10 Best Fakeout Endings In Comics

While he often uses his smarts for nefarious means, there's absolutely no doubting the vast intelligence of Otto Octavius.

Likely the greatest example of said smarts came during the Dying Wish tale, where Doctor Octopus was able to change the very fundamentals of the Spider-Man books of the time. How did he do this? Why, Ock managed to switch bodies with Peter Parker.

After years of tormenting the Wall-crawler - and obviously continually getting bested by ol' Web-head - the terminally ill Otto put into place one final masterplan in an attempt to save his life. Said masterplan saw Octavius swap consciousnesses with Peter just as Doc's body was about to take its final breath. Thus, Parker died in the body of Ock, and the spirit of Otto was placed in the alive 'n' well body of Spider-Man.

With that, readers were left to believe that Peter Parker had died in the body of Otto Octavius, as Ock now proclaimed his intention to prove himself as a superior Spider-Man to Peter after Parker's dying words encouraged his long-time rival to embrace a life of herodom.

The complete demise of Peter was a fakeout here, with his consciousness eventually resurfacing in his own body to serve as somewhat of a 'good angel' to Otto. Still, Octavius would parade as Spider-Man for over a year before voluntarily letting Parker regain control of his own body in order to stop Norman Osborn as part of the Goblin Nation arc.