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"They say the moon is made of green cheese!"
"No! It's made of cake, candy, and ice cream!"
— The unnamed lead characters of the Van Beuren Aesop's Fables cartoon "Silvery Moon" (1933)

One of the common Moon myths in Western culture is the saying that it is made of "green"note  cheese. There was never a time when this was a popular belief, though people sometimes talk as if there really was once a mythic culture credulous enough to believe it.

This can manifest in many ways in fiction, often for laughs. For example, the moon may be depicted as made of Cartoon Cheese (possibly even a shade of green), and it may even be inhabited by moon mice (since mice love cheese and all that).

In Video Games, this can overlap with Level Ate as applied to lunar settings.

See also The Man in the Moon, the other common Western folklore about the moon. The closest Eastern equivalent would be the Moon Rabbit, which traditionally pounds mochi.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • An old McDonald's ad featured Ronald McDonald attempting to reach the moon to collect cheese for the restaurant's burgers.
  • "The Power of Cheese" mused that for thousands of years, people believed the moon was made of cheese. We landed on the moon in 1969 and checked if this was true. It was not. (pause) We haven't been back since.
  • A Ritz Bits commercial from The '90s featured a box of Ritz crackers rocketing to the moon, in order to use the cheese to become Ritz Bits sandwiches...with cheese!

    Comic Books 
  • Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: Little Cheese is a mouse who gets shrinking powers from a chunk of lunar cheese that was being studied by his scientist father. Green cheese as Green Rocks.
  • Justice Society of America: In an unpublished 1940s story, a villain sends Johnny Thunder to get a piece of green cheese from the moon as one of several Impossible Tasks. Thanks to Johnny's Literal Genie, he manages to do it anyway.
  • Raggedy Ann: In one comic, Raggedy Ann and Andy (and a visiting astronaut doll) visit the moon and discover a crater full of green cheese while having to dodge real astronauts.
  • Superman: Mr. Mxyzptlk once turned the moon into cheese (and then back) as part of one of his pranks to annoy Superman.
  • UglyDolls: The comic "Once in a Blueberry Moon" plays the idea of the trope with a different food. Tray, all out of food, constructs a plan to travel to the moon, which is a blue one since she assumes it'll taste like blueberry pie. Eventually, she makes it to the moon, chomps out a bite, and reacts with disgust. It's not blueberry pie, it's raspberry!

    Comic Strips 
  • Felix the Cat: Present for a gag in a 1920s Sunday strip. Felix decides to help out a struggling cheese vendor by climbing a tower and pulling the moon directly out of the sky like it's a wheel of cheese, which the shopowner gratefully chops up and begins selling. Unfortunately, he is arrested shortly afterward — the crime being that he's selling Moonshine!

