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- « "Well, this could be tricky to explain to the next of kin. Good news, he is not technically dead. Bad news, he has turned into a mushroom." »
- — James Lester on a victim of the Future Fungus.[src]
The Future Fungus (also known as Killer Fungus) was a highly deadly and immensely aggressive species of fungus from the future, which infected and literally took over living hosts.
Characteristics[]
The Future Fungus could infect animals such as humans, and would spread either through direct physical contact or through releasing spores which could be inhaled by potential hosts. Once a host was infected, the Fungus would rapidly begin to spread throughout their system and across their skin; becoming visible as expanding green patches on the host's skin, and causing the host to suffer breathing problems in the form of coughing and choking and to feel extremely cold in moderate temperatures. The symptoms of infection with Future Fungus would appear minutes if not seconds after exposure, although the rate at which the Fungus took the host over varied wildly.
After approximately a few hours, the Future Fungus would have completely covered and literally taken over the host, transforming it into a hulking, monstrous shell of its former self. When a victim of the Future Fungus was fully taken over, all apparent vestiges of their humanity and personality were lost, and they became primal, aggressive and mindless creatures, which relied on instinct, and would attack and infect any other potential hosts they came across so as to spread the Fungus further.
Despite the overwhelmed Fungus Creatures' preference for cold, dark and damp environments, the Future Fungus especially thrived in heated environments; high temperatures could cause the Fungus Creatures to explode and die, but the Fungus itself would not only survive but would sporulate on a massive scale, one which Connor Temple described as being enough to spread the Fungus through "half of London." However, as the Future Fungus thrived in heat, it also was logically vulnerable to the cold; extremely low, arctic and sub-zero temperatures could halt the Fungus' growth and then kill it off (Episode 3.5).
Incursions and encounters[]
Episode 3.5[]
When Lloyd, Sir Richard Bentley's assistant, went through an Anomaly into a woodland in the future, he came across a batch of Future Fungus, which infected him by spurting a cloud of spores into his face. Lloyd tried to return through the Anomaly, but it closed on him, though not before he vomited several spores into Sir Richard's flat on the other side. Lloyd was presumably taken over by the Fungus and transformed into a Fungus Creature in the Future shortly afterwards.
When Sir Richard returned to his flat to collect the paperwork, he came into contact with the spores Lloyd had left, and rapidly began to succumb to the Fungus. When the Anomaly Research Centre team investigated Sir Richard's flat, Connor Temple took a sample of the Future Fungus spores back to the ARC building to analyse.
When he added a saline solution to the Fungus to examine it, the Fungus began to rapidly grow in reaction to the solution; forcing Connor to contain the sample.
Sir Richard tried to reach his train at St Pancras International, but as the Future Fungus began to take him over, he retreated from the ARC team into an underground tunnel system. There, Sir Richard was fully taken over by the Fungus. Meanwhile, Mark Baker found Connor's Fungus sample in the ARC lab and touched it. The Fungus almost instantly began to affect him and quickly took him over; forcing Connor and Danny Quinn to seal the Baker creature in the lab.
When Sarah Page drastically raised the temperature in the lab to try and kill the Future Fungus, the Baker creature exploded. Later, when Connor went back into the lab and realised that the Baker creature's remains were massively sporulating from the heat, he had Sarah lower the temperature to freezing. Once the temperature reached -25 degrees, the Fungus in the lab died.
Meanwhile, the ARC team pursued the Bentley creature in the tunnels, and the creature managed to infect a Special Forces soldier with the Future Fungus. The team later cornered the Bentley creature with flamethrowers, but the creature escaped when the team discovered that using fire on the Bentley creature would increase the Future Fungus' spread. The team managed to lure the Bentley creature back to the surface and trapped it in a security van.
Danny and Jenny then drove the Bentley creature back to the ARC, but it was able to break out of the van and escape into the building. It travelled through the ARC's ventilation system into the operations room, where the temperature had been lowered to freezing. The Bentley creature then attacked Jenny in the operations room, and Jenny tried to defend herself with CO2 from a fire extinguisher. However, the fire extinguisher eventually ran out and Jenny began to freeze to death.
The Bentley creature then infected Jenny with the Future Fungus before Danny fought and distracted the Bentley creature, until the freezing temperatures killed the Fungus and destroyed the creature. As Jenny was infected with the Future Fungus, Connor had the team wait before taking her out, and the cold eventually killed the Fungus on Jenny.
Deaths Caused[]
Trivia[]
- In Episode 4.2, an archive shot of Sir Richard Bentley taken over by the Future Fungus was used for a picture of a creature on Area51creatures.com. Due to this, some fans believe that canonically, the creature seen on the website may have been a human at Area 51 infected with Future Fungus that came through an Anomaly.
- The concept art by Daren Horley of the humanoid form of the fungus portrays a different design than what is seen on-screen. It has four asymmetrical arms with seemingly three fingers on each hand. Furthermore, it has a different, eyeless head as well. Overall, it also has less bulk.
- What looks like human eyes can still be seen on the Fungus Creatures.
- There are rumours that the Future Fungus' home time period is 500 million years in the future, and that the Fungus had evolved to thrive in heat due to sun expansion warming the Earth.
- The concept of fungus taking over a person seems to be based on the Japanese cult film Matango.
- This was the first non-animal threat to come through an Anomaly.
- This was the third creature that parasitically used humans as hosts. The first was the Parasite in Episode 1.4. The second was the Precambrian Worm offspring in Episode 2.2.
- The humanoid version of the Fungus was one of the 5inch Primeval action figures planned by Character Options but due to the closure of Woolworths it was never mass produced. Its original maquette is owned by Tim Haines.
- The concept of the Future Fungus is similar to the Flood from Bungie's Halo video-game series. The Flood are parasites that convert hosts into fungus-looking creatures.
- The Future Fungus was mentioned in Fire and Water, which said that the Fungus incursion was days before.
- The Future Fungus was similar to, and theorised by fans to have possibly evolved from, the real-life Cordyceps fungus.
- The Cordyceps Brain Infection from the 2013 video game The Last of Us is highly similar to the Future Fungus in Primeval.