Despite originally being introduced as a villain, Venom has gone on to become an anti-hero of sorts. Perhaps due to the popularity of the character, Venom has been elevated above the usual traps that the villain persona holds, allowing Eddie Brock (and some of the other symbiote’s hosts) to be a more interesting character with some moral grayness thrown in. While the symbiote is typically seen to be a bloodthirsty creature, it is also capable of satisfying these urges with something surprisingly sweet - chocolate.
When Venom was introduced in the late 1980s, the character was a dark, twisted villain. Eddie Brock himself was about to commit suicide before he encountered the more lighthearted and almost Deadpool-like. In some comics, such as Sign of the Boss, Venom is seen making jokes and quips as he’s beating up bad guys.
Perhaps in an effort to make Venom appear more digestible (no pun intended) as an anti-hero, writers introduced a new element to the character. While Venom had been famously known to eat people, writers introduced the notion that this bloodthirsty hunger could also be staved off with chocolate. The reasoning behind this is that the symbiote craves phenylethylamine and used to get its fix from eating human flesh.
However, Eddie Brock soon learned that this craving could be sated by having the symbiote eat copious amounts of chocolate in order to satisfy the phenylethylamine deficiency. One of the most memorable scenes involving Venom’s chocolate addiction came in the comic Sign of the Boss, in which Venom is seen swinging through the New York skyline with a sack full of chocolate and singing the ‘Venom Man’ song (essentially the Spider-Man song).
While this need for chocolate did form a huge part of the character during the 90s and early 2000s, the Venom symbiote doesn’t need to eat anything now as it is no longer corrupted. The symbiote is able to sustain Eddie Brock on its own, ing nutrients into the host. The knowledge that Venom used to eat chocolate to curb his homicidal tendencies may be surprising to some, but it is certainly an important piece of comic book history and is easily one of the most interesting pieces of Venom’s past.