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • Wallace & Gromit: Their debut short film "A Grand Day Out" revolved around the characters travelling to the moon to get cheese. The second short film, "The Wrong Trousers", made a reference to it in a newspaper article mentioning how sales of "moon cheese" are soaring.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • A Brief History of New York by Washington Irving: Diedrich Knickerbocker assesses the morality of the conquest of America by suggesting what might happen if the men on the moon colonised the world. According to Knickerbocker, they would be irked by, above all other human precepts and practices, the belief that the moon is made of green cheese.
  • The Church Mice and the Moon, by Graham Oakley: Played with. A small camera-carrying rocket to the moon goes astray and ends up in the church instead. At one stage the scientists see a camera image of the mice (who were supposed to go up in the rocket) eating cheese and are overjoyed at this scientific discovery that the Moon is edible.
  • Cosmicomics: In the first short story, "The Distance of the Moon", the Moon is depicted as having once been close enough to Earth for people to regularly get cheese and milk from it. In this case, rather than the whole thing being made of dairy, the "milk" is a product of organic detritus from Earth being drawn to the Moon and fermenting there.
  • Hank the Cowdog: The 5th Audio Only book discusses this trope from the perspective of two (unintelligent) dogs. Drover believes the moon can't really be made out of cheese because cheese sinks. Instead, the moon must be a giant oatmeal cookie because oatmeal floats.
  • Mouse Math: Subverted in the picture book Lost in the Mouseum, in which Albert and his friend Leo observe a mouseum display of a large-size newspaper front page which carries the headline "MICE WALK ON MOON: One Small Step for Mouse: Astromice say moon is not made of Green Cheese!"
  • The Phantom Tollbooth: "THE MOON IS MADE OF GREEN CHEESE" is one of the half-baked ideas cooked up by the half bakery. The Spelling Bee eats the "CHEESE" part first.
  • "A 'Rounders' Story about the 'Green Cheese' Moon", by Kenneth Lans, revolves around the green cheese made by giant spiders which is transported to the moon by leaf-cutting ants. It is a clever story of how the earth was formed. By using a simple narrative, giant spiders, a greedy rat, an old wise turtle, jealous mountains, and the main character "green cheese", the readers are introduced to the mountains, and volcanic eruptions, rivers and tides, the desert and the moon and stars which form the Earth.
  • Space Mice, written by Lori Haskins Houran and illustrated by Priscilla Alpaugh, is about two very hungry mice who run out of cheese. They see the moon in the sky and determinedly build a rocket, then fly to the moon and eat their fill. They head back home to a boy's yard on Earth and the boy is stunned that the moon is now a crescent.
  • Summer in Orcus: One of the exotic cheeses available for sale at the Wheystation is a green cheese labeled "Fresh from the slopes of Mare Imbrium".
  • Tom and Jerry: The Astro-Nots sees Jerry decide to join a space training camp alongside other animals to go to the moon since he's a mouse and he's interested in visiting a place made entirely of cheese. He starts to have second thoughts near the end when he sees pictures of the moon that depict it exactly how it is in real life.
  • Xanth: The moon is described as being cheese on the near side, honey on the far side.
  • Yuck, A Love Story: The moon is made of (yucky-tasting) cheese.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Beverly Hillbillies: In "Jethro's Military Career", Jethro wants to blast off to the moon (by tying himself to a rocket!) so he could meet moon maidens and eat its green cheese.
  • Double Dare (1986) has an obstacle called "Moonwalk": a green tube with three entry/exit ports and colored gak representing the cheese. The cheese color depended on the taping day.
  • The Electric Company (1971): There is a sketch where Fargo North is an astronaut in space who receives orders to proceed to the moon. He protests that is impossible since the Moon is made of green cheese and his exasperated partner reminds him that he was told otherwise in training.
  • Even Stevens: Mentioned in the episode Influenza The Musical in the lyrics of Ren's song, saying that the Apollo astronauts were "surprised to find" that the moon was solid and not cheesy. She got an F for her science project, if you couldn't tell. Of course that episode was a dream.
  • Hey You! What If...: "The Moon Was Made Of Cheese?" shows what would happen if the moon really was made of cheese. It wouldn't stay cheese for long. The cheese would separate with water and gases boiling up to the surface to create oceans and an atmosphere.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Bear in the Big Blue House: Discussed in "Eat, Drink Juice and Be Merry". Luna tells Bear she doesn't know how that one got started, other than it proving folks always have food on their minds, even when they look up at her.

    Roleplay 
  • We Are Our Avatars: At some point, some of the group explored a moon made of cheese during their trip to 3E. They encountered Chaos Marines and Serpentera, who survived the encounter.

    Theatre 
  • Merrily We Roll Along: In the opening song of the second act, a long list of maybes includes "Maybe the moon is cheese".

