Goo It Up

Hey! Who's going to clean up this mess?

Creating and using viscous goo as a power. Generally this slime is hosed at an opponent or launched as "slimeballs". It can also sometimes be shaped into various elastic constructs and weapons, which tend to be a bit more durable than the Making a Splash equivalent.

This is a staple ability of "gross" or "sick" characters and animals, as an exaggeration on how mucus and slime work. It's also fairly popular with ghosts and pollution-based antagonists, and can be integrated into the arsenal of any would-be Science Hero.

While traditionally the slime is green, the options are limitless here. At its most flexible, the chemical properties of the goo can be freely modified by the user. Expect a heavy dose of Chemistry Can Do Anything. It could be made slippery, sticky, corrosive, blinding, itchy, glowy, stinky, bouncy, stretchy, possibly even explosive or poisonous. Watch out if the goo is given quick-dry properties, as it tends to become impossibly durable. The goo might even explicitly behave in a non-newtonian fashion, and harden on impact.

Alternatively, this ability could be limited to a single real gooey substance. Common choices include: mud, oil, honey, wax, and gum. When the substance is paint or ink, this can overlap with Art Attacker. Many Food-Based Superpowers also behave like goo, particularly deserts.

Under Personality Powers these supers are usually slobs or delinquents. It is essentially inevitable that someone will be left Covered in Gunge while this guy's around. Expect them to be mortal enemies with any local Neat Freak who doesn't appreciate their Filthy Fun.

This ability's Logical Weakness usually involves exploiting the slime's chemistry. The substance might not take well to extreme heat, cold, or getting diluted for example.

Compare Blob Monster, which usually has slime powers, but doesn't require it. Most cases of sentient slime and slime shifting will take the form of an amorphous Blob Monster.

Subtropes include Slime Girl, Cute Slime Mook, Muck Monster, Zombie Puke Attack and Super Spit.

For other liquid superpowers, see Making a Splash, Bloody Murder, and Magma Man. Also has some overlap with Rubber Man, Poisonous Person, Plaguemaster, and Acid Attack.

Not to be confused with Grey Goo.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black Clover: Sally can use gel magic to create a titanic blob-like salamander that she often modifies by injecting them with magical products.
• DARLING in the FRANXX: Early in the series, the children fight a klaxosaur that produces slime that seeps into their mechas' crew compartments and melts all their clothes off.
• Dragon Ball GT: Rage Shenron's main gimmick is manipulating electric slime. He uses it to absorb electricity and grow more powerful, encase his enemies, and make a gigantic slime version of himself that he hides in for defense.
• My Hero Academia:
  • The Sludge Villain from the first arc is composed of a greenish-gray sludgy substance and can use it to attack.
  • Mina can create slime that can vary between being slippery and acidic.
• Naruto:
  • Katsuyu is a gooey slug that can turn into a slimey liquid and spit acid.
  • Slime Release is a kekkei genkai that allows creating and manipulating slime.
• One Piece:
  • The Wax-Wax fruit creates gooey wax that can be hardened to be stronger than steel.
  • Caribou ate the Numa Numa fruit, which essentially lets him transform his entire body into swamp gunk.

Comic Books

• Batgirl2009: After Stephanie earned Barbara's blessing to start serving as the new Batgirl, she got access to a number of experimental pieces of Waynetech. Her favorite of them in later issues were, "gooperangs", which were batarangs that exploded into a coat of green gel that immobilized her opponents.
• The home VHS release of the X Men episodes "Enter Magneto" and "Deadly Reunion" came with a mini-comic featuring a one-off mutant who could create sticky gels that rapidly hardened to trap people in them. He could also dissolve his own gels at will. He apparently wasn't that bright, given that Mister Sinister was able to trick him into believing that the X-Men were the bad guys.

Film — Animation

• In Disney's version of Big Hero 6, Honey Lemon's Power Purse is able to combine various chemicals into different types of goo that she can use in fights to trap enemies or stick to any surface.

