Ockham's Spoon

Giant spiders adapt for the urban environment:

Lots of good points on the poison discussion and what the rules really mean. What I think it comes down to is how the GM wants to handle it. If Life Support is going to provide protection, then the GM needs to require that all poisons are NND or have a limitation that lets LS affect them. If you think LS is too cheap to allow immunity to poison, or you want something more granular than an all-or-nothing effect (which has always been one of my gripes with D&D saving throws), then poisons need to be built as AVLD of some stripe or characters can buy Damage Negation or Reduction only vs. Poison (and maybe requiring a CON roll). The HERO system is very flexible, so you can do anything you like, the key is that you need to define the world and framework in which you want to play to keep things consistent and reasonable.

This is one I share with my students, especially at the end of the semester when everything becomes due:

When Game of Thrones meets Twitter (from Tom Toro)

I fail to see how bringing snakes in is going to de-stress anyone. Not that snakes aren't amazing, fascinating creatures, but lowering stress is not exactly what they are known for.

From Lila Ash:

Before my first cup of coffee in the morning, I am a zombie. Otherwise I would have to go with werebear. Most of the time benign, but about once a month I get out of sorts and become a real bear (my wife's exact words).

Brownies, because they are delicious by themselves, while chocolate cake usually needs frosting to make it really good. Breakfasts that could be deserts: Doughnuts vs. Pancakes

Gazebo, because I got married in one. Also because Phil Foglio had a comic strip in Dragon magazine (What's New with Phil & Dixie) decades ago that introduced the superhero Gazebo Boy (who found his sole power of turning into a gazebo useless against the giant termite). Next up: Battle of the Artists Phil Foglio vs. Erol Otus

Otyugh. This monster is practically an animated pile of offal which makes a neo-otyugh a new pile of animated offal, which is an oxymoron. Besides which, did we really need a next generation version of this monster? Back to the giant worms: asteroid worm from Empire Strikes Back vs. the sandworms from Dune

Griffin. King of beasts + King of birds is going to trump the offspring of a mare and a griffin (and lord knows why the griffin didn't just eat the mare in the first place) Unusual non-human fantasy races: Cat people vs. Lizard people

This is related to some of the other reasons or could overlap, but one that I think deserves a specific classification is villains who have a sense of entitlement. This may be because they think they are better than others (because they are supers or because they are white supremacists or whatever) or because they feel they have been wronged by society and so they are going to get their fair share by force. Villains like this don't perceive themselves as actual villains even if they break the law because they have justified their actions in their own minds.

I would agree that giving the players a narrow common background tends to stifle their creativity and they end up having less invested in the game. I think Doc Democracy has an excellent idea in having the players come up with a reason they would want to be on a team. That gives the PCs a more organic reason to stick together rather than being forced into it. One twist on the police force team I enjoyed was a group of reformed criminals, organized by the government into super team as part of their restitution to society. The one caveat the players had was their characters couldn't be overtly violent or casual killers - they wouldn't be chosen for the team in that case. The policy argument was that it was cheaper than imprisoning them or trying to fund an additional government super team - better to put nonviolent supers to work helping others both for their own benefit and that of society. This set up led to lots of good backgrounds, conflicts with past associates as well as other super teams, and plenty of role-playing discussions over what made a hero a hero.