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"Don't look now, but there's a humongous fungus among us!"
Red Green, The Red Green Show

Mushrooms that are larger than average appear often in fantasy. While some actual mushrooms have been known to grow as large as soccer balls, in fiction mushrooms can grow to be as large as people, or even trees, leading to whole forests of nothing but mushrooms. Visually, these are most commonly classic wide-capped toadstools, often in vivid colors; less often, other forms such as cup fungi, shelf mushrooms, or puffballs may appear in giant-sized versions. Sometimes they are merely supposed to be an unusual flora used to convey the alien nature of a place, when unreal or differently sized trees, grass, and the like just wouldn't seem alien enough. Forests of giant mushrooms are a common sight on alien planets, and they're a staple Beneath the Earth where plants cannot grow. In more mundane environments, they often show up in swamplands or jungles. Other times, they are used to show corruption, an evil blight that is spreading across the land.

This can lead to Fridge Logic issues if an entire planetary ecosystem is based on this trope, as even giant fungi can't produce oxygen like plants can.

This does not apply to tiny people living in regular mushrooms, since in those instances it is the people that are unusual, not the mushrooms. This also does not apply to mushroom clouds, which are just mushroom-shaped. Nor does it apply to sapient fungi, since they are not necessarily part of the scenery, unless they are so humongous that they dominate the scene. See Mushroom Man for that sort of thing. Of course, if they live in giant mushrooms, that is another matter. If it's in a video game level, the mushrooms may be bouncy.

Named after the wordplay "a fungus among us".

See Towering Flower for its floral equivalent.


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Astra Lost in Space: The planet Shummoor has tree-sized mushrooms which feed on the local animals.
  • Moyashimon: In volume four, the legion of A. oryzae mold spores (which Sawaki can see and speak to) that have taken up residence in his dorm room bother him while he's reading a manga... and then combine into a giant oryzae and sit on him when he won't pay attention to them. Sawaki also sees large concentrations of other microorganisms as room-sized miasma blobs with big grinning faces.
  • Naruto: Kakashi Gaiden includes a forest with very large trees with mushrooms so large you can stand on them.
  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: The world has been overrun by massive fungus. In the manga, it's shown that one type of fungus can grow to a height of 30 meters in seconds.
  • Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: The eponymous demon castle has giant mushrooms growing in some of the areas around it. The fact that they are extremely poisonous doesn't dissaude Princess Syalis from trying to use one as a mattress.
  • Urusei Yatsura: At the end of his competition with Lum, Ataru pursues her in an area where giant (building-high) mushrooms have burst out of the ground.

    Asian Animation 
  • Nana Moon: Moon Haven is teeming with all sorts of unique, quirky flora, including giant mushrooms.

    Card Games 
  • Magic: The Gathering combines this with Mushroom Man in the Sporoloths, towering fungus creatures that came from Dominaria's far future during the Time Spiral crisis.
  • Magi-Nation: The entirety of the Underneath is covered in mushrooms, and most of the dream creatures in the area resemble them tremendously. Giant Korrits, Brubs, Vulbors, you name it, it's a mushroom. They make houses out of the things, too. Ormagon, possibly the most powerful dream creature in the game, is a colossal, ambulatory mushroom that completely decimated all of civilization in the Underneath in no time at all. For scale, the little thing at its feet is a CITY.
  • Munchkin has the Fungus, which is already rather large, but players are encouraged to play the "Humongous" card on it (by giving it a +15 on top of the card's normal +10) to get the Humongous Fungus (which one must never truffle with).

    Comic Books 
  • Star Wars: Doctor Aphra: The surface of Skako is populated by forests of mushrooms the size of trees.
  • Superman:
  • The Incal: The Johns find Tortuga Island overgrown with giant mushrooms.
  • Spirou & Fantasio: In Le prisonnier du Bouddha (Buddha's prisoner) and Alerte aux zorkons, under the influence of the GAG device and an accelerated evolution's law, giant plants grow in the count 's garden, and in the jungle surrounding Champignac, respectively. Which include huge mushrooms.
  • Tintin: The Shooting Star involves a rocky meteorite the size of a small island that mysteriously sprouted mushrooms and other creatures that quickly grew to giant size and exploded.
  • Yoko Tsuno: La Forge de Vulcan has a few pages set in a forest of tree-sized mushrooms, stated to be brought by the Vineans from their world. They have not returned since, but fit the pattern for other Vinean lifeforms of being our familiar wildlife (very well-drawn), modified in a single respect (size, colour, number of limbs) or combined together.
  • Zero: In the future depicted in the comic, gigantic mushrooms are shown growing out of the ocean.

    Comic Strips 
  • Little Nemo: One page finds Nemo walking through a forest of giant mushrooms so utterly fragile that they all collapsed when Nemo stumbled against one.
  • Mutts: In one strip, after a damp spring, Earl and Mooch (a normal-sized dog and cat) find themselves walking among mushrooms taller than a human being.

