind of nano-tech powersuit with a holographic "cape". Were these changes merely for the needs of the story? Or is the Miguel depicted in the film not who he claims to be?
• Anachronic Order: A brief example at the very beginning of the film. We're introduced to Gwen playing drums while she monologues about Miles, but if one pays attention to her words and the images, she eventually recounts events that are yet to play out. What's actually going on is present-day Gwen playing drums while she's thinking about Miles, while the speech and future imagery is her recruiting other Spider-people to help her rescue Miles at the end of the film.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: A deliberately platonic version when Peter B. goes after Miles, which descends into anguish because Peter is literally hiding behind Mayday before he forces himself to let it out.
  Peter B. Parker: You're the reason I had her, okay? Because I thought that if I did a decent job raising her then there's a chance she's going to turn out like you! And that got me excited because YOU ARE A WONDERFUL PERSON AND I LIKE BEING AROUND YOU!!
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Miles casually defeats Armadillo with his Venom Sting when he attempts to stop a train, and mistakes the Spot as one when he crashes his first attempted robbery.
  Miles: So are you like a cow, or a Dalmatian?
• Anticlimactic Unmasking: Done the opposite way to the typical use: when Miles reveals he's Spider-Man to his mother, she shows no interest whatsoever... because she doesn't know who Spider-Man is.
• Apocalypse How: According to Miguel, preventing a Canon Event from playing out to its conclusion results in a Class X-4, the complete destruction of that universe and everyone living in it. By the end of the film, we know of several universes where that's not true, Earth-1610B, Earth-42, and Earth-65B, all of which have various things different to them from canon but exist perfectly fine, and Mumbattan's damage is due to the Spot instead of the subverted canon events.
• Arc Welding:
  • Miguel O'Hara alludes to the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home as having an effect on the current predicament, implicitly connecting the Spider-Verse franchise to the Spider-Man Trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man Series, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe all in one fell swoop. Prior to this, the Spider-Verse films only had a loose connection with the others through Sony's Spider-Man Universe, with Miles appearing in The Stinger of Venom while Venom would appear in No Way Home.
  • The international trailer furthers this connection by opening with footage and soundbites from Spider-Man 2, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Spider-Man: Far From Home respectively, while using Benjamin Squires's remix of the '60s Spider-Man theme from the Far From Home marketing material.
  • Before Miguel overlays the specific realities of the Spider-verse onto a map of the Multiverse it looks exactly like how it has been portrayed in the MCU starting from Loki. The Spider-Society itself is also similar to Loki's Time Variance Authority, an organization with a self-imposed mission to make sure events follow a so-called "correct" path (though the Society lacks the TVA's ability to Time Travel and undo things).
  • Also related to the MCU, Miguel's explanation of "Canon Events" lines up with the MCU's concept of events that must happen, called "Nexus Events" in Loki and "Absolute Points" in What If...?^note What If...?'s head writer has given Word of Godinvoked that both MCU terms refer to the same thing. The disastrous consequences of trying to stop them can be seen in the latter when a Doctor Strange creates a Reality-Breaking Paradox trying to save Christine Palmer.
  • This also firmly establishes that 1967's Spider-Man, which was shown in the previous film, is canonically an Alternate Universe to the Raimi, Webb and MCU films. This film additionally adds Spider-Man (PS4), Spider-Man Unlimited, and The Spectacular Spider-Man into the mix.
  • While the Spot is still learning the true extent of his powers, he briefly pops in on the SSU. Much to his surprise, Mrs. Chen isn't remotely fazed at being robbed by an animated Humanoid Abomination who appears through a black portal.
  • By showing comic-book panels as Canon Events as well as directly lifting alternate Spideys from the comics, the film also connects Marvel Comics with their adaptations, something the comics have already been doing from the other side.
• Armor-Piercing Response: As Gwen is being forced through the Go-Home Machine by Miguel, she can only say this before the machine sends her away: "We are supposed to be the good guys." The entire Society falls silent until Miguel bitterly remarks, "We are," sounding more like he's trying to reassure himself than the others.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: During the Spot's Motive Rant to Spider-Man, he reveals that he was part of the experiments that resulted in the radioactive spider being where it was, biting Miles and giving him his spider-powers, explaining how he created Spider-Man. How does he follow this up? Spidey threw a bagel at him, which apparently lead straight to him being turned into a walking canvas of portals and justifies his rage at Spider-Man.
• Art Attacker: Art is still important. The previous film of course showed how important graffiti is to Miles through his connection with his uncle, Peter A released a Christmas album, and Gwen talks about fighting like a dance while wearing ballet shoes as part of her costume. The sequel amps this up by introducing Hobie, a punk rocker who carries his axe into battle (Gwen's the drummer in his band and has shifted to chucks as a result of going more punk than before) and Pavitr, who is another Dance Battler, uses a yo-yo that strongly resembles a two-headed drum commonly found throughout India. Art and music are key to a large number of Spider-People who incorporate it into their costumes, their fighting, and their personal philosophies (especially Hobie, for that last one).
• Art Shift:
  • This film inverts the dynamic of the previous movie, where Spider-People with different art styles enter Miles' universe, by spending longer portions in completely different universes with their own styles; for example, Gwen's Earth-65B (briefly seen in the previous movie) is done in bright pastels that change color to reflect the mood, Earth-13122 is Built with LEGO in a pseudo-Stop Motion style, and Pavitr's Earth-50101B is heavily saturated and resembles Indian comics from the 1960s.
  • The Spot's flashbacks are done in the style of stark black-and-white ink drawings. The flash forward he gives to Miles is done in the same style.
  • After absorbing the energy of the collider in Mumbattan, The Spot transforms from a 3D animated body to a constantly shifting mess of scribbles that looks like something out of a Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book, while also inverting color.
• Art-Style Clash: Every character retains their original art style, even if they enter another universe. This leads to a lot of different art styles coming together, and characters even commenting on them.
  • A notable example of this is the Vulture that appears in Gwen's universe at the beginning; he looks like a living Leonardo da Vinci sketch that Gwen outright asks if he is made of parchment, and he is awestruck to see the colorful impressionist skyline of her world's Manhattan.
  • Later, the Spider-Punk Hobie Brown has the most distinct art style from others. His style combines punk zines, a collage of magazine cutouts, and minimal-color photography, blending together a number of punkish, counterculture themes to suit his own ideologies and origin. This appearance is carried over by his bootleg dimensional watches, which temporarily shift the reality of nearby scenery to resemble the art style of his world when they open portals.
  • The Spot has something blatantly wrong with him even when he's still in his native dimension. For one thing, he appears to have sketch lines, like he's a basic drawing of a character pose, and the spots are ink blots on himself and reality. Turns out he can access the multiverse almost at will. He looks like that because he no longer "belongs" to any dimension, and is more closely related to the fundamental nature of the multiverse. Which is... drawings.
  • Miles is stunned at the appearance of a live-action Aaron Davis, who tells him off that it's rude to stare.
  • There's also a scene where a Green Goblin from the Atari 2600 Spider-Man game appears and is captured.
• Ascended Meme:
  • The "Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man" meme is referenced yet again (following the previous film's post-credits scene) and maximized in absurdity— when Miles goes rogue in Nueva York after learning the Spider-Society's purpose and how he fits in, Miguel sends out a call to "stop Spider-Man"... which results in every Spider-person in the Spider-Society pointing an accusatory finger at another Spider-person until Miguel clarifies which Spider-Man is his problem.
  • As Miles is chased by the Spider-Society, he passes through a shooting gallery-style training ground where targets of Spidey's Rogues Gallery pop up. Naturally, Doctor Octopus's target shows up with a "Hello, Peter."
  • When Miles is grounded, he says that Spider-Man can't be grounded, which is a reference to this meme.
  • No matter what universe a given scene takes place in, every single TV news story we see is being reported by J. Jonah Jameson, played by J. K. Simmons. This is a reference to a certain meme pertaining to the live action movies, stating that no matter how different the Spider-Man is in each universe, J.K. Simmons is Jameson in every single one^note even though we technically never saw Jameson in the Amazing Spider-Man series, fans like to think that if we ever were to somehow see him in that universe, he would again be played by J.K. Simmons.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: Miles meets a Western Spider-Man on a Spider-Horse.
  Miles: Why does the horse need a mask?
  Western Spider-Man: To conceal her face.
• Babies Ever After: When we're reintroduced to Peter B. Parker, he's shown wearing a baby carrier on his chest, before showing he indeed has a kid — Mayday.
• The Bad Guy Wins: It can't be denied that the Spot wins this round. Once he discovers he can travel between dimensions, his plan goes off mostly without a hitch, from gaining enough power to become a walking extinction event, to forcing Miles to acknowledge Spot as his nemesis. By the end, the Society is so obsessed with capturing Miles it's left Spot on the loose to execute the next phase: killing Captain Morales.
• Bait-and-Switch: The last scene makes it look like Miles' uncle is preparing to slip his hand into his Prowler power glove but then it turns out he was just picking the glove up to hand it to Miles' dark Alternate Self who just entered the room.
• Bat Family Crossover: Like the first film, this film is about various versions of Spider-Man meeting each other, though the sheer number of spiders present in this film eclipses the first one by a wide margin. The only villains we ever see are Spider-Man villains, and Miles even takes to calling the multiverse as "the Spider-Verse." The only acknowledgment of any other Marvel heroes is when Miguel refers to Doctor Strange from Earth-199999, and Gwen asking who that is implies that either her universe doesn't have a Doctor Strange or she just doesn't know about him (yet).
• Bathos: A couple of dramatic moments are undercut by comedy. For instance:
  • When Miguel O'Hara introduces himself to Gwen, his dramatic speech about his dark past is interrupted by an uninterested Gwen who rather wants to know about his Super Wrist-Gadget.
  • Towards the end, there is an emotional moment when Miles says his goodbye to Gwen and hurls himself off the Space Elevator. Then the dramatic music gives way to Peter B. Parker cracking a joke about how he taught Miles how to do that jump.
• Batman Gambit: Miles has the Spider-Society chase him around Miguel's universe so he can get them away from the headquarters so he can then use the Go-Home Machine to be transported back to his universe.
• Bat Signal: Discussed by Miles' roommate Ganke, who refuses to call the cops on a criminal Miles spotted earlier.
  "Sounds like a slippery slope. It starts with one call, then it's walkie-talkies, synchronized watches. In a month, it'll be a spider-signal."
• Batter Up!: The shopkeeper goes after The Spot with a baseball bat.
• Beard of Sorrow: When Gwen shows up (unwillingly) back at her father's apartment, he's sporting a heavy five o'clock shadow because she left.
• Berserk Button:
  • Miguel has issues with Spider-Men who caused (however inadvertently) their native realities to become the site of a multiversal crossover event, likely because of the sheer headache that results, specifically noting that both Miles and "that little nerd back on Earth-199999" are not going to be part of his team.
  • The Spot takes particular offense to Miles calling him a "Villain of the Week" (which Gwen also does, though not in his presence), angrily responding "What'd you call me?!" and taking a level in badass soon after, largely out of a desire to force Miles to stop seeing him as a joke and take him seriously.
  • Pavitr apparently really does not like the Department of Redundancy Department that often occurs when foreigners refer to Indian cuisine, and gets super irritated at Miles and later Spot for saying "chai tea" (since "chai" already means "tea"), ranting about this and people who say "naan bread" (as "naan" likewise means "bread").
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • The Spot is a ridiculous-looking "villain of the week" who can't even rob a convenience store competently and whose powers hinder him just as much as they aid him... right up until he realizes the full extent of his powers and suddenly isn't anymore.
  • Spider-Punk is a loud anarchist who, despite his constant political protesting, is still subservient to Spider-Society. Except he's not; he was deliberately playing up a Bomb-Throwing Anarchists Soapbox Sadie persona to distract everybody from his subtle subterfuge and internal sabotage, waiting for Miguel to show his true colors to everyone (and to have stolen enough tech to re-create the watches) to make his actual, more cunning plans much clearer.
• The B Grade: Early on, Miles' parents cheer his high grades in science, only for Rio to start chewing him out in Spanish after finding out he has a B in Spanish class.
• Big Applesauce: This movie's settings are all variants of New York City, specifically those of Earth-1610B, Earth-65B, Earth-928B (renamed Nueva York), and Earth-42. Earth-50101B has a unique combination of New York and the Indian city of Mumbai known as Mumbattan. Earth-1610B Brooklyn has some more distinguishing features to help it be more similar to real-life Brooklyn, just like the previous movie. Aside from actual street names, the introduction to this universe includes the Myrtle Avenue subway station, and Miles' "thinking spot" is the Williamsburgh Bank Building
• Big Bad Ensemble: The film's antagonists consist of The Spot, a maniacal supervillain who is willing to destroy the multiverse to get at Miles and Miguel O'Hara, who is more of an Anti-Hero but nevertheless wants to prevent Miles from rescuing his father from dying in a canon event, threatening the multiverse even further. The very end of the film introduces a new antagonist, that being an alternate version of Miles who in his universe became the Prowler.
• Big Beautiful Woman: One of the recurring extras in the Spider Society is a heavyset female Spider-Woman with a large belly and wide hips, who still wears a tight, form-fitting suit that accentuates her figure.
• Big Brother Mentor:
  • Hobie Brown, who's been Spider-Man for three years, seems to fill this role to both Pavitr Prabhakar (who's only had the job for six months) and Gwen Stacy. It's clear in their brief screentime together that Hobie and Pavitr have a solid friendship, with the latter looking up to the former; meanwhile, when Miles asks why Hobie is still in the Spider Society despite his clear disdain for it, he replies that he's looking out for his "drummer" (Gwen), whom he's allowed to crash at his home in his dimension many times since she can't return to hers. In the ending, he also has left Gwen a dimensional watch that he made himself so she can still travel between universes even if she leaves the Society.
  • Hobie also becomes this to Miles himself once the latter wins his respect by helping save Mumbattan. He repeatedly tries to warn and discourage Miles from wanting to be part of the Spider Society, knowing it's not all it's cracked up to be, and also teaches him how to use his palms to better utilize his Venom Blast (even reminding him of it again once Miguel has captured Miles, allowing him to break free). He also promptly quits the Society after seeing Miguel's treatment of Miles, and later joins Gwen's band of Spider-People to help rescue him.
• Big Honking Traffic Jam: In reference to the real-world India and NYC's horrible traffic, Pavitr gives the other Spiders a quick tour of Mumbattan. All but one of the places he highlights are "where the traffic is", complete with the sound effects of all the vehicles honking at each other while at a standstill.
• Big Rotten Apple:
  • Earth-42 features a horribly crime-ridden New York, complete with a "Sinister Six Cartel" running rampant. Thanks to there being no radioactive spider, and no Spider-Man, to change this outcome.
  • Subverted with the NYCs of Earth-1610B and Earth-65B. Petty crooks are still relatively frequent, while villains like the Kingpin are enough of a common sight that the NYPD is used to them. On the other hand, thanks to Miles and Gwen's respective efforts, the streets are still relatively safe and things never get anywhere close to Earth-42's decrepit state.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In the universe inspired by Spider-Man India Miles travels to, the caption boxes visualizing various sound effects, like cars honking, Miles "THWIP"-ing webs, and so on, are written in Hindi instead of English, further setting this universe apart from Miles'.
  • Miles, his mother Rio/their extended family, and Miguel all speak Spanish at various points in the film.
    • Miles often uses the wrong words/phrases, most notably when he first meets Miguel. No wonder he has a B in Spanish class.
    • When all the Spider-People point at each other in confusion rather than chase Miles per Miguel's directive, he mutters "ay, coño." This is Spanish for "oh, fuck" (literally "cunt").
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The trend of Miles' universe having similarly-named brands and products in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse continues in this film. The baby powder Miles endorses (and apologises for endorsing) is "Charm & Stammer", instead of our world's Arm & Hammer. A magazine rack in the bodega where Miles fights the Spot is carrying PLACE, Rocking Stone, and Newsfreak instead of TIME Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Newsweek.
  • A couple Freeze-Frame Bonus cases even double as Foreshadowing. While the first film established that Coca-Cola's counterpart in Miles' universe is "Koca-Soda", one of the ads we see when Miles is swinging "home" after escaping the Society is for "Soda-Koca", demonstrating that this isn't Miles' universe.
  • Additionally, there are signs for corporations named after — and presumably run by — supervillains, including "Con Electro" (instead of the real New York's Con Edison).
• Blatant Lies: Lenny catches the Spot having teleported the ATM into the middle of the sidewalk, and is currently jumping up and down on the machine. The Spot tries to cover his robbery up by saying everything is "all good" and that he just "forgot his PIN number."
• Bookends:
  • Gwen provides opening and closing narration for this movie. At the beginning of the movie, she ends up quitting her band the Mary Janes after taking out her aggressions on her drums. The last scene of the movie shows her leading a team of Spider-People to find Miles and save his father, as Gwen narrates, "I never found the right band. So I started my own. With a few old friends. Want in?"
  • The first time Miles meets the Spot, he (if in a Failed Attempt at Drama) declares that he's from his past. Their last encounter in the movie has the Spot ominously telling Miles they've just witnessed the future before disappearing.
• Brand X: Played for Laughs with a huge billboard seen while Miles is swinging through the city, advertising "SODA" ("It's a generic brand!").
• Brick Joke:
  • Not only does Miles take Peter B's advice from the first movie to put baby powder in the suit, he goes one step further and endorses the entire brand (and also ends up regretting it, but that's not the point).
