5. Gustav Fiers Is The Man In The Shadows - The Amazing Spider Man 2
The Twist: Because it's so much easier to copy Marvel than try anything distinct in the super-hero genre, The Amazing Spider-Man featured a mid-credits sting that showed a de-transformed Lizard visited by a mysterious "Man in the Shadows" who took a distinct interest in Peter Parker. It took over two hours of confused setting up of further sequels, but The Amazing Spider-Man 2 finally revealed who this trilby-ed mystery man was - he's Gustav Fiers. Wait, who? Why It's So Dumb: Gustav Fiers' reveal is the equivalent of the guy under the mask at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode being a totally new character (this did happen once and it was as disappointing as you'd expect). Not only is there nothing in the Amazing world pertaining to him, but he's so obscure a comic book character that even Spidey die-hards would be left scratching their heads. Known as The Gentleman, Fiers' only previous appearances in the lore have been in text novels, with the comics wisely not including such a lazily conceived character. How is his inclusion meant to get everyone amped for The Sinister Six? It's emblematic of how Sony really don't understand what they're doing with Spider-Man, tossing in whatever elements they can in the hope the franchise can free-wheel itself to success. At least the Shadow Man mystery was somewhat solved - Uncle Ben's killer is still a free man.