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Ambergris: These things sprouted from the ground around the city of Ambergris sometimes in mere hours in Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen: The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, as foreshadowing to the mysterious incident known as the Silence where two thirds of the city's population mysteriously vanished overnight without a trace, along with all the mushrooms. In the sequel novel Finch, the city is overtaken by the Graycaps, and their giant mushrooms grow to the size of buildings and periodically spew out spores that are delicious and nutritious, but also contain extremely addictive drugs and are used for population control.
  • Book of Brownies has mushrooms from a magic forest large enough for the brownies to be used as umbrellas. They later use a larger shroom as a boat.
  • The Death Gate Cycle: While very deep down in the miles-high jungles of Pryan, Roland, Rega and Paithan come across a massive fungus jutting out of one the trees, large enough to serve as a temporary support for their caravan.
  • The First Men in the Moon: Massive fungi are encountered that, when eaten, induce euphoria and intoxication.
  • The Forgotten Planet: Murray Leinster carefully justifies 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.
  • The Fungus features an experimental enzyme that causes fungi to rapidly grow out of control and take over the city of London.
  • Gotrek & Felix: While in the Chaos Wastes in Daemonslayer, the crew of the Spirit of Grungni encounters a forest of tree-sized fungi in a rainbow of sickly shades and dripping with toxic slime, as an example of the twisted and unnatural life found there.
  • How the Marquis Got His Coat Back introduces The Mushroom, which has a tribe of people tied to it by Symbiotic Possession.
  • Humanx Commonwealth: There's a scene where Born, Losting and the giants use fungal stalks to build a raft and traverse the Lower Hell of Midworld.
  • Jacob's Ladder Trilogy: In Chill, the second novel, there are several levels inside the Generation Ship where massive insects and fungus have developed in humid darkness resulting from wonky life support—two characters make camp on a shelf the size of a mattress.
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth: While exploring the shores of an immense underground sea, the main characters find a grove of mushrooms forty feet high and with caps equally broad.
  • The Marvellous Land of Snergs: While wandering around a subterranean maze, Gorbo, Joe and Sylvia arrive in a cavern full of monstrous, towering wild mushrooms.
  • 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.)
  • Peter Pan: The secret chimney of the Lost Boys' hideout is concealed by a giant mushroom. Unfortunately Captain Hook picks that mushroom to sit down on for a rest while searching for them.
  • Pettson and Findus: 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.
  • The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks: Played with in book 4, where it's mentioned that scientists discovered an entire underground fungus that shoots up normal-sized honey-colored mushrooms all over the place. The fungus as a whole is said to weigh one hundred and ten tons, cover thirty-seven acres, and be at least fifteen hundred years old. This is actually true.
  • Tunnels has a massive fungus that grows inside the Pore. Its shelf-like protrusions can provide a soft landing for some of those unfortunate enough to fall in.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Doctor Who: Not only are there giant toadstools on Mechanus — they're walking, ejaculating giant toadstools.
  • Extraterrestrial (2005): The forest floor of swamps that carpet the planet Aurelia is dotted with large mushrooms, ranging in size from ones the size of a person to a few that come close to matching the gulpogs' nine-meter height.
  • Land of the Giants: The mushrooms are normal size for their world, but humongous to the tiny earthlings stranded there. In "The Unsuspected", exposure to giant mushroom spores cause Steve to go crazy and he captures his fellow shipmates one by one.
  • The Muppet Show: In the John Denver episode, there's a Running Gag about Gonzo's sudden fear that his mushroom collection is plotting against him. As he tells this to Denver, large mobile mushrooms start to appear around them. Gonzo promptly flees. Denver starts to sing "Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen", and the mushrooms attack him in disgust.
  • Star Trek: Discovery has Prototaxites stellaviatori: although the mushrooms themselves are regular-sized, their mycelia stretch across The Multiverse and form a unique Subspace dimension called the "mycelial network".
  • Ultra Series:
    • Ultraman Taro: In one episode, Taro battles giant a mushroom Kaiju called Mushra that can transform people into Mushroom Men.
    • Ultraman Dyna: Forgas is an intelligent Fungus Humongous consisting of a city-sized toadstool and an even bigger network of mycelium underneath. This network allows it to create Kaiju and humanoid offshoots to interact with the characters as well as meld itself with the Internet to increase its vastness and intellect. Appropriately, its episode is titled "The Biggest Monster on Earth".
    • Ultraman Neos: Backacoon is another fungus-based monster, whose fungal spores reanimates a dead kaiju called Backacoon as it's backup during it's assault on earth.
  • The X-Files: "Field Trip" features a Monster of the Week which is a giant underground fungal complex ; the nonsentient growth sucks down its human victims and doses them with powerful hallucinogens to keep them docile while it slowly digests them.