  • One of the Spider-people chasing Miles is the so-so popsicle mentioned by his universe's Peter Parker in the previous film.
  • Early in the film, Miles's parents learn that he got a B in Spanish and chastises him. Later in the film, Miles finally meets Miguel and, recognizing him as a fellow Latino, speaks to him in Spanish. Miles's Spanish is indeed not the best, and Miguel isn't impressed. After Gwen reconciles with her Father, he comments on her speech being the result of her A in English. She corrects him and says she got a B+ because she missed a few classes.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Played for laughs. Miles fights the Spot in a puddle of soap, both failing to maintain their balance as they slip all over each other and stir up a cloud of bubbles, all while a wild swan is attacking them. A kid wearing a mask based on Miles' costume takes it off and says he doesn't want it anymore after witnessing this.
  • Played for Drama later on after Miles get to meet the Spider-Society in their universe. Before that, Miles was initially excited at the prospect of joining a society of fellow Spider-People interdimensional travelers who have a duty to uphold the stability of the multiverse. After finding out that said duty involves letting certain people die because they are part of the "Canon Events", and that the latest victim would be his father and Miles is not allowed to do anything to stop it from happening, Miles is understandably devastated by this revelation. It's even more personal when it comes to Gwen Stacy and Peter B. Parker, the two Spider-people that Miles are closest to, who are deliberately keeping Miles in the dark about the Spider-Society and helping Miguel O'Hara in stopping Miles from trying to save his father. While the two of them (along with a few other Spider-People) eventually come around as they are inspired by Miles's example, they have yet to reconcile with Miles by the time the movie ends.
• Brown Note Being: In a meta sense, the Spot, due to his new role as a Transhuman Abomination. He looks like a literal stain in the page.
• Buffy Speak: It's a movie full of Spider-People. Of course this happens. Even Miguel gets in on it.
  Miguel: What do you mean "What thing?" The information-explainy thing.
• Bus Full of Innocents: In Mumbattan, a bus full of innocent people including Pavitr's love interest is about to fall from a bridge which the heroes have to prevent from happening.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • The Spot considers Miles his arch-nemesis, as Miles indirectly gave him his current form through the exploding collider from the first movie, causing him to lose everything. Miles has no idea what he's talking about and considers him another "villain of the week". Unfortunately for Miles, this disrespect leads Spot to become a depraved Transhuman Abomination who plans to destroy his world and everyone he loves. On a slightly more humorous note, when the Spot is giving Miles his Motive Rant and trying to get him to recognise him, he brings up the time Miles hit him in the head with a bagel from Into the Spider-Verse. Not only does that still fail to jog Miles' memory, he quips that he's apparently hit multiple villains in the face with foodstuff over the past year, enough that the Spot's example doesn't even stand out as particularly memorable.
  • In a more comical example, The Spot alludes to this trope when he encounters an unfazed Mrs. Chen.
    Spot: For you, it's just a Tuesday night.
• Butterfly of Doom:
  • Because the spider of Earth-42 was transported to Earth-1610B where its only bite was the Miles Morales there, Earth-42 is the only world that lacked a Spider-Man to protect it, resulting in it becoming a Crapsack World where crime and villains reigned supreme and Jefferson had died in the line of duty. However, the Miles Morales of Earth-42 still took up the mantle of a vigilante, only that it was as The Prowler instead, and whether he works for good or evil remains to be seen.
  • Miguel tells Miles that had it not been for the latter being bitten by that same spider, the Peter Parker from Earth-1610B would have lived, and that Miles himself wouldn't be a big walking anomaly. And if you invoke a little Rewatch Bonus on the first movie, you'll find that Miguel was right: Miles inadvertently stumbling into the battle between Peter and Kingpin's goons distracted Peter from his quest to destroy the collider, thus setting in motion a series of events that end with Peter being severely injured before dying at the hands of Kingpin. In fact, given that this series of events leads to the Collider ultimately exploding, the scientist who brought in the spider from Earth-42 would ultimately be responsible for these events in which he himself would become The Spot.
• Call-Back:
  • As soon as Miles gets caught in a force field cage, Hobie holds up his hands, reminding him of the first bit of advice he gave him. "Use your palms, not just your fingertips.".
  • One of the first lessons Peter B taught Miles was "Don't watch the mouth, watch the hands." as he freed himself from the bungee cords holding him to the punching bag Miles had tied him to. The last shot of this movie is Miles bound to a punching bag with chains, stroking an electric-sparking finger over the chains holding him while Prowler-Miles of Eath-42 holds a power gauntlet next to his head in an obvious threat.
• The Cameo:
  • Peggy Lu appears as Mrs. Chen from Venom when Spot first starts jumping between universes.
  • Donald Glover appears, in live-action, as a version of the Prowler.
  • Josh Keaton as The Spectacular Spider-Man.
  • Yuri Lowenthal as Earth-1048 Spider-Man.
  • The original Earth-616 Peter Parker and George Stacy from the comics appear when Miguel is explaining Canon Events.
  • You can see Swiss Miss from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark in a cage during the scene between Miles and Miguel in the Spider-Society.
• Capitalism Is Bad: Hobie holds this viewpoint, befitting an anarchist. When a museum in Mumbattan sinks due to a portal created by Spot, he quips that it's "a metaphor for capitalism".
• Carrying a Cake: While trying to make it to his dad's party for being promoted to police chief, Miles brings two cakes (as the long message he asked for at the bakery couldn't fit on just one cake) and runs into numerous mishaps while heading home, such as forgetting he left the cakes on the roof of a taxi and having to run after it to get them back. By the time he finally gets to the party and reveals the cakes to his parents, one of the cakes is broken down the middle and the icing for both of them is ruined, with his long and heartfelt message being reduced to the words "I'm not proud".
• Casting Gag:
  • Much of the cast of the Japanese dub is this, in a meta-sense: Many of their voice actors worked in the Fate Series franchise, and by default, in Fate/Grand Order, a game and also sub-franchise about trying to solve the hijinks of their own multiverse.
  • Related with the above, Tomokazu Seki (Miguel O'Hara) previously voiced Gilgamesh, a character taking an antagonist role by using a heroic character from their original mythos (The Epic of Gilgamesh and Spider-Man respectively).
  • This is also not Seki's first role as an antagonist who believes that everyone's fate is preordained.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: During their fight with Renaissance Vulture, Miguel O'Hara and Gwen still find time to bicker about the consequences of the collider accident from the first movie.
• Central Theme: Has its own page.
• Chekhov's Gag: That amusing moment in Into the Spider-Verse when Miles chucks a bagel at a random scientist? That scientist turns out to have been the man who would become the Spot.
• Chekhov's Gun: The "glitching" spider that bit Miles back in Into the Spider-Verse is revealed to be from an entirely different dimension than Miles' original one, and it having bitten Miles deprived that universe of its own Spider-Man, which adds to Miguel's animosity towards him, seeing him as a walking dimensional anomaly. This becomes important when Miles tries to use the Go Home Machine to reach his Earth-1610B Universe, only to discover too late that the machine registered the spider's home universe of Earth-42 instead, leaving him trapped in an alternate dimension faced with his Evil Counterpart.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • When The Spot reveals the origin of the spider that bit Miles, Earth-42 Miles can be briefly seen from behind.
  • This is also the case for The Spot himself, as he's revealed to be the random Alchemax scientist that Miles hit with a bagel in the previous movie.
  • Spider-Punk is constantly messing with things and flat out mentions he doesn't take orders from anyone like the anarchist he is, and visibly disappears just before the chase begins. When Gwen needs a dimensional transport watch that hasn't been blocked (and can't be tracked) by Miguel, however, Spider-Punk provides her with one.
• Civil War: By the end of the film, Miles has unknowingly launched one within the Spider-Verse. Miguel is determined to hunt him down, while Gwen, Hobie, Pavitr, Margo and the original Spider-Gang from the first movie are determined to help him and put an end to Miguel's megalomania.
• Cliffhanger: The Spot is on his way to cause Jefferson's death, while Miles is trapped in Earth-42 by that universe's Aaron and a version of himself as Prowler, and Gwen has assembled a team of their friends to rescue him.
• Clockworks Area: Miles and Peter B. Parker have a heartful conversation while crossing an area full of steam engines and gears.
• Clue from Ed.: In keeping with its comic book style and look, there are several editors' notes peppered throughout the film, with two notable instances being to explain Hammerspace and why Spider-Punk says he "hadn't got a Scooby-Doo" about something.
• Collapsible Helmet: At the end, the Dramatic Unmask of the Prowler of Earth-42 is done through his menacing mask retracting into the rest of the costume, revealing the face of Miles Morales.
• Collapsing Lair: The building hosting the collider comes down after the explosion forcing the heroes to make a run for the exit.
• Collateral Angst: Defied. The death of a policeman close to Spider-Man is considered by Miguel to be such a superhero-formative event that he lambasts Miles for saving Pavitr's, and is willing to let Miles' newly-promoted NYPD captain father die to ensure the safety of his universe. Miles rejects Miguel's assessment, fully believing that he can be Spider-Man without suffering such a loss.
• Color Motif: As Miles spends more time on Earth-42, the color palette gets more and more negative, until it's all purple and green, the villain colors.
• Comically Missing the Point: The Spot defends his robbery by saying he's like Robin Hood "if he gave to himself" - which fundamentally destroys the entire message of the Robin Hood story.
• Company Cross References: As pointed out by Guillermo Martinez, Head of Story for The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Katie Mitchell's wooden moose can be seen in Miles' room.
  Martinez: Fun fact: Katie sold it on Etsy for college money.
• Compartment Shot: A shot of Miles' beef patty warming up inside the microwave at the corner shop.
• Confusion Fu: Starting off, the Spot has zero combat skills at all, but is still a difficult opponent to fight because not even he knows how his portals work or where they're exiting. He randomly creates them around himself and stumbles through them in a desperate bid to avoid a shopkeeper's attempts to beat him up during his first attempted robbery, disarming him and trapping him in a portal through sheer accident. Later on, when he becomes more confident with his abilities, he enforces this trope deliberately, zipping around using his portals to conserve his forward momentum and increasing his speed. He also uses his portals to redirect enemies and bewilder them by suddenly changing their positions, making him incredibly hard to attack or capture.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Hundreds of Spider-People chase Miles throughout Nueva York and he manages to elude them all. Only Peter B. (who isn't interested in physically stopping Miles), and Miguel catch up to him, and only individually. It's semi-justified in that it's been made clear in the prior films that Spider-people aren't used to operating together, and especially not in a large group as pursues Miles, several times with some members getting in each other's way trying to get him. Additionally, as his mentor, Peter B. has a better understanding of how Miles operates, and thus simply moves to a location where he can discretely pull him aside for a private talk, and Nueva York is Miguel's home Dimension, thus he is specifically outfitted to traverse it better than the non-native spiders, along with being the most determined to catch Miles.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The preview shows a narration box that reads "Meanwhile in another another universe...", which is a play on a similar narration box seen in the first film as well as The Stinger for Venom.
  • During the Renaissance Vulture's Guggenheim rampage, a police helicopter is about to fall down into the civilians and Captain Stacy below. Gwen thinks about when she's playing drums intensely in her band to help herself focus before proceeding to save people. This harkens back to the moment in the first film when Miles got himself stuck on an overhead lamp in Doc Ock's office and Peter B. advised him to relax, which Miles did by singing to himself as his hands untangle. This also shows that both Gwen and Miles use music to help themselves focus during intense moments.
  • During Miles' relay of happened to him during the events between the first film and now, he brings up how he endorsed baby powder, calling back to Peter B.'s "advice" in the first film to put baby powder in the Spider-suit to avoid chafing.
  • Inside Miles' sketchbook, he kept the coach bus ticket from Schenectady, NY to Brooklyn Central. This calls back to his return trip from the upstate Alchemax Lab in the first film, where Gwen joined the bus ride home with Miles and furthered their bond.
  • A bystander once again says "Yeah, I think it's a Banksy" about a piece of collateral damage that they mistake for an art installation, this time about a webbed-up helicopter at the Guggenheim rather than a dimensional glitch in the first film.
  • Once again, someone from another universe makes a reference to people dressing up as Spider-Man for Comic-Con; Miles still has no idea what Comic-Con is.
  • When Miles awakens after being knocked unconscious by Earth-42 Prowler, his P.O.V. Shot awakening and situation (tied up in Uncle Aaron's apartment to his punching bag) is a deliberate, darker parallel to his own interrogation of Peter B. from the first film.
  • While chasing the Spot, Jefferson is presented with a Leap of Faith, backing out of it to use the stairs instead, similar to what his son Miles did in the first movie when trying to test out his new powers.
  • When Miles reunites with Gwen, he once again briefly changes his voice to sound deeper than it is, mirroring his awkward "I'm... a man" line in the first movie.
• Continuity Snarl: Thanks to Schizo Continuity.
  • It's repeatedly confirmed that the Spider-Verse series takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's greater multiverse. Miguel directly alludes to Spider-Man: No Way Home, that universe's Prowler makes an appearance in the Spider-Society's custody, and the MCU's design for the multiverse is even briefly shown. However, all multiversal travelers suffer the glitching effect if they're outside their universes unless they have proper equipment, which never came up in MCU works involving the multiverse.^note However, this could be explained by the Spider-Society using super-collider tech while multiversal travel in the MCU has only been TVA tech, magic, or Uatu's cosmic powers so far.
  • Additionally, Miguel refers to the MCU as Earth-199999, which is the official designation given to it by the comics, while MCU media refer to it as Earth-616.
  • Spidercide from the true Earth-616 appears, and is even given the designation Earth-616A in contrast to Peter B., who comes from Earth-616B, indicating the Spider-Verse series takes place in the comics multiverse as well. Similarly, Tarantula is stated to hail from Earth-1610A, implying Miles's Earth is Earth-1610B. Even barring the fact that the MCU appears to work on an entirely different set of multiverse rules from the comics (which is a whole other can of worms and makes things even more confusing), Gwen is stated to come from Earth-65 without a letter, despite the fact that the movie's version is Earth-65 is incompatible with the original comic.
  • Sony's Spider-Man Universe is designated Earth-688, when that's already taken.
• Conversational Troping:
  • At various points in the movie, the Spider-People discuss whether The Spot is a mere "Villain of the Week", or an actual serious threat. Right in front of him. This has disastrous consequences later on when he seeks to affirm himself as Miles's Arch-Enemy.
  • Ganke refuses to get involved in Miles' superhero activities because, as he explicitly says, he doesn't want to become Miles' "Guy in the Chair".
  • The idea of a "Canon Event" comes up in the movie as a plot point: a series of character-defining events that every Spider-Man has to go through.
  • When Pavitr watches Miles and Gwen bicker, he outright comments that they have a Will They or Won't They? dynamic.
• Costume Evolution:
  • Miles' Spider-Man suit has gone through some changes since the first film. The suit is predominantly jet black, lacking the gray webbing originally seen on his mask and chest. His logo, while looking spray-painted, is sharper and lacks obvious blot marks. Lastly, red body lines adorn the sides of his arms, torso, and legs, while excluding his red "shoulder fangs".
  • Spider-Man 2099 has gained longer arm fins, a larger body build than before, and an altered take on his logo.
  • On a subtle note, Gwen's Spider-Woman suit trades in her ballet shoes for Converse sneakers after she leaves home and joins the Spider-Society. Additionally, she's gained more pink around her arms, the black tips of her front marking are angled inwardly, and her back's lighting white markings streamlined into fangs.
  • Pavitr's outfit and hair have shifted to better reflect his Indian roots, prompting praise from some who find him more authentic this way.
• Crapsack World:
  • Hobie Brown's version of Britain in Earth-138B, is implied to be this, with his homeland being under a dictatorial Prime Minister and authoritarian thugs.
  • The New York of Earth-42, due to having no version of Spider-Man to defend it, is shown to be a crime-infested hellhole.
• Create Your Own Hero: It is revealed that the spider that bit Miles is not from his universe, and was brought there due to the efforts of Kingpin, The Spot and Olivia Octavius and their creation of the trans-dimensional collider. However, if they had not done this, it is implied they still would have met their defeat at the hands of their universe's Spider-Man. Furthermore, a Freeze-Frame Bonus when the Spot recounts the origin of said spider has it heading towards Earth-42's Miles Morales seen from behind, meaning that the spider was destined to turn a Miles into Spider-Man either way, with their multi-dimensional experiments simply resulting in it targeting a different Miles.
• Create Your Own Villain: The Spot reveals that he gained his abilities due to being caught within the destruction of Kingpin's collider during the final battle of the first film. His goal is to make Miles suffer for this.
• Creative Closing Credits: The main-on-end titles are a painterly representation of Miles' tribulations throughout the film.
• Creator Cameo: Music producer Metro Boomin (who produced much of the film's soundtrack) makes a quick cameo as his own Spidersona when the Spider-Society is chasing Miles.
• Crossover Power Acquisition: It's revealed that the spider that gave Miles his powers originated from a separate universe entirely. This means that by the deterministic rules of the multiverse the Spider-Society runs on, he's a walking, talking anomaly that endangers the multiverse.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: As a sign of how far he's developed in confidence and handling his powers since the first film, Miles casually uses his Venom Sting as a Finger Poke of Doom to defeat Armadillo attempting to stop a train he's riding, not even bothering to get into a fighting posture to beat him.
• Cut Apart: Miles manages to escape and activate the device designed to return him to his home dimension only for Miguel, Jessica, and Ben to quickly follow. We then see Miles sneaking back to his house while his pursuers hunt through the city for him and his family. It is only later that we realize, alongside Miles, that Miles never actually made it back to his home universe at all and both parties were in two different dimensions rather than just a few streets over from each other.

