Spider-Man 2 New Game Plus Spawns Strange Symbiote Meme

Fans are quickly noticing a bizarre detail while playing Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s newly-added New Game Plus mode while wearing Peter’s alien Symbiote Suit — and it's already becoming a meme. Months after the game first came out, Insomniac has finally added the much-requested New Game Plus to Spider-Man 2 in its latest update, allowing fans to restart the main story campaign with all of the unlocks from their initial playthrough.

This includes the alternate costumes players can equip Peter Parker and Miles Morales with in Spider-Man 2, drawing from their many appearances in comics and films. In Peter’s case, this means that players can have him don his infamous Black Symbiote costume hours before he gains it in-universe, along with some menacing new color variants unlocked when starting New Game Plus. While this usually makes Peter a darker, more intimidating web-slinger, a quirk in Spider-Man 2’s pulse-pounding opening act is putting the Venom-infected hero in a more comical light.

Spider-Man 2 opens with Peter and Miles confronting a rampaging Sandman through the streets of New York City, braving a massive sandstorm and dodging flying obstacles as they struggle to reach the tragic and empathic Flint Marko. This causes sand particles to cling to the Spider-Heroes’ costumes, and as Twitter user Lukec1605 recently pointed out, Peter’s Symbiote looks more like fecal matter after going through Sandman’s raging cyclone. Other users like TrafalgarLog have started calling Peter’s new look “Poop Man,” and playfully speculating that the fear of players discovering this unsanitary new hero caused Insomniac to take so long to add New Game Plus to Spider-Man 2.

Fans like TrafalgarLog have started to embrace Poop Man as a meme, even threatening to boycott Spider-Man 2’s speculated DLC if Insomniac removes “Peter Pooper” in a future patch. Others are humorously citing it as the primary reason to try out Spider-Man 2’s New Game Plus Mode, which came with other long-wished-for features