Phase Zero
Characters

Adrian Toomes / Vulture

The man with the loan and the crew

Adrian ToomesSpider-ManEarth-616

A salvage contractor who was cleaning up after the Avengers until the government handed the contract to Tony Stark, and who kept the wreckage.

Adrian Toomes has the best motive of any villain in these films because it is paperwork. His company is hired to clear the alien wreckage out of New York after the Battle of New York, he takes on debt to do the job properly, and then the Department of Damage Control is created and the work is taken from him. He keeps a truckload of Chitauri technology and goes into business for himself.

Michael Keaton plays him as a working man with a crew to feed, which makes the car scene late in the film one of the most frightening things in the series. He is not threatening a superhero. He is a father, driving his daughter’s date to the dance, working out who is in the seat behind him.

Show detailsThe cameo nobody has explained

Keaton appears as Toomes in Morbius, a Sony film outside the Marvel Studios continuity, in a mid-credits scene where he arrives in that universe and proposes teaming up. No later film has followed it up, and no source here explains how the two universes are meant to connect. It is listed because it happened, not because it makes sense.

Played by
Michael Keaton
Role
Owner of Bestman Salvage
Affiliation
His own crew
What they can do
None. A flight suit built from Chitauri parts, by people who were already good at their jobs.

The journey

What happens to this person, title by title.

  1. Spider-Man: Homecoming2017

    Sells weapons made from alien debris for eight years, and then finds out who his daughter is going to the dance with.

  2. Morbius2022

    Turns up in another studio's universe, in a scene that has never been fully explained.

Appears in

  1. Spider-Man: Homecoming2017
  2. Morbius2022

Sources

Facts last checked on Sep 8, 2026