    Tabletop Games 
  • 2300 AD: On the planet Aurore, there are mushrooms that grow up to four meters high.
  • Call of Cthulhu
    • Supplement Terror from the Stars, adventure "The Temple of the Moon". The Fungi from Yuggoth have a giant cave complex beneath the mountains of Peru filled with a disgusting array of giant fungi imported from their home planet.
    • Supplement Dreamlands boxed set, booklet "The Dreamlands". In the Dreamlands there's a fungus forest atop a great cliff at the southern edge of the Peaks of Thok in the Underworld. It contains obscene giant fungi.
  • Carcosa: Weird Science-Fantasy Horror Setting. The introductory adventure "Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer" has a Grand Fungus Forest. It includes fungi of all sizes, up to that of a towering tree.
  • Central Casting: Dungeons. In the Herbalist's Laboratory section, one of the illustrations depicts a room filled with mushrooms and other fungi that are taller than an adult human being.
  • Dying Earth: In the 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.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • The Beastlands, an Outer Plane representing nature and the untamed wilderness, has groves of giant mushrooms.
    • Several of Gary Gygax's early modules have giant mushrooms and other fungi, including D3 Vault of the Drow, EX1 Dungeonland, S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil.
    • In Module Q1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, one of the chaotic events that can happen inside Lolth's giant spider ship is the sudden appearance of a grumpy two-foot high toadstool that will argue with the PC party.
    • Forgotten Realms
      • Module FRQ2 Hordes of Dragonspear has a cave with a forest of giant mushrooms.
      • Supplement Elminster's Ecologies, booklet "The Settled Lands". Giant mushrooms grow near the edge of the Hullack Forest.
      • The Great Fungus Araumycos is a colossal organism that covers hundreds of miles of caverns in the Underdark. It's also sapient and endowed with tremendous Psychic Powers, which causes some trouble when it tries an Assimilation Plot on the population of the Underdark.
      • Menzoberranzan boxed set. The large title underground city of the Drow (dark elves) is separated from the plateau of Qu'ellarz'orl by a forest of gigantic mushrooms as large as an ogre (over 9 feet tall).
    • Polyhedron magazine #140 article "Underdark Campaign Journal". Raven's Deep is an underground encampment near the city of Ravens Bluff. One of its features is fungus beds that hold giant mushrooms, some of which are taller than normal trees.
    • Advanced D&D 1st Edition supplement Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. One of the campaign setting's underground areas is the Fungus Forest, which has giant mushrooms that grow up to 30 feet high.
    • Dragon magazine:
      • Issue #32 module "Fell Pass". The Red Fungus Glade has fungi up to eight feet in diameter, the Gray Fungus Glade features fungi up to fifteen feet high, and the White Fungus Glade has gigantic toadstools.
      • Issue #211 article "Fungi of the Underdark". The Trillimac mushroom grows up to 5 feet high and Timmask mushrooms grow two feet high and two feet wide.
    • Dungeon magazine:
      • Issue #5 adventure "Hirward's Task". In Hirward's underground complex, some of the fungi in the Fungus Forest Room grow more than 8 feet high.
      • Issue #20 adventure "The Ship of Night". In the underground dwarven fortress of Hammerkeep, the Garden is filled with giant fungi, such as puffballs as large as boulders and large tree-like umbrella mushrooms.
      • Issue #22 adventure "The Dark Forest". An underground cave is filled with a forest of 20 foot high grey mushrooms.
      • Issue #24 adventure "Thunder Under Needlespire". The underground gnome town of Burrock has a cavern filled with gigantic edible fungi, and near the Dimglow underground river are mushrooms that grow 6 feet high.
      • Issue #30 adventure "Thiondar's Legacy". While exploring under the mountain, the Player Characters will encounter a gigantic white mushroom more than ten feet high and 8 feet wide.
      • Issue #45 adventure "An Artist's Errand". The Food Stores room in the Oloth Kulggen castle has troughs filled with towering growths of great white mushrooms.
      • Issue #52 adventure "Welcome to the Krypthome". One of the rooms in the underground caverns has mushrooms that are up to four feet high and four feet wide.
      • Issue #60 adventure "Shards of the Day". The lost dwarven city of Dylvwyllynn has former garden caverns filled with large tree-like fungi, including giant toadstools and mushrooms.
      • Issue #81 adventure "Khazefryn". The duergar monastery's fungi garden has very large mushrooms.
    • White Dwarf magazine #39 adventure "The Daughter of Danu". In the goblins' underground lair, the main tunnel has mushrooms that are up to several feet high.
    • Basic D&D modules:
      • B1 In Search of the Unknown has the Garden Room, which includes a grove of giant fungi with stems like tree trunks and caps 8 feet wide. The cover has an illustration of a PC party exploring it (original version and later version).
      • B8 Journey to the Rock. The cavern of the chameleon men has mushrooms as tall as houses.
    • Expert Set D&D modules:
      • O2 Blade of Vengeance. The flitterlings' Magic Mushroom ring has a large red and blue spotted mushroom in its center.
      • X8 Drums on Fire Mountain has a volcanic cavern with a fungus forest, some of which were the size of a small tree.
    • There's a layer of the Abyss devoted to fungi. The capital city is carved out of miles-high mushrooms.
    • Slave Lords modules A1-A4
      • Module A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords. The PCs will encounter an underground lake. Nearby is a forest of large (6-7 feet tall) mushrooms which give off an eerie luminescence.