Tropes D–G

• Darker and Edgier: For starters, the movie has profanity that the first movie didn't have (though not enough to move it into PG-13 territory). Aside from that, while the first movie dealt with Miles's insecurity with his newly gained powers in the face of all the other much more accomplished veteran Spiderpeople, Across the Spider-Verse deals with his feelings of betrayal and alienation with all of the other Spiderpeople, particularly Gwen and Peter B, upon learning that father is "scheduled" to die tragically and that they are planning to deliberately let this happen because it is "meant" to happen and changing it could supposedly unravel his universe. It also delves more into Gwen's backstory where we learn she accidentally caused "her" Peter's death which eventually leads to estrangement with her father when he learns who she is as he considered Peter to be like a son and swore revenge against Spider-Woman for "causing" his death which only adds to her angst in betraying Miles. It's not a coincidence that the hands-down wackiest character from Into the Spider-Verse — Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham — is almost entirely absent from this movie, appearing only right before the end.
• Darkest Hour: Miles is trapped on Earth-42 by his Evil Counterpart, out of web fluid and suffering from glitching that could kill him if he doesn't get back to his home dimension. He's also racing against the clock to stop The Spot, now powered up to Eldritch Abomination levels, from killing his father Jefferson in the next two days. There's also the Spider-Society, led by Miguel who's obsessed with ensuring The Canon is preserved by Jefferson dying, waiting in Earth-1610B for Miles to show up so they can stop him.
• Death by Origin Story: Discussed and Defied.
  • Miguel O'Hara is convinced that every Spider-person needs to go through certain, usually tragic "Canon Events" to prevent the entire universe of that Spider-person from breaking apart. Miles disagrees, and their viewpoints clash badly enough to fight over.
  • Gwen is uncertain about forming close bonds with other Spider-people because most Gwen Stacys who do so tend to end up dead.
• Death of a Child: Used in the backstory, ala with Kingpin's son from the first movie. Miguel O'Hara's daughter from the alternate Nueva York isn't lucky enough to escape the collapsing dimension; we see her fade out of existence, onscreen, in Miguel's arms.
• Deconstruction: The plot heavily deconstructs the concept of being obliged to be Truer to the Text. The Spider-Society's strict enforcement of "Canon Events"—repetitive narratives from past works—such as losing an Uncle Ben and Captain Stacy figure, and deliberately confining someone to these story beats in the belief that suffering a tragedy is a necessary prerequisite to being Spider-Man and even the stability of the universe, can rob them of their agency in developing their own unique stories and the possibility of them being happier and healthier than they were originally portrayed. Miles flat out points out that when it's being done in-universe, it's incredibly screwed up and understandably horrified.
• Deconstructor Fleet: This film attacks some of the core of the Spider-Man story. Spider-Man suffers the loss of multiple loved ones, particularly father figures. He's unlucky in love, leaving him alone. Suffering brings growth and heroism is its own reward, etc. And this is enforced by an authoritarian regime full of Dark and Troubled Past and The Ends Justify The Means (editors). Spider-Man in his many incarnations and spin-offs have trodden this ground so heavily that some fans are yawning and hoping for something new. Miles is fighting canon, and it remains to be seen if the next film will do any Reconstruction.
• Delayed Explosion: The collider just turns off after The Spot enters the energy stream. Pavitr concludes that this was an easy adventure after which the big explosion occurs.
• Demoted to Extra: Peni Parker, Spider-Man Noir, and Spider-Ham only appear in small cameos this time. Only Peni has a speaking line when Miguel and the Spider-Society try to talk Miles down, whereas Spider-Ham gets an archived line from the first film, and all three show up in the ending as a part of Gwen's new team to rescue Miles.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • Miles muses on this whilst interrupting the Spot's first attempted robbery of a corner store's ATM, pointing out that people always call it an "ATM machine" when the M already stands for "machine". Earlier, Spot had also said "PIN number".
  • While chatting with Pavitr Prabhakar, the Indian Spider-Man, Miles remarks he likes "chai tea", which results in this:
    Pavitr: "Chai tea"?! "Chai" means "tea", bro! You're saying "tea tea"! Would I ask you for a coffee-coffee with room for cream-cream?!
  • He also remarks how redundant "naan bread" is, because "naan" itself means "bread", and compares the name to "chai tea". Unfortunately, he says this within Spot's earshot, to which he says, "Ooh, I love chai tea!", much to Pavitr's annoyance.
  • Miguel calls the Spider-Verse the "Arachno-Humanoid Poly-Multiverse"... but poly and multi just mean "many" in Greek and Latin respectively. He's calling it the "many-manyverse".
• Distinction Without a Difference: When Gwen indignantly asks Miles if he followed her through the portal to Mumbattan, he replies that no, he didn't follow her, he just saw where she went and also went there without her knowledge.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Many people have noted the similarities between Gwen's falling out with her father and the stories of queer/trans kids being rejected by their parents, even if those parents later regret their bad response.
• Downer Ending: If you haven't seen the part where it was planned to be a two-part film, then it's inevitable that it has this. Many characters end up with their own personal bad endings.
  • Miles is trapped in an alternate Crapsack World, glitching out and possibly about to be disemboweled by an alternate Prowler version of himself, Miguel O'Hara and his Spider-Society are still on the hunt, Miles has lost all his trust for Gwen, Peter B, and presumably Peni for betraying him, and the Spot is about to unleash the apocalypse on Miles' world. About the only upside is that Gwen has assembled a team to rescue him, while Miles himself ends the movie charging a Venom Strike, ready to fight back.
  • Miguel has to exile Gwen, which clearly bothers him, lost many members of his Squad after they defect, others are now questioning his actions, and he is left wondering Was It Really Worth It?
  • Peter B. has a daughter with MJ thanks to Miles helping Peter, but his inaction and unwittingly leading Miguel to Miles has shattered their relationship completely. His only saving grace is Gwen creating the new Spider Group to try and find Miles.
  • Gwen learns that canon events CAN be averted, but not before losing her only real friend in Miles. And now said friend is lost and his world threatened because she refused to act.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: The sad truth about the Spider-Society's enforcement of Canon Events is that it demands that they can't step in to stop the deaths of anyone important to each Spider-Person when the whole mantra of being Spider-Man is to never knowingly allow someone to suffer or die because of inaction, meaning the Spider-Society is going against everything that Spider-Man is supposed to stand for. Miles himself indirectly states this when he says how messed up that is.
• Dramatic TV Shut-Off: Miguel is observing things via holographic computer scenes. One of the screens shows a video from the past of him and his child from the destroyed universe. The clip lines up with him in the present, and the screen shuts off to show the contrast of his demeanor before and after the incident.
• Dramatic Unmask: An Internal Reveal happens when Gwen unmasks herself in front of her dad who believes he is holding Spider-Woman at gunpoint.
• Drone of Dread: Miguel O'Hara's theme uses a heroic example. Like the Prowler's theme, it is based off of an elephant sound, and emphasizes the extremely imposing presence he has on the battlefield to enemies and allies alike.
• Eldritch Location: The Spotted Dimension, which is a Void Between the Worlds (if you're feeling meta, you could say it's supposed to be the gutter) with trans-cinematic properties and is connected to the multiverse's overall working.
• Eldritch Transformation: The Spot goes through two: His initial transformation from a human into a Humanoid Abomination and when in Mumbattan he goes from a Humanoid Abomination to a Transhuman borderline-Eldritch Abomination.
• Et Tu, Brute?:
  • Miles is heartbroken when he realizes that Gwen and Peter B. are supporting Miguel's stance on canon events and effectively arguing that he should let his father Jefferson, who is marked for death as a canon event as well, die. He outright tells Gwen that she shouldn't have come to visit him as she said before, and coldly rebuffs her when she tries to convince him to give up during his escape.
  • Peter B. and Miles have a heart-to-heart while Miles is on the run from the Society, and Peter seems to be getting through to him. Then Miguel calls on his dimensional stabilizer, revealing they've used it to track his location and by extension Miles. Understandably, Miles is heartbroken by Peter's seeming betrayal, ignoring Peter's protest that he didn't know he was being tracked.
  • During the climax of the chase, as Miles is being manhandled by Miguel who's ranting about Miles' status as "the original anomaly" due to being bitten by a spider not native to his dimension, Peter B. accidentally lets it slip that he and Gwen were aware of this, which Miles correctly infers to be the reason why they never visited him, further increasing his feelings of betrayal and abandonment from his friends.
• Everyone Can See It: Many, many characters pick up on the romantic chemistry that Gwen and Miles have.
• Everyone Chasing You: Miles is chased through the Nueva York HQ by hundreds of Spider-People after Miguel sends a directive to capture him.
• Evil Doppelgänger: The film ends with Miles stranded in an alternate universe and at the mercy of a version of himself who became The Prowler.
• Exact Words: When Gwen's father confronts her, and she refuses to acknowledge him, he asks her to look at him. She proceeds to stay in place and glare at him over her shoulder.
  George: What is that? What are you doing?
  Gwen: Looking at you. Like you told me to.
• Excuse Me While I Multitask: Subverted. Part of the way it's demonstrated that Miles initially doesn't take the Spot seriously is that he texts his family in the middle of their first fight (much to the Spot's chagrin). However, it isn't meant to demonstrate Miles' superior skill; it just results in him getting hit by otherwise avoidable attacks and sending barely-comprehensible messages.
• Expospeak Gag: As Miguel is explaining the nature of the Spider-Man multiverse, Miles coins it the "Spider-Verse". Miguel derides the name as stupid and explains that its proper name is the "Arachno-Human Poly-Multiverse". Realizing it's pretty much the same thing, he concedes his version is also stupid.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Despite the impressive runtime, most scenes occur consecutively, meaning that, with the exception of the opening sequence, the entire film takes place on the same day (2023/07/11, if Lenny's security camera is to be trusted), with the majority playing out in Real Time.
• Eye Cam: In the last scene, when Miles wakes up tied to a punching bag, the camera emulates his eyelids opening and closing.
• Eyedscreen: During the Everyone Chasing You sequence, Miles comes to sit on a horse, face-to-face with Web-Slinger, a Spider-Man Cowboy. The camera goes into wide-screen for their facial staredown.
• Facepalm: Jessica orders the Spiders that were in Mumbattan to return to headquarters, including Miles. Hobie tries to claim that neither he nor Miles follow orders, but Miles eagerly agrees, eliciting a facepalm from Hobie who knows the truth of why the Spider-Society wants him there.
• Failed a Spot Check: Miles has a few of these when he unknowingly enters the wrong dimension towards the end and eventually reaches "his" room, likely due to adrenaline and the idea that he could be in the wrong dimension not even crossing his mind.
  • He doesn't notice "his" room having a rather different layout than it did before.
  • The Rio he speaks to has green eyes instead of his own mother's brown ones.
  • He had previously left his jacket and Jordans on the fire escape stairs by his home when he went to follow Gwen, and doesn't question how they're suddenly back in his room for him to quickly grab when Rio enters.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: When The Spot introduces himself to Miles at the corner shop, he wants it to come off as a dramatic moment but Miles starts laughing about his name.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • Just before Miles goes to rescue Captain Singh, Lyla warns Gwen that sensors have detected an incoming Canon Event, "So tread carefully".
  • When Miles scans his DNA to use the Go-Home Machine, the machine identifies his native reality as Earth-42. The subtitles first identified his Earth as 1610B and the reality the spider came from is repeatedly established to be Earth-42, so while Miles doesn't catch the mistake, attentive viewers will realize he's going to the wrong Earth.
  • Right before Miles confesses to his mother that he's Spider-Man, she mentions his hair being different. While Miles was on an immense high speed chase earlier, it still doesn't look significantly different from when it did when she last saw him. It's a very early hint that there's another Miles around, and he's in the wrong universe, which is shortly revealed when his mother doesn't know who Spider-Man is.
  • In the same scene, Miles covers his Spider-Man uniform with a green and purple jacket belonging to this universe's Miles. These colors, being the same as those on The Prowler's costume, hints that said Miles has taken up the Prowler identity on Earth-42.
  • It's hard to spot because of lighting, but Earth-42's Rio Morales has green eyes, while Earth-1610B's Rio has the same amber-brown eyes as Miles. Viewers who have been paying attention would have noticed this resemblance being highlighted in the rooftop heart-to-heart between Miles and Rio earlier in the film.
  • Before it's revealed that Miles ended up in a different universe than Gwen and the others, you can tell that the matching scenes aren't taking place in the same location because it stops raining in one universe while it continues to do so in the other one.
  • When the Earth-42 Prowler is approaching the captive Miles, one of the shots of his appearance shows that his tech-fitted shoes have their laces untied, a Running Gag about Miles from Into the Spider-Verse about his attempts to be "cool" with a bold fashion statement. Less than a minute later, it's revealed that this Prowler is Earth-42 Miles.
  • A few in Miles's conversation with Rio towards the fact that the Jefferson Morales of Earth-42 is dead:
    • Miles, upon arriving "home" and fearing that the Spot has already struck and killed one or both of his parents, frantically asks Rio, "Are you guys okay?!" She confusedly responds with "I'm okay," rather than "We're okay."
    • Miles also tells her in the ensuing conversation that "you and Dad" are the reason he feels strong, and Rio reacts with a concerned "Oh, tito." right after he mentions his dad, since he doesn't know how much more weight that statement carries in this universe.
    • When Miles is confused over Rio not being more shocked over him being Spider-Man, he mentions how Jefferson has worked with him in his alias. It's then that Rio goes from lightheartedly confused to more tense and serious. She then states, "Miles, please. I have you to look after, I have me to look after," heavily implying she's a single mom here.
• Foil: Both Miguel and Hobie show up as impossibly cool Spiders-Man to wow and embarass less experienced Spiders. Miguel drops in on Gwen to be a totally cool badass who easily (not so easily) takes care of the parchment Vulture. Hobie drops in on Miles to easily (not so easily) ... be a cooler, funnier, guitar-playing punk Miles. They even both pretend not to be who they actually are. Miguel pretends not to be an authoritarian who wants to rule the multi-verse and protect "the canon" with religious zeal. Hobie pretends not to be an anarchist resisting authority with silly quips, but he really is an anarchist resisting authority by stealing Miguel's tech and reverse-engineering his watches so Hobie can overthrow the Spider-Verse in a true anarchist revolution.
• Foreign Cuss Word: In addition to using his trademark "shocking", Miguel straight-up drops "ay, coño"^Translationalong the lines of "oh, for fuck's sake" at one point.
• Foreshadowing: All over the place, for numerous different reveals and plot twists throughout the story, such that it has its own page.
• Forgot About His Powers: Subverted. Throughout the climax Miles doesn't try to lose his pursuers by simply turning invisible, because he wanted to be seen and followed. Played straighter for both Gwen and Peter B, both of whom are aware he has that as part of his Combo Platter Powers, but since they're so atypical to the usual spider powers and both are more concerned with Miles' well-being after the dramatic revelations he's had, neither realise something's up with Miles' escape.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Has its own page.
• Freudian Couch: Played for Laughs. At one point during the climactic chase, a distraught Spider-Man is laying on a couch grieving to a psychiatrist Spider-Man over the death of Uncle Ben, only for the therapy session to get interrupted when Miles and the rest of the Spider-Men crash into the office.
• From Bad to Worse: Hooo boy, let's see... Miles learns that because he interrupted destined events, he wound up destabilizing dimensions but that's just the start. His own friends have turned on him (until the end that is), Spot goes from a wannabe villain to a Transhuman Abomination able to rip apart the very threads of reality itself. Lieutenant (soon to be Captain) Morales is apparently destined to become Miles' variant of Captain Stacy, who as a reminder is destined to die, and Miles has an entire infinite legion of Spiders from all over the Spider-Verse gunning for him. And to top off all that? Miles lands in the wrong universe by the end. The universe his spider came from, where there is no Spider-Man, crime rules the city, his father died, and that variant of Miles is The Prowler under the tutelage of Uncle Aaron who's alive and well.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Jonathan Ohnn, a.k.a. "The Spot", was originally just a random scientist working for The Kingpin at Alchemax who got powers when the Super Collider exploded at the end of the first movie. He begins this movie as a petty thief that can think up portals who wants revenge on Miles for causing the event that transformed him into the Spot (and for hitting him with a bagel). He ends the movie as a multidimentional Reality Warper ready to bring the apocalypse to Earth-1610B and kill Miles's family with no-one able to stop him. Miles initially treats his claims to be his "nemesis" as a joke, calling Ohnn nothing more than a Villain of the Week. Needless to say that by the end, this is no longer the case. It's also worth noting that while he never outright says it, The Spot knows Miles Morales is Spider-Man, meaning he knows just who to target to make Miles suffer.
• Genre Savvy: The Spot seems to have a fair amount of knowledge about superhero/villain dynamics, conversationally talking about his criminal act of robbing a store and turning to a life of crime because of his altered condition like it was the next logical step for him, and outright invokes the role of Miles' Arch-Enemy. Their first meeting has him trying (and failing) to dramatically invoke a climatic showdown between destined foes, and gets legitimately angry when Miles won't humour him in his new "role". It's hinted that Spot managed to deduce who Miles is under the mask, knowing that it was the dimensionally-displaced spider he experimented on that gave Miles his powers, and it's hinted his fixation on becoming his nemesis is rooted squarely in the fact that he has no place to belong anymore after his mutation except as a villain in opposition to the heroic figure he created, even if the reasoning he ascribes to place equal blame on Miles for "creating" him in turn is tenuous at best. This makes him a dark parallel to Miguel and the Spider-Society's adherence to Canon Events and destined roles and outcomes.
• George Lucas Altered Version: The Digital release has a plethora of audio, dialogue, and visual effect changes made compared to the original June 2023 theatrical release, and even later showings had its own (smaller) list of changes compared to the original premiere.
• The Glomp:
  • Gwen does this to her father twice; once early on before the fight with the Vulture, and once in the third act when they reconcile. The second time, she hits him with a web line, and tugs on the line to pull him in for a hug.
  • She also does it to Miles when they reunite in his bedroom.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: During Gwen's investigation of Spot repowering himself in Miles' universe, she and Miles both say "Shoot!" many times as they watch his scheme unfold.

