Man-Eating Plant: Difference between revisions

* [[DC Comics]]' [[Batman|Poison Ivy]] plays with this trope. She was once human but is now a mobile, autonomous, sentient and altogether villainous plant. While she may not literally eat human flesh (although [[I'm a Humanitarian|this has been alluded to on occasion]]), she's certainly a man-eater in every other sense of the word. Her sweat contains pheremones which make her just about irresistible to members of both sexes and her lips secrete botanical toxins which she can and will use with relish to dispatch enemies with a kiss. (Enemies meaning anyone she sees hurting a plant, hears about hurting a plant or suspects may have hurt a plant at some point.) She also has the ability to control plants to a degree in which she can control their growth and cause mutations on the fly, most of which are of the literal Man-Eating variety. If she's not in the mood for a decent snogging, she can always feed her current play-toy to her "babies". ''[[Arkham Asylum: Living Hell]]'' has her admitting to using at least one victim as mulch.

** Making it deliciously ironic and karmic when one of her "babies" became a [[Mind Hive]] of the people she fed to it that promptly decided to add her to the menu. Thanks to Batman and Robin she survived and the monster vanished, but Poison Ivy was left with a fear of plants for a while.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In the beginning of [[Jasper Fforde]]'s ''[[Shades of Grey]]'', the reader finds the protagonist "wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a [[When Trees Attack|yateveo tree]]." Of course, this can only be described as a "[[Understatement|frightfully inconvenient]]" state of affairs.

* The [[Iain M Banks]] short story ''Odd Attachment'', while not necessarily about a man-''eating'' plant, is written from the perspective of a lovesick intelligent alien vine who catches a human planetary explorer, that he thinks has fallen from a lucky star, and then plays "she loves me, she loves me not" - usually done by pulling petals from a daisy or other flower - by dreamily and thoughtlessly removing the (male) astronaut's various appendages. Including the "odd attachment". The vine does try to eat part of the astronaut's spacesuit, thinking it's peel, but doesn't like it.

* [[David Drake]] often seems to be "phobic" about plants; they won't swallow you whole, but they'll sure suck the nutrients out of you. The vampire honeysuckle in ''The Jungle'' is [[Nightmare Fuel]].

* The ''[[Tunnels]]'' series has the Sweet Traps, plants which knock people out with powerful narcotics and then germinate their spores in their victims' still-living bodies.

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "[[The Scarlet Citadel]]" [[Conan the Barbarian]] happens on a man-eating vine in his prison and goes to rescue the man.

* ''[[The Darksword Trilogy]]'' has the blood-sucking Kij vines. [[The Fool]] Simkin initially tells his hungry companions that the vines are edible; only after the plant attacks does he correct himself "they consider ''us'' to be edible. I knew it was something to do with food."

* There's a very nasty one in [[Deltora Quest]] which preys on farmers; essentially it looks like a normal plant, until you get too close... and watch the ground open up to reveal jagged teeth and an open maw which essentially drags you in and lets you slide down inside to be eaten... getting torn at the whole time of course.

* John Collier's short story "Green Thoughts", thought to have inspired the original film version of ''[[The Little Shop of Horrors]]''.

* ''[[Amphibia (TV series)|Amphibia]]'' is a place where [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You]], including the plant life. One ironic example occurs in "Hop Luck" where Anne, Sprig, Hop Pop and Polly are swallowed whole by a man-eating tomato plant, but discover that this man-eater is both ''edible'' and ''delicious'', so they are [[The Hunter Becomes the Hunted| able to eat their way out.]]

* Frank from ''[[Harley Quinn (TV series)|Harley Quinn]]'', one of Poison Ivy's creations. A mutated plant-monster who can talk, this makes him a [[Servile Snarker]] with the attitude of a "gangsta rapper" and [[Sir Swearsalot|a foul mouth]]; he's [[Laughably Evil| hilarious]].

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