Hypno-shroom


 * For the version in Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, see Hypno-shroom (PvZ: GW2).
 * For the version in Plants vs. Zombies: All Stars, see Hypno-shroom (PvZ: AS).

Hypno-shroom is a single-use mushroom that appears in both main series Plants vs. Zombies games, and in Plants vs. Zombies: Great Wall Edition. In the first game, he is unlocked on the Night levels as the twelfth plant unlocked overall, while in the second game, he is a premium plant that can be purchased with 100 gems.

Hypno-shroom converts the zombie that eats him to the player's side, causing it to turn around to attack its former comrades. The zombie retains its current health, and in some cases, special abilities when converted. Crushing, damaging, abducting, pushing, pulling or otherwise bypassing Hypno-shroom will not cause the zombie to be converted.

Origins
His name refers to how it hypnotizes zombies into fighting for the player, and how he is a mushroom.

Audio
The sound when a zombie has been hypnotized by Hypno-shroom.

Plants vs. Zombies
Hypno-shroom is the 13th plant received and obtained after beating Level 2-5. As he is a nocturnal plant, Coffee Bean will be required to wake up Hypno-shroom on Day, Pool and Roof levels.

Generally speaking, most zombies will retain their special ability when hypnotized, but will use these for the player's benefit instead: Screen Door Zombies and Ladder Zombies can use their shields to defend themselves from bites, Dancing Zombie can summon hypnotized Backup Dancers, while Jack-in-the-Box Zombie can explode and damage nearby unhypnotized enemies. The latter does not apply to ZomBotany zombies, however, as Peashooter and Gatling Pea Zombie will continue to shoot and damage plants, and Jalapeno Zombie will still destroy all plants in its row when exploding.

Hypnotizing a Dancing Zombie will give the player the Disco is Undead achievement.

Plants vs. Zombies 2
Hypno-shroom makes a return in this game as a premium plant. Due to the absence of the sleeping mechanic, Hypno-shroom can now work immediately planted in levels outside the Dark Ages, but his cost has been increased to 125 sun (the latter does not apply to the Chinese version).

Unlike in the first game, hypnotized zombies will usually not retain their special abilities, while other zombies will have their special abilities glitched. For example, Turquoise Skull Zombie will use its crystal skull to burn zombies, but the laser will head to the player's house, and all Neon Mixtape Tour special zombies will not activate their special abilities regardless of jam. The only exception to this are the abilities regarding creating additional zombies, as any hypnotized units such as Disco-tron 3000 and Chicken Wrangler Zombie/Weasel Hoarder will create hypnotized zombies to fight for the player.

Zombie Chickens and Ice Weasels will be instantly hypnotized by Hypno-shroom without consuming the plant. Hypnotizing Chicken Wranglers or Weasel Hoarders that have not released their respective animals will cause them to instantly release them. Zombie Bulls and Rodeo Legend Zombies will still throw their hypnotized Bull Rider Imp towards the player's house, but will throw the Imp even if the Imp has already been thrown before the Bull was hypnotized.

Plants vs. Zombies
When eaten, Hypno-shrooms will make a zombie turn around and fight for you.

Usage: single use, on contact

Special: makes a zombie fight for you

Sleeps during the day

"Zombies are our friends," asserts Hypno-shroom. "They're badly misunderstood creatures who play a valuable role in our ecology. We can and should do more to bring them round to our way of thinking."

Cost: 75

Recharge: slow

Plants vs. Zombies 2
Note: Hypno-shroom only costs 75 sun in the Chinese version.

Plant Food effect
Hypno-shroom's cap glows when fed with Plant Food, and any zombie that eats him transforms into the level's respective world version of Gargantuar. In the Chinese version, a non-costumed Hypno-shroom with Plant Food will instead transform the zombie into a Buckethead Zombie, regardless of toughness.

The Gargantuar variants will retain their special abilities and characteristic: For example, Gargantuar Prime will move more slowly and smash twice per attack, Sloth Gargantuar can throw up to three Yeti Imps, and Jurassic Gargantuar has increased durability and lowered speed. Each smash itself can either reduce a Gargantuar's health to the nearest quarter (it will take up to four smashes to instantly kill a Gargantuar) or instantly kill any other enemy. Gargantuar Prime, however, cannot fire their eye lasers, while Hair Metal Gargantuar will generate glitched shockwaves that head for the player's plants and house, which does nothing when it hits a plant. The Dinosaurs from Jurassic Marsh will also interact with zombies affected by Hypno-shroom's effect.

Costumed
A Hypno-shroom fed with Plant Food will transform the zombie that eats him into a Gargantuar with increased health from a regular one.

Plants vs. Zombies
While theoretically introduced as a way to abuse high-threat enemies for the player's own advantage, Hypno-shroom faces several obstacles that prevent it from actually performing the task efficiently: Firstly, most of the more dangerous enemies such as Zomboni and Gargantuar are immune to Hypno-shroom, as they can either crush or bypass plant and will not trigger Hypno-shroom's ability. This reduces Hypno-shroom's effectiveness to mostly Buckethead Zombies, Screen Door Zombies, Football Zombies, Jack-in-the-Box Zombies, Ladder Zombie and Dancing Zombies, which are in most cases not very dangerous. Secondly, the hypnotized zombie's actual performance is only average at best, and will only worsen as the game progresses and the zombie density increases.