    Video Games 
  • DuckTales: One level is the Moon, and one of its collectibles is a piece of cheese. Also, the boss there is a giant rat.
  • James Pond 3: The Big Bad hires rats to mine cheese from the moon, which also possesses abundant quantities of other dairy products.
  • King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride: During one chapter, the moon falls out of the sky into Falderal (a place based on wordplay and literal figures of speech) and it's revealed to be just a wheel of Cartoon Cheese. The player is tasked with finding some way of getting it back in the sky before they can leave the area.
  • Luck be a Landlord: Destroying a Moon symbol makes it break down into 3 Cheese symbols, which is mostly to reference to this trope as it's usually impractical to do this for gameplay gains.
  • Mad Rat Dead: Mad Rat sees a full moon made of yellow cheese at all times of the day. It's known as the Phantom Moon, it was created by Rat God, and it is her strongest minion.
  • Mario Kart: Super Circuit: The Cheese Land racetrack is set on the Moon, made of Cartoon Cheese, and inhabited by Mousers. Gravity is the same as everywhere else though. Averted when Cheese Land was brought back for Mario Kart 8, as the setting had been Ret Conned to resemble a desert with a clear blue sky above.
  • Mystery Case Files: In Millionheir, the secret of astronomer Lee O. Ryan is that he is addicted to the green cheese from which the moon is made and that he sold Phil's private book collection to be able to get the cheese back to Earth.
  • Within a Deep Forest and #modarchive story, by Nifflas, reference the trope (the former has an entire level set on the Lunar Cheese Extraction Factory), and one of his songs is also called "The Cheese in the Sky".
  • Noita: Successfully navigating the cloudscape and the work above it will allow you to reach the moon. The cheese can be eaten like many other substances in the game, and hollowing out the moon's center will reveal hidden runes.
  • Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat from Your Head to Your Feet: At one point, you have to find out what type of cheese the moon is made of. Depending on the game it can be either brie, cheddar, mozzarella, or Monterey Jack.
  • Power Bomberman: One of the stages is set on the moon, with the soft blocks being wedges of cheese.
  • Putt-Putt: Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon has a brief scene that shows a few mice astronaut kids gnawing on the observatory — much to their mom's dismay. "But it's made of green cheese, Mom!"
  • Revenge of the Titans: Many of the Moon Campaign's mission locations are named for different kinds of cheese, disguised with the nomenclature of actual locations on the moon—for example, Mare Crisium (Real Life) and Mare Caseum (in-universe).
  • Scribblenauts Unlimited: In the "Kana Craters" stage, which is set on the moon, Maxwell encounters a mouse who is convinced the moon contains cheese and asks for a tool to mine for it. If Maxwell gives the mouse a useful tool, like a pickaxe, the mouse will indeed strike cheese, earning Maxwell the Moon Gold shard.
  • Spyro 2: Season of Flame: The "Moon Fondue" level is comprised of green, cheese-like terrain and includes a race of mouse astronauts.
  • Worms: Many 2D games have a terrain setting that makes the ground out of cheese, with the implications of a cheesy moon.

    Webcomics 
  • Girl Genius: While it's unclear what the actual moon is made up of in the 'verse, there is an exhibit in London's observatory labeled Moon Cheese.

