History Main / NuclearMutant

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Atomia uses nuclear radiation as part of her process of turning humans into her mindless superpowered mooks.

* ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'': when the Eds tell a bedtime story to Johnny, [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Ed's]] version begins with [[AbhorrentAdmirer the Kanker Sisters]] eating radioactive mashed potatoes and turning into [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giants]].

* ''Manga/KimbaTheWhiteLion'' has [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever a grasshopper becoming a huge one]] thanks to a nuclear mutation.

* Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk and his gamma radiation-empowered friends and enemies would certainly qualify. At one end of the spectrum you've got lucky folks like Doc Samson and She-Hulk, who just look like impossibly buff people with green hair or skin, and at the other end you've got freaks like the Harpy and the Abomination. Their degree of self-control after their mutation varies from one individual to the next, too. There have been gamma-mutant animals over the years, too, (mainly dogs), but they tend not to survive beyond a single issue.

* The BigBad of another French comic, ''Bikini Atoll'', is a horribly mutated and homicidally insane man, one spawned by the nuclear tests that were performed in the eponymous area during the 1950s. [[spoiler:The story ends with him being eaten by a mutated shark]].

* Played with in ''ComicBook/SupermanRedSon''. When Superman, who was raised in Soviet Ukraine, meets the Bizzarro clone created by Lex Luthor, America's smartest scientist, for the first time, due to Bizzarro and an American nuclear sub crossing territorial waters, Superman punches him, accidentally activating Bizzarro's "telescopic x-ray vision." As a result, the submarine's crewmen get a severe case of radiation poisoning, and Superman comments: "birds became irradiated and dropped from the sky for fifty miles around."

* ''Film/TheBeastFromTwentyThousandFathoms'' is the TropeMaker, although the bomb isn't credited with creating the monster (a dinosaur that had been [[HumanPopsicle frozen in Arctic ice]]) so much as bringing it to the modern world (by melting said ice during a nuclear test).

* Creator/BertIGordon loved this, whether it's the giant grasshoppers from ''Film/BeginningOfTheEnd, Film/TheAmazingColossalMan'', ''Film/TheFoodOfTheGods'', the horrible cyclopic giant from ''TheCyclops'', or the giant ants who mind control people by farting pheromones on them from ''Film/EmpireOfTheAnts''.
* Creator/RogerCorman also had quite a few of them, like The Beast who Brings Death With Its Touch from ''Film/TeenageCaveman'', the three-eyed; horned; big-nosed mutant from ''TheDayTheWorldEnded'', the giant leeches from ''Film/AttackOfTheGiantLeeches'', and the titular creatures from ''Film/AttackOfTheCrabMonsters''.
* ''Film/TheIncredibleMeltingMan'', with an incredibly disgusting appearance done by RickBaker himself, who gets stronger as he melts ([[FridgeLogic How that works is anyone's guess]]).
** The movie started off as a parody, but the distributors wanted it to be a serious horror film and exorcised all of the comedy from the final cut.

* The original ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968'' includes a speculative {{Handwave}} about radiation from a returning space probe to Venus causing the ZombieApocalypse. This explanation is discarded in the subsequent ''Dead'' films, however.

* ''Atomic Shark'' features [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a shark mutated by a nuclear submarine wreck]], leaving it covered with radiation burns, [[PowerGlow glowing red]], and emitting enough heat to cause things around it to burst into flames. It's also more or less a swimming one megaton nuclear bomb that will detonate if killed.
** Just to make things stupider, some fish that the shark passed nearby become irradiated also, are caught and served up at a seafood restaurant, and cause both the kitchen and a diner to explode.

* Literature/{{Gone}}: The Gaiaphage was initially a virus [[{{Panspermia}} created by aliens to spread life]] which then crashed into a nuclear plant by meteor, which combined with the meteor killing a human and some of that person's DNA being incorporated into the Gaiaphage, led to it mutating and becoming a terrifying EldritchAbomination which feeds on nuclear fuel.

* Used seriously, but knowingly, in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3'' to explain why some of the animals are bigger (like the tree frogs) or more aggressive (like the gavials) than they are in real life. Para-Medic even compares it to Godzilla.

* ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'': when the Eds tell a bedtime story to Johnny, [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Ed's]] version begins with [[AbhorrentAdmirer the Kanker Sisters]] eating radioactive mashed potatoes and turning into [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever giants]].

* For the ultimate real-world inversion of this trope, check out what Wiki/TheOtherWiki has to say about ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans Deinococcus radiodurans.]]'' It's a microorganism (so an inversion on the size front, as well as the radiation-effects front) capable of surviving radiation doses ''a thousand times greater'' than what's required to kill a human being. It's a pain in the ass for nuclear reactor operations since it can survive in places where life really shouldn't (like cooling pipes), and it also causes problems with radiation sterilization to preserve food long-term. Being resistant to a whole pile of other things as well, it's known in the world of microbiology as "[[{{Pun}} Conan the Bacterium]]".

[[folder:Web Original]]

* Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish and some other creatures living in the lake near the Nuclear Power Plant from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons.''

