Richard and Mary Parker have been adapted to appear in several animated television series and video games.

For many years before The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 (November 1968), there had been no explanation of why Peter Parker was being raised by his aunt and uncle, with his parents only appearing in flashbacks and photographs.

That issue finally answered the question: Richard and Mary Parker were murdered by Albert Malik, who was one of Johann Schmidt's successors to the persona of Red Skull.

In July 1997, Untold Tales of Spider-Man #-1, part of Marvel Comics' "Flashback Month" event, written by Roger Stern and drawn by John Romita, Sr., the characters' origins are expanded.

While on a mission to investigate Albert Malik, the third Red Skull, they posed as traitors and double agents to infiltrate his criminal organization in Algeria, ultimately being discovered.

These LMDs were near-perfect robotic replicas of Peter's dead parents, and managed to convince him that they had in fact been held captive overseas for most of his life.

The cynical mindset of Harry Osborn and the Chameleon was present in the LMDs, particularly during Maximum Carnage:[8] When Aunt May advises Peter to "listen to your heart", (the pseudo) "Richard" tells a very different lesson:[9] Strip away the veneer of society and civilization and you'll find a devil inside all men.

...When Shriek uses her psychic powers to turn the whole town against Spider-Man and the other super-heroes, "Richard" remarks that the "moral, orderly" world he remembered while in prison "was just an illusion!

— inviting a sharp rebuke from Peter's wife, Mary Jane[10] (when exposed as frauds, some of his "parents'" cynicism rubs off on the "son" — with Spider-Man becoming unusually brutal against his enemies and developing a "Spider" alternate personality).

For one thing, the very fact that Harry Osborn and the Chameleon were able to fool the State Department, Peter, and (for a time) Aunt May into thinking Richard and Mary had "returned" after 20 years implies that the government was never able to solidly confirm the bodies found in the original plane crash were theirs.

[11] This uncertainty was exploited by Harry Osborn and the Chameleon: When explaining how he and Mary "survived", the false Richard Parker asserts that the bodies found were of Russian spies who stayed on the plane while they were forced to jump out.

It is also ambiguous how old Peter was when his parents mysteriously disappeared: some accounts have it happening in his infancy;[12] others say he was as old as six years[13]—particularly, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Spider-Man, 2004.

The latter view is supported by Spider-Man's musing, during The Child Within,[14] that he remembers his parents, yet "they were practically strangers to me", as he prepares to fight Green Goblin and Vermin.

[7] Another, more comprehensive book on the Marvel Universe (also released in 2004) asserts that Peter's only clear memory of his (real) parents was of the moment they were boarding the fateful plane and he promised them he would be a "good boy" for Aunt May and Uncle Ben.

In Marvel 1602, Peter Parquagh's parents are briefly mentioned as having worked with Sir Nicholas Fury, Queen Elizabeth I's chief of security.

Disappointed by his rejection, Mary passes leadership of the Spider Clan to her pupil, Venom, causing Peter to give up his Spider-Man identity.

[volume & issue needed] The 2003 Epic Comics limited series, Trouble, was marketed as the "true origin" of Spider-Man.

He recounted that Bolivar Trask, the man responsible for shutting down the cure project, brought the research staff back together.

After the crash, Richard was approached by government agent Henry Gyrich, for the purposes of launching his own research project in case S.H.I.E.L.D.

Though his memories were false, Richard loves Peter like a son and asks the Fantastic Four in particular Sue Storm to look after him before passing away.

[19] One day, while Pym and Banner are testing a possible match to the serum, Richard is just outside the lab being visited by his wife and recently born son, Peter.

[20] Artist Mark Bagley based the likeness of the Ultimate version of Richard Parker on that of Peter Parker as drawn by John Romita, Sr. and Gil Kane in the late 1960s and early 1970s, feeling he hadn't captured Peter's appearance during his earlier run on The Amazing Spider-Man in the 1990s.

The possibility was also raised that Spider-Man had an older sister when Peter discovered what appeared to be photographs of his parents with a baby girl a few years before his own birth, creating the implication that this girl was now the Gentleman's ward, a young woman called Pity, who was capable of climbing walls, possessed a strength level approximately equal to Spider-Man, and could create a "darkness" around herself that she could choose who it was affected by (allowing her to blind Spider-Man while Pity's current allies could still see), Pity having been basically brainwashed to serve as the Gentleman's enforcer.

At the conclusion of the trilogy, Peter Parker meets Logan, who reveals he worked regularly with the Parkers on joint missions between the American and Canadian secret services; the discovery that Logan was the first person to congratulate Richard after learning that Mary was pregnant prompted Peter to say "Wolverine's practically my Uncle".