The Fold, also commonly referred to as the Collective, is the primary antagonistic faction in the 2009 videogame Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. They are a large collective of thousands upon thousands of superheroes, supervillains, and others, that are all controlled by nanites that are linked together in a hive mind; and they were intent on dragging all of humanity into their mind-enslavement, take over the entire Earth and achieve "world peace".
History[]
The nanites were originally highly advanced nano-tech Latverian technology that was recovered by Mr. Fantastic from the Latverian attack on New York City by Lucia Von Bardas, who then used them as a way of controlling supervillains to aid S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Maria Hill, and the Pro-Registration forces, led by Iron Man, in enforcing the Superhuman Registration Act and battling the Anti-Registration heroes led by Captain America.
The nanites took control of a subject's nervous system, allowing a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to control him or her remotely. If there was any danger of the subject breaking the nanite control, an emergency shutdown signal was sent to paralyze the supervillains,
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2: Story[]
During the Super-Hero Civil War, S.H.I.E.L.D. used the nanites to control villains, turning the tide against Captain America and his growing army of anti-registration heroes. However, once the network of nanite-controlled villains reached critical mass, the nanites became sentient and started to take over their hosts, using them to spread more nanoprobes into others then linking them into the group consciousness, which began referring to itself as 'The Fold'. A side effect of this connection was the sharing of superpowers over a short-range, making facing groups of nanite-infected hosts a daunting one. Examples of this include Green Goblin gaining the ability to shoot Venom-like webbing material and Venom being able to control Green Goblin's glider during the attack on the Geffen-Meyer Chemicals plant, hosts gaining fire, ice and electrical attacks when close to low-level metahumans with those abilities and Nick Fury gaining the ability to use a number of powers from a range of metahumans.
Eventually whatever heroes were left came up with a plan to upload a shutdown signal, which had been built into the probes by S.H.I.E.L.D. in case of villains ever got out of control, to the world-wide data link of the nanite collective, taking down the group and paralyzing them. To this end, a small strike team was sent to a nanite base located in Iceland, which acted as the hub between the American and European nanite networks in order to access the data transmission tower there.
Unfortunately, Nick Fury, who had been captured by the Fold and forcibly integrated into the group mind, remained under the Fold's control due to experimental nanoprobes the Tinkerer had developed (after having been somehow infected himself) designed to allow infected hosts to retain superpowers when outside the range of the original user. After facing Fury on the roof of the transmission tower the strike team were able to pacify him long enough to transmit the shutdown signal, neutralizing the Fold worldwide.
In the wake of the crisis the Superhero Registration Act, which had sparked the Super-Hero Civil War, was repealed and all heroes pardoned for their actions in defying it after the American government realized the danger the world had been placed in without heroes to save them.
Trivia[]
- For an unknown reason, this faction act as the final antagonist instead of the overreaching antagonist of the Civil War I, Walter Declum.