      • Module A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords. The Mushroom Garden is filled with mushrooms that are up to 9 feet tall and have trunks as thick as a tree. The Fungus Forest is filled with giant mushrooms and toadstools and huge puffball fungi.
    • Ravenloft module Thoughts of Darkness. An underground cavern inside the mind flayer complex is filled with large mushrooms and other fungi.
    • Dragonlance module DL14 Dragons of Triumph. In the tunnels under the Plains of Neraka, there is a cavern filled with giant mushrooms and other types of fungi.
    • WG7 Castle Greyhawk.
      • Level 8 "Of Kings and Colonels". There's a large cavern holding fungus forest with giant mushrooms and tall, stalk-like growths.
      • Level 12 "Where the Random Monsters Roam". One room has fungal growths about 10 feet tall.
    • 2nd Edition AD&D Planescape setting boxed set Planes of Law. In the plane of Mechanus, the realm of the myconid deity Psilofyr is a 400 mile wide cavern. The dim purple light comes from giant mushrooms that cover the floor of the cave like a carpet. Psilofyr's palace is a gigantic mushroom in the middle of a lake.
    • Mayfair Games' AD&D-compatible Role Aids supplements and adventures
      • Supplement Dwarves. Mushrooms up to 12 feet tall are used for food and carved into furniture and musical instruments.
      • The adventure Swordthrust had an indoor garden with mushrooms up to 20 feet high.
    • Zuggtmoy is a Demon Lord with dominance over fungus, and that's kind of a problem for her; very few mortals are interested in worshipping fungus. This led her to be used as an Unwitting Pawn, by the dark force behind the Temple of Elemental Evil, who tricked her into attracting worshippers, thinking their devotion was granting power to her. In truth, the Temple's true patron was Tharizdun, and Zuggtmoy ended up a prisoner in the dungeons of "her" own temple for years because of her mistake, and even after escaping, she had lost much of the power she had in the first place. (Kind of hard to feel sorry for a demon, but still, she was clearly the Lesser of Two Evils.)
    • Gygax magazine #3, adventure "The Marmoreal Tomb of Garn Pat'uul": One cave has mushrooms that are twelve feet high. If cut down or otherwise harmed, they will regrow within a day.
    • La Notte Eterna: As much of Neir's plant life has died off from a lack of sunlight during the eternal night, forest of massive bioluminescent mushrooms have sprouted up to fill in the biological niche that the trees once served.
  • 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.
    • The cavern systems that wind beneath much of Creation take on elemental aspects when approaching the Elemental Poles much like the surface world does. In the East, where the influence of the Pole of Wood covers the surface with endless stretches of immense trees, the caves become filled with forests of giant mushrooms.
  • Gamma World adventure GW1 Legion of Gold. The buggem lair has a room filled with a fungus garden made up of tall, shrub-like fungi.
  • Gods of the Fall: Towering fungus spires nine meters tall and higher fill much of the Second Deep.
  • GURPS Space Atlas 4: Shiva is a jungle planet which has huge toadstool-like fungi, some of which are as high as a man.
  • Hollow Earth Expedition:
    • One of the more exotic surface terrain types in the Hollow Earth is forests of towering mushrooms.
    • In the supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth, these are common in Moletown, the underground cave city of the Molemen. The cave that holds the Temple of the Worm has huge forests of phosphorescent fungi, and the fungus farm has fungi that achieve towering heights.
  • Judges Guild:
    • In the 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.
    • In the supplement The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, two of the rooms in the titular fortress have giant mushrooms growing in them.
  • Numenera:
    • The Skelirroth Fleet is home to fungi called growlers that can grow to towering heights in the spore forests of the great vessels, or to arm height in the dark recesses of other compartments.
    • Hyperfungus are tall, spotted mushrooms that sprout after certain rainstorms on the shores of Augh-Chass, sometimes gaining as much as a foot per day. When they reach about two metres, they begin to shake violently, releasing thousands of tiny spores into the air.
  • Paranoia XP supplement The Underplex. The hidden sector Mescalinzan is filled with fungal growths, including puffball mushrooms with caps a meter thick.
  • Rolemaster Shadow World supplement Sky Giants of the Brass Stair. In the Brass Stair's underground caverns, the Hall of the Forest Wyrm has fungi and mushrooms more than 8 feet high.
  • RuneQuest
    • In the Trollpak supplement, the Sporewood is an underground Mushroom Wood with a variety of immense fungi, including toadstools.
    • In the adventure "The Black Broo of Dyskund" in White Dwarf magazine #51, in the underground Dyskund Caverns, the Chaos Garden has fungi and mushrooms that grow up to twenty meters high.
  • 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.
  • The Strange: Vun is a large city of towering fungal stalks mixed with the more traditional organimer construction.
  • Traveller
    • 2300 AD 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.
  • 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.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade: Some members of the Nosferatu clan keep gardens of mushrooms, some of which can grow to the size of trees. These can be grown for aesthetic purposes, or for defending their havens.
  • Varanae: In the supplement Monstrum 1, the Red Mushroom is colored a dull brick-red and can grow up to 5 feet high.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The Sporehollows, located within the Flamescar Plateau of the Realm of Aqshy, are a series of caverns filled with forests of massive, multicoloured fungi that spew mind-altering spores.

