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At this point, it is tough to imagine Spider-Man without his multiversal counterparts, but Peter Parker was a well-established part of comic book history for decades before he ever dabbled into any kind of Spider-Verse. It wasn’t until 1998, more than 30 years after Spider-Man first debuted in the comics back in 1962, that the Spider-Verse concept was introduced. His 90s animated series might not have aged particularly well in some ways, but it set up some of Spider-Man’s biggest box office hits.

In 1998, the fifth season of Spider-Man: The Animated Series (simply known as Spider-Man at the time) was ending with a two-episode story arc that involved Peter Parker meeting with the Spider-Men of multiple universes to take down a different Spider-Man’s attempt to unite the multiverse. These included a version that used their incredible intelligence to become a billionaire industrialist, a Spider-Man with six arms, a Spider-Man who uses Doctor Octopus’ tentacles, Scarlet Spider, and an actor who portrays Spider-Man in movies.

It is a bonkers storyline that draws from multiple comic book storylines and ends with Spider-Man going to our universe to meet Stan Lee before swinging around New York and leaving the comic book icon on a random building somewhere. The episodes served as the series finale for Spider-Man: The Animated Series, as the show was cancelled straight after, but its legacy was eventually felt in both comics and in film.

Fast forward to 2014, and Marvel Comics would run their Spider-Verse comic, which featured multiple Spider-Men from across the multiverse teaming up to fight a figure trying to destroy reality. While the comic book version of the story had plenty of weird versions of the character, the basis was very much the same. It's worth noting that Dan Slott, who wrote the 2014 comic book storyline, has publicly stated that the animated series story was "off [his] radar" when he came up with the idea, saying that the original idea was more closely connected to the idea of a Peter Parker/Miles Morales team-up that grew in scope.

If the comic book Spider-Verse echoed the 1990s animated series storyline, the same can be said about Sony’s Spider-Verse films. Even the MCU has dipped into the concept when they dragged Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield out of Spider-Retirement for Spider-Man: No Way Home. That film would go on to make nearly $2 billion at the box office, all based on the series finale of an animated series from two decades earlier. This is something of a sore spot for Animated Series head writer John Semper, who complained in 2025 that he has since "abandoned all expectation that Marvel would acknowledge any of my contributions to the Marvel universe - like, for instance, my creation of what is now known as the 'Spider-Verse.'" 

There are plenty of ways that Spider-Man: The Animated Series was ahead of its time. It introduced a whole generation of young fans to the character before they ever picked up a comic book and (loosely) adapted many of the character’s story arcs, including The Clone Saga. But the ending, which brought multiple Spider-Men together to save the Spider-Verse before we knew what that was, might be the most enduring legacy of the show’s run.

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's...

• Best Spider-Man comic books 
• The best Spider-Mans (or is it Spider-Men?)
• Spider-Man movie watch order
• Spider-Man's actors, ranked
• The best Spider-Man suits
• and the Spider-verse explained!

Just watch out for that radioactive blood.