Tropes H–K

• Hammerspace:
  • The Da Vinci Vulture restores a wing Miguel cuts off, which the latter explicitly calls out as hammerspace, with a Clue from Ed. appearing onscreen to helpfully explain the term. The process looks as if a replacement were being sketched into existence.
  • Incidentally, the Spider-Society's dimensional travel watches can summon drones that materialize in a similar manner, but appearing as holograms before solidifying.
• Handbag of Hurt: When the Spot finds himself in "the Spotted Dimension", he tries out one of the portals by putting his head through. Finding himself in a world based on old-school comic strips, he startles a woman who immediately bashes him with her handbag.
• Handicapped Badass: Sun-Spider, a spider-person in a wheelchair. In the comics, she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
• Hard Light:
  • There's Miguel's webbing, which looks like zig-zagging laser beams, that are immune to environmental conditions like wind or gravity. His suit appears to be made entirely out of solid holograms, as he can modify it on the fly to have claws, blades or wing membranes.
  • There's also Spider-Byte, who's a Digital Avatar of a girl in VR projected from her home dimension, that can still interact with her environment as if solid.
• Hellish Copter: The police helicopter crashing into the Guggenheim.
• Her Boyfriend's Jacket: When emerging from Miles' room towards the end of the film, Gwen wears Miles' jacket while talking to his parents.
• Hero Antagonist:
  • Miguel actively considers himself one of the "good guys," and is the leader of a large organization of interdimensional Spider-Heroes, some of whom have demonstrated their heroism time and again in their own stories. However, he's also increasingly hostile towards Miles, the protagonist, belittling him, leaving him out of the loop, and eventually pursuing him and facing him down in a brutal battle across Nueva York. When he fails to stop Miles, his immediate reaction is to hunt him down. While he is genuinely well-intentioned, he's so dogmatic that even the Spiders who side with him seem unnerved by his calculating methods.
  • The Spider-Society becomes this due to their enforcement of Canon Events and later antagonism to Miles. None of them antagonize Miles when he first arrives until Miguel gives the order to hunt him down in the climax, and even then it's shown a good chunk of the Society ignored those orders and went about their business while Miles' is chased by those who do.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Hobie spends the first two acts acting like a Bomb Throwing Anarchist Soapbox Sadie, typical of Hollywood's failures to take communists seriously. Turns out he's an amazing representation of anarchism, working from within to subvert Miguel's authoritarian vision and acting as a Trickster Mentor to younger Spider-People while stealing Miguel's technology and reverse engineering the multiverse-hopping watches, using Obfuscating Stupidity to keep Miguel and his people from seeing him for the anarchist he truly is.
• Hope Spot: After an arduous and lengthy chase, Miles manages to evade capture by Miguel and the Spider-Society and transports himself back home to save his dad, where he musters up the courage to admit to his mother that he's Spider-Man. However, she tells him she has no idea who that is and he starts glitching out, at which point he realizes with horrifying dread this isn't his home. He accidentally stranded himself in the wrong dimension.
• Hourglass Plot:
  • Miles starts the film desperately wanting to reconnect with his Spider-friends and to be a part of a team again, and ends it disillusioned in all of them, rejecting their advice and deciding to go his own way with a newfound confidence in himself. Gwen starts it as a determined loner afraid to make new friends and struggling to maintain her existing relationships and ends it by accepting the strength of all people who support her and starting a new "band" of her own.
  • In the previous film, being improperly yanked from their native dimensions led the various members of the Spider-Gang not native to Miles' reality to suffer from "glitching" as their cells molecularly destabilised in the alien environment, forcing them to Race Against the Clock to return to their homes. This time, it is Miles who is traveling to other dimensions without the technology to stabilize his body, and he ends the film stranded in another dimension, tied by another version of himself to the same punching bag that he tied the stranded Peter to in the first movie.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Spot's original form. He looks like a sketch filled with ink blobs that can somehow hear, see or eat and is able to travel the multiverse using his own wormholes. He later becomes a godlike Transhuman Abomination.
• Human Sacrifice: The "Canon Events" that dictate certain individuals die as part of a Spider-Man story come off as disturbingly close to this in execution, as even when able to determine roughly when these events are going to happen and having the power to stop it, the Spider-Society's views means that those of them present at said events do nothing to save the individuals endangered, merely limiting the collateral damage by saving civilians. This is the case even if they know the Spider in question on a personal level, such as Gwen reluctantly standing back and nearly allowing Captain Singh to get crushed by rubble despite knowing Pavitr well enough to use a nickname with him, even trying to hold Miles back from interfering. When Miles discovers his own father is slated for one of these events and the Society intends to stop him from preventing it, even luring him to their main base for containment if needed, the horror of the situation is made clear.
• Hurricane of Puns: The Spot's Atrocious Alias combined with an entire roomful of Spider-People leads of a veritable deluge of them, such that Jessica Drew has to ask them all to get them off their chest.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • While confronting the Spot while he's attempting to steal an ATM, Miles asks why they're often called ATM machines, even though the "M" already stands for "machine". Later, when Miles' is in Mumbattan on Earth-50101, he mentions how he loves "chai tea" to Pavitr, which annoys Pavitr because "chai" already means "tea" (in both cases, the Spot refers to them in the redundant way).
  • Miles talks to his dad under the mask and notes, "Maybe he's scared to talk to you." His dad's response? "WHY WOULD ANYONE BE SCARED TO TALK TO ME?!"
• Idiot Ball: In Mumbattan, Miles decides to call out to Gwen just as she's about to punch Spot, leading to her getting distracted and kicked promptly in the face by Spot for it.
• If Only You Knew: Early on, Gwen's dad comes to her room telling her that they are having a break in the Spider-Woman case and he feels he is "close". Little does he know how close he is.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Part of the reason Gwen doesn't want to start a relationship with Miles is this trope, because Spider-Man dating Gwen Stacy is one of the most notorious death flags within the Spider-verse. In fact, this trope as a whole is so integral to Spider-Man's character that it's practically enforced on a meta level. Every Spider-Person has had loved ones die, and thus to become a "true" Spider they must suffer the same tragedy. Miguel believes that a Reality-Breaking Paradox results when this doesn't happen, though whether he's right is another matter.
• In Medias Res: The opening of the movie (with Gwen's narration) turns out to be the ending of the movie: after reluctantly betraying Miles, being rejected by the Spider-Society and later realizing that Canon Events could be safely altered, Gwen decided that she Must Make Amends with Miles and decided to recruit like-minded Spider-people to save Miles and rebel against Miguel.
• In Name Only: Earth-13122 is that of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes; the LEGO adaptation games usually have realistic settings where only characters and interactive objects are made of LEGO, as well as smooth animation where pieces and faces bend in ways impossible for real LEGO pieces. This movie's depiction of Earth-13122 instead takes heavy inspiration from The LEGO Movie, with the world being made entirely of realistic LEGO bricks and characters being animated in pseudo-stop-motion. This universe's Peter is also voiced by a different actor than he is in any of the LEGO games.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Despite the wildly differing circumstances in all the alternate realities of the multiverse, certain events, known as "Canon Events", tend to play out in the lives of almost all the Spider-people, such as an "Uncle Ben" figure dying to inspire them into the superhero path, a relationship with a "Gwen Stacy" figure that doesn't end well, or a "Captain" figure with close ties to a Spider-Man dying trying to save a child during a fight between that Spider-Man and a villain.
  • Mumbattan is a New York with a very heavy Mumbai influence, with the implication that Pavitr, his girlfriend, and her father are this world's Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, and George Stacy. Despite this, the British colonization of India and the subsequent western culture stereotypes still happened at some point.
  • While the previous movie touched on it slightly, this movie shows pretty clearly that Spider-People basically always have the same supervillains. The Spider-Society has an entire hall for holding cells of different variants of those from the character's rogues gallery from across the multiverse.
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus and Rewatch Bonus in the scene showing the Spot's origins shows that the inter-dimensional radioactive spider that ended up biting Miles was about to bite the Miles in its native universe before it was teleported away.
  • For a more humorous example, if J. Jonah Jameson appears, he will sound like J. K. Simmons. Must be an absolute point.
  • Another humorous example is that apparently, every Spider-person has to go through at least one Crucified Hero Shot moment where they try to hold two large objects on opposite sides together with their webs. It gets to the point that the Spider-Society has a training room for its members to practice for exactly this sort of thing.
• Intimate Artistry: When Gwen Stacy visits Miles' room, she finds that his sketchbooks are filled with drawings of various people, hers being more than the next two most frequent (Aaron and Noir combined). She clearly understands that it is reflective of his crush on her, but instead of pushing the issue she gives him back the sketchbook and says that she missed him, too. The descriptive audio for the scene glosses over everyone else completely, and describes his drawings as "sketch after sketch of Gwen."
• Ironic Echo: Miles is pretty good at throwing people's own words back at them.
  • When Miles switches from Spanish to English mid-sentence, Rio chastizes him and calls it "Spanglish". Later in the movie, when she does it Miles asks if that was in Spanglish.
  • After finding out Miles followed her to Mumbattan, Gwen remarks she should never have come to visit him. When Miles finds out Spider-Society expects him to sit by and let his father die, he tells Gwen she was right, she should never have come to visit him.
  • When Gwen is about to leave Earth 1610,having just promised Jessica to never come back, she gives one last look to the city and whispers tearful "Goodbye, Miles". In climax of the movie after learning how Gwen and Peter B. betrayed him, Miles says "Goodbye, Gwen" in a very similar tone, indicating he never wants to see her again.
• Irony:
  • As a heroic figure, Spider-Man is best known for preaching the notion of With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. In this film, both Miguel O'Hara and The Spot are antagonistic towards Miles for extremely flimsy reasoning, blaming him for events and outcomes he has practically no personal responsibility for.
  • The Spider-Society in general firmly believes that Canon Events must happen even if there's something they can do about it, like a loved one dying or a relationship ending up on the rocks. Basically, they believe that It Can't Be Helped when Spider-Man is about proving that it can be helped.
  • Miles becomes jealous towards Hobie when he learns Gwen has been spending time with him and even has a toothbrush at his place, and maintains a frosty attitude towards the Spider-Punk; Eventually it turns out Hobie is the single member of the Spider-Society (Gwen included) who doesn't view Miles as a multiversal threat, wholeheartedly supports his choice to save his dad, and helps Miles escape the Society headquarters.
  • The Spot's recollection how he dimensionally transported the spider that bit Miles to their universe has a very brief shot of the Earth-42 version of Miles, showing that the spider was preparing to bite him as he was studying in a classroom. Instead, it wound up biting the Earth-1610 Miles as he was blowing off his own assigned homework to go make Graffiti art with his secretly criminal uncle. As a result of this, the "bad" Miles fated to become a villain instead became a hero, and the studious "good" Miles who was originally supposed to receive said destiny instead ultimately became a criminal Super Villain as his native universe turned into a Crapsack World without a Spider-Man protecting it.
  • The Spot's One-Winged Angel turns him into a Cosmic Flaw/Brown Note Being so otherwordly that he doesn't fit into any art style, so much that it makes him look like a literal stain in the page. He truly is a spot.
• It Can't Be Helped: What the Spider-Society's attitude towards Canon Events ultimately amounts to, with them being incredibly fatalistic towards the bad ones. Naturally, Miles takes issue with this.
• Jerkass to One: Miles faces opposition from two individuals throughout the movie who are either affable or respecting towards other Spider-Men, but antagonistic and aggressive towards him specifically for their own reasons. This attitude is gradually deconstructed throughout the plot as it shows that indulging in their worst traits towards Miles, especially with less-than-stellar reasoning for it, gradually results in their negative qualities beginning to eclipse their positive ones and leaving them morally worse for it.
  • The Spot is Affably Evil even towards the civilians he tries to rob or inconvenience with his powers, and the majority of the danger towards them from him during his first few fights with Miles was utterly accidental. He's so polite he even apologises towards Pavitr when his comment about being on a "journey of self-discovery" is taken the wrong way by him, and this same attitude is precisely why Miles finds him non-threatening enough to term him a Villain of the Week. The Spot's rage towards being dismissed like this leads to him dropping the attitude during a rant at Miles that forces the teenager to treat him seriously for once and coincides with a brief power boost from his anger, leading to him discovering the true extent of his powers. From then on, he leans more and more into the "Jerkass" personality towards Miles in order to force him to treat him more like an actual Arch-Enemy worthy of respect, becoming more aggressive and dangerous as he does. This culminates in him willingly sacrificing what trace remnants there are of his humanity for a massive power boost into his "Black Spot" form, utterly dropping any pleasant mannerisms as his personality becomes almost as inhuman as his body, making clear the depths he's willing to sink to to make Miles respect him. Whereas he previously warped the scientists out of danger at the Mumbattan Alchemax Super Collider, his new powers result in massive collateral damage that would have killed hundreds of civilians, with Spot not caring a jot about it.
  • Miguel O'Hara is surly and terse in his attitude towards everyone, but his interactions with others show that he's not shy about giving out praise and acknowledging their efforts to try and be the best hero they can be. The fact he recruited so many different Spider-Men to the Society shows that his heroic attitude and willpower was enough to convince them to support him in keeping the Multiverse safe. However, when dealing with Miles, his aggressiveness gradually gets ramped up more and more, with him visibly controlling himself at several points and needing to be talked down by others. This is because of his Survivor's Guilt from (apparently) accidentally breaking a Canon Event and destroying an alternative universe that contained an Alternate Self of his family as a result. Anything related to multiversal anomalies or threatening to break Canon is therefore a Trauma Button for him, and Miles being both the original anomaly and whom he blames for the multiversal breakdown in the first place means he's a walking Berserk Button for Miguel. Miles' refusal to allow the Canon Event of his father dying eventually burns through Miguel's patience and leads to him going way overboard with subduing him against the protests of his allies, driving him practically feral towards the end. Afterwards, it's clear that Miguel's lapse in control has damaged the Society's faith in him, and several members of them eventually choose to stand with Miles in opposition to him because of that.
• Juxtaposed Halves Shot: One of these occurs after The Spot absorbs all the energy from an Alchemax collider and releases it in an explosion. Half of Miles' face can be seen on the left side of the screen, and half of The Spot's face can be seen on the right side of the screen.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Gwen and Miles each deal with the complications of keeping their role as Spider-People a secret from their families and the consequences, or possibility of, if they reveal them.
• Kick the Dog: Miguel not only wrongfully blames Gwen for Miles' escape, but he reacts to her questioning him by kicking her out of the Spider-Society and sending her home to her own dimension, where, as far as he knows, she's a fugitive with no home to go to. Not to mention that, considering his idea of Captain George Stacy's death being a canon event, Miguel is basically sending Gwen back to watch her father be ultimately killed at some point in the future.
• Kinda Busy Here: Miles' dad receives a phone call from his wife while he is involved in a fight with The Spot.

