Mushroom

It’s state of the art intelligence software. It learns and adapts on the fly. It’ll monitor your brain activity and try and work out how best to frighten you.

This is the one where Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell’s lad gets his brains fried. If that’s not too big of a spoiler. As it’s all very game heavy, you would have to say that the use of a mushroom is deliberate. Super Mario and all that. Probably the first instance a mushroom has made a human lose their mind, right, hallucinogenic fans?

If you are a gamer, you may well recognise where this design is coming from. It’s loosely riffed off the logo of a handheld console created by a Japanese manufacturer you know well.

I personally am not a gamer. Nothing against it, but my hand-eye co-ordination leaves a lot to be desired. I’m much more of a drinking and doing fuck all type of person. In fact, back in the 90s, I was so terrible, I ended up just watching my brother play games. As he could complete them in ten minutes. It was kind of like an analogue version of Twitch.

In all honesty, we’re probably pretty close to this type of brain implant thing happening IRL, aren’t we? mostly thanks to Space Karen and his army of toxic lemmings.