Arrival to Earth & Becoming a Cure

The symbiote arrived on Earth with the mission of conquering the planet. It came to Earth, housed within a meteorite bearing the mark of Knull likely after to the death of Emily Osborn, crash landing on the outskirts of New York, where it was intercepted by an armed Oscorp Industries team led by Curtis Connors. As he approached, the symbiote attempted to bond with Connors by clinging to his left arm. Connors fought back, giving the soldiers time to shoot it down and amputate his arm. The symbiote was subsequently retrieved alongside a shard of its meteorite.^[1]

At some point, Norman Osborn had his son Harry locked in statis and bonded with the symbiote, now classified as GR-35, as a temporary cure for Harry's Oshtoran Syndrome. It reacted to Norman's presence when he came to check on Harry after the Devil's Breath crisis ended in 2018.^[2]

The Black Suit

Following Harry's release from stasis,^[3] the symbiote remained bonded to him, its powers keeping his disease in remission. He did not discover its other powers until his visit to Coney Island with Peter Parker, MJ Watson, Miles Morales, and Ganke Lee, where its tendrils allowed him to help Peter rescue some civilians from a collapsing roller coaster.

Astounded by his newfound abilities, Harry tested the symbiote's powers at the Emily-May Foundation before using it to aid Peter in rescuing Tombstone from Kraven's forces, manifesting it as a hybrid of tactical armor and Peter's Spider-Man suit. The symbiote, however, was not satisfied with being bonded to Harry, repeatedly reaching out to Peter and even forming a stylized spider logo to mimic his Spider-Man suit. After finding out that Connors was missing, Harry decided to investigate, occasionally using the symbiote to assist Peter and Miles in fighting crime.

During MJ, Peter, and Harry's failed attempt to stop Kraven from turning Connors back into the Lizard, Kraven fatally stabbed Peter. The symbiote left Harry and bonded to Peter to heal him, manifesting as the Black Suit. With the symbiote's powers, Peter fended off Kraven's Hunters to let MJ and Harry escape. Regrouping at the Emily-May Foundation, Peter tried to transfer the symbiote back to Harry, but it refused to leave its new host.

Peter used the Black Suit to go undercover at Kraven's main base of operations and retrieve the Lizard antidote, and later to restore Connors to normal from his Lizard form. Connors was surprised to see Peter with the Black Suit and explained its origins before showing a fragment of the meteorite it came from. This caused the Black Suit to mutate into the Symbiote Suit and corrupt Peter's mind, making him believe he needs it to be a better Spider-Man. Under the influence of the symbiote, Peter scared Connors when he was about to report the symbiote problem to Oscorp and then left the scene.

Peter returned to May's house to rest, ignoring MJ's words about the symbiote. Unbeknownst to him, Kraven's hunters had arrived at his home, the symbiote took control of Peter's body while he was asleep and began to brutally attack the hunters and then went to a location where there were more of them. Mary Jane talked to Miles about the alien symbiote to go help Peter, the symbiote ended up attacking MJ when she hurt the symbiote but managed to flee while Miles was captured by Kraven.

The next day, Peter woke up not knowing what happened to the symbiote in the night, still under the symbiote's corruption, Peter showed rejection towards Harry and MJ who read his report published in the Daily Bugle, then he met Norman who thanked him for being Harry's friend and that he was like a son to him, this last was heard by Harry who felt anger towards him. Peter was contacted by Rio Morales to find Miles. Martin Li, who had been freed earlier by Miles, intercepted Peter and told him where Miles was. Once there, Peter confronted Kraven who instilled more hatred towards him causing the symbiote to influence him more, when Peter was about to kill Kraven, Miles stopped him and confronted him to prevent him from killing the hunter, using the sounds of a bell, Miles managed to reason with Peter and he proceeded to tear the symbiote from his suit and Miles captured it in a small container.^[1]

Venom

Venom's Rampage

On Connors's orders, Peter returned to Oscorp to destroy the symbiote. He was intercepted by Harry, whose illness had returned. Peter tried to reason, but Harry attacked Peter in rage, accidentally breaking the symbiote's container. The symbiote broke free and bonded to Harry once more, transforming him into a hulking monstrosity who knocked out Spider-Man and rampaged through Oscorp.

During its rampage, it was found by Kraven's Hunters, who lured it out of Oscorp and into the city. It eviscerated the Hunters with ease before Kraven confronted it himself. Despite his best efforts, Kraven was no match for the symbiote's might and thanked it for giving him a worthy death before it bit off his head, killing him.

Harry came to his senses and was horrified at what he had done. He retreated to his mother's grave, where the symbiote, using Emily's voice, influenced Harry on a way to save the people using the symbiote as his only salvation.^[1]

Meeting with Knull

Immediately after bonding to Harry, they were contacted by the variant of Knull from Earth-616, who opened a portal and pulled them through to witness his conquest of Earth and ordered them to join his army. Although admitting there were similarities between Knull's ambitions and its own, they refused--dismissing Knull as a petty tyrant who wanted to enslave everything. Realizing that Knull could neither control or directly harm them because they were not of his universe, the symbiote mocked the King in Black for his limitations and was sent back to Earth-1048, their memories of the encounter erased.^[4]

Symbiote Invasion

The symbiote possessed Harry completely and would began capturing citizens and linking them to symbiote offshoots throughout the city, then went to visit MJ while pretending to be Harry. It held her captive until Peter arrived and tried to persuade him to join him, but when he refused and insulted the symbiote by calling it a thing, the symbiote took over Harry and adopted the moniker Venom.

