Springy Spores

"Who needs a trampoline when you've got fungus!"

You're a character in a video game, and you need to climb up a cliff. However, you have no climbing or Le Parkour skills in your repertoire, and there are no trampolines, jetpacks, Grappling Hook Pistols or flying animals to hand. So what do you do? Find a mushroom! They are spongy, flexible and a little bouncy, so jumping on these Springy Spores can bring you an extra impulse! Combine it with a Ground Pound and the sky's the limit!

In short, mushrooms in video games can be used as trampolines and springboards, as game designers extrapolate the spongy texture of most mushrooms to those of mattresses and conclude it can be a reasonable substitute in the wild. An Acceptable Break From Reality.

There are some non-video game examples, more so in Western Animation. They may be homages to video games, such as in Sonic adaptations.

A sub-trope of Springs, Springs, Everywhere.

Video Games

 * The Trope Namer is the Springy Spores level from Donkey Kong Country Returns.
 * There are some mushrooms to bounce on in Ratchet & Clank All 4 One.
 * Fungi Forest's mushrooms in Donkey Kong 64.
 * There's only one mushroom in Dizzy The Adventurer, and it serves this purpose.
 * In Sly 2, in Rajan's second level, there are mushrooms you can bounce on.
 * Found in Eternal Daughter. There, however, are also fake ones that bite you.
 * A track in Mario Kart Wii has mushrooms you can bounce on. Some of the levels from New Super Mario Bros. and New Super Mario Bros. Wii also feature this.
 * Sonic and Knuckles has giant bouncy mushrooms in Mushroom Hill Zone. Meanwhile,Sonic Rush Adventure has giant bouncy mushrooms in Plant Kingdom.
 * Alice: Madness Returns has the "Amanita Muscaria" within Wonderland of different cosmetic varieties that rigidly shoots Alice upwards almost vertically regardless of the angle of landing onto the mushroom.
 * The Forbidden Forest in LEGO Harry Potter has them.
 * In the Madagascar game, there was a minigame where you had to jump on mushrooms in a certain order. they were bouncy. In the same game, Alex was chasing you in a level, and he would bounce up and down on a mushroom hoping to get you.
 * Seen in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, if only at the end of the shrinking animation on tree stumps.
 * Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2.
 * There was a Sega Genesis game called The Aquatic Games that was part of the James Pond series. It had a variant of this involving sea sponges used in a gymnastics level.
 * The Flash game Nelly.
 * The blue mushrooms in Rayman Legends are particularly springy, launching the players into new sections of the level either in the background plane, or many screen heights above.
 * Songbird Symphony features these throughout the game. Birb can use them to access higher platforms or backtrack if he gets stuck.
 * Early 3D platformer Bug!! features these on a number of levels. One of the few reasonably-proportioned examples, given the main character is an insect.
 * Truffle Man's stage from Make a Good Mega Man Level 2 has plenty of bouncy mushroom platforms for you to hop around on.
 * The Fungal Wastes from Hollow Knight is full of these, since the place is overrun from top to bottom by tons of fungal blooms.

Western Animation

 * One early episode of Dragon Tales had the dragons showing Emmy and Max a patch of mushrooms where you can bounce on them, and they play music. They're equivalent to trampolines. Ord and Max manage to tap out "Shave and a Haircut".