History Main / FungusHumongous

** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'':
*** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'': Phazon Mines has mushrooms that have become irradiated by Phazon and grown unusually large. They're called Saturnines. Scanner logs explain that the Pirates deliberately exposed the mushrooms to Phazon to make them large, so that they could then feed them to the Elite Pirates. Cheap and easy source of food.
*** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'': According to the developers, the orange, bulbous, spiky growths on Bryyo's [[TheHedgeOfThorns Thorn Jungle]] area are mushrooms.
** ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'': Brinstar also has large mushrooms.

** ''VideoGame/MarioKart'': The Mushroom Gorge course in ''VideoGame/MarioKartWii'', ''VideoGame/MarioKart7'' and ''[[VideoGame/MarioKart8 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe]]'' has mushrooms big enough to drive a car on the caps.
** ''VideoGame/MarioParty1'': The minigame Mushroom Mix-Up takes place in an area made up of seven large mushrooms that grew from the sea. From a distance, Toad raises a flag whose color will indicate which mushroom the characters have to stand on, as all others will begin to sink; if a character fails to get there in time, they'll end up touching the water and will be disqualified. After a brief period, the sunken platforms will emerge once again and Toad will raise a flag of a different color. As time passes and fewer players remain, Toad will raise the flags more often and the unsafe platforms will sink more quickly. The last player standing on top wins (though if the last two or more players fall into the water at the same time, a draw is declared and nobody will win).

** ''VideoGame/MarioKart'': The Mushroom Gorge course in ''VideoGame/MarioKartWii'', ''VideoGame/MarioKart7'' and ''VideoGame/MarioKart8 Deluxe'' has mushrooms big enough to drive a car on the caps.

** ''VideoGame/MarioKart'': The Mushroom Gorge course in ''VideoGame/MarioKartWii'' and ''VideoGame/MarioKart7'' has mushrooms big enough to drive a car on the caps.

* ''Film/SuperMarioBros'': The live-action adaptation has a giant fungal growth covering the whole city [[spoiler:that turns out to be the king, subject to a ForcedTransformation]].

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'', [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1294 SCP-1294 ("The Laughing Fox")]]. SCP-1294 reproduces by mating with a female fennec fox. Fungus created inside the fox will exit the body as a ChestBurster and expand all the way to the ceiling of the room it's in.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10'': One episode has a giant fungus forest. Like just about everything else in the series, it turns out to be a hostile alien.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': The gang has to deal with a mushroom-dog BondCreature that houses an actor's ego. The dog grows larger the more self-satisfied the actor becomes, so it gets to be [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever quite large]]. Zoidberg even says the line "There's a humongous fungus among us."

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfTintin1991'': In "The Shooting Star" (''L'Étoile mystérieuse''), Tintin finds giant mushrooms that promptly explode.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'':

[[quoteright:242:[[ComicBook/{{Amulet}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/copper_fungushumongous.png]]]]

->''"Don't look now, but there's a humongous fungus among us!" ''
-->-- '''[[Series/TheRedGreenShow Red Green]]'''

* ''Film/SuperMarioBros'': The live-action adaptation has a giant fungal growth covering the whole city [[spoiler:that turns out to be the king, subject to a BalefulPolymorph]].

* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': In ''Egbertbound'', the well in the center of the village is surrounded by a cluster of three blue, long-stemmed mushrooms the height of short trees.

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* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites The Prototaxites]] may have actually been giant 26 foot (8 meter) tall mushrooms, the tallest living land organisms at the time.

* The largest known living organism on Earth is a 2,400-year-old (they think) ''Armillaria'' fungus in the Malheur National Forest in Oregon, USA. It covers an estimated area of 9 square kilometers. Most of it is the underground mycelium, all you'll see above ground are the small honey mushrooms that sprout in autumn.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites The Prototaxites may have actually been giant 26 foot (8 meter) tall mushrooms, the tallest living land organisms at the time.

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'': Tree-sized giant mushrooms replace regular trees in the Mushroom Fields biome, a rare area found on islands where the ground covered by mycelium instead of grass, and also home "[[PunnyName mooshroom]]" cows. The player can grow their own giant mushrooms by using bone meal on a regular mushroom. They also appear in swamps (in the Pocket Edition) and in the [[TheLostWoods Roofed Forest]], where they contribute to the ever-present gloom. Huge mushrooms come in two varieties: brown with flat, wide caps and red with dome-like spotted caps.

* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'': ''Kakashi Gaiden'' includes a forest with very large trees with mushrooms so large you can stand on them.

* ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'': ''[[Recap/TintinTheShootingStar The Shooting Star]]'' involves a [[GreenRocks rocky meteorite]] the [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale size of a small island]] that mysteriously sprouted mushrooms and other creatures [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever that quickly grew to giant size]] and [[StuffBlowingUp exploded]].

* ''VideoGame/CaptainRainbow'': [[VideoGame/PanelDePon Lip]] lives in one.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' had Mushroom Rock Road, but the cliffs just resembled large mushrooms. Halfway there, at any rate.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'' had a dungeon called the Mushroom Forest, with giant mushrooms taking the place of trees.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfSpyro'': The first two games have first levels that take place in the dragonflies' swamp, which is filled with gigantic glowing mushrooms.

* ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsOnline': Giant glowing mushrooms illuminate the Foundations of Stone in the underground halls of Moria.

* ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'':

* ''Literature/PettsonAndFindus'': One of the tie-in games features worlds with housing for the collectable Muckla families, one of those being the Mushroom World. Although the Muckla are tiny, the houses are big enough for Findus, who's a cat.

* ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'': The dominant form of native life is the enormous mass of Xenofungus, including an aquatic variety, which is incovenient rather than deadly (until you've researched the appropriate technologies). The same cannot be said, however, for the mind worms that lurk in the fungus...

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'': Frequently present:

** Similar levels appear in ''[[VideoGame/SonicHeroes Heroes]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/SonicRushSeries Rush Adventure]]''. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''Heroes'' when Team Sonic encounters [[ExaggeratedTrope a mushroom the size of a mountain]]:

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'': Starting from this game, the ''Mario'' franchise in general has had levels with huge mushrooms that can be used as platforms in a number of games. In later games, some of them even help Mario and Luigi hop at great heights, while other either tilt or mildly lower while Mario or Luigi steps onto them.

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* ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'': In ''The Shooting Star'' (''L'Étoile mystérieuse''), Tintin giant mushrooms that [[spoiler:promptly explode]].

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* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'':

* ''Literature/JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth'': In the 1959 film, the heroes discover a subterranean forest of mushrooms, ranging from small, edible ones to ones the size and toughness of oak trees.

* ''TabletopGame/DyingEarth'' RPG supplement ''Demons of the Dying Earth''. The demonic subworld of Gnarre is made up of underground tunnels and caves with huge mushrooms and toadstools that are farmed for food.

** Expert Set D&D modules

* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': A Wyld pocket in the East where the sun never shines is covered in a forest of dark-adapted trees interspersed with fields of mushrooms five meters tall.

* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Space: Space Atlas 4''. Shiva is a [[SingleBiomePlanet Jungle Planet]] which has huge toadstool-like fungi, some of which are as high as a man.

* Judges Guild
** Supplement ''Fantastic Wilderlands Beyonde''. Man-sized mushrooms grow around the edge of one of the Idyllic Islands in the Sea of Five Winds. Only the green-spotted ones are edible.
** Supplement ''The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor''. Two of the rooms in the title fortress have giant mushrooms growing in them.

** ''Trollpak'' supplement for ''TabletopGame/RuneQuest''. The Sporewood is an underground Mushroom Wood with a variety of immense fungi, including toadstools.
** ''TabletopGame/RuneQuest'' adventure "The Black Broo of Dyskund" in ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' magazine #51. In the underground Dyskund Caverns, the Chaos Garden has fungi and mushrooms that grow up to 20 meters high.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Stormbringer}}'' supplement ''Atlas of the Young Kingdoms Volume 1''. In the Forest of Troos are the Fungus Groves, which have mushrooms whose stems are as wide as a house and whose caps are large enough to build a castle upon.

