Earth-71928 first diverted from the Prime Marvel Universe when the spider that bit Peter Parker had a different look with a skull-like pattern on it, and Peter decided to design his costume based on the spider, giving himself a costume with a skull on it. But the biggest diversion from Earth-616 was when Peter decided to kill the burglar who had murdered his uncle Ben rather than leave him for the police. From there, Peter decided as Spider-Man to fight crime by any means necessary, even keeping the gun that had killed his uncle as a weapon to use himself and as a reminder of what crime had taken from him.

Though he tried to avoid using the gun or murder his enemies, when it became clear that some enemies would keep coming back over and over, he resolved to assassinate these particular foes. In particular, after the Sinister Six kidnapped his aunt May and Betty Brant, Spider-Man felt he had no choice but to execute them all and did so using weapons specifically designed to eliminate all of them.

Shortly after, Peter Parker went to college at ESU where he first met and fell in love with Gwen Stacy. During that time, a war between mob factions heated up, and the Kingpin almost took control, but Spider-Man killed him. As the factions were primarily killing each other, Spider-Man left them alone. When Gwen was later kidnapped by the Green Goblin, Spider-Man killed him with ammunition designed to pierce his armor. After then narrowly saving Gwen Stacy's life, Peter revealed his identity to her, proposed to her, and decided to retire his vigilante identity by throwing away his costume and live a normal, peaceful life with Gwen.

However, unknown to Peter, the Costa crime family was targeting Forrest Hunt, a banker and money launderer who had been skimming their profits. Costa gunmen captured Hunt in Central City Park and were about to execute him when Frank Castle and his family unexpectedly showed up. The gunmen shot at the Castles, and a wounded Frank managed found out his family was killed. In grief, Castle wandered the alleys, came across the remains of Spider-Man's costume in the trash can and became inspired by it.^[1]

• The confrontation between Spider-Man and the Sinister Six on Earth-71928 is evocative of the events of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, only with the difference being that Earth-71928's Spider-Man killed the Sinister Six instead of capturing them.