    Video Games 
  • Against the Storm: The Marshlands biome is covered in mushroom trees called mushwoods that yield wood because they're covered in "leathery bark". There's also a chance for a Forbidden Glade in certain biomes to contain a massive mushroom that can be harvested functionally forever.
  • American McGee's Alice and its sequel Alice: Madness Returns. Including seemingly giant flesh-eating mushrooms. Technically, the mushrooms are normal-sized; before encountering them, Alice is shrunken to a very small size.
  • ANNO: Mutationem: At Freeway 42's Abandoned Laboratory, the passage is blocked by huge mushrooms emitting a Deadly Gas that'll affect Ann with a poison ailment until she activates the ventilation system to dispel the gas.
  • Animal Crossing:
    • The Mushroom furniture set — which is found disguised as regular fungi in early games and is crafted using regular fungi in and after Pocket Camp — consists of mushrooms large enough to serve as furniture items. The smallest, the low mushroom stool, is "only" the size of a small chair; the mushroom table is only half the height of the player but a good couple meters wide; the tallest item, the mushroom parasol, is the same height as the games' trees. One item, the mushroom lamp, is also luminescent.
    • Animal Crossing: New Horizons: The Mario furniture set includes small and large mushroom platform based on the ones in Super Mario Bros., with flat and colorful caps and pole-straight stems. The short ones are roughly the height of the player, while the tall ones are the height of trees.
  • Apsulov: End of Gods: Jotunheim has a whole copse of giant mushrooms at its entrance, and they grow in spots all over the place, with the smallest reaching up to your waist and the largest slightly taller than you.
  • Asteroid 5251: One area contains a bunch of giant mushrooms made out of glowstone. The biggest one even has a little house inside.
  • Aveyond, in a specifically Wonderland themed bit of land.
  • Awakening: The gnomes' Sacred Toadstool is a massive glowing mushroom several stories tall.
  • Cave Story has a number of malicious mushrooms infesting the Mimiga graveyard. Some of them are larger than humans.
  • Civilization: Beyond Earth: One of the selectable biome types for planets is Fungal, in which, instead of plants, 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.
  • Curious Expedition: One of terrain types is giant mushroom forest. Aside from looking weird, it is one of the easiest tiles to pass through, similar to a light jungle.
  • Dark Souls has mushrooms broad enough to be used as platforms in lower areas of The Great Hollow, as well as the mostly harmless Mushroom Children (watch that charging headbutt though) and the obscenely strong and durable Mushroom Parents.
  • Diablo (1997) has a quest line ("The Black Mushroom") where the player must retrieve a larger-than-average black mushroom. The blacksmith, Griswold, exaggerates its size by calling it "A huge, gargantuan, swollen, bloated mushroom". It wasn't so big.
  • Deep Rock Galactic: One of the biomes found in the alien caverns the players are tasked with mining is the Fungus Bogs. The mushrooms growing there go from simply large to enormous caps that can hold up the entire team and take three pickaxe hits to break, like the hardiest of terrain.
  • Donkey Kong:
    • Donkey Kong 64: 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.
    • Donkey Kong Country Returns has the level Springy Spores which, as the name suggests, revolves around Donkey and Diddy hopping between large bouncy mushrooms. One of the minecart levels has these mushrooms as well.
    • Donkey Kong Jungle Beat: Exceptionally large mushrooms are found throughout the game, which stretch out to serve as bouncy platforms when you clap near them.
  • Don't Starve: The extensive cave systems that the player can explore are home to scattered groves of mushtrees, tree-sized mushrooms that shine with faint blue, red or green light, depending on which color variation they come in. Since the caves are otherwise completely lightless, and since in Don't Starve walking into the darkness is an excellent way of dying a horrible death, mushtree groves provide invaluable oases of relative safety.
  • Dragon Blaze 2000 have giant mushrooms in the forest levels. Towering fungi shows up only in the background, while occasionally sentient shrooms will uproot themselves to attack the player from close range.
  • Dragon Quest V: In the land of Faerie Lea, overgrown bracket fungis are used as stair steps.
  • Dragon Tavern: One of the exotic items a player can find in the vast forests of Stangwood are the Huge Stangwood Mushrooms, which are worth thousands of gold coins.
  • Driven Out: When confronting a Necromancer for the first time, he teleports the main character to a land of giant mushrooms swarming with giant insects.
  • Dust: An Elysian Tail: In the Cirromon Caverns, where the big mushrooms infrequently drop liquid on Dust; sometimes they heal him (blue), most of the time they spray poison (red).
  • Dwarf Fortress has subterranean forests with "trees" like tower-caps and fungiwood, that are so large that they function as a source of lumber. An honorable mention also goes to the Plump Helmet, your staple food crop; by implication they could be anything up to the size of a television set.
  • Several locations in the EarthBound (1994) ROM Hack 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.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Morrowind takes place on the island of Vvardenfell (a district within the titular province) which has giant tree-sized mushrooms growing throughout the island. Great House Telvanni settlements consist almost exclusively of magically-grown Mushroom Houses, while the Telvanni magisters themselves live in gigantic mushroom Mage Towers. One progressive Telvanni wizard even gets the idea to blend Imperial and Telvanni styles together, creating the oddest mushroom infested keep ever. Many homes all over the island have potted mushrooms and other fungus as decorations.
    • The Shivering Isles expansion to Oblivion likewise features giant mushrooms.
    • Skyrim:
      • The land of Skyrim itself is mostly mushroom-free, with one very notable exception—the massive cavern called Blackreach, which contains huge glowing mushrooms along with veins of Soul Gems and ancient Dwemer ruins.
      • The giant mushrooms of Morrowind make a return in the Dragonborn DLC. Tel Mythrin, a Telvanni tower in Solstheim, is a more traditional mushroom shape compared to the towers we saw in Morrowind.
  • Eternal Daughter: Giant mushrooms are found in the jungles. Some can be jumped on; others, identical in appearance, will open their maws and bite you if you land on them.
  • EverQuest: In the "Shadows of Luclin" expansion, the moon's dark side is literally that — it never gets light. There are groves of mushrooms there, and even a giant mushroom rainforest.
  • Fallen London: The series takes place in a huge, dark underground cavern, and giant mushrooms consequently turn up a lot as scenery.
    • Sunless Sea: 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.
