Norman Osborn (Spider-Man The Animated Series)

Norman Osborn is the main antagonist and the most recurring villain in Spider-Man The Animated Series. He was voiced by Neil Ross.
Norman Osborn appeared in the series from the start, but not as the Goblin. Osborn was indebted to the Kingpin for various shady loans that Osborn was unable to repay, so the Kingpin asked Osborn to kill Spider-Man to repay the loans. Osborn then hires Spencer Smythe to build Spider-Slayers to kill Spider-Man. After the plan fails, Osborn hires the Hobgoblin to kill Wilson Fisk. But the assassination is foiled by Peter Parker, and the Kingpin suspects a conspiracy against him. For his failure, Osborn fired the Hobgoblin. Hobgoblin then joins with Kingpin and kidnaps Norman's son, Harry Osborn, for the crime boss. When Hobgoblin sees that Kingpin will not pay him immediately, he eventually betrays the Kingpin by going to Norman for better weapons to kill the Kingpin and Osborn can have his company and son. Osborn gives him a better glider and weapons and by the time the Hobgoblin returned to the Kingpin, Hobgoblin realizes that the Kingpin knows he was going to double-cross him, causes the Kingpin to flee, having the Hobgoblin think he died and took over his empire. The story concludes with the Kingpin, Osborn, and Spider-Man all loosely allying themselves to defeat the Hobgoblin, who escapes after crash-landing into the water. In the end, Osborn sells 50% of his company to the Kingpin in order to repay his debt, Harry Osborn is returned safely, and the Kingpin rebuilds his headquarters. Later on, in the two-part second season finale, Osborn refuses to grant loans to Adrian Toomes's projects because Toomes was too old and senile. Therefore, Toomes became the villain known as the Vulture in order to try to kill Osborn, but as usual, Spider-Man saves Osborn and defeats the Vulture. Later in the episode, Enter the Green Goblin, Norman Osborn and his partner, Mendel Stromm, were coerced into creating a formula for the Kingpin that grants superhuman strength. An unstable reaction resulted during one experiment and Norman disappeared in the explosion, presumed dead. His son, Harry, blamed the Oscorp stockholders, J. Jonah Jameson, Anastasia Hardy, and Wilson Fisk (the Kingpin), among others, for the death of his father. Soon a mysterious airborne figure, identifying himself as the Green Goblin, began kidnapping the stockholders one by one. Spider-Man uncovered an underwater base where the Goblin intended to kill everyone he had kidnapped. Fighting the Goblin, Spider-Man unmasked him, only to discover that the Green Goblin was Norman Osborn, rather than the suspected identity of his son, Harry. Amnesia ensued and Norman was unable to remember his dual identity. The following morning at OsCorp, he announced that he will no longer build chemical weapons, much to the Kingpin's secret dismay.
Osborn appeared as himself again in the episode The Ultimate Slayer at an engagement party for Harry, who was going to marry Mary Jane Watson. However, the party was crashed by Alistair Smythe, recreated as a cyborg under the Kingpin's machinations, and Smythe kidnapped Norman, his son and Mary Jane, bringing them back to the Kingpin's lair. There, the Kingpin reveals to Osborn that Spencer Smythe did not die in the explosion back in The Spider Slayer, but that he escaped early on before the explosion ensued at OsCorp and was met up by the Kingpin. But rather than killing him outright for his failure with the Spider Slayer's goal to kill Spider-Man, the Kingpin sees that he may still have some future use for Spencer, so he places him in chronological suspension. Spider-Man overhears this and tells this to Alistair, who turns on the Kingpin completely, destroys his lair and takes his chronologically-suspended father away with him, thus ending whatever relationship the Kingpin and Alistair had between each other. Spider-Man managed to have saved Norman, Harry and Mary Jane, but unfortunately for Harry, Mary Jane decided to call off her engagement with Harry to be with Peter Parker.