Venom bonded the Scream symbiote to Mary Jane to confront Spider-Man as he went to steal the other part of the Meteor that came with the symbiote to Earth and was stored at Oscorp. Venom managed to snatch the missing part of the Meteorite from Connors' hands and fused it together, enveloping the entire city with the symbiote's mass. Before getting the part of the Meteor from Oscorp, fragments of the Venom symbiote were in Spider-Man's body and when they were activated to take control Peter, Miles and Martin Li managed to free it when Li used his powers causing the remains to become a new white symbiote.

Venom went after Connors and Norman in order to retrieve the rest of the meteorite that brought the symbiote to Earth, fusing it together again to create more symbiotes, despite Peter's intervention. The symbiote pretended to be Harry to try and convince peter to convert to its side of conquering the world by saying, that it would help the world.

Peter, Miles and MJ devised a plan to retrieve the meteorite and destroy it using Emily-May's particle accelerator. Peter engaged Venom in a fight in order to distract it, but as soon as Venom noticed the meteorite being stolen, Venom defeated Peter and brought him to Emily-May, where it also faced Miles. Several times Harry tried to escape but the symbiote always engulfed him. In a climactic fight, Peter managed to burn it away with his Anti-Venom symbiote; at the same time, the particle accelerator destroyed the meteorite and the symbiotes along with it.^[1]

Symbiote Biology:

• Superhuman Strength
• Superhuman Speed
• Superhuman Agility
• Superhuman Stamina
• Superhuman Reflexes
• Superhuman Durability
• Regenerative Healing Factor
• Camouflage Capabilities: The symbiote is capable of shapeshifting to mimic the appearance of any form of clothing.
• Wallcrawling
• Offspring Detection
• Genetic Memory
• Constituent-Matter Generation
• Constituent-Matter Manipulation
• Augmented Visual Senses: The Venom symbiote was capable of seeing Miles, despite him being cloaked and invisible to the naked eye.
• Flight: Like its Prime Universe counterpart, this universe of Venom symbiote can manifest large dragon-like wings.
• Hive Mind: The symbiote has access to the symbiotes hive mind, enabling it to communicate with the symbiotes on their homeworld and access information about the species' past and hence Harry can too.
• Size Alteration
• Shape Alteration: Harry as Venom used the symbiote to enlarge his fists to attack his opponents.
• Self-Replication: Venom can replicate the Symbiote and attach it to other people, thus 'infecting' them. He can either do this directly or through the creation of 'hives'.
• Fire Immunity: In contrast to its Prime Universe counterpart, this Venom symbiote is immune to fire and extreme heat.

• High-frequency Sounds: The symbiote is extremely weak to high-frequency sounds produced by sources such as alarms to church bells, which can cause the alien and its host to experience extreme pain. Prolonged exposure could kill the symbiote or even cause the host to separate itself from the alien with enough willpower.
• Negative Energy: Martin Li’s powers allows him to clear out symbiotes from the minds of people, freeing them from the alien. Alternatively, he can drain his power into the symbiote to create Anti-Venom, such as with the case of Spider-Man.
• Anti-Venom: A powerful variant of the Venom symbiote combined with Martin Li’s powers, Anti-Venom can weaken symbiotes to allow for more physical damage.

The Venom symbiote can manifest fangs, claws and tendrils from its constituent living abyss.

Flight: The Symbiote can manifest large dragon-like wings to fly.

• The symbiote is voiced by Tony Todd in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
• The symbiote was originally going to have "like five different weaknesses" which were cut down out of concern of how to communicate them to players, and only its trademark vulnerability to high frequency sound was kept. One of the scrapped weaknesses is fire, which is the symbiote's second major weakness in the comics. A scene in the mission "Hunt to Live, Live to Hunt" that has Spider-Man ask Harry if the fire bothers him, to which he replies that it doesn't, was purposefully meant to convey this deviation to the players.^[5]
• Another deviation from the comics is the symbiote's inability to produce organic webbing. In cutscenes, Peter is shown still wearing his web-shooters while bonded to the symbiote. In gameplay, Spider-Man's web-based abilities retain the same limitations as when he is not wearing the symbiote: he can still run out of webs and he is unable to fire his web-shooters if hit with an EMP. In Harry's case, he uses tendrils instead of webs for transportation. The symbiote, however, affects Spider-Man's webbing cosmetically. When Peter is bonded to the black suit, he shoots black webs.^[1]
• The symbiote's immunity to Peter's Spider-Sense and it possessing its own Spider-Sense is affected by gameplay/story segregation. In cutscenes, Spider-Man is unable to detect the symbiote. In gameplay, the Spider-Sense mechanic will alert the player of Venom's incoming attacks. Venom's gameplay features a mechanic similar to the Spider-Sense, but this ability doesn't appear throughout the rest of the game.^[1]
• According to Venom's voice actor Tony Todd, the game "only used 10%" of his recorded dialogue. He also recorded lines for Miles Morales being bonded to the symbiote.^[6]

• Marvel's Spider-Man contains what could be considered a meta-reference to the Black Suit. Early in the game, Yuri Watanabe facetiously asks Peter if he has a black and white suit when he jokingly suggests attending a police ball with her.
• In Marvel's Spider-Man, an action figure of a black-suited Spider-Man can be present as part of the low-poly elements that populate the procedurally-generated room interiors of buildings.
• Oscorp's designation of the symbiote as "VNM-252" is similar to the designation of the symbiote as "V-252" in the animated series Marvel's Spider-Man. The use of the number 252 in both designations might be a reference to Amazing Spider-Man #252, the first appearance of the symbiote.