      • Demeaux Island is completely covered in a thick jungle of tree-sized mushrooms, providing cover to pirates, ambulatory carnivorous mushrooms of somewhat more reasonable size and other monstrous predators. The Iron and Misery Company has established an outpost on its shores to harvest the fungi — the bolegus mushroom-trees make good lumber. The logging has little impact on the jungle — the mushrooms grow back almost as fast as they're cut down.
      • The biggest mushroom of them all is the Uttershroom, which is large enough to have a small village on top of its cap. It's also surrounded by large mushrooms that at at least as big as your ship.
    • Sunless Skies: The town of Hybras is located in an area of the Reach covered with titanic growths of fungus and mould. 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.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy X had Mushroom Rock Road, but the cliffs just resembled large mushrooms. Halfway there, at any rate.
    • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles had a dungeon called the Mushroom Forest, with giant mushrooms taking the place of trees.
  • Future Cop: L.A.P.D.: One of the levels features a part where you have to move across gigantic mushrooms growing in the sewers you're in to avoid getting damaged by corrosive fog covering the floor.
  • Gears of War 2 has mushrooms that are slightly shorter than Fenix, and some giant puffballs that might be fungi.
  • Grim Dawn: Some underground areas are populated with large blue-glowing mushrooms.
  • Guild Wars Factions: The Echovale Forest features giant petrified mushrooms that are more than ornamental- they emit spores that afflict you with the annoying 'Stone Spores' condition.
  • Hive Jump: One biome features large mushrooms, some of which can be jumped on to launch you upwards while others will instead spit purple Deadly Gas at you.
  • Illusion of Gaia had a level consisting of huge mushrooms connected by big green vines. Because everything looked pretty much the same, it was something of That One Level.
  • illWill (2023) have you crossing a copse of giant, tree-sized shrooms in the forest, all which have faces on the barks. Sometimes, the faces can regurgiate poisonous liquid which damages you.
  • Journey to the Savage Planet: Areas in the Itching Fields have big mushroom trees and forests, notably the Festering Chasm and the Fungi of Si'ned VII. Large mushrooms are also evident in other places.
  • Katamari Damacy has mushrooms of many different sizes that can be rolled up. This makes sense.
  • Kirby's Epic Yarn: Mushroom Run contains many huge, bouncy mushrooms.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: There are 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.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The Depths, a vast lightless underworld running beneath Hyrule, are covered in forests of alien flora that include enormous mushroom-like growths, sprouting many distinct caps in a manner similar to branches and often much taller than surface trees.
  • Lineage 2 has giant mushrooms in various areas of the world, some man-sized, others are big as buildings. In particular is the Sea of Spores, which in addition to being inhabited by giant fungi of many varieties (including ones that attack you), is filled in every direction by a literal fog (or snow) of spores from them. It is so bad that there is a giant domed forcefield to keep the damned thing from spreading. One wonders how the little dragons breathe or the stone golems don't get broken apart by fungus growing all over them. However, aside from this being a fairly good place for low 40's to grind and being part of a class change quest, this area is almost entirely ignored. That is, if you don't count Orfen, the fifty foot six-armed spider queen that hides in there.
  • Little Nemo: The Dream Master had giant mushrooms in the first level. As mentioned above, they also appear in the source material.
  • The Lord of the Rings Online: Giant glowing mushrooms illuminate the Foundations of Stone in the underground halls of Moria.
  • Marco & the Galaxy Dragon has a brief scene set on the Energy Planet, where towering mushrooms dominate the landscape.
  • Meadow: Some of the collectible mushrooms are as big as a wolf. The shelf mushroom platforms on the central tree are also big enough to support three or four animals.
  • Mega Man Network Transmission: The Garden Comp stage resembles a sprawling forest with lots of tall mushrooms obscuring some of the game's enemies.
  • Metroid:
    • Metroid Prime: 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.
    • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: According to the developers, the orange, bulbous, spiky growths on Bryyo's Thorn Jungle area are mushrooms.
  • Minecraft:
    • Tree-sized giant mushrooms replace regular trees in the Mushroom Fields biome, a rare area found on islands where the ground is covered by mycelium instead of grass, and also home to "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 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 adds two 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. Notably, these fungi actually give planks when mined despite being mushrooms and not trees (although they differ by being nonflammable, unsurprisingly, since they grow in the Nether).
  • Mintiest: The Ethereal mod adds a purple-grassed mushroom biome. 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.
  • Ni no Kuni has the mushrooms in the golden grove which you must use magic to grow to massive size. They get used as stairs to advance deeper into the forest.
  • Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom features a similar situation to its predecessor. In the forest of Niall you cast spells on the mushrooms growing on trees making them much larger and opening paths deeper into the forest.
  • Ōkami: An early dungeon has some teeny tiny mushrooms. They grow huge enough to jump on when exposed to sunlight (which, of course, would have the opposite effect on real mushrooms).
  • Paladins: The town of Brightmarsh is a small village hidden in a lush marsh where they have giant mushrooms in place of trees.
  • Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus introduces Habirao Forbidden District on the Wutai Planet of Neudaiz, a place where mushrooms have grown massive due to a reaction from photonic energies there.
  • Phoning Home has Mytox, which are mushrooms roughly as big as ION. They're a ingredient in Item Crafting.
  • Pikmin Bloom: Some landmarks are represented by clusters of massive mushrooms that the player must send their Pikmin to destroy for rewards.
  • Pokémon Sword and Shield: Glimwood Tangle is a dark, wooded area where most of the light comes from bioluminescent Fungus Humongous.
  • Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy: Played with in Phong Gi, a dense jungle and one of the playable locations. There are many mushrooms that are part of the local wildlife, and the place's name is etymologically derived from fungi; however, the enormous mushroom-like formations are actually man-made buildings where the locale's inhabitants are. Said people, in turn, also have large afros shaped like mushrooms, except for their chieftain Morel, who has been in a dire mood lately (it's believed that he's ill or something, but Layton later discovers that it's because the old man's eyesight has deteriorated, so a new pair of glasses are made to recity that).
