The classic Spider-Man villain Doctor Octopus has a secret and subtle link to the X-Men. Otto Octavius is one of Marvel's smartest supervillains. Although he tends to operate on a local scale rather than a global one, and frankly that's a good job. The one time he really got ambitious, in the epic "To The Ends Of The Earth," he literally threatened the entire planet. Spider-Man had to turn into James Bond to take him down.
Otto Octavius started out as one of the world's most respected scientists, and he invented four mechanical arms that he wore on a harness on his body and controlled with his mind. Unfortunately an accident created a permanent bond between Octavius and his arms, and it also seemed to have unbalanced his mind. He's driven almost entirely by ego, which explains why Doctor Octopus has become obsessed with Spider-Man. He has become determined to prove himself superior to the wall-crawler, explaining why he once took possession of Peter Parker's body and became the so-called "Superior Spider-Man."
He may be Spider-Man's greatest enemy, but Doctor Octopus actually has a secret connection to the X-Men as well. His almost-indestructible arms are constructed of a metal called carbonadium, a resilient but radioactive metal that is far stronger than steel but is essentially a cheaper alternative to adamantium. It appears to be an alloy, and it was first developed in the USSR during the Cold War. Both the Soviet and American governments became interested in the effect of carbonadium on a mutant's body, discovering it has a pronounced effect on mutant healing powers. The US government sent a black ops team called Task Force X into the Soviet Union to shut down experiments with carbonadium, and to retrieve a stabilizing agent called the carbonadium synthesizer. The members of Task Force X included Sabretooth and Wolverine, and this adventure was detailed in flashbacks in X-Men #5-7. Clearly Octavius had strong connections to the US government, in order to acquire carbonadium for his tentacles.
Doctor Octopus' coils are actually made of the same substance as the X-Men villain Omega Red's, and as such they have properties the comics have never really explored. Carbonadium has a dampening effect upon healing factors, actually meaning Doctor Octopus could be one of the few villains to take on the likes of Wolverine and X-23 with ease. Indeed, his presence in a team could even cause problems for the Hulk, because in theory it would affect the Jade Giant's healing too.
There is a down side of carbonadium, though, and Doctor Octopus learned it to his cost. The radiation affected his body, and too late he learned his health was deteriorating. Doctor Octopus' body eventually broke down completely, killed by the very metal he had bonded to, and he only survived by memory transfers and cloning.
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