Octavius's focus on the larger scale also resulted in him missing the Green Goblin's efforts to establish a new criminal empire, with the Green Goblin rescuing criminals who have escaped Spider-Man and recruiting them into his new gang, as Octavius simply focused on the leaders whereas Peter would have tried to capture the whole gang. His fixation in proving himself Spider-Man's superior reached a particular climax when Spider-Man 2099 came to the past to deal with a temporal anomaly, with Octavius becoming so fixated with solving the problem and keeping his identity secret that he actually attacked the future Spider-Man rather than ask for his help, his actions resulting in the destruction of Horizon Labs because he could not solve the vibranium -related equations that Peter was able to resolve. Unknown to Octavius, Peter's memories managed to survive the deletion. When Octavius attempts to access Spider-Man's memories (because Octavius can only view memories that were looked at before the delete), Peter is shown lifting the 'rocks' off himself from the mental battle.