Tropes L–O

• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Bombastic Bag-Man isn't wearing the Fantastic Four uniform, only a blue long-sleeved shirt, to avoid stepping on Disney's toes.
• Leader Wannabe: Miguel O'Hara. He tries to act as the headstrong leader of the Spider-Men he's gathered, yet none of them seem to respect his authority and even express disapproval over his occasionally cruel and controlling methods to maintain it. The only one who does seem to actively obey and respect him is Jessica Drew, and even she doesn't always approve of his actions either and frequently acts as his Only Sane Woman. This eventually comes back to bite Miguel in the butt later in the film, where the other Spider-Men start to actively disobey and even rebel against him, leading to many of them abandoning Miguel all together and joining forces with Gwen to rescue Miles instead.
• Leitmotif: The film heavily features the same musical cues as the first film, such as the pervasive three-note Spider-Man motif, along with new additions. Arguably the most prominent is the leitmotif of Miguel O'Hara: a futuristic-sounding synth drone that exudes danger and mystery.
• Logo Joke: Once again, the opening logos begin to glitch out. This includes the newly added logo for Lord and Miller, which briefly shifts into its classic TV variation, the painted Columbia logo from Lawrence of Arabia and the '80s style used for Cocaine Bear.
• LOL, 69: Miles' apology video for promoting a baby powder is shown to have 69 million dislikes.
• Mama Bear: Despite having arguments with Miles over his constant disappearances, Rio Morales truly does love her son and is distrustful towards Gwen due to this trope.
• Man of Kryptonite: Miles' Venom Blast abilities make him a natural counter against Miguel's high-tech future gear, using his Energy Absorption technique to shatter both the Hard Light cage he traps him in and drain his nanotech suit of energy for a point-blank blast that knocks Miguel off him.
• Mathematician's Answer: When Miles asks Webslinger why his horse needs a mask, Webslinger answers "To conceal his identity." This is true, but the question of why a horse would need to conceal his identity is left unanswered.
• Meaningful Echo: While struggling to save both his girlfriend and her father during the bridge collapse, Pavitr says "I can do both!", a line that Miles will say verbatim when confronted with his own dilemma over saving his father or preventing his entire universe unravelling; in the former case, Pavitr only manages to succeed in saving both with the aid of Miles intervening, and in the latter case it remains to be seen what will be the fate of Miles' family/dimension.
• Meaningful Background Event:
  • If you look closely, you can actually see how Spot caused the ATM to teleport into the sidewalk; Spot got too close to the machine, and a portal from his leg transferred to the machine.
  • On Earth-42, as Miles is still bewildered by the chaos around him and shocked at the discovery that Jefferson Morales is already dead in this universe, Aaron Davis is seen checking out an incoming message on his mobile phone before turning to look at Miles suspiciously. Seconds later, Miles is knocked out by the Earth-42 Prowler. Presumably, Aaron receives a message from the Prowler/Earth-42 Miles and realizes that the Miles he's with at that moment isn't the Miles he knew. Also doubles as Five Seconds Foreshadowing.
  • When making their way to Miguel, Hobie and Miles have a conversation while Hobie messes around with various gadgets in the lab. Turns out he's been stealing tech from Miguel to develop his own method of multiversal travel — and who knows how long he'd been doing it for before he met Miles.
  • When the Prowler arrives and approaches Miles on Earth-42, you can hear a news broadcast by J. Jonah Jameson, reporting on the Sinister Six's rampage through Manhattan. If that wasn't enough to convince you of how fucked things are in this dimension, Jameson says that if there were any vigilantes brave enough to try and take the Sinister Six down, he'd fully support them.
• Mega City: Mumbattan of Earth-50101, a New York City mixed together with Mumbai (with the traffic problems of both). The city is absolutely gargantuan and layered, and instead of the ocean and rivers between boroughs, there's more city and buildings.
• Metafiction: The entire film is an example more literally than most examples as a lot of the drama of the film that Miles faces is built around the actual concept of continuity and the journey of story-telling as a whole being represented by the variations of the multiverse he encounters along his way and where the biggest source of conflict between himself, Miguel, and the Spot all stem from in one way or another.
• Miranda Rights: A dramatic moment where Gwen's dad, after learning that his daughter is Spider-Woman, still decides to arrest her and recites the "You have the right to remain silent" line.
• Misery Builds Character: Defied by Miles. Many within the Spider-Society have become so fixated on this aspect of being Spider-Man that they've began to deliberately permit tragedy across the multiverse believing it to be vital pillar of their universes, and Miles himself is horrified to learn that his dad is supposed to die as part of his "canon event" and resists this, almost certainly, arbitrary dictation of fate.
• Misplaced Retribution:
  • The Spot's animosity towards Miles and viewing himself as his "nemesis" is due to his view that they "created" each other, and his anger eventually becomes so great that he promises to "take everything" from Spider-Man, "like you took everything from me." He claims that he "gave" Spider-Man his powers because the spider he and Liv Octavius transported from another dimension escaped and eventually bit Miles, so at most, Spot was only responsible for setting off this chain of events that led to the former (who was in the right place at the right time) becoming Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Miles blew up the collider to stop Kingpin from using it, and not only had absolutely no way of knowing how that this would damage Ohnn enough to turn him into the Spot, but also didn't know the man was even there to begin with, making him only very indirectly responsible, at worst, for Spot's current state.
  • Miguel's resentment towards Miles is a result of blaming him for getting bitten by a radioactive spider from Earth-42 which then died, both depriving Earth-42 of a Spider-Man and starting the chain of events that led to Blond Peter dying and not preventing the damage Kingpin did to the multiverse, none of which is Miles' fault in any way.
• Mistaken for Foreigner: In trying to figure out Miles' "story," his guidance counselor paints him as part of a struggling immigrant family. Rio incredulously remarks that she's from Puerto Rico, which is part of the United States.
• Monkey King Lite: An international Chinese poster◊ making a homage to classic Chinese art visually associates Miles Morales with Sun Wukong, depicting him holding a battle staff while among the clouds.
• Morally Bankrupt Banker: Not in the movie per se, but this does seem to be the Spot's attitude regarding banks.
  The Spot: This ATM machine doesn't even belong to you, it belongs to the bank. They're the real criminals.
• Motor Mouth: Besides the obvious input from the various Spider-People, the Spot is a fairly chatty villain himself, listing off his entire backstory and motivation in a panic whilst trying to beg the shopkeeper attacking him to cease and let him rob him, and engaging in some copious talking to himself whilst trying to control his powers enough to steal the ATM's money.
• The Multiverse: While the first film dealt with spider-themed heroes from other universes being brought to Miles' reality, this film shows various characters travelling to many realities in the multiverse.
• Mundane Utility: When the Spot enters Mumbattan's collider room, he pushes a button to activate the barrier. Despite the fact that the button is just a few feet away from him, he saves himself the five-second walk by spawning a portal directly above the button and putting his finger through it. Stuff like that is a minor perk of becoming a transdimensional portal-infested superbeing.
• Musical Nod: Spider-Man 2099's theme is directly based on the one he had in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
• Mythology Gag: Apart from the fact that it has its own page, this series might as well be "Mythology Gag: the meme pointing at itself". It toys with the fact that every Spider-Man movie for the last 25 years has been playing the same set of tropes dead straight every single time to tug at the same heart strings. And it turns that into the plot. The MCU and Rick and Morty WISH they could ouroboros this deep.
• The Needs of the Many: Miguel invokes this to Miles when explaining that preventing a Canon Event from playing out can result in an entire universe being erased from existence along with its inhabitants, saying that as Spider-Man, he has to choose between whether to save only one person or save every world, with Peter making it clear that he can't do both after Miles suggests otherwise. This is because he tried to move into the life of an alternate Miguel O'Hara, only for reality to unravel around him, with him thinking it was this act which doomed his world, not thinking canon had nothing to do with it.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: During the fight scene with The Spot, Miles and his dad, the dad prepares to jump into one of The Spot's portal holes to rescue Miles. The music swells and ... we cut to him running down the stairs instead.
• Never My Fault:
  • Jonathan Ohnn/The Spot blames Miles for his altered inhuman appearance because he was transformed when Miles blew up the collider at the climax of Into the Spider-Verse, infecting him with unstable dimensional energies... except Ohnn helped build the machine, was willingly inside the collider room when it was in a meltdown, and tried to flee the scene with a canister of dark matter in his arms, which broke when it blew up and changed him. Miles wasn't even aware of his presence whilst trying to stop a fallout event that could have destroyed the entire city and potentially The Multiverse itself, and Ohnn never even considers that Kingpin or Olivia Octavius were far more involved with his changes than Miles is. Ohnn's animosity towards him is presented as being merely a coping mechanism to deal with his alterations and having something to do with his life.
  • Miguel O'Hara, after Miles escapes, vents in complete rage on why Miles didn't follow his doctrines despite the numerous actions the former took against him, including having him forcibly imprisoned, sending the entire Spider Society to chase after him, viciously assaulting him to the point of nearly killing him, calling him an anomaly and a mistake. An angry Gwen calls him out on it, leading Miguel to blame her for the fallout.
• Never Trust a Trailer: A few lines are given completely different context in trailers compared to the actual movie.
  • In the trailers, when Spot introduces himself and bread falls out of a hole in his stomach, Miles apparently recoils and says "Don't do that." In the movie proper, Miles just laughs; the "Don't do that" line is from a different part of the movie, when Miles witnesses a boy licking a train window.
  • The trailers frame Miguel's "don't get me started on Doctor Strange and that little nerd back on Earth-199999" as part of his rejection toward Miles joining the Spider-Society, while in the actual movie, he says it during the Action Prologue, speaking to Gwen.
  • The line of Miles asking himself "Can this day get weirder?" is followed by an attack from Spider-Cat in the trailers. In the film, the line is in response to the Spider-Cat attack, and is immediately answered by an attack from Spider-Rex.
• Nightmare Hands: As Miles Morales desperately swings through New York in the end of the film, he reminisces over his past experiences; during the montage, the Spot's hands begin to come out of portals on buildings, symbolizing his threat to Miles.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Whilst swinging through Miles' reality and catching him up on what she's been doing and the Spider-Society, Gwen describes Miguel as a "ninja vampire Spider-Man".
• No Endor Holocaust: A downplayed example. Spot accidentally opens a hole into a water tower, then back out of it, leading to a brief gush of water. Water towers are huge and contain huge quantities of water; the result would have been a flood.
  • A more straight example: Spot destroys the Alchemax of Mumbattan, resulting coming down on multiple skyscrapers before being webbed up and then damaging the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. Even with the Spider-Gang's combined efforts, it's a miracle that there were no fatalities.
• Noodle Incident: In between movies, Miles appeared in an advertisement for baby powder. Somehow, this eventually led to him having to issue a public apology.
• Non-Standard Character Design: With even more universes and art styles being played with in this film than in the last one, you better believe there's tons of characters with even crazier unique styles.
  • Hobie Brown, fitting in with his punk anarchist nature, has an overall design that makes him look as though he's made of newspaper clippings that resemble both something from a punk rock album cover and something from an Underground comic book, which constantly shift both shape and color, like a living animated collage. He's also animated on threes rather than other Spider-People's ones or Miles's twos.
  • Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider's design stands out by incorporating the drawing and inking style of Tom Lyle, one of the artists who worked on the 90's comic book The Clone Saga, as well as the artist responsible for his iconic blue hoodie and red spandex outfit.
  • The LEGO Spider-Man (and his entire universe) are done in CGI animated to resemble stop motion, just like The LEGO Movie.
  • Spider-Man from the 1967 cartoon is drawn in 2D and is complete with Limited Animation, fitting for a character from a cheap 1960s television cartoon.
  • Insomniac Spider-Man is realistically shaded and textured, and animated on ones rather than twos, to match the look of the games he comes from.
  • Peter Parker from The Spectacular Spider-Man animated show has a much bigger and more angular head and flatter feet compared to other characters, given that he's from a show with a completely different art style.
  • Non-Spider-Person example: The Spot, in the beginning of the film, is a blank, featureless humanoid with inky black spots all over his body. Looking closer at his design you can see he's literally a blank character design, as you can clearly see thin sketch lines on his body. The spots he creates are also comparable to ink blots spilled on a page. Later in the film, when he powers up and becomes a Transhuman Abomination, that inkiness spreads all over his body, making him look like a living black scribble.
  • Another villainous example: The alternate-universe Vulture who Gwen, Miguel, and Jess fight in the beginning of the film is animated to resemble a Leonardo Da Vinci sketch brought to life, including only being coloured in shades of brown. Gwen even asks if he's made of parchment.
• No-Sell: Miles' Spider-Sense completely fails to warn him about the Earth-42 Prowler about to ambush him from behind, leading to him getting knocked unconscious in a surprise attack. At first it seems to be because he's in shock over realising that he's in the wrong dimension and this world's version of Jefferson is already dead, but upon the Prowler unmasking himself, it's revealed to be because he's the Earth-42 version of Miles himself, and is thus undetectable to Miles' senses because he technically is Miles.
• Not His Sled: An actual in-universe plot point. Certain events, such as the deaths of Uncle Ben and Captain Stacy (or close equivalents) are known as "Canon Events" that are tied to the very fabric of Spider-Man's being. If they don't occur, it can lead to the destruction of an entire universe, possibly even the entire multiverse, due to a Reality-Breaking Paradox. Miles, and later Gwen, meanwhile are trying to point out that, basically, that's not how paradoxes work.
• No True Scotsman: The main reason Miles was not invited to the Spider-Society and his former allies from the first film never visited him is because Miguel outright forbade it due to seeing Miles as a mistake who never should have become Spider-Man and being the indirect cause of the temporal anomalies that now threaten the multiverse, as the radioactive spider that bit him didn't originate from Miles' own universe.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: When we first see The Spot, he is a goofy-looking "villain of the week" who cannot even rob a convenience store ATM competently. Less than twenty-four hours later a power-up has turned him into a Transhuman Abomination capable of threatening the multiverse who is actively seeking to kill Miles' loved ones out of vengeance.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: While he's not pretending to be an idiot by any stretch of the term, Hobie manages to accomplish his goal of pilfering enough tech from the Spider Society to make his own interdimensional watch by pretending to be breaking and fiddling with random things he seemingly has no idea the function of, for the sake of being petty to a Spider Society he has serious disdain for. In reality, he knows exactly what those pieces he's stealing do, and he's been stealing enough of them over enough time that he's able to give out multiple copies of the interdimensional watch to other Spiderpeople like Gwen. Given Miguel's reaction to Hobie being present at the canon event reveal, namely trying to ignore him entirely, Hobie's M.O. appears to have been to annoy them into ignoring him so that he can move forward with his plan without being scrutinized.
• Oblivious Janitor Cut: There is a scene halfway through the movie where Spidy ropes around the city in the background and a cleaner hovers over an office floor in the foreground, oblivious to what's going on outside.
• Obviously Not Fine: In the opening scene, Gwen's bandmates note something's very not right with her, and try asking. Gwen immediately shuts them down by saying she's fine, but they point out people who are legitimately fine tend to say it in a more upbeat way.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Miguel has one when Miles points out he lured hundreds of Spider-People away from their base, revealing it to be his plan all along. He then gets another one immediately when he's about to be hit by Miles's Venom Blast.
  • Miles realizes he is not on his home Earth when he thinks he's made it back home but suddenly glitches out after talking to Rio (who, as it turns out, as no clue who Spider-Man is when Miles reveals his secret to her).
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Like in the first film, characters will "glitch out" when in another universe since staying there for too long will cause their cells to disintegrate. Fortunately, members of the Spider-Society are able to prevent this by wearing special watches, and this time it's Miles himself who tends to glitch out until Jessica lends him a "day pass" while he's in Nueva York. Later on, this becomes especially ominous when Miles suddenly glitches out after he thinks he's made it back home, which makes him realize to his horror that he's accidentally stranded himself in the wrong universe.
• The Omnipotent: Implied with the Spot. After going from Humanoid Abomination to Transhuman Abomination, he seems to be observing the Web of Life and Destiny, and it's all but stated that he has found out that Miles Morales is Spider-Man.
• Once More, with Clarity: This movie recontextualizes the ending of Into the Spider-Verse with Gwen beckoning Miles through a dimensional portal. Specifically, he hadn't seen any of the other Spider-People in months, he had just been grounded when Gwen finally popped up, and she wasn't there just to see him; she was doing work tracking down Spot for Miguel, and had actually, in a way, been grounded herself, Miguel refusing to let her see the 'mistake'.
• Out-Gambitted: How Miles is able to escape Miguel and the Spider-Society's chase after him in the end, after luring enough of them on the Space Elevator in Earth-928 and getting them high enough, Miles makes a break for it at the last possible moment, allowing him to opportunity to cut off his pursuers altogether.

