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"We call them symbiotes."
Dora Skirth to Eddie Brock[src]

The symbiotes are an alien race from Klyntar who landed on Earth and were taken by the Life Foundation to experiment on humans.

History[]

Discovered by humans[]

At some point, a comet holding a colony of symbiotes was discovered by the Life Foundation. They were able to collect four symbiotes: Riot, Dead Blue, Old Yeller and Venom. However, Riot was able to bond with one of the crew mates and crash the shuttle in Malaysia. While the Life Foundation was able to collect three of the symbiotes, Riot and his new human host was able to escape, jumping from one host to another to claim his captured brethren and escape the planet.[1]

Experimentations[]

Carlton Drake began testing on the symbiotes he gained first using rabbits. However, when the rabbits died off easily, he authorized the Life Foundation to get "volunteers" to bond with them. While most of these experiments failed, some were able to bond with the symbiotes. At one point, one of the scientists, Dora Skirth, hired Eddie Brock to leak the information about the experiments to the public. However, Brock ended up bonding with Venom and Skirth was forcefully bonded with the dark blue symbiote. Skirth died from not being compatible and the SYM-A02 symbiote died of starvation and lacking an oxygen-breathing host. At this point, SYM-A03 was successfully bonded with a rabbit. The fate of SYM-A03 was unknown, but it probably died just like SYM-A02.

Drake and the Life Foundation hunted Brock down, but the Venom symbiote helped him escape. Venom eventually warmed up to Brock, but also constantly mocked him for being a loser. However, Brock forced the symbiote out of him, but was captured afterwards. Venom had to escape into the vents and bond with a dog to survive, and then to Brock's ex-fiancée, Anne Weying. Meanwhile, Riot bonded with Drake himself and the two planned to use Drake's rocket to bring more symbiotes to Earth. After Venom bonded with Brock again, the two fought Riot and Drake and eventually killed them and destroyed the rocket, preventing an invasion.[1]

Birth of Carnage[]

During a visit to Cletus Kasady, a convicted serial killer who was moments away from receiving lethal injection, Eddie briefly interviewed him. Kasady taunted Eddie about his past, which resulted in him being attacked by Venom, after Eddie stopped Venom from attacking Cletus, the serial killer retaliated by biting Eddie's hand. To his shock, Kasady finds himself ingesting a portion of the reporter's blood mixed with bits of Venom himself that subsequently regenerated into an entire new symbiote completely different from the original one inside him (Kasady noted that he tasted something off in Eddie's blood as it happened). The new symbiote, Carnage, revealed itself as soon as Cletus received lethal injection, in which the chemicals awakened him and subsequently saved his host, and transformed him in order to escape from San Quentin State Prison.

After the escape, Carnage and Cletus went to rescue Shriek from the Ravencroft Institute, with all three later going on a rampage across San Francisco, coming into conflict with Eddie and Venom. After a huge battle at the Grace Cathedral, Carnage along with its host were devoured by Venom, ending their rampage.[2]

Characteristics and Traits[]

In appearance, Symbiotes are gelatinous blob-like creatures made completely of semi-tentacles that come in a variety of colors, from yellow to black. Though unconfirmed whether this also apply to their Sony's Marvel Universe iteration yet, the symbiotes in the comic rely on adrenaline and phenethylamine (which found in chocolate and human brain) to keep themselves healthy and stable. Nevertheless, the latter was implied to be case owing to Venom craving both and he is commonly shown eating the heads of his foes. Although, symbiotes seem to also desire flesh and organs as well and that they prefer to consume fresh and still-living prey; when Eddie was partaking in Venom's cravings, his symbiote complained that the cooked steak he ate was dead.

Symbiotes are unable to survive that long in an oxygen-rich environment without a host. The host in question must likely be biological, carbon-based, and oxygen-breathing.

Symbiotes are able to transfer themselves from host to host upon physical contact with them, passing into their flesh as if intangible and taking full control of their bodies. While in their bodies, these creatures are able to enhance their physical abilities to inhuman levels, allowing them to overpower other humans with ease and heal from severe injuries such as broken bones and damaged tissue in seconds. While it is capable of seemingly suppressing a host's mind and use their bodies as if it were its own, as Riot did while possessing various people before reaching Carlton Drake if their host is accepting of them, it is able to almost meld minds with them. Additionally, while physically merged with their host, a symbiote is able to perceive its host's thoughts, feelings and memories and communicate to them in the form of auditory and sometimes visual hallucinations, causing a host to hear the symbiote speaking in their minds. With their body and minds united in this manner, both the symbiote and its host can work and think collectively while sharing the same body.

The abilities it can use while bonded to its host, including manifesting constructs out of its own mass and enveloping its host to form a body for itself that akin to sentient, full-body suit the host wears, is fueled by their compatibility to one another. The process of symbiotes bonding was deemed similar to organ transplants in humans, and that their presence in less compatible hosts proved fatal to them. Internal organs of less compatible hosts would quickly wear off due to symbiotes within feed on them from inside out due to their hunger for organic matter, a fact that didn't help with symbiote themselves not only vulnerable without its host, but also unable to survive long without one.

Even if the host in question and their symbiote proved to be an ideal match, the former's internal organs are still susceptible to wearing albeit at much slower rate. To compensate this, the host attains increased metabolism that demands them to eat more than usual and in combat, allows their symbiote to consume their organic foes as a counteragent. Some, like Eddie Brock, are willing to let the symbiote eat others if they're bad guys. Symbiotes also need oxygen to survive within their host or they would die off.

It appears that segments of a symbiote which are separated from the whole will form their own individual consciousness and personality, becoming another being entirely. When a piece of Venom was left in another universe, the segment moved on its own, and when Cletus Kasady fortuitously acquired a part of Eddie Brock's blood while the latter was bonded with Venom, it immediately formed into another symbiote with a vicious intent to kill its "father" and feed on the city.

According to Venom, all the symbiotes seem to have a hive-mind of knowledge that extends across many universes, plausibly through their brethren or alternate selves in other universes. This is a quirk they usually keep hidden from their hosts as said hive-mind proved too much for their minds to handle. For the same reason, Venom warns Eddie that he can only allow the latter a fraction of it at best and even that was under the symbiote's discretion.

Also, at least in the case of Carnage, it appears that people (or perhaps just the components of their head, in which case probably only the brain and other organs) potentiate the symbiote after the former consumes the latter, since when Carnage was "fused" with Kletus seems to claim to power up after consuming a priest's head, this could be due to Carnage's "mutant" nature.

Furthermore, it appears that red symbiotes in particular, such as Carnage, are dangerous to a very extreme level. Proof of this is Venom's visible reluctance to clash with Carnage, identifying the latter as "red", wanting to get out of there and refusing to fight, even though it meant letting Anne die. This is solely because Carnage was red in color, which differentiated him and his father. Only after Eddie promised to feed him whoever he wanted (apart from the priest) did Venom agree to fight. These red symbiotes may just be symbiotes of a different color from those known so far; perhaps particularly rare.

Known Symbiotes[]

Trivia[]

  • In the comics, the symbiotes are a species of inorganic, amorphous, symbiotic extraterrestrials from the planet Klyntar that were created from the "living abyss" at the beginning of the universe by the primordial deity Knull. They can bond with a host, creating a symbiotic bond, and grant them superhuman abilities. The same bond also allows the symbiote and its host to influence one another's mental state.

References[]

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External Links[]

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