    Websites 

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Arthur:
    • In one episode, Arthur is trying to buy Moon Boots. He imagines himself hopping straight to the moon wearing these. He then grabs a bit of the moon and tastes it, saying that it's green cheese all right!
    • Arthur's Perfect Christmas: In the "Baxter Day" song, Buster Baxter and his Mom "stop by the moon just to make sure it's really made of cheese."
  • Beany and Cecil: "Beanyland" has the gang building a theme park on the moon — Dishonest John, already mining and selling the cheese there, tries to sabotage the place.
  • Bugs Bunny Builders: At the beginning of "K-9: Space Puppy", Daffy asks Petunia if either the sun or the moon is made out of cheese. Petunia tells him that neither one is, to which Daffy tells her that he'd like to know for sure by going out into space.
  • The Crumpets: In "My Family's Full of Losers", while the titular family play a game show where losers get ejected to the moon, their antagonistic Cranky Neighbor Ms. McBrisk hopes that the losers will like The Man in the Moon's green cheese. However, the moon (which is littered with trash) is not made of cheese.
  • The Flumps: Played with in "Moon Shot". Pootle Flump dreams that he travels to the Moon, where he meets a pair of aliens who have come to the Moon for a picnic. They're having green cheese sandwiches, they explain, which they had to bring with them because there's no green cheese on the Moon.
  • Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs: In one episode, Harry and Charlie are arguing over what the moon is made of. Harry thinks it's made out of cheese, while Charlie thinks it's made out of peanut butter. Among the dinosaurs, Sid tried to argue that it's made of rocks, while Trike said the moon is made of chocolate chip cookies. Both kids and the dinosaurs then head to Dinoworld and use a rocket to fly to the moon to see who's right. When they land, they discover that the moon is indeed made out of chocolate chip cookies and Trike boasts that he was right.
  • Let's Go Luna!: In " The Case of the Missing Cheese", Mia references this trope by calling Luna her favorite cheese in the sky.
  • MGM One Shot Cartoon: Little Buck Cheeser is about a group of young mice who build a rocket to go to the moon because it's made of cheese. It turns out in the end that the main character was only dreaming when the rocket comes crashing down after they fail to get cheese and attempt to fly home.
  • Mighty Mouse: An early Super Mouse cartoon has the hero cutting the moon slice by slice like a wheel of baby Swiss, letting them fall to Earth so his mice brethren can collect them.
  • The Milky Way: As "three little kittens who lost their mittens" explore a dreamland, space is made up entirely of dairy products (e.g., the Milky Way is made of milk, and the moon is made of cheese).
  • Popeye: In one cartoon Popeye, Olive, and Wimpy visit the moon, which is actually made of cheese, and populated by cheese-men. Unfortunately, the Big Cheese who rules the place is a cruel tyrant. (A dose of spinach later, and Popeye manages to turn him into crumbs.)
  • Ready Jet Go!: In "Mindy Turns Five", it is implied that Mindy told her teddy bear that the moon was made out of green cheese.
  • Rugrats (1991): In "Destination Moon", the babies get into an old trailer and think that they're astronauts on the moon. Phil and Lil find some old cheese in the garbage, and eat it (with no ill effects), thinking it's moon cheese.
  • Seven Little Monsters: "Bang! Zoom! To the Moon" has Seven ask if the moon is made of cheese. Three answers that it is actually made of dust and rocks.
  • Sheriff Callie's Wild West: The moon is made of blue cheese.
  • Sid the Science Kid: In "The Big Cheese", Sid and his mother find a website that says that the moon is made of glowing green cheese. From this, Sid eventually learns a lesson that you can't believe everything you read on the Internet.
  • The Smurfs (1981): "The Man in the Moon": There is cheese on the moon that Greedy helps himself to.
  • Tom and Jerry: "O Solar Meow" ends with Jerry on the moon, which has large quantities of cheese. Another short featured Tom and Jerry operating a lunar mining operation, where the caverns were made entirely of cheese.
  • T.U.F.F. Puppy: In "Toast of T.U.F.F.", Snaptrap's evil plan is to blow up the moon, since he thinks it's made of cheese, which he can't eat due to having a severe cheese allergy that causes him to swell up massively, which is ironic since he is a rat. When Ollie tries to talk him out of it by saying that scientists have proven that the moon is not made of cheese, Snaptrap denies it by saying that the real reason he's blowing up the moon is to get rid of the werewolves.
  • Van Beuren Studios: Subverted in the Van Beuren Aesop's Fables cartoon "Silvery Moon", 1933, where the lead character suggests the old myth that the moon is made of green cheese, but his girlfriend insists that the moon is actually made of cake, candy, and ice cream. Once they set foot on the moon, the latter is proven to be right.
  • The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: The ending portion of the live-action Framing Device for "Visitors from Outer Space" has Ronald suggest going to the moon and looking for cheese as a possible future space adventure.
  • Yogi's Ark Lark: While the Hanna-Barbera cast are in space, Pixie and Dixie run by with a slice of cheese. Huckleberry Hound sees them and asks where they found it. He then makes a realisation and glances at the moon. Sure enough...

 
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Moon Cheese

Wallace and Gromit try moon cheese, but can't decide what the taste reminds them of.

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