In the run-up to Spider-Verse, Octavius was sent to the year 2099 by accident while dealing with the temporal anomalies caused by Horizon's time portal. Trapped in the future, he attempted to return home by creating a dimensional portal, but found himself travelling to various alternate universes – including one where Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four and a variation of the House of M – where all the Spider-Men were dead. Realizing that something was hunting Spider-Men across other dimensions, Octavius began to gather some of the more ruthless Spider-Men into a team that could oppose whatever was killing them, including Spider-Man Noir, a multi-armed Spider-Man, Pavitr Prabhakar, and a Peter Parker working in black ops with Wolverine. As the crisis unfolds, Octavius takes command of a group of alternate Spider-Men, considering himself particularly qualified to lead them due to his unique nature and willingness to kill, but when his team is confronted by another group led by the Peter Parker of Earth-616 – who Octavius presumes is a past Peter as he cannot contemplate the possibility that he will fail- he is forced to concede to Peter's leadership when Peter defeats him in a fight, Peter stating that killing Morlun and the Inheritors is not the answer, as they will just come back, and they need a new plan. Although he realizes that Peter comes from his future when Peter recognizes Anna Maria's name, Otto is forced to acknowledge his own failures when he learns that another Earth where Ben Parker was the Spider-Totem was reduced to a nuclear wasteland due to the actions of his own local counterpart.