A little boy injected himself with fatal mercury because he wanted to be like his favorite X-Men superhero.
The 15-year-old Indian youngster reportedly wanted to be like the Marvel superhero Mercury, but he ended up with excruciating ulcers that wouldn't heal.
In order to become like Spider-Man, the child also let spiders bite him.
The rare instance was revealed in a report published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which detailed the injuries sustained by the unnamed boy after he injected mercury into his body on purpose.
He went to an Indian trauma center with "several non-healing sores on the left forearm."
A psychiatric evaluation was conducted because doctors suspected that substance usage was a problem. The youngster admitted to injecting himself with mercury he had managed to extract at least three times from a thermometer.
According to the report, the child was "inspired" by the X-Men character Mercury, who has appeared in a number of comic books.
It went on to say: "Surprisingly, he had a history of multiple bites by spiders to simulate Spider-Man. He had no other psychological issues and a normal IQ, which was surprising."
Toxicology tests were performed on the teenager to check for mercury levels in his blood.
He had managed to avoid injecting mercury into all of the major blood vessels, but the ulcers needed to be cleaned out and he needed a skin graft.
The boy is likely to recover completely.
The report concluded: "The patient did not develop clinical signs of chronic poisoning," showing that subcutaneous mercury injection has a minimal risk of systemic toxicity and that histopathology is significant in diagnosis."