In Goblin War!, Norman Osborn became the Green Goblin again after being threatened by the Kingpin that if he did not reveal the Hobgoblin's identity, who the crime boss was currently in league with, then Harry will suffer the consequences. In this episode, he and the Hobgoblin clash over Dr. Ohn's Time Dilation Accelerator, which was what the Hobgoblin possessed that lured the Kingpin into an alliance with him. Near the end, the Green Goblin tracks the Hobgoblin down to Jason Phillip Macandale's home, since the Goblin knew from prior knowledge as Norman Osborn that Macandale was actually the Hobgoblin. So he kidnaps Macandale and his fiance, Felicia Hardy, with the Time Dilation Accelerator, takes them to OsCorp and ties them up over a chemical vat to slowly lower them there to their doom. But Spider-Man arrives just in time for a brief fight with the Green Goblin, saves Macandale and Felicia and nearly destroys the Time Dilation Accelerator with one of the Goblin's weapons. But, seeing that there is still some power left in the Accelerator, the Goblin takes his chances into a portal, stating to Spider-Man beforehand that he'd rather be trapped in limbo than be defeated again by the superhero. However, at the end of the episode, the Goblin manages to make it back into his own dimension because the Accelerator had more power than either him or Spider-Man thought, and he starts to modifying the machine while plotting the downfall of his enemies like Spider-Man and the Kingpin (the Hobgoblin is now jailed at this point because of his identity of Jason Macandale now revealed). In the next episode Turning Point, the Green Goblin finds out Spider-Man's secret identity with the Time Dilation Accelerator. As Osborn, he nearly reveals Peter's identity as the superhero in front of everyone at Harry's birthday party, but when Peter catches on, he causes a fire that abruptly interrupts Osborn. Next, Spider-Man and the Green Goblin's ensuing fight goes from Osborn's home atop the George Washington Bridge. But at the Bridge, the Green Goblin uses the Accelerator again, implying that he will go to Peter's Aunt May's home to kill her. But by the time Spider-Man arrives, the Goblin appears and tells him that he decided to switch targets, implying that he is intending to kidnap Mary Jane. The Goblin succeeds in this task and takes her back to the George Washington Bridge, where he and Spider-Man have their final confrontation. And during the battle, both Mary Jane and the Time Dilation Accelerator fall over a ledge, and the machine is accidentally activated, creating a portal which MJ falls into. Neither Spider-Man or the Goblin know what happened, which makes Spider-Man assume that MJ possibly died and vows vengeance on the Green Goblin. The villain tries to escape using the Accelerator again, but finds that it is almost out of power. Nevertheless, he manages to reactivate it before Spider-Man could reach him, but accidentally creates an unstable portal that sucks anything in its path inside. Spider-Man initially tries to push the Goblin in, but he then realizes that vengeance will not bring Mary Jane back, so he tries to save the Goblin. But the villain activates his glider to attack Spider-Man from behind to push both of them into limbo. However, Spider-Man's spider sense tingles, warning him of the glider coming in, so he dodges it, and the glider hits the Green Goblin in the chest where the Time Dilation Accelerator is situated, thus destroying it and pushing the Goblin into limbo all by himself, where the unstable portal finally ceases to be.
Though this is the last time Spider-Man and the Green Goblin would clash, this is not the end of Norman Osborn's saga. In the episode The Return of the Green Goblin, Norman, as the Goblin, contacts Harry through a spiritual link, saying that if Harry becomes the Green Goblin and kills Spider-Man, then he will see his father again. Harry hesitantly complies and, figuring out thanks to Norman that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, the new Green Goblin tries many times to kill Spider-Man while having the Punisher track them both down. Harry goes back to OsCorp for better weapons against Spider-Man and the Punisher, but Spider-Man arrives and tells Harry that his father is the Green Goblin, which the latter confirms, to Harry's shock. But Harry realizes that this is his family's legacy to be the Green Goblins, so he confronts Spider-Man and the Punisher again at the George Washington Bridge. Spider-Man defeats Harry by tackling him into the river and destroying his glider, and Harry's unconscious form is taken by the Punisher back to Peter's house for interrogation as to Mary Jane's whereabouts. Later, after the clone of Mary Jane arrives to be mistaken by everyone to be the real MJ, Spider-Man takes Harry to Ravencroft Institute to cure him of his mental insanity as the Green Goblin and make him think his knowledge of Peter being Spider-Man as false. But in the fifth season premiere, The Wedding, when Harry hears that Peter and Mary Jane's clone are getting married, Norman contacts Harry again, inspriring him to escape Ravencroft and team up with Alistair Smythe, now under the employ of the Kingpin's enemy, Silvermane, to create Goblin Warriors, robot battle droids under Harry's command. He decides to use them at Peter and MJ's clone's wedding to kill Spider-Man so that Harry could marry MJ's clone, but the Goblin Warriors fail to kill Spider-Man, thanks to the help of the Black Cat and Smythe's Mega Slayer robot controlled by the Kingpin, and Mary Jane's friend Liz Allen tells Harry that she loves him. This makes Harry think that he's insane again, goes back from his plan on trying to marry MJ's clone and goes back to Ravencroft to be cured of his mental insanity for good.
Norman Osborn appears again as Green Goblin in I Really, Really Hate Clones, the first part of two-part series finale, in which he was working for Spider-Carnage and the Kingpin in an alternate reality. This is simply a parallel version of the character in this other universe, as there was nothing that implied of the previous Norman Osborn. When the Green Goblin was confronting the Spider-Men from different realities who had joined forces to stop Spider-Carnage, all of them used their webbing to stick him to a floor of the Kingpin's tower. In the next episode, although he did not appear in it, the Green Goblin likely dies in an explosion that destroys the tower.
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