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"I don't expect forgiveness from you anymore. I don't believe in miracles. How could you possibly understand that your childhood had to be sacrificed for something greater? And not just for me. For you!"
―Norman Osborn to Harry Osborn[src]

Dr. Norman Virgil Osborn was a billionaire geneticist and businessman, the CEO and founder of Oscorp Industries, and the father of Harry Osborn. Despite his industrial success, Osborn suffered all his life due to a degenerative disease which eventually kills him. To prevent that, Norman had Richard Parker and Curt Connors work on a possible cure. After Richard realized what were Osborn's true intentions for his research, he and Mary Parker attempt to leave the country, however Osborn sent Gustav Fiers to assassinate both of them. After Richard and Mary's disappearance, Norman had made a cover up story about Richard's death to the government. Prior to his death, Norman had told his son, Harry Osborn about the disease, explaining to Harry about the illness.

Biography

Early life

Founding of Oscorp Industries

"I started Oscorp because I looked at the world around me and I thought, "We can do better. And we should do better." Einstein said the world cannot be changed without changing our thinking, but change isn't just a slogan. It begins with hard work. Change begins with persistence and commitment."
―Norman Osborn[src]

Norman Osborn was born in 1951 to the extremely wealthy Osborn Family, and would eventually get married to a woman named Emily and have a son, Harry.[3]

Norman Osborn

Norman Osborn was the founder of OsCorp Industries, with it's objective to cure people and even, himself.

Osborn, who was born with a degenerative genetic disorder[4] called Retroviral Hyperplasia,[3] was incredibly intelligent and scientifically inclined, and using his family fortune, founded Oscorp Industries, a multimillion dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate that strived to develop new medicinal drugs and medical procedures to overcome diseases, with Osborn particularly hoping to find a cure to his own condition.[3] He recruited several accomplished scientists into his employ, including geneticists Curt Connors and Richard Parker[4], and roboticists Otto Octavius, Adrian Toomes[5], and Alistair Smythe, whom he put in charge of Oscorp's two R&D departments: medicinal and prototype military hardware manufacturing.[3]

Cross-Species Genetics/Special Projects Initiatives

Eventually, his wife Emily disappeared, either dying or divorcing him, and throwing himself into his work and overseeing his company[6], Norman sent Harry off to boarding school at 11[3]. Eventually, Connors and Parker eventually found a breakthrough in experimenting with animal genomes and finding sequences and aspects that could empower the human genomes, which they dubbed Cross-Species Genetics. They particularly found promise in spiders, and eventually managed to engineer and breed a new species, the Araneus Oscorpeus, who through their modified DNA they hoped to develop medical applications involving the virally and physically disabled.[3][4]

Bioweaponry

Norman Osborn hologram

Though he seemed to look as a nice person, Norman had intentions to use Richard's projects as bioweaponry.

However, Osborn had insidious ulterior goals beyond public manufacturing and distribution, having a lust for power and personal profit. This lead to him tasking Octavius, Toomes, and Smythe with developing prototype inventions made for combat, including a four-armed mechanical harness and a magnetic winged aerial harness Octavius and Toomes built, alongside prototype military robotic drones built by Smythe. He also hired electrical engineer Max Dillon to design a power station that would hook up to New York's power grid and provide and distribute electricity for the city, but Menken and Smythe would constantly undermine him.[3]

Killing the Parker Family

Cover up Story about Richard's death
"A few days after the funeral, two government men came to see us. They said the genetics research, that your father was doing with Norman Osborn was very valuable, and that people would pay a lot for it. And that's why he ran off with it. They said he was a traitor. I couldn't believe it, Peter. They told us he betrayed his best friend, all of us.... for the money."
May Parker to Peter Parker[src]

Richard Parker would have destroyed his research, knowing about what Osborn was going to do with it. Osborn, learning about Richard and his wife Mary was going to leave the country to hide from him, Norman sent Gustav Fiers (a representative from Oscorp and a trained assassin) to the Parker private plane to kill both Richard and Mary. A few days after the plane crash, Norman had made a cover up story with the government.[3]

Dying

Birth of Spider-Man
Lizard FA

Curt Connors was forced to test his version for the Osborn cure, risking Connors' life and turning him into Lizard.

"People die, even Norman Osborn."
Curt Connors[src]

Following the Parkers' death in a plane crash, Osborn withdrew from public view as his health worsened, with a giant silhouetted hologram of him holding an orb with Oscorp's logo in his company's HQ Oscorp Tower being his only visual representation.

With Richard and Mary dead, Osborn tasked Dr. Connors with heading the promising Cross-Species Genetics initiative, supervised by his close friends/confidants Rajit Ratha[4] and Donald Menken[3]. Knowing that Harry likely inherited his disease, Norman would send his son a bottle of scotch on his 16th birthday, likely to cope with the early symptoms of his own bout with the illness.[3]

Ratha and Connors' working relationship was strained at best, with Ratha constantly pushing Connors' for results in the Cross Species research, on behalf of the dying Norman. Eventually, Parker's teenage son, Peter, would discover his father's old briefcase containing his old work and notes, including the incomplete formula of his formula involving the Araneus Oscorpeus spider breed, which constantly met failure due to the decay rate algorithm.