  • Rayman: Giant mushrooms are a common environmental feature in the series, particularly the Canopy level in Rayman 2: The Great Escape.
  • Repton: The deadliest peril in Repton 3 is the rapidly growing fungus. Unless you block it off, it can cover entire levels.
  • Runes of Magic, located just outside the Elf starter town and in a cave in the Human starter village.
  • Satisfactory: The flora of the Blue Crater, one of the biomes of the alien world you explore, consists almost entirely of fungi of various sizes, some of which are large enough to serve as tree analogues. The latter appear in a few other biomes as well, such as the adjacent Southern Forest as well as the Spire Coast.
  • The Sea Will Claim Everything: Tree-sized mushrooms can be found on the Isle of the Moon.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island: The Caverns of Meat have mushrooms that are slightly shorter than a person, and really wide.
  • The Secret World: The forests of Transylvania are home to at least two large colonies of gigantic fungus, one in the power station, the other in the water treatment plant. Several species here are mobile and extremely dangerous, requiring you to head in and destroy them before they start endangering the locals.
  • Septerra Core. Shell 7's Mold Forest, although the game doesn't say whether or not these are actual fungi or oversized plants convergently evolved to look exactly like giant fungi.
  • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: 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.
  • Solatorobo has Visla, a continent full of humongous fungus and Big Creepy-Crawlies.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: Frequently present:
  • Space Harrier: In Stages 3 (Amar) and 10 (Minia), giant psychedelic mushrooms fly at you at great speed.
  • Space Quest V: The Next Mutation: Planet Thrakus has no apparent bottom, just giant fungus.
  • Splatter Master have giant toadstools in the third stage which serve as platforms to help you reach hidden power-ups or bonuses. The bottom of these toadstools can release poisonous spores however, you'll need to be careful as you approach.
  • Spyro the Dragon:
    • Spyro: Year of the Dragon: Moneybags sells Jack magic "seeds" that can spawn giant mushrooms in Charmed Ridge.
    • The Legend of Spyro: The first two games have first levels that take place in the dragonflies' swamp, which is filled with gigantic glowing mushrooms.
  • Star Trek Online: Some of the randomly generated planetary surfaces are basically giant mushrooms.
  • Star Wars:
  • Stardew Valley: During the Fall season a Mushroom Tree can randomly spawn on the player's farm. They have a white-spotted red cap atop a white stem and are as tall as a normal tree. Chopping down or tapping the tree yields mushrooms rather than wood or a sap product.
  • Stop the Darkness: The Mushroom Forest and Mushroom City structures are big enough to be comparable to trees, lighthouses and skyscrapers.
  • Stormland have giant shrooms growing in the forest stages, where the fungi are as tall as the trees. You even use some as hopping platforms at one point.
  • Subnautica has the appropriately-named Mushroom Forest biome (though the fungi there are flat discs rather than "mushroom shaped"), as well as the Jellyshroom Cave, which has glowing pink mushrooms as large as houses.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario Bros.: 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.
    • Super Mario Sunshine: Giant mushrooms large enough to stand on can be found all over Pianta Village.
    • Mario Kart: The Mushroom Gorge course in Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart Tour, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has mushrooms big enough to drive a car on the caps.
    • Mario Party: 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).
  • Tales of the Abyss has a hidden area known as Mushroom Road that is covered with giant mushrooms.
  • Terraria features the "mushroom" biome complete with tree-like mushrooms which can be harvested. If you manage to find some Mushroom Grass Seeds, you can create a mushroom biome on the surface (which is also the only way to attract the Truffle NPC).
  • Tass Times In Tonetown, an early Activision game, has these in a few sections of the forest maze. Linger too long and the spores can suffocate you. Of course, if you take a hunk of it, it's used to solve a puzzle later. You can also eat it. If you do, the game tells you that you Timothy Leary walks in, laughs at you, and disappears.
  • Tomba!: Early in the game, you encounter a forest of giant mushrooms and flowers. Very much That One Level as you can easily be afflicted by nasty status ailments with limited means of curing them, it's crawling with bats of both the Goddamned and Ledge variety, and nearly all the related sidequests are utter nightmares. At least it looks really cool.
  • Trinity has a land of giant mushrooms, each representing one nuclear weapon's explosion.
  • Ultima VIII: Mushrooms the size of trees are a common sight on Pagan.
  • Unearthed: An underground area has several gigantic mushrooms scattered about.
  • Uru: Ages Beyond Myst has the age Teledahn, an Age written as a gift for the guildmaster of the Guild of Caterers. The spores of the mushrooms are harvested to make bread... and a lot of the harvesting machinery is built into the mushrooms.
  • Vine Realms has giant, bioluminescent mushrooms in the Psychedelic Swamp. There are also giant mushrooms in Vinetoad Kingdom, which are used as platforms and scenery.
  • The Wandering Village: The fungal plague that the villagers and the Onbu are fleeing is characterized by giant fungi in its advanced stages. Spore clouds, for instance, are represented on the map by clusters of immense toadstools.
  • Warcraft: Giant mushrooms first appear in Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal on Draenor, the native world of the orcs, and these mushrooms provide the same lumber as trees. Warcraft III and World of Warcraft add other places with giant mushrooms growing there, such as some dungeons and the Plaguelands. In WoW's Outland — the place that remained of Draenor after its destruction — the only place where giant mushrooms grow is Zangarmarsh, some of these being large enough to have houses built on top of them and for a player to get killed by falling off one. In a later expansion's uncorrupted Draenor from an alternative timeline, there are several places with giant mushrooms. Background info explains the biome is native to the Zangar Sea, named after the Sporemound which died there millennia ago. The Sea is an invasive species actively attempting to consume the land.
  • Warframe: As part of the ancient Orokin terraforming process, Venus gained massive mushroom trees hundreds of meters tall. In a twist, Venus is also an ice world, so the various mushrooms and spore clusters are covered in snow and sit on banks of rivers filled with coolant.
  • Wuppo: Some mushrooms in the Wumgarden are nearly as tall as the screen.