Tropes P–S

• Pet-Peeve Trope: Pavitr has a few.
  • He gets very mad at Miles for saying "chai tea" because "chai" means "tea", sharing the same sentiments for the term "naan bread".
  • He also gets rather angry at the Spot for implying he went specifically to Mumbattan on his quest to become stronger, something Spot tries to clarify on being a coincidence.
• Phonýmon: One of the floating items in Miles' bedroom included a couple of trading cards known as TerriakiMon. Underneath the name is a similar white and red Pokéball-like design seen on the back of official cards.
• Playing the Victim Card: Played for Laughs: The Spot tries to convince the shopkeeper attacking him that his altered condition means that he can't get a normal job, therefore the logical thing for him to do is to turn to a life of crime, and as such, it's the shopkeeper's moral responsibility to stop trying to hit him and let himself be robbed, as the ATM's money technically actually belongs to the bank and not the shopkeeper.
  The Spot: I've never robbed anybody in my life, please don't make this a bad experience for me!
  Shopkeeper: "Bad experience"!? I'm trying to run a business here!
• Pop-Up Texting: When Miles chats with his dad who is waiting for him at the teacher's office, their text messages are shown as on-screen text.
• Portal Cut: When Miles attempts to stop the Spot from entering the collider by snagging him with a web-line, Spot opens a hole in the middle of the line to sever it, even making a "scissors" motion with his hand as he does so.
• Portmanteau: One of the more prominent locations featured is known as Mumbattan◊ — a fusion of India's Mumbai and New York's Manhattan.
• Power Incontinence: Spot spends a lot of time struggling with his holes before finally finding a way to use them instinctively.
• Precision F-Strike: A surprising amount for a modern PG-rated movie, even some in Spanish.
• Pregnant Badass: Jessica Drew is an active superhero who engages in battle and uses her motorcycle as a defensive weapon while pregnant, drawing from her 2014 title.
• Production Foreshadowing: At one point, Ganke can be seen playing Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which wouldn't release until later the same year Across the Spider-Verse premiered.
• Production Throwback: One universe The Spot enters is one made entirely of LEGO. The way its Peter Parker works his gizmo (Saying Sound Effects Out Loud) as well as being in faux-stop motion makes it rather clear that all of it is a reference to Lord and Miller's previous work The LEGO Movie.
• Prolonged Prologue: The movie opens with a lengthy sequence recapping Gwen Stacy's backstory and what's happened to her since the first movie. The title card doesn't appear until roughly 20 minutes in.
• Punch Catch: Miles catches a punch thrown by the Spot through one of his portals. And then Miles pushes back through the same portal, sending the Spot hitting a wall.
• Put on a Bus: While recapping the first movie, and the events since then, Miles mentions that the Aunt May of his universe moved to Florida. As a result, she only appears in a single shot and plays no further role in the narrative.
• Race Lift: Jessica Drew is a black woman instead of white like she normally is, due to being voiced by Issa Rae. This incarnation of Jessica isn't the first black Spider-Woman, however: that honor goes to Valerie the Librarian of The Electric Company (1971), who took up the mantle in the pages of the tie-in Spidey Super Stories comic series nearly two years before Jessica was even introduced, and this Jessica's design appropriately takes cues from Valerie's costumed appearance.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: While Miles is trapped on the wrong Earth being held captive by an alternate version of his uncle Aaron and himself, who is the Prowler in this universe, Miguel and the Spider Force are hunting him to make sure Jefferson does die, and the Spot has returned with more power than ever and is intending to do some serious damage. Meanwhile, although having lost Miles' trust, Gwen is still able to travel across the Multiverse, and has assembled a team of her own to rescue him. Also, the last shot of Miles himself is him calmly rubbing a single finger against the chains holding him, charging up a Venom Strike, ready to fight back.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: The Spider-Verse has certain events that play out similarly in all realities, known as "canon events": the spider bite, the death of Uncle Ben, the death of Captain Stacy, or the local equivalents thereof. Preventing that causes reality to break down, which is why Miguel O'Hara formed the Spider-Society to stop any such disruptions from happening. Miguel believes he destroyed a reality when he replaced a version of himself that died, and views Miles as a walking paradox because the spider that bit him was taken from another reality. There are hints, however, that Miguel's interpretation of these paradoxes isn't precisely accurate, as Miles points out The Spot could easily be responsible for the damage to Pavitr's reality, and it's mere coincidence that Miles intervened in his I Let Gwen Stacy Die moment at the same time. Moreover, Earth-42 and Miles's Earth are both structurally fine (Earth-42's other issues aside, it shows no signs of collapsing), despite both undergoing significant deviations to the canon. Gwen's own father quits the force after wrestling with the revelation that his daughter is Spider-Woman, seemingly changing the course of her history without her reality falling apart.
• Reality Has No Subtitles:
  • A decent amount of Spanish is spoken in this English-language film, none of it translated in subtitles.
  • Averted with Inspector Singh, who has one line—in Hindi—that is given a caption.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Peter B. Parker wears a pink bathrobe for the entirety of his time on-screen.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Miguel gives Miles a scathing one after Miles is revealed to be an anomaly.
  Spider-Man 2099: Everywhere you go, you're an anomaly! You're the original anomaly! The spider that gave you your powers, wasn't from your dimension. It was never supposed to bite you! There's a world out there with no Spider-Man to protect them because it bit you instead! You're not supposed to be Spider-Man! [...] You're a mistake! If you hadn't been bit, your Peter Parker would have lived, instead he died saving YOU. He would've stopped the collider before it ever went off, Spot wouldn't exist, and none of this would've happened! And all this time, I'VE been the only one holding it all together! You don't belong here. You never did. [...] That's exactly what you are! You're just a kid. Who has no. Idea. WHAT HE'S DOING!
• Re-Cut: The film's theatrical release had two different versions: one made for an international release and another version finished two months later with graphical touch-ups and changes in scenes, dialogue, and audio. For example, when Miguel pleads with Lyla to call for back-up, then after he begs, she tells him she already did, the international version has her mockingly offering him a fistbump, while the later release has her take a selfie with a filter attaching bunny ears to Miguel. The digital release of the film is the finished version with the latter scene along with various other changes.
• Retcon:
  • The first film designated Peter B's universe as Earth-616, the number normally used for the main comics universe, indicating the Spider-Verse films took place in a separate multiverse. This film ends up classifying it as Earth-616B, as Miguel's map of the multiverse is shown to include the actual 616 in it, with the original comic artwork. Miles's universe is similarly shown to be Earth-1610B, indicating that the original Ultimate Marvel universe exists as well.
  • In the first movie, Gwen's origin story recap showed her Peter dying in some sort of industrial lab based on the background, while his design heavily resembled Peter B. Parker. Here, he died at their school while attempting to get revenge on a bully, and his design was changed to that of a teenage Peter B.
  • Gwen's father, who was briefly shown being saved from a criminal by Gwen in the first film, also had his character design completely changed in the second film.
• The Reveal: It turns out that the spider that bit Miles and gave him his powers didn't come from his universe; it was brought to his dimension by the Collider. Without the spider bite and the powers it bestowed, the Earth-42 that the spider originated from has no "native" Spider-Man, and Miguel states that as a result, Miles is a walking temporal anomaly within the Multiverse — the original anomaly. This is supported by Miles getting confronted by the Earth-42 version of himself at the end, revealing that thanks to the displaced spider, that Miles wound up becoming the Prowler instead, showing that Miles was originally destined to become a villain rather than a hero.
• Revision: This movie expands on the Alchemax escape sequence from Into the Spider-Verse by revealing the scientist Miles beaned with a bagel was the future Spot all along.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • The Spot details his backstory to Lenny the shop owner, but considering all that was going on in that scene, most viewers probably wouldn't process what he's saying until they hear the Spot's proper backstory reveal later in the film.
  • Hobie praising Miles for saving Inspector Singh takes on a different meaning upon seeing that Hobie is working against the Spider-Society behind its back. His praise towards Miles was for breaking the rules of the society by disrupting a canon event.
  • Gwen's opening monologue and the brief future imagery shown makes more sense on a rewatch when you know the actual context of her speech and the images shown.
• Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!: When Spider-Punk is giving his backstory, he comments that he "hates the AM". This is communicated with a visual of him smashing an alarm clock with his fist.
• Roger Rabbit Effect:
  • While testing a new application of his powers, the Spot travels to the live-action Sony's Spider-Man Universe and robs Mrs. Chen.
  • Some of the captured anomalies at the Spider-Society's headquarters are in live-action, most notably, the Earth-199999 alternate of the Prowler played by Donald Glover.
  • During the explanation of Canon events and the consequences of altering them, footage from George Stacy's death scene from Earth-120703 and Uncle Ben's death scene from Earth-96283 are used.
• Ruder and Cruder: While not enough to earn it a PG-13 rating, Across still has considerably more profanity than either the previous film or your typical Western animated flick.
  • Most notably, the film gets away with a couple uses of "ass", which is a lot stronger than what is usually allowed in this sort of work.
  • At one point, Miguel exclaims "Ay, coño!" which in English means "Oh, dammit!"
  • Also, when Jefferson grumps about not even knowing why Miles is seeing Gwen, Rio says that she has "some ideas" with Jeff replying "you're really not helping", the implication being she thinks the two are at the very least working their way around the bases if not actually having sex.
• Rule of Funny: It makes little sense that Miguel wouldn't immediately specify which Spider-Man he wants the Society to catch, which of course leads to the mass-confusion that he throws an exasperated swear at. But of course, we wouldn't have one of the movie's funniest moments without it.
• Rule of Symbolism: Miguel is reintroduced in the second act while brooding alone in a lair, nothing but negative colors, ruminating on his Dark and Troubled Past, on a floating platform that slowly descends to the ground. He's a towering presence, literally looming over others due to his size and his choice of office decor. When Gwen meets him, he's an amazing Badass, but Miles meets a Jerkass who shouts at him.
• Running Gag:
  • As the movie progresses, Miles' grounding sentence gets steadily longer.
    Rio: [to Gwen] If you see him, tell him five months! And tell him we love him.
  • Characters remarking that the red streaks on Miles' costume look like he's "bleeding from the armpits."
  • The younger Spider-People always try to deepen their voice to sound more mature when they come across adults they know in their civilian identities.
• Running Gagged: The movie eschews the "let's do this one last time" gag from the previous movie; the beginning instead has Gwen say "Let's do things differently this time" and provide a mix of recap and foreshadowing for Miles' story. While Pavitr and Hobie introduce themselves with similar monologues, they don't say the phrase. This is to reflect the film's major theme of straying away from tradition.
