Secret Spider-Man 2 Reference In No Way Home Confirmed By VFX Artist

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A visual effects artist who worked on Spider-Man: No Way Home reveals that a key shot he animated drew inspiration from 2004's Spider-Man 2. No Way Home was a colossal film for the Spider-Man franchise, not only because of the huge box office numbers the film raked in, but also due to what it did for the lineage of Spider-Man as a film character. In allowing the MCU's Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, to share the screen with his predecessors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield thanks to some multiversal trickery, No Way Home allowed fans of previous incarnations of the character to finally get some closure.

What made Spider-Man: No Way Home rewarding for these fans was the number of references and homages to past Spidey films. For one thing, the presence of villains like Alfred Molina's Doc Ock, Jamie Foxx's Electro, and Willem Dafoe's Norman Osborn relied upon lines of dialogue, music cues and character scenes that directly linked back to their previous appearances. Moreover, it seemed like everyone working on No Way Home, from director Jon Watts to returning actors like Dafoe and Maguire, were true fans of Spider-Man.

Related: Doctor Strange 2 Alternate Ending Would've Made No Way Home Even Better

Now, a recent thread from No Way Home senior animator Andy Le Cocq has confirmed that the visual effects were also paying tribute to past Spider-Man installments. In the thread, Le Cocq shows a shot he animated for No Way Home's train duel between Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. This was pictured side by side with a similar shot from Spider-Man 2's classic train fight between Maguire's Spider-Man and Doc Ock. Le Cocq, who lovingly admits to using the Spider-Man 2 stance as an animation reference, calls the completed No Way