Perhaps the most important deleted scene of the lot, this is the moment when Rajit Ratha, Curt Connors and Peter Parker meet in The Lizard’s lair. This was so close to actually making it into the finished film that snaps from it ended up in the official stills press release – see here for just one example – as well as certain trailers. Note that normally his green-socked forearm has been CGI-ed away too.

Connors takes the time to quote Michelangelo’s Silkworm to Peter, saying, “That, changing like the snake, I might be free / To cast the flesh wherein I dwell confined!” Needless to say, Peter recognises the quotation immediately because he’s a boy genius and loves all this stuff.

“Would you go back? After all you know you can do, all the power you feel? Would you give it all up?” asks Connors. Peter has no answer. Connors pauses, then brings up Peter’s dead father and his scientific work: “Richard never let me read his notes, he didn’t trust me. He knew how I felt. Incomplete. An aberration. I dream of a world where everyone is equal... and thanks to you, Peter, I’m going to make that happen.”

So the implication here is that Peter is somehow responsible for Connors’ mad plan to turn everyone into lizard monsters, purely by being a successful genetic mutation himself. No pressure then, Spider-Man.

Connors injects another dose of the Lizard juice before growling, hissing and turning his now-yellow eyes towards a frightened Peter.

Earlier in the scene, Connors explains that he “had to get a place off the grid.” Not off the grid enough, it seems, as Ratha’s imminent arrival with loaded gun proves.

The sock returneth! Also, if you ever wondered how good Rhys Ifans was at being-shot-repeatedly-acting, know this: he’s good. So good, in fact, that he timbers Del Boy-style towards the floor at the end.

Blasting bullets into former employees with one hand, spraying sedative into high schoolers’ faces with the other – Rajit Ratha: the multitasking mega-henchman.

“Peter, listen! We need the research,” says Ratha to a barely conscious Peter. “The science is flawed…” whispers Peter. “It’s working quite well on you. Did you ever stop and wonder why? Do you have any idea what you really are? The possibilities are magnificent – beyond your father’s wildest dreams…”

Did Richard Parker crack the code to genetically enhancing humans 15 years ago and not tell anyone? Did he try out his research on his own son? Did Peter’s spider bite earlier on in the film awake the work his father had done on him? What were Richard’s plans, exactly? Why was there a big spider in a jar in this office? Who experiments on a baby? What does Norman Osborn suffer from to make him go this far to steal obviously flawed research?

For anyone interested in the story behind the disappearance of Peter’s parents, this stuff is gold dust – gold dust that for some reason ended up on the cutting room floor.

On the sewer floor, however, is Peter Parker, who gets swatted across the room by a now revived Lizard.

Meanwhile, Rahta gets choked – just like the still we saw before – and then The Lizard opens wide and looks set to swallow his head whole. It’s unclear what was meant to happen Spidey after this, or The Lizard, or Rahta himself. Will Rahta appear in the sequel if this scene as been cut? We can presume he’s dead even though this was deleted, right?