First-gen Web-Shooter (TASM)

Peter Parker, Richard's son, would become Spider-Man and foil the Lizard's plans.

Peter eventually managed to solve his father's formula and would sneak into an internship tour at Oscorp Tower (impersonating an unfortunate intern named Rodrigo Guevara, who got escorted out), where he met Dr. Connors. Sneaking into a restricted area, Peter would find a hidden lab housing an entire cluster of the Araneus Oscorpus spiders, who were spinning the genetically-strengthened webs to develop Oscorp's BioCable. Accidentally interrupting the process, several of the spiders fell on Peter and he hastily managed to escape. Being caught by Connors' apprentice and his classmate Gwen Stacy, she revoked his intern badge and kicked him out. However, one the Araneus Oscorpus spiders had stayed on him and promptly bit him on the neck. The mutated venom from the spider began to alter Peter's DNA and on the way home aboard the subway, he developed strange new abilities akin to a spider's, leading him to accidentally provoke a fight with a group of passengers in confusion.[4] Later, when Connors became Lizard, he clashed with Spider-Man, and Peter ended up curing and defeating Connors, with another cure for Osborn failed.

When Dr. Connors was put in prison[4], Gustav Fiers[3] approached him in his jail cell and asked him if Peter knew the truth about his father[4].

Death

In 2014, Harry Osborn returns home after years away in boarding school and visits his father at the hospital, whereby this point Norman is in very sick health. Norman explains to Harry that his illness is genetic and that he is at the right age where it begins to show. Before he dies, Norman gives Harry a device saying it is his life's work. The next day, it is reported that Norman had died[3]. To be added[7]

Legacy

To be added

Personality

Norman was a very ambitious, intelligent, brilliant and bright person, but he was also very corrupt and self-regarding. Even though he often acted nice and calm towards others, he was actually cunning, deceitful and uncomprising since he was willing to weaponize Richard's research (unbeknownst to the latter) for foreign countries, thus he was eager to betray his own country for profits.

He was also merciless, grudging and vengeful since he wanted to kill both Richard and Mary after finding out that Richard wants to destroy his work and even willingly faked evidence against Richard in order to discredit him. It is also implied that he mistreated Donald Menken in the past, suggesting that he was also abusive. Despite the extent of his nefariousness, he truly loved and genuinely cared about his son Harry; despite sending him to the boarding school, he gave him a device that was containing his work, hoping that it would save his son from death.

Trivia

  • For unknown reasons, Chris Cooper is not credited for his appearance as Norman in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
  • Osborn, in other Spider-Man media, takes on the identity of the Green Goblin, a famous Spider-Man villain. However, in this universe, it's his son Harry who first takes on the identity of the Green Goblin.
    • It is rumored that plans for the third film would have had Norman come back from the dead and become the beastly Goblin from the Ultimate Marvel comics.
  • Chris Cooper had stated that Norman's appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 would be the introduction to the character, and a return in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will be on the cards.
    • Marc Webb had confirmed that Norman was planning to appear in The Sinister Six film. However, as the Spider-Man franchise is being rebooted in order to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this version of Norman Osborn will unlikely be part of that continuity.
  • Webb and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, with input from Drew Goddard, James Vanderbilt, and Juan Capdet, reveals a rough vision for the franchise was that Norman had indeed survived his death and had gone into hiding, revealing that he'd formed a paramilitary organization known as the Scryers, who instigated war overseas with various foreign powers and countries to allow Oscorp to elevate in both bio and military weaponry in presenting themselves as the only defense the US has against them, eventually ascending into world power status. The Cross-Species Genetics Initiative would be the flapship of this campaign, with Osborn not only wishing to cure himself of Retroviral Hyperplasia, but evolve into a new lifeform and utilize serums derived by both his, Doctors Curt Connors, and Richard Parker's research in the field. However, due to Parker's betrayal when he discovered this, he conspired to have his old friend and business partner, Gustav Fiers, assassinate Dr. Parker and his wife Mary Parker and afterwards keep surveillance on their son Peter, while forcing Dr. Connors to continue on in Parker's stead. After Peter discovers and is bitten by an Araneus Oscorpeus spider specimen, and his uncle Ben was murdered in a struggle with a bodega robber, Peter would become the vigilante-turned-superhero Spider-Man and begin defending while Dr. Rajit Ratha forced Connors' hand in testing his experimental regeneration serum on human subjects, leaving him to test it on himself and become the Lizard. Seeing that Cross-Species Hybrids were viable and believing them the next stage of human evolution, Osborn would have another associate, Sergei Kravinov, an Australian-Russian bounty hunter who prided himself on hunting the most dangerous predators in the world, combat Spider-Man to procure his blood and hopefully cure himself

References

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External links

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