I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for viral internet campaigns. I followed the Joker’s campaign for ‘The Dark Knight’ with all of its false websites, clues, and riddles. Now Sony Pictures’ ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ is ramping up its viral campaign to use, not only websites, but Twitter to feed the curiosity of eager Spidey fans.
Last month, the ASM viral campaign revealed a wanted poster for the wall-crawler along with a news clip featuring Capt. George Stacy (Dennis Leary) asking for citizens to help put an end to Spider-Man’s vigilante shenanigans. This viral also introduced the first of the Spidey-related sites, webbedmenace.com, for fans to submit their own Spider-Man sightings.
Then a couple of weeks ago, the new site ParkersPOV.com came online and has dropped several clues, including some blue-prints for Spider-Man’s webshooters.
Earlier today, Superhero Hype gave fans a lead on the next part of the ASM viral campaign. Apparently, the people who submitted Spidey siting to webbedmenace.com were sent information on a new site for Jerera’s Boxing Gym.
From the Gym’s site, fans were taken down a rabbit hole that led to a slew of new Spider-Man clues and hints. Take a deep breath and follow along as we lead you through the spiraling viral links and onto a final clue that is supposed to provide even more fun this coming Friday. Ready? Here we go…
At the Jerera’s Gym site news page, fans noticed an ad for a lucha libre wrestling match that has a familiar mask. Then on the same page, there’s a mention Jerera’s is sponsoring a wrestling team at Midtown Science High School. So, someone took a shot in the dark and typed the name of the school into their address bar and went further down the hole when a new website was revealed.
You see, Midtown Science High School is where Peter Parker goes to school. Flipping through the pages on the school’s website, we’re given a look at some of Peter Parker’s classmates and a little background on the school. We’re also treated to some images of Midtown’s resident jock… Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka – left).
Meanwhile, over on the ParkersPOV.com site, a new photo (below) popped up showing Peter Parker’s messy desk. One intrepid fan called GuestUser17 at the Unfiction Forums, did some code cracking on the math that Peter has on his desk in this photo and discovered that it revealed the words: PPARKER and DEEPFOCUS.
Back on the Midtown High site, if you enter PPARKER as the user name and DEEPFOCUS as the password, on the “student login” page, you get Peter’s class schedule. (Geez! This kid really is a brainiac!)
Taking the final clue from that page, the word “vulnerability” from Peter’s “incident report” and entering it back on the PetersPOV site, you’re treated to a photo of a young Peter with his parents. (Take a close look at little Peter’s right hand.)
Got all of that so far? Good. Now onto the final piece of the puzzle… for now. Back at the Midtown High site, if you went to the “newsletter” page and download the PDF of the latest Midtown High newsletter, you’ll find a story on the Lizard written by a student with a Twitter account over at @ScaleSeeker. ScaleSeeker says that he will be revealing more info on the Lizard this coming Friday, May 11th. Now what that might be isn’t clear but I’m sure I’ll be back giving you the info as soon as it appears.
Now how’s that for a viral campaign? I’m still scouring the faux sites in an attempt to find any futher clues but I think that all of the big ones have been discovered already. If you know anything that we don’t or if you discover any more Spider-Man clues in these sites, drop us a comment below or hit me up on Twitter at @hydeandgeek where I will be following @ScaleSeeker as well.