Giant Germs

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You're gonna need a cold pill the size of Manhattan to cure that.

They cause diseases and you can never truly escape from them. So it is only natural that the creators of media exaggerate bacteria to make them seem even scarier than they need to be. Due to a lot of regular bacteria looking like ovals and other basic shapes, many forms of media also make germs look like actual monsters which, due to how disgusting germs can be in Real Life, can lead to potential Nightmare Fuel. Many times these creatures are represented as amoeba-like Blob Monsters.

There are four main types of larger than life germs:

1. A germ that is a Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever kind of creature that smashes buildings and the like.

2. The second kind is usually as small as as a dog, but can be troublesome, becoming a Cute Bruiser, a Team Pet (if it decides to join the hero), or an Adorable Evil Minion (if it is controlled by a villain).

3. "Good germs"; these are usually medicine or some kind of bacteria that can combat the other, more evil germs. these are sometimes more humanoid than evil germs, and are also usually seen in a Fantastic Voyage Plot -like setting.

4. Germs that in-universe are, in fact, as small as real life germs are. These, like the good germs, are usually involved in a Fantastic Voyage Plot and are usually the reason the protagonist venture into another body in the first place. many times they are more inhuman-like and can merge with the second kind of germ-type, but are usually bigger than the hero.

Remember: Giant Germs aren't necessarily evil, they just need to be big enough to interact with other characters.

Examples of Giant Germs include:

Anime and Manga

• Moyashimon: Tadayasu - and only Tadayasu - can interact with bacteria. He sees them as insect-sized.
• Some of the mushi in Mushishi are essentially giant spirit-bacteria.
• The Giant Germ which appears in nine different episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Comic Books

• In an old Donald Duck story where the characters are shrunk, foot-and-mouth viruses are portrayed as weird monsters.
• Strictly speaking, both Protys from The Legion of Super Heroes are Type 2. Members of the same species, their bodies were undifferentiated masses of protoplasm without individual cells or even a nucleus.

Film

• Fantastic Voyage (naturally enough) features Type 4 -- normal-sized germs (and other organisms and organelles) which end up oversized compared to the miniaturized humans who encounter them.

Literature

• The sixth volume in the Magic School Bus spin-off book series is entitled The Giant Germ and is (as might be guessed) about the exploration of the microscopic world by Ms. Frizzle and her class.

Live-Action TV

• The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Immunity Syndrome" sets the Enterprise against a planet-sized amoeba. Which is also an energy vampire.
  • Also the episode "Operation: Annihilate!", in which the Deneva colony, home to Kirk's brother and his family, is attacked by flying parasites that are basically basketball-sized cells.

Music

• One somewhere between type 2 and type 1 in size appears in passing in Rob Balder's song Muppet Laboratories:

It isn't easy working in the Muppet Laboratories. So maybe you could help me with this giant germ. Would it kill you? Okay, maybe. Germ enlarger seemed like a good plan. Beaker thought so, now it's got his head...

Tabletop Games

• In Pandemic, the disease cubes are as big as cities on the board! Though they're supposed to be more symbolic than representational.
• The Giant Germ card from the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game.
  • And given that they're portrayed as having eyes, the Vile Germs from the card of the same name.

Video Games

• City of Heroes had the Hamidon, a former environmental scientist gone One-Winged Angel who is now a single cell the size of a football stadium (as seen in the page image). With cognizant mitochondria.

Other

• GIANTmicrobes by Drew Oliver makes and sells giant-sized plushie germs, viruses and other micro-fauna and -flora. As of early 2017, you can find them on Amazon.com, among other places.