** ''TabletopGame/TwentyThreeHundredAD'' supplement ''Aurore Sourcebook''. The Bladehood plant is the shape of a mushroom two to four meters high.
** ''The New Era'' supplement ''The Regency Sourcebook''. The planet Enaaka's ecosystem is mostly fungus, including tall, tree-like mushrooms over 30 meters high.
* SPI's ''TabletopGame/{{Universe}}''. In the Encounters section of the main rules, Creature #33 is an alien mushroom about three meters tall. It's covered with a glue-like secretion and anyone who gets too close will be grabbed by a five meter long tentacle and dragged in to be its dinner.
* Some members of the [[LooksLikeOrlok Nosferatu]] clan in ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' have been known to keep gardens of mushrooms, some of which can grow to the size of trees. These can be grown for aesthetic purposes, or for [[GardenOfEvil defending their havens]].
* ''Varanae'' generic RPG supplement ''Monstrum 1''. The Red Mushroom is colored a dull brick-red and can grow up to 5 feet high.

* One of the selectable biome types for planets in ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'' is Fungal, in which instead of plants, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysontheTin fungi dominate the planetary ecosystems]]. In particular, a gigantic (as in, three tiles' worth of space) specimen of fungus is found somewhere on every fungal map. Slightly smaller samples are scattered all over the planet as well, providing substantial food benefits to surrounding tiles.

** In ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong64'', Fungi Forest has five major areas. One of them houses a gigantic mushroom you have to explore from the inside. Parts of the level are also littered with fungi that act like trampolines.

** ''VideoGame/SunlessSea'':
*** Groves of giant mushrooms are fairly common as terrain decorations, and are visible in numerous areas of Unterzee when you sail close to the shores.

* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'' features mushrooms that are the same size as Link. If you cut them with your sword, they regenerate in seconds. You can also get a makeshift potion substitute from them.

** Phazon Mines in the first ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' has mushrooms that have become irradiated by Phazon and grown unusually large. They're called Saturnines. Scanner logs explain that the Pirates deliberately exposed the mushrooms to Phazon to make them large, so that they could then feed them to the Elite Pirates. Cheap and easy source of food.
** Brinstar of ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' also has large mushrooms.
** According to the developers, the orange, bulbous, spiky growths on Bryyo's [[TheHedgeOfThorns Thorn Jungle]] area in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' are mushrooms.
* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' has the Mushroom Fields biome, complete with tree-sized giant mushrooms, ground covered by mycelium instead of grass, and "[[PunnyName mooshroom]]" cows. The player can grow their own giant mushrooms by using bone meal on a regular mushroom. They also appear in swamps (in the Pocket Edition) and in the [[TheLostWoods Roofed Forest]], where they contribute to the ever-present gloom. Huge mushrooms come in two varieties: brown with flat, wide caps and red with dome-like spotted caps. The 1.16 update also added mushroom forest biomes to the Nether, known as the Warped Forest and Crimson Forest biomes, consisting of teal and red giant fungi respectively. Endermen are common in the Warped Forest, while the unique boar-like Hoglins spawn in the Crimson Forest. Weirdly, these fungi actually give ''planks'' when mined despite being mushrooms and not trees (although they differ by being nonflammable, unsurprisingly, since they grow in [[FireAndBrimstoneHell the Nether]]).
* The ''Ethereal'' mod adds (amongst other intriguing things) a purple-grassed mushroom biome to ''Minetest''. There you find the occasional little red or brown mushroom -- and lots and lots of red mushrooms the size of bigger trees. You can cut them down, but you'll need climbing equipment, newbie towers or an "easy tree-cutting" mod such as ''Woodcutting''. The stems make for awesome building material because they're white (however, they don't give you four planks per block, so you'll have to cut down a whole freaking lot of 'shrooms for an entire building). You can extract white dye from the caps (with more mods, that is) which also give you mushroom saplings (one is enough to grow one of these mushrooms). And the pores hurt much less if you land on them from greater heights, so you can use them as safety padding around construction sites for taller buildings. They still look quite weird, though.

** Similar levels appeared in ''[[VideoGame/SonicHeroes Heroes]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/SonicRushSeries Rush Adventure]]''. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''Heroes'' when Team Sonic encounters [[ExaggeratedTrope a mushroom the size of a mountain]]:

** ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006'' had large mushrooms in jungle.

* ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestV'': [[SingleBiomePlanet Planet Thrakus]] has no apparent bottom, just giant fungus.

** ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront 2'': Some of the flora in the Felucia level includes giant mushroom-like plants.

* In ''VideoGame/SunlessSkies'', the town of Hybras is located in an area of the Reach covered with titanic growths of fungus and mold. The enormous fronds and mushrooms easily dwarf your locomotive -- some of the shelf mushrooms are as big as city blocks -- and the great fungi that loom in the background are bigger still.