When played straight, this is a case of ArtisticLicenseBiology. This becomes ''slightly'' more plausible if an organism is irradiated and its ''offspring'' are born as mutants, rather than some weird transformation happening to the irradiated organism itself. See also ToxicWasteCanDoAnything, RadiationImmuneMutants, a {{Required Secondary Power|s}} for some of these nasties. However, in most cases, high exposure to nuclear radiation usually results in death of most animals and humans (which makes post-apocalyptic nuclear war scenarios of fighting mutated creatures highly unrealistic). That being said, there have been several species that are able to adopt to nuclear radiation, as evident with Chernobyl where several animals manage to survive with minimum or no mutations (although radiation levels are still lethal for most humans without adequate protection).

** In "The Vault" Finn's past life Shoko is turned into a giant, horribly monster after falling into a radioactive river. However, it seems as though the process also caused death by radiation poisoning shortly thereafter, so it mostly just gave her [[JacobMarleyApparel a different-looking ghost]].

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/JimmyNeutron'' has Jimmy and his friends investigating a lake monster. Jimmy initially dismisses the claims, then spots his dad pouring radioactive waste into the lake, OhCrap.

When played straight, this is a case of ArtisticLicenseBiology. This becomes ''slightly'' more plausible if an organism is irradiated and its ''offspring'' are born as mutants, rather than some weird transformation happening to the irradiated organism itself. See also ToxicWasteCanDoAnything, RadiationImmuneMutants, a {{Required Secondary Power|s}} for some of these nasties. However, in most cases, high exposure to nuclear radiation usually results in death of most animals and humans (which makes post-apocalyptic nuclear war scenarios of fighting mutated creatures highly unrealistic). That being said, there have been several species that are able to adopt to nuclear radiation, as evident with Chernobyl (although radiation levels are still lethal for most humans without adequate protection).

When played straight, this is a case of ArtisticLicenseBiology. This becomes ''slightly'' more plausible if an organism is irradiated and its ''offspring'' are born as mutants, rather than some weird transformation happening to the irradiated organism itself. See also ToxicWasteCanDoAnything, RadiationImmuneMutants, a {{Required Secondary Power|s}} for some of these nasties.

* While we don't get mutations in the conventional sense, the nasty side of being exposed to something nuclear is that (human) parents are at a more increased risk of having children with birth defects, has a higher risk of developing cancers, or many other numerous health problems.

* The ComicBook/IncredibleHulk is an obvious example in-universe, along with the Abomination and the Leader.

* Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk and his gamma radiation-empowered friends and enemies would certainly qualify. At one end of the spectrum you've got lucky folks like Doc Samson and She-Hulk, who just look like impossibly buff people with green hair or skin, and at the other end you've got freaks like the Harpy and the Abomination. Their degree of self-control after their mutation varies from one individual to the next, too. There have been gamma-mutant animals over the years, too, (mainly dogs), but they tend not to survive beyond a single issue.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'', the Irradiated Dead are a SuperSoldier project GoneHorriblyRight, produced by a MadScientist replacing warriors' blood with radioactive sludge that she distilled from an [[ArchaeologicalArmsRace alien spaceship ruin]]. It makes them superhumanly powerful, gives them radioactive flesh and {{Zombie Puke|Attack}}, and [[TheCorruption converts their victims]] into more Irradiated Dead, but it turned them into [[ImAHumanitarian ravenous]] uncontrollable [[TheUndead undead]] rather than obedient minions for the scientist.

* Being inspired in part by 1950s sci-fi and taking place after a nuclear war, the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series has a bunch of these. Mutated animals include [[BigCreepyCrawlies giant roaches, mantises, scorpions (including the fearsome Albino Radscorpion), flies, ants]], geckos, [[RodentsOfUnusualSize and rats (both the regular kind and Mole Rats the size of large bulldogs)]], monstrous bears with hairless skin covered in lesions and tumors, and [[MultipleHeadCase deer and cows with two heads]]. Shall we mention that tougher varieties can shrug off minigun bursts and high explosives?

* The trouble here is that radiation-prompted mutations would happen randomly. Such mutations are overwhelmingly silent (cause no change in phenotype), deleterious (cause a reduction, sometimes drastic, in reproductive fitness), or lethal (cause the individual to die as an embryo, fetus, or infant). For a large macroscopic change to present itself in a living thing, a number -- usually a ''large'' number -- of genes have to be mutated in a specific pattern, with ''no'' severely deleterious or lethal mutations happening. The odds against this are [[{{Understatement}} rather large, we're afraid]]. Even this change is itself ''much'' more likely to be useless or deleterious, like having an extra pair of legs, than to create ''de novo'' even a mildly useful complete trait.

When played straight, this is a case of ArtisticLicenseBiology. Becomes ''slightly'' more plausible if an organism is irradiated and its ''offspring'' come out as mutants, rather than some weird transformation happening to the original organism itself. See also ToxicWasteCanDoAnything, RadiationImmuneMutants, a {{Required Secondary Power|s}} for some of these nasties.

When played straight, this is a case of ArtisticLicenseBiology. See also ToxicWasteCanDoAnything, RadiationImmuneMutants, a {{Required Secondary Power|s}} for some of these nasties.

* The {{ComicBook/Hulk}} is an obvious example in-universe, along with the Abomination and the Leader.

* The Spiritual Predecessor to ''[[VideoGame/Metro2033 Metro 2033]]'', [[VideoGame/STALKER]], also has its share of nuclear nasties.

* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' may well be the mascot for this trope. The [[Film/Godzilla1954 original incarnation]], whose backstory was used in most later movies, was originally a dinosaur mutated by an H-bomb.