• Run or Die: Well, not die, since they're all still heroic individuals, but the climax sees Miles being pursued by the entire Spider-Society, a small army of Spider-Men each of whom is as if not more experienced than himself. Miles is so hilariously outnumbered and outgunned that his only option is to try and keep ahead of everybody whilst trying to figure out a way back to his home universe. Ultimately, Miles takes advantage of their tactics to lure the entire mob away from their headquarters and to Nueva York's space elevator, before leaping off it once it's high enough, putting enough distance between his pursuers and himself to buy enough time to use the Go Home machine at their headquarters to jump back to his dimension before they can stop him.
• Sadistic Choice: Immediately after receiving his final power-up, The Spot demonstrates that his powers now extend beyond space into time itself, and he shows Miles a vision of The Spot killing his father using a Canon Event. This intentionally puts Miles into a cruel choice on a cosmic scale: either helplessly watch his father die, or risk billions (if not trillions) of lives. It is little wonder then that almost the entirety of Spider-Society seems to agree on doing everything they can to take that impossible choice away from him, regardless of how cruel that in and of itself is.
• Screw Destiny: A running theme of the story is whether or not a Spider-Man could defy certain elements that are destined to happen to them across the multiverse, including the bad things (a close ally/relative/love interest dying), that make them who they are. Most of the Spider-People, especially Miguel O'Hara, believe that they cannot change their destinies, and that trying to do so will threaten the entire multiverse. Miles Morales and eventually Gwen Stacy, Peter B. Parker, and several others believe that their fates are not set in stone and that if they really try, they can save the people they aren't supposed to save instead of letting them die just because the "Canon Events" said so. Notably, Earth-65B, Earth-1610B, and Earth-42 have all violated the Canon Events in their own way, yet are still intact.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!:
  • When Miles starts running from the other Spider-People, Hobie teleports back to his own dimension, muttering, "For the record, I quit." He later arranges for Gwen to receive his dimensional stabilizing watch, and at the end of the movie joins Gwen's team of Spider-people to help rescue Miles.
  • Several members of the Spider-Society, including Peter B., leave the organization after they can no longer stomach Miguel's excessive cruelty towards Miles and Gwen.
• Second Chapter Cliffhanger: The film ends on several heavy notes linking it up to the upcoming third movie, Beyond the Spider-Verse: Miles is trapped on Earth-42 captured by an alternate version of him who became the Prowler and that Earth's Uncle Aaron, and is set to glitch out of existence if he doesn't get back to his own Earth in time; Miguel and several members of the Spider-Society are out hunting for Miles to prevent him from saving his father from his seemingly preordained death to The Spot's havoc; The Spot has become a Transhuman Abomination intent on ruining Miles' life starting by going after his family and home; and Gwen, having realized that Canon Events may not be truly preordained after her father effectively prevented one on his own (the death of a police captain close to that Earth's Spider-Man) by quitting the force, has assembled a team of Spider-People to find Miles and get him back home.
• Seen It All: The Spot is on the receiving end of this twice in the film.
  • A shopkeeper's reaction to being robbed by a dude who can conjure up portals is to try to hit him with a baseball bat.
  • The Spot can't help but wonder what kind of universe Mrs. Chen lives in that she isn't in the least bit fazed about having her store robbed by a trans-dimensional Humanoid Abomination through a portal.
• Separated by a Common Language: When Spider-Punk makes his first appearance, Miles has no idea what his rapid-fire London slang even means.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: As soon as Pavitr finds out that Miles followed Gwen to Mumbattan despite not being invited, he immediately deduces that Miles must have done this because he's in love with her. Both of them promptly become flustered and begin denying it, even though Miles does have a major crush on Gwen and she's implied to like him back.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Pavitr gleefully teases Gwen and Miles about having feelings for each other when watching them interact.
  • Even Hobie, who acts as an implied love rival to Miles, refers to Gwen as "Gwendy" and later calls Miles "Peter Pan".
• Ship Tease:
  • In the official trailer for the movie, Rio's speech to Miles at the water tower is played over various clips. Every time she talks about Miles needing to know how much he's loved, the lines are played over clips of him and Gwen.
  • It's revealed that Gwen is the person Miles misses the most from the previous film; he's updated his "No Expectations" mural with her as the most prominent figure, and he intends to major in theoretical physics to explore the possibility of alternate universes, with the implied reason being so that he can see her again.
  • Gwen immediately hugs Miles when arriving in his room, and flips through his sketchpad to find that he's drawn several pictures of her. While Miles is understandably flustered, her response is a smile and a simple "I missed you, too". Later, when they have a heart-to-heart on the Williamsburgh Bank Building, Gwen rebukes the idea of them getting together (because she's presumably been shown the "canon event" that Gwen Stacy falling for Spider-Man "doesn't end well"), but she leans on Miles's shoulder anyway. It's eventually revealed that she was actually strictly forbidden by Miguel to see Miles, but she had thought about him for over a year since they parted and missed him so badly that she secretly did so anyway.
  • When hanging out together in private at Jefferson's party, Gwen apologizes to Miles for acting weird over her watch and the two suddenly get really close, giving the impression an Almost Kiss was happening before Miles' mom suddenly pops up between them.
  • When Gwen is about to leave Miles' universe, she turns to look towards the spot they stood together, and unbeknownst to her, she's looking directly at Miles who is watching her upside-down while invisible. The next shot of the two of them in profile looks very reminiscent of the famous upside-down Spider-Man and Mary Jane kiss which Into the Spider-Verse itself referenced twice.
  • While many smaller jokes are spent on Miles being jealous of Gwen's ambiguous relationship with Hobie, Gwen gets some brief moments of jealousy herself when Miles shows interest in Spider-Byte and uses her web to yank him away from her.
  • When emerging from Miles' room towards the end of the film, Gwen wears Miles' jacket while talking to his parents. While she had to put on something to cover her suit, it's still quite heartwarming and gives Her Boyfriend's Jacket vibes.
  • The song that plays while Gwen and Miles are swinging around buildings and hanging out is Dominic Fike's "Mona Lisa", which is a love song. When they stop to chat at the Williamsburgh Bank Building, it briefly plays Pop Money's "Another Dimension", another love song.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: To emphasize the more serious nature of the story compared to its predecessor, Spider-Man Noir, Peni Parker, and Peter Porker have significantly reduced roles. Peter Porker only gets one line archived from the first movie. Peni also only gets one line, and she's become much more serious after experiencing her own canon event. Spider-Man Noir doesn't say anything at all.
• Shout-Out:
  • While fighting an alternate-universe Vulture, Gwen quips that the only Italian she knows is from Mario Kart.
  • Miguel on keeping the multiverse together:
    Miguel: Now I'm stuck putting everybody back where they belong before all of time and space collapses. And don't even get me started on Dr. Strange and the little nerd back on Earth-199999.
    Gwen: Who's Doctor Strange? Sounds like he maybe shouldn't practice medicine.
  • In scenes 25 minutes apart, Hobie teasingly calls Gwen and Miles "Gwendy" and "Peter Pan", respectively.
  • When Gwen meets Miguel, she jokingly calls him the Blue Panther, Caped Blue-sader, Dark Garfield, and Macho Libre.
  • A billboard with a poster reading "All of It, Always, All Over the Place" with a bagel appears on top of the building The Spot hides out in.
  • When Miles asks her about Miguel O'Hara, Gwen describes him being a bit like a vampire, but still a good guy. Miles's response suggests he'd be interested in a story starring a good guy vampire.
  • When the Spot attacks Mumbattan, Pavitr calls out his claim that he's on a journey of self-discovery with, "And you came to India. That is such a Western culture cliché! Don't Eat, Pray, Love me, bro!"
  • Hobie lives in a Crapsack World where the UK has turned into a fascist dystopia, reflecting many comics and books written by such as George Orwell and Alan Moore. That Hobie is able to fight back against that dystopia reflects Moore rather than Orwell.
  • On the pages of Hobie's backstory comic, he's yanking on his web-line saying "Get over here!", to which somebody off-panel responds "I understood that reference!".
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: After Gwen abandons her home dimension to join the Spider Society, she switches her ballet pumps for a pair of Spider-Punk's sneakers, signifying a shift to a less innocent and more cynical worldview.
• Skewed Priorities: Miguel is dead-set on upholding "canon" and protecting the multiverse from damage by letting Jefferson die on the day of his promotion. At the hands of The Spot. Whose powers are directly capable of multiversal instability, and is all but guaranteed to do a whole lot of collateral damage while killing Miles' family.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Both Miles and Miguel's philosophies on the Multiverse and how all Spider-Men are connected. While Miguel believes that everyone should follow the rules and story as the others to prevent dimensions from being destroyed, Miles chooses to follow his own path.
• Snowballing Threat: The Spot's goal is to become more powerful by absorbing the energy from as many Alchemax colliders as possible. The longer he isn't dealt with, the more energy he absorbs, and the more powerful he becomes.
• Space Elevator: A variation. Earth-928 has a space highway that goes up to the moon right in the middle of Nueva York City. Miles lures most of the Spider-Society to it and then jumps out when it is high enough, giving himself a break from the pursuit.
• Spotting the Thread: Earth-42 Aaron realizes something's off when he spots Miles without his braids.
• The Stations of the Canon: Discussed in depth, invoked, and justified. According to Miguel, every Spider-Person has similar backstories that must occur in order to make them who they are; these are called "Canon Events", and straying from them threatens the entire universe, however individual realities that do break them are shown to have survived and with this film explicitly taking place in the MCU's multiverse, where this trope was only in place because the TVA enforced it, it's clearly shown that something else is going on, even if it's unclear exactly what.
• Stealth Pun:
  • It's revealed in this film that the scientist who Miles threw a bagel at in Into the Spider-Verse is actually the man who would later become the Spot. In other words, one could say that that bagel "definitely hit the Spot".
  • Hobie's introduction includes the line "I hate the AM, I hate the PM..."
• Stock Footage:
  • The scene of Mrs. Chen interacting with the Spot is repurposed footage from Venom: Let There Be Carnage; the entire scene of the Spot exploring his dimension-hopping powers was added late in production, so they didn't have time to record new footage.
  • Holograms of both Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Marc Webb's Spider-Man are seen mourning over the bodies of Uncle Ben and George Stacy respectively, the footage taken directly from the films. The latter is also seen mourning Uncle Ben in another clip, this time taken from the tie-in game for TASM2.
• Stopped Dead in Their Tracks: Miles, as Spider-Man, speaks to his dad, who begins opening up about his struggles with Miles. Not wanting to blow his cover, Miles begins walking away. His father laments on how smart Miles is, before saying with a sharp tone that he does things that are so stupid. This causes Miles to stop dead in his tracks with an angry expression. He walks back and retaliates that he should "get off the kid's ass", prompting an angry dad's "I'm sorry, WHAT?!" Needless to say, he demonstrates his dad's point.
• Stress-Induced Mental Voices: During the climax, Miles is in a funk and hears the voices of Miguel, Spider Ham, and the Spot telling him that he is not good enough.
• Super Wrist-Gadget: Members of the Spider-Society use wrist gadgets to travel between dimensions.