** The Mushroom Gorge course in ''VideoGame/MarioKartWii'' and ''VideoGame/MarioKart7'' has mushrooms big enough to drive a car on the caps.
** ''VideoGame/MarioParty1'': The minigame Mushroom Mix-Up takes place in an area made up of seven large mushrooms that grew from the sea. From a distance, Toad raises a flag whose color will indicate which mushroom the characters have to stand on, as all others will begin to sink; if a character fails to get there in time, they'll end up touching the water and will be disqualified. After a brief period, the sunken platforms will emerge once again and Toad will raise a flag of a different color. As time passes and fewer players remain, Toad will raise the flags more often and the unsafe platforms will sink more quickly. The last player standing on top wins (though if the last two or more players fall into the water at the same time, a draw is declared and nobody will win).

* The Creator/{{Infocom}} text adventure ''VideoGame/{{Trinity}}'' had a land of giant mushrooms, each representing one [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons atomic / nuclear explosion]].

%%* ''Whisper of a Rose'', in the dream world.%%ZCE

* ''WesternAnimation/SpaceGhost'': In "Hi-Jackers", the planet where the title criminals make their base is covered with giant mushrooms several times larger than a human being.

* In ''Animation/NanaMoon'', Moon Haven is teeming with all sorts of unique, quirky flora, including giant mushrooms.

** In ''ComicBook/SupermansReturnToKrypton'', the Man of Steel goes back to the past and ends in Krypton, making landfall in a meadow full of human-sized, purple-capped mushrooms.

* In the 1959 version of ''Literature/JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth'', the heroes discover a subterranean forest of mushrooms, ranging from small, edible ones to ones the size and toughness of oak trees.
* ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': The jungles of the planet Felucia, besides many normal if alien-looking plants, contain numerous groves of colossal purple mushrooms big enough for a small spaceship to land on their caps.
* In ''Film/SonicTheHedgehog2020'', Sonic's next destination, in case Earth becomes unsafe for him, was a planet filled with giant mushrooms. [[spoiler:At the end of the film, Robotnik ends up stranded on that planet, thanks to Sonic and Tom sending him there]].
* The live action adaptation of ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' has a giant fungal growth covering the whole city [[spoiler:that turns out to be the king, subject to a BalefulPolymorph.]]

* In ''The Forgotten Planet'', Creator/MurrayLeinster carefully {{justifie|dTrope}}s this by giving the planet patterns of weather that make photosynthetic life forms non-viable, allowing saprophytes to fill the niches occupied by trees, grasses, etc.
* BodyHorror extravaganza ''Literature/TheFungus'' features an experimental enzyme that causes fungi to rapidly grow out of control and take over the city of London.

* Zack Parsons's serial story [[http://www.somethingawful.com/d/daily-dirt/instruction-for-america.php?page=1 Instructions For A]] is worth reading without spoilers. However I'll say that [[spoiler:it's a frightening take on what our lives would be like if there were a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOQ0VU24xw Cordyceps]] fungi species that could infest every living thing on the planet]].

* Creator/PiersAnthony's ''Omnivore'' is set on a planet where animals never arose, but some fungi did evolve mobility. In addition to plenty of oversized stationary fungal species, there's an omnivorous mobile type the size of a minibus. (Also sentient mobile carnivorous ones, but that's a different trope.)

* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': In ''Literature/SplinterOfTheMindsEye'', Luke and Princess Leia cross an underground lake using the caps of giant mushrooms as kayaks.

* Several locations in the ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' [[GameMod ROM Hack]] ''VideoGame/{{Unearthed}}'' have mushrooms nearly twice the size of the protagonist. Since most of the game takes place underground though, and mushrooms often thrive in darkness, it doesn't stand out as much as some examples.

* According to [[http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/long-before-trees-overtook-the-land-earth-was-covered-by-giant-mushrooms/ this article]] it's possible that the Prototaxites may have actually been giant 24 foot tall mushrooms, the tallest living land organisms at the time.

** In general, the various games in the franchise have had levels with huge mushrooms that can be used as platforms in a number of games. Some of them even help Mario and Luigi hop at great heights, while other either tilt or mildly lower while Mario or Luigi steps onto them.