Because of these reasons, Hypno-shroom should be best treated as a tool to eliminate select targets in earlier levels, and phased out in favor of more powerful instants such as Squash later on. Dancing Zombie and Jack-in-the-Box Zombie are prime targets for hypnotizing, as the former can summon hypnotized dancers to fight for the player, while the latter may explode and kill all adjacent unhypnotized enemies, which is simply a Cherry Bomb, essentially.

Vasebreaker
In the Vasebreaker level Third Vase, Hypno-shroom should be used immediately against Disco Zombie to prevent them from swarming the field with Backup Dancers. Hypnotized Disco Zombies can also bolster the player's defensive force with hypnotized zombies and help cleaning up the remaining vase.

In another Vasebreaker level Chain Reaction, the Football Zombie is probably the most important zombie to get with the Hypno-shroom, as there are no Magnet-shrooms or Wall-nuts to defend with.

Plants vs. Zombies 2
Hypno-shroom continues to suffer from the lack of viable targets, and the hypnotized zombie's lacking performance against their former allies. The situation has only worsened, however, as a number of enemies are now immune to Hypno-shroom, while hypnotized enemies now almost never use their special abilities. Hypno-shroom's Plant Food is also deceptive-looking - the Gargantuars take a long amount of time to smash individual zombies and cannot take much punishment in return, and thus are incredibly vulnerable to rushes of weaker enemies, in particular, Zombie Chickens and Ice Weasels since the Gargantuar is not capable of doing area damage.

Hypno-shroom benefits from the usage of Intensive Carrot, as the former is treated as defeated when used and therefore can be revived by the latter. Imitating Intensive Carrot can therefore greatly cut down the cooldown between Hypno-shroom uses, providing that the player does not plant another plant on the tiles with Hypno-shroom. This also works if Hypno-shroom is boosted via the Zen Garden since Intensive Carrot will also create a boosted Hypno-shroom upon reviving. An effective zombie to hypnotize is an enraged Newspaper Zombie or Sunday Edition Zombie, as it will most likely destroy several zombies before being destroyed itself. If there are zombies scattered around the lane, use Plant Food on Hypno-shroom and you will have a clear lane sooner or later, or if not, the number of zombies will have decreased. However, if in Pirate Seas, with Swashbuckler Zombies, using this while the zombie is past the flowers in a "Don't let the zombies trample the flowers" level, will make you fail the objective if you don't kill everything else before the hypnotized Swashbuckler Zombie tramples the flowers.

Specific to Plants vs. Zombies

 * If a slowed zombie eats him, he will still move slowly at first after being hypnotized.
 * When a zombie eats him, the player will hear a siren. The same sound also occurs when the player gives chocolate to Stinky the Snail or to their plants in the Zen Garden.
 * If the last zombie of a level eats him, then it'll disappear and end the level, making it seem like he killed it.
 * The sound effect still plays, though.

Specific to Plants vs. Zombies 2

 * Hypnotized zombies can eat tombstones and frozen blocks if plants are inside of them.
 * Before the 2.4.1 update, the zombies who ate him somehow regained their full health after being hypnotized. This still happens to robot zombies like Zombie Bull.
 * This, however, is still not fixed in the Chinese version.
 * He used to make zombies tougher than normal zombies when hypnotized before 2.9.1 version.
 * Hypnotized zombies are affected by the Power Toss, but they will never be tossed off the screen, similar to non-shrunken Gargantuars.
 * Jester Zombie (while spinning) is the only zombie in the entire series that can eat him without being affected.
 * This is most likely because when the Jester Zombie is spinning, it is actually the flung back projectiles that destroy the Hypno-shroom, not the Jester.
 * Besides, only few types of zombies shoot projectiles, and therefore Jester Zombie is useless against other zombies.
 * If a hypnotized zombie eats a Sun Bean before it was hypnotized, it will still generate sun as it battles with other zombies. However, it will not drop sun after it exits the lawn.
 * Hypnotized zombies can trample the flowers, causing the player to fail the objective and loss of a level. This is because even though they are hypnotized and therefore on the plants' side, they still count as zombies. In addition, hypnotized Gargantuars can even eat the player's brain by being flung back a few spaces by Glitter Zombie into the player's house (regardless if there are lawn mowers on the lane or not).
 * After Zombie Chickens and Ice Weasels bite him and get converted to the player's side, he will still be kept instead of disappearing. Also, if they bite him when he's fed with Plant Food, they will not transform into Gargantuars, and instead will be kept as themselves.
 * He is featured for free in Dark Ages - Nights 4 and 8.
 * He is the first plant to have a positive view on zombies, with the second being Blooming Heart.
 * Coincidentally, both are premium plants.
 * Turquoise Skull Zombie can instantly kill hypnotized zombies and hypnotized Gargantuars with its crystal skull.
 * If a zombie is poisoned, it will be cured of the effect when hypnotized.
 * In the Transformation Bundle in the store, he is mistakenly referred to as " Hypnoshroom".
 * On March 16, 2017, he became one of 4 premium plants to be permanently purchasable with 100 gems, along with Squash, Jalapeno and Pea-nut.
 * In the Chinese version, he will not be spawned by Spore-shroom (level 2 and above), despite also being a mushroom.
 * It is also applied with Perfume-shroom.