Resizing (fiction) - Excessive Growth

Excessive Growth

Common causes of excessive growth in fiction include poisons of various kinds and radioactive contamination. Other causes are the drinking of chemicals, being shot by a growth ray, or by will.

The novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells describes a kind of food that can accelerate and extend the growth process, which when introduced to the world causes great upheavals. In Wells' novel, giants have great powers, and they seek to continue growing and improving; only the small people with their small minds stand in their way. This is a symbol of social groups with great potential suppressed by mainstream society, and an expectation for them to eventually change the world (through a radical way). Though one of Wells' lesser-known works, many of the features of the novel have been incorporated into other works.

Excessive growth is often described as result of advance in biology (in Wells' novel, for example, the food was developed by two biologists). In reality, excessive growth is usually related to some illness; victims of fictional excessive growth, however, are generally more than healthy, and have powers proportionate to their size (in the same way that the physical limitations related to size in reality are ignored).

In science fiction/horror B-movies, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, enlargement of people or creatures to monstrous size (often accomplished via radiation) was a common theme. Films featuring enlargement include Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Amazing Colossal Man, Village of the Giants, The Food of the Gods, 1954's Them!, and Tarantula. Bert I. Gordon is the filmmaker most closely associated with this genre. More recently, Disney released Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, which involves a toddler who grows tall when exposed to electricity, and causes panic in Las Vegas.

In the recent Japanese production "Dai-Nippon-Jin" ("Big Man Japan") the protagonist is the latest in a dynasty of heroes who can grow to enormous size to fight equally huge monsters.

In the music video of Relient K's "(Marilyn Manson ate) My girlfriend", a gigantic Marylin Manson eats the band's girlfriend and the band has to go into Marilyn Manson to save her.

Probably the best-known example of resizing in comic strips is a series of Calvin and Hobbes strips where Calvin grows bigger than a galaxy.

In the science fiction film Monsters vs. Aliens, Susan Murphy grows to giantess size when exposed to quantonium.

In the children's book, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Clifford starts out as a small puppy who grows up to become a giant dog.