Tropes T–V

• Taken During the Ending: The film ends with Miles Morales arriving at Earth-42 and getting captured by his counterpart there (who became the Prowler) and his uncle. The final shots include Gwen Stacy reuniting with the Spider-Gang to try to find him.
• Take That!:
  • Peter Parker and Mary Jane's wedding being briefly shown as a Canon Event, using the original comic's cover art, may be this towards Marvel Comics' decision to undo their marriage and keep them apart in the comics.
  • The idea of Canon Events, specific times in Spider-Man's life where he would rise up as a hero is seen as a checklist that mainly consists of tragedies that help motivate the hero to do better, is a jab at how the Superhero Origin must always involve the death of loved ones without any leeway. It also makes fun of the idea in where a "true" superhero must rigidly be Truer to the Text and follow The Stations of the Canon, even if said points are no longer needed or didn't age well.
• Take That, Critics!: Much of the Spider-Society's and especially Miguel's adherence to Canon and dismissal of Miles Morales, some even outright telling him he isn't a true Spider-Man, was intended to be a massive commentary on the vocal group of people who disliked the character and are overly critical and controlling of who should deserve to bear the mantle.
• Tantrum Throwing:
  • The first thing Miguel O'Hara does on meeting Miles is throw a piece of equipment in Miles's direction. It turns out he has a very severe dislike for Miles.
  • After Gwen is cast out of the Spider-Society and sent back to her birth universe, she takes out her frustration on a large container first by punching it, and then throwing it away with her Super-Strength.
• Tap on the Head: Miles gets knocked out cold by his own alternate version on Earth-42, who acts as the Prowler there. He wakes up a little while later and has a subtle black eye from the punch, but otherwise no further injuries from it. Likely a more justified case as Miles is a superhero with enhanced durability.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Miles tries to invoke this when he first meets Miguel by offering him an empanada, since he hopes to get on the latter's good side and Jessica mentioned earlier that Miguel is fond of the empanadas they serve in the Spider-Society HQ's cafeteria. It's quickly subverted when Miguel seems to accept the food, but almost immediately throws it back at Miles in a fit of anger—an early indication that Miguel does not want to be friends with Miles due to viewing the latter as an "anomaly" that goes against his strictly fatalist views.
• Team Mercy vs. Team Murder: The conflict of interest between Miles who doesn't want his dad to die, and Miguel who believes that the multiverse is at great risk of destruction if he lives.
• Teleportation Misfire: The Go-Home Machine scans for the dimensional frequency of the subject's DNA and then sends them back to their native reality. After evading the Spider-Society, Miles uses it to send himself back to home, but because of how it works, it prioritizes the DNA of the spider that bit him, stranding him in a Crapsack World that has no Spider-Man and leaving him to slowly die from his cells rejecting the dimension.
• Tempting Fate: When the Spot is absorbing the Mumbattan Super Collider's energy to power up into a Transhuman Abomination, he briefly winks out of existence from the effort. After a Beat, Pavitr (having been Spider-Man for only six months) assumes he's been defeated and starts talking about how that was another easy adventure for Spider-Man. Miles, Gwen and Hobie, all more experienced, immediately can tell this is happening and try to get him to stop talking before the Spot literally comes back with a bang.

  Miles/Gwen/Hobie: [Rapid-Fire "No!"]

• Theory of Narrative Causality: The links between different dimensions of the The Multiverse cause each to have a Spider who goes through similar events In Spite of a Nail, all of them iconic moments in the Spider-Man franchise. Miguel believes some of them, which he calls "Canon Events", must happen or else the entire dimension will be destroyed.
• This Was His True Form: When the Lizard was fatally injured in his fight with Gwen, he reverted back into his original human form, at which point Gwen discovered, with horror, that the Lizard was not only a human, but her best friend Peter.
• Thwarted Coup de Grâce: Renaissance Vulture is about to deliver a final blow to Gwen when Miguel O'Hara arrives and blocks the punch.
• Time Skip: It has been a little over a year since the events of Into the Spider-Verse, with Miles being a much more confident and capable Spider-Man than he was before.
• Title Drop: When Miguel is explaining to Miles how every universe is connected, Miles coins the term "Spider-Verse". This annoys Miguel, who insists on the more complicated "arachno-humanoid poly-multiverse"... before admitting that this also sounds pretty stupid.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Captain Stacy wants to arrest Spider-Woman for suspected murder, but when he nearly does so, learns she is his daughter, Gwen. Though Stacy no longer believes Spider-Woman is a murderer, letting someone go just because they're his family would be considered abuse of power. He resolves it by quitting the force.
• Took the Wife's Name: Jefferson now goes by his wife's family name, Morales, rather than his own family's name, Davis. It's kind of hard to blame him for this one. This was explicitly mentioned in the Miles Morales comics, but remains subtext here. The Jeff of Earth-42 also changed his last name to Morales, as shown by his memorial.
• Totally Radical: Miles' mother tries to talk in his language when saying "I hope I didn't ice your game, man." to which Miles replies that no one his age says those words in that order.
• Transhuman Abomination: Perhaps a more fitting description for the Spot's final form. While his original form is more Humanoid Abomination-ish, it still looks human enough and Jonathan still is as much of a loser. On the other hand, his One-Winged Angel form has nothing human to it and looks like a living scribble on the movie, and has uncanny Reality Warping Brown Note Being powers. And that's without entering into his implied omnipotence.
• Trapped in Villainy: Played for Laughs. The Spot points out his transformation and alternated nature means that he can't get a normal job anymore, so therefore the moral thing to do is for the shopkeeper to stop attacking him and let himself be robbed so the Spot can support himself.
• Truer to the Text:
  • Overlapping with Characterization Marches On; Miguel as portrayed in the film is significantly more dour and aggressive compared to his rather jokey portrayal in Into the Spider-Verse, putting him much more in line with his original comic-book characterization.
  • Peni's Sp//dr now harbors its original Evangelion-esque design from the comics, and from what little we see of Peni, she's much more dour and stoic like her appearances in Edge of Spider-Verse, especially the second appearance.
• A True Story in My Universe: Ganke briefly appears playing Marvel's Spider-Man 2, presumably based on Peter's exploits in Earth-1610B. The Spider-Man of the game universe later turns out to be a real person, from Earth-1048. This provides additional justification towards Ganke's reference to being a "guy in a chair", given that he serves as such for the also playable Miles of that universe, presuming he too is real.
• Twerp Sweating: A Gender-Inverted example occurs with Rio towards Gwen. Since Miles's home life has grown more chaotic thanks to both regular teenage drama and the always excessive Spider-drama, she doesn't appreciate seeing a (maybe-older) strange girl randomly appearing and starting to hang out with her baby boy in a clear Unresolved Sexual Tension-filled manner without at least an explanation.
• Uncertain Doom: Due to the cliffhanger ending, Miles is left stranded at the mercy of his evil alternate universe self, with only a distant promise of reinforcements from his friends.
• The Unchosen One: Miles is revealed to be this. The spider that bit him was actually a Canon Event from an entirely different dimension, and with its death and Miles receiving the powers instead, that universe was deprived of the chance for its own "native" Spider-Man. This fuels Miguel's resentment of Miles, as it makes him a walking temporal anomaly in the Multiverse. Driving the point home, when Miles accidentally winds up in said Earth-42 when trying to travel back to his own universe, he's confronted by his own Evil Counterpart: a Miles Morales who became The Prowler instead due to the absence of a Spider-Man, showing that Miles was destined to slide into a villainous role before that chance encounter.
• Uncool Undies: Just before Gwen portals into Miles's room, the dimensional energy causes several items to float around... including a pair of tighty-whiteys. Miles immediately hides them from view from Gwen.
• Understatement: While the Spot is attempting to explain his backstory to Lenny, he refers to his Humanoid Abomination transformation as being "a little accident".
• Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: The machine that the Spider-Society uses to send captured villains to their home universe, aptly named the Go Home Machine, is a giant robotic spider with a translucent chassis that crawls out from the ceiling to weave an energy field around subjects to teleport them home. Hobie sardonically lampshades it as humane and definitely not creepy.
• Unseen No More: The Earth-65B version of Peter Parker, who turned into the Lizard. The Lizard form was only seen as a shadow in the last movie (and according to one of the effects artists, was just the Green Goblin model modified into a lizard silhouette). This time, we actually see it and more of the event that defined Spider-Gwen's backstory.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Miles Morales's seeming Indy Ploy in running away from the Spider-Society was actually a diversion so that he can lure them all away and then use the Go Home Machine unimpeded. He outright lampshades this to Miguel in a way that comes off as a feeble bluff, but Miguel learns later that it wasn't the hard way.
  Miles: I have a plan! I just...haven't told you it yet!
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: While testing out his dimension-hopping powers, the Spot ends up poking his head into a store in a live-action universe. The cashier that sees the cartoon man sticking out of a portal is totally unimpressed. The Spot even questions what kind of weird universe she lives in that none of what's happening seems strange to her.
• Villainous Legacy: Kingpin and Olivia Octavius don't appear in person, but their multidimensional experiments with the supercollider directly lead to the creation of the Spot, the disruption of the multiverse that formed the Spider-Society, and the spider that gave Miles his powers.
• Villain World: Earth-42, due to a lack of Spider-Man (and evidently any other superheroes) has New York being a flaming hellhole that's home to the "Sinister Six Cartel". Also, instead of becoming Spider-Man, the local version of Miles instead became the Prowler.

Tropes W–Z

• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Both Miles and Gwen struggle in school because their superhero engagements cut into their study time.
• Weird Science: When interrogated on what he wants to do with his life by his parents and school councilor, Miles reveals that he has developed an interest in Quantum Physics and the concept of Dimensional Travelling, having been inspired by the events of the first film and a desire to see his fellow spiders again.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Miguel may not be willing to actively murder the innocent, but he has no issues with standing back and letting them die (and forcing others to do the same) if he feels it is for the good of the multiverse.
• Wham Line:
  • With this line, Spot reveals that he is far more than a Monster of the Week, and talks about how he's directly responsible for the previous movie:
    The Spot: I worked at Alchemax. I ran a test on this collider that brought a spider here from another dimension. It escaped, and it bit you. My spider made you Spider-Man.
  • During their climatic scuffle, Miguel hits his Rage Breaking Point from Miles' stubborn refusal to quit and reveals to him the reason why he's excluded from the Spider-Society.
    Miguel: You don't get it! You're an Anomaly!
    Miles: Not if you let me go home!
    Miguel: Everywhere you go, you're an Anomaly! You're the original Anomaly!
  • The above line is swiftly followed by a line from Peter B. that has Miles realize that his old friends were aware of him being "the original anomaly", and agreed not to visit him because of it.
    Peter B: This isn't what we talked about!
    Miles: [shocked] You talked about this!? You knew?... you...you all knew!?
  • This is then followed by an exchange between Miles and Miguel that reveals that the whole chase wasn't an Indy Ploy, but in fact all part of Miles' plan.
    Miles: I'm not a kid, Gwen!
    Miguel: That's exactly what you are! You're just a kid, who has NO! IDEA! WHAT HE'S DOING!!!
    Miles: Yeah, well, I did lure hundreds of Spider-people away from your little clubhouse.
  • After a long and stressful day, Miles finally decides to tell his Mother who he is, only for her response to make it crystal clear his troubles are just beginning.
    Miles: I'm Spider-Man.
    Rio: Who's Spider-Man?
  • When Miles is captured and at Aaron's mercy, he tries to give him a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech that falls flat for one reason:
    Miles: I know you don't want to be The Prowler.
    Earth-42 Aaron: ... I'm not.
• Wham Shot: There are three at the very end of the film that gets Miles to realize that his trip back home went terribly wrong:
  • He glitches once again despite being in his "home" universe, seconds before his dead uncle Aaron comes waltzing into his apartment, very much alive. Welcome to Earth-42.
  • The "Rest in Power" mural on Earth-42 memorializes Jefferson.
  • Miles coming face-to-face with the Prowler of Earth-42... who removes his mask to reveal he is the Miles Morales of that universe.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Miles initially gives a brief one to Gwen and Peter when it turns out they've been keeping information from him regarding "canon events" and the possible death of his father.
  • Gwen and Miguel call each other out. Miguel is angry that Gwen disobeyed orders and potentially endangered the multiverse while Gwen believes Miguel's extreme tactics are not warranted when other options may exist.
• White-and-Grey Morality: The conflict between Miles and Miguel boils down to Miguel choosing The Needs of the Many and not wanting Miles to risk the safety of the multiverse by disrupting "canon events", while Miles insists that it's possible for him to save his father from his supposedly certain death without disrupting the existence of the multiverse.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Miguel's and Miles' conflict plays similarly to Doctor Strange and Peter's conflict in Spider-Man: No Way Home — the supposed Big Good sets up a mass Weirdness Search and Rescue operation while allowing compulsory deaths of certain characters because they believe You Can't Fight Fate for The Needs of the Many multiverses. The protagonist Spider-Man who learns of this rebels against this and attempts to save the people they are told were meant to die.
• Who's on First?: When Miles first makes his escape from the Spider-Society, Miguel orders everyone over the intercom to "stop Spider-Man." Cue a mass version of the Spider-Man pointing meme as all of the assembled Spiders try to figure out who he's referring to.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: You would think Rio from Earth-42 would be a little more freaked out that her son suddenly has a completely different hairstyle, (presumably) behaves differently than he does, and especially speaks with a different voice, but none of this seems to faze her. As her nonchalance at his behaviour is needed for Miles to continue to temporarily believe he made it home and is speaking to his own mother, it's an understandable reality stretch.
• "Will Return" Caption: "Miles Morales will return in Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse". It doesn't specify which Miles.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Spot lost his job and loved ones when he was mutated into a (initially comical) Humanoid Abomination. By the end of the movie, he will gladly rip apart countless worlds and murder innocents to make sure that Miles shares his pain.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Within the one year after Miles had become Spider-Man, Peter B. somehow manages to repair his relationship with his MJ, get married again, and give birth to Mayday, who appears to be about a year old herself. Inversely, despite Gwen having joined the Spider-Society for "a few months", Jessica does not look any further along her pregnancy than she was when she first met Gwen. This could, however, be chalked up to the possibility that time flows at different speeds in between realities.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Implied. Spider-Punk mistakes Mayday soiling her diaper as an Excrement Statement. The fact that he's not in his universe, which resembles a punk zine or underground comix, is the most probable reason.
• You Are Grounded!: An early source of conflict is Miles getting grounded by his parents. It starts when he gets in a argument with them at Jefferson's party, which gets him grounded for a month. After he leaves in a huff, Jefferson ups it to two months. Miles tells Gwen about this shortly after meeting up with her; she circumvents the issue by asking if Spider-Man is grounded. When Gwen speaks with Miles' parents at the end of the film, promising to find him, Rio asks her to let Miles know it's been upped to five months.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Spider-Society believes in this through the Canon Events theory; for every spider-person, they have to go through a "canon event" like their Gwen Stacy equivalent dying, or a close police captain dying. If a canon event is averted, it's assumed that reality would punish them even harder for it. However, the anomalies surrounding Miles prove the theory incorrect; he defied canon simply by being Spider-Man in the first place, while the dimension that the spider that bit him came from would go without a Spider-Man as a result, but both are sound. It's rather evident that Pavitr's dimension only destabilized because of the Spot, not because Inspector Singh didn't die.
• You Can't Go Home Again:
  • After explaining to Miles how the canon events work, with his father being seemingly doomed to die at the Spot's hands, Miguel bluntly refuses to allow Miles to return to his home dimension until after this event has occurred, knowing that Miles will attempt to prevent it from happening, despite the fact he's effectively aiding and abetting the Spot's rampage in doing so.
  • A much more factual case is Miles not going back to his dimension with the Go Home Machine. It scans the dimensional signature of the spider in the case of Spider-People, and since Miles got bit by a spider from another dimension, the machine sends him to Earth-42 instead of Earth-1610.
• You Keep Telling Yourself That: When Gwen calls out Miguel on the fact that they're supposed to be the good guys, his feeble "We are" is clear he's doing this to himself, and the person who he's most trying to convince in the room is him.
• YouTuber Apology Parody: Twice, when Miles relays what happened in the Time Skip between the end of the last film and the start of this one. The first time was for endorsing a brand of baby powder as Spider-Man (which, via Freeze-Frame Bonus, got a ratio of 87 likes to 69 million dislikes, even though it has less than 11 million views), and the second time was for growing a moustache as Spider-Man (90 likes to 90 million dislikes, despite, again, having far less than 90 million views). The clip we see from the first apology consists of Miles saying the customary apology line "I made a mistake"; for the second one, we see him say, "I made another mistake."

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"I never found the right band to join, so I started my own, with a few old friends. You want in?"

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