When Activision and Beenox announced the Rhino would be one of Spider-Man’s foes in The Amazing Spider-Man, it didn’t really shock or surprise anyone. It was almost a no brainer. The Rhino has been around since Spider-Man’s earliest days and has appeared in thirteen separate Spider-Man games. The Iguana on the other hand. That choice is a whole other story.
The Iguana is at best a footnote in the Spider-Man lore. Only ever appearing in Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #32 back in July of 1979, the Iguana was an experiment gone wrong by Doctor Curt Connors (a.k.a. The Lizard and the main antagonist of the upcoming summer blockbuster film which this game ties in to). The Iguana would only make a singular appearance in comics before returning to his original, non-super powered iguana form.
Though incredibly obscure, the character choice does actually make sense. There are few, if any, characters with a more direct tie to the Lizard in Spider-Man’s rogue gallery. Instead of shoehorning in other purely “evil” villains, the concept behind the Iguana is one that makes sense for him to be intertwined in the events of the movie game.
The Iguana’s Game Bio from Beenox:
Of all the cross-species to come out of Oscorp, only Iguana was never claimed as a creation of any of the company’s scientists. That’s because its true creator, Curt Connors himself, had no idea that one of his own former experiments would evolve to its current fearsome form.
Connors’ go-to lab animal, an iguana he referred to as “Iggy,” had weathered so many odd experiments over the past few months, it was a wonder the small reptile was still alive. Somewhere along the way, Connors had injected Iggy with a formula that appeared to have no effect at all. And it didn’t – at least not in and of itself. What this particular injection did manage, however, was to serve as a catalyst that slowly warped and mutated intended effects of other experimentations upon the animal for months to come.
Shortly after Connors became the Lizard, Iguana revealed himself within the walls of Oscorp in all his seven-foot glory. As it turns out, after gestating for months, all of the strange science going on inside Iggy’s body had come to a head in the course of a couple hours, morphing him into the remarkable being terrorizing Manhattan today.
Take a look below at some screens and the trailer of the Iguana in action. Stick to the Flickcast for more on The Amazing Spider–Man, both the game and film as more news surfaces before their upcoming releases.