    Webcomics 
  • Copper: In one strip, Copper and Fred cross over a forest of tall mushrooms while pondering the nature of achievement.
  • Daughter of the Lilies: When Thistle is caught out in the magic storm in Chapter 10, fields of meters-tall mushrooms begin popping out of the ground. When the characters emerge after the storm abates, they see that the magic caused the environment to grow gigantic, including the button mushrooms.
  • The Dreamland Chronicles: Some of the mushrooms in the fairy village are well over college-aged Alex's height, and hollowed out to serve as houses for the six-inch-tall fairies.
  • Good Show Sir: In Tiny Cavemen, house-sized mushrooms can be seen growing outside of the building where the characters are hiding.
  • 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.
    • Paradox Space: In "Morel of the Story", the salamander farmer finds a glowing mushroom several times larger than he is.
  • Person-sized, bouncy blue ones show up on one page of Chapter 2 of Jenny and the Multiverse, with Jenny breaking her fall off a roof by teleporting mid-fall to land harmlessly on one of them.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • The Adventures of Tintin (1991): In "The Shooting Star" (L'Étoile mystérieuse), Tintin finds giant mushrooms that promptly explode.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "The Desert", when a stressed Aang hits his staff against the ground, it forms a mushroom cloud. Sokka sees this from a distance, and, being high on cactus juice, mistakes it for a giant mushroom.
    MAYBE IT'S FRIENDLY!
  • Ben 10: In "Camp Fear", a forest of giant fungi begins to overrun a summer camp. Like just about everything else in the series, it turns out to be a hostile alien.
  • The Dragon Prince: The understory of the Moonshadow Forest includes toadstools the size of small trees.
  • Final Space: "Chapter 5" is largely set on an alien planet covered with large, glowing mushrooms as its primary form of vegetation.
  • Futurama: In "The Thief of Baghead", gang has to deal with a mushroom-dog Bond Creature that houses an actor's ego. The dog grows larger the more self-satisfied the actor becomes, so it gets to be quite large. Zoidberg even says the line "There's a humongous fungus among us."
  • Godzilla: The Series: In "Underground Movement", Randy and Mendel encounter an extremely large fungus that's leaving the farmlands in Michigan barren.
  • Gravity Falls: In "The Land Before the Swine", giant shelf-like mushrooms make up a good bit of the flora of the underground Lost World to which the characters track the pterodactyl.
  • Magi-Nation: Extremely large mushrooms, puffballs, and cup fungi grow in the caverns of the Underneath, where they form forests. Underneathians build their homes out of the larger mushrooms.
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: The Mushromp, where the Moochick lives, is a forest dotted with large mushrooms ranging from ones as tall as the ponies and with caps wider than they're tall to ones the size of trees.
  • Porky in Wackyland: Large mushrooms are amongst the scenery seen when Porky first enters the bizarre realm of Wackyland.
  • Space Ghost: In "Hi-Jackers", the planet where the titular criminals make their base is covered with giant mushrooms several times larger than a human being.
  • Superfriends: In "The Mysterious Moles", while exploring underground, Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog encounter a stream with giant mushrooms growing along the banks.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Fungus Humongous is a giant mutant mushroom lurking within New York City's sewers, thriving and spreading itself and its army of Mushroom Men within its dank, dark corridors. As if that wasn't bad enough, it and its Mushroom Men have the ability to spray spores that makes a person experience their worst fears.

    Real Life 
  • 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.
  • Termitomyces titanicus is the largest edible mushroom, potentially growing 3 feet in diameter and nearly two feet in length. The mycelium is cultivated by termites, and the fruiting body grows after the mound has been abandoned.
  • There are smaller Armillaria in Michigan, USA. It's over 30 acres, located in Mastodon Township. The nearby city of Crystal Falls has a Humongous Fungus Fest every year.
  • This is not photoshopped.
  • The Prototaxites, from the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods, may have actually been giant 26 foot (8 meter) tall mushrooms, by far the tallest living land organisms at the time. In fact, they were so big that scientists believed they were coniferous trees or giant algae at first.

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Mushrooms and Flowers

"It's not us, it's the mushroom!"

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