Literature

• How to Build a Dungeon: Book of the Demon King: Aur's apprentice Spina develops a talent for crafting new kinds of slimes that she uses as fighting familiars.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • In the World of Darkness, Cerberus will vomit a puddle of thick goo onto one part of the battlefield. Anyone who steps in it will be quickly drawn to the center of the goo to be instantly killed by Cerberus soon afterward. But if you are shrunken by the gastric juice orbs beforehand, you'll instead be swallowed and enter his stomach, allowing the swallowed to temporarily incapacitate him by ripping up his insides.
  • Several bosses in the Shadows of Mhach raid series have an attack that coats everyone affected in extremely thick mucus. This stops anyone caught by it from moving until someone runs between the tethers created between the victims to break the bindings.
• In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, there is an obstacle called "Black Slime", negatively charged slime that hurts you if you touch it. You are given a Slime Launcher to shoot positively charged green slime to neutralize it. You can also use the slime to tether objects together, using them to do various things such as pull platforms together, break crumbling walls down, or loosen things that were stuck in place. Many enemies can also cover you in slime, just like Peter was in the first movie. This negatively affects your movement speed, making it harder for you to avoid incoming attacks. Enemies can cover you and your fellow ghostbusters in the aforementioned black slime as well.
• Hollow Knight: Several infected bugs launch yellow/orange infection goo as their attacks. Some of the bees in the hive also shoot honey instead.
• In the Mega Man franchise, there's the Devil line. A group of robots notable for throwing pieces of their bodies around and reconstructing themselves elsewhere. The ones that really follow this trope better, though, are the Green Devil of Mega Man 8, the Twin Devil of Mega Man 9 and the Rainbow Devil of Mega Man Zero.
• In The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, Jack Skellington uses the Soul Robber, a green, slimy creature created by Dr Finklestein, as a weapon.
• The Ooze is a Sega Genesis game where a scientist named Dr. Daniel Caine is turned into a sentient puddle of glowing green ooze by his employers after discovering their plans to release a deadly plague onto the world and make millions of dollars from the antidote. Caine can attack his enemies by punching them or spitting ooze on them. Doing the latter uses up a small piece of his body. Killing enemies turns them into ooze, which can help restore lost health.
• Pokémon:
  • Most poison-type Pokemon can use the move "Sludge" or "Sludge Bomb" which is visualized as firing gross sludge at the opponent.
  • Goodra constantly excretes slime due to being based on snails.
• Starcraft: The Queen's Ensnare ability vomits up a big batch of slime across an area, which slows enemy units there and reveals invisible units.
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Inkling uses paint for this purpose, firing it off as viscous globs and sticky flooring that slows down opponents.
• The Unreal series has the Bio Rifle, which uses cartridges of toxic Tarydium Sludge (acknowledged as such in Unreal's naming of the ammo boxes). The weapon shoots green goo which is both acidic and explosive in nature; it even adheres to walls and ceilings. The primary fire shoots a stream of goos that can join for a bigger goo causing a bigger explosion upon expiration. The secondary fire charges the goo and releases a bigger but slower glob when the trigger is released. In both fire modes, the glob can kill the own user if they're not careful. This is the basic model, but some games spice it up:
  • Unreal: The secondary glob was launched as soon as it was fully charged, which caused some problems.
  • Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict gave the globs "semi-sapient" properties, chasing the closest targets. Also, it was classified as an "energy" weapon for loadouts, sharing the weapon model with the "explosive" class Grenade Launcher. Its feature was also present in the Unreal Tournament 4 version of the weapon before being removed. Additionally, this game had a weapon combo with the gun which instead of a glob it released a poisonous gas that caused damage over time. Only the Skaarj characters were immune to said gas.
  • Unreal Tournament III: Instead of exploding upon being latched to a target, the bigger glob slowly consumed the target until they died.
  • Unreal Tournament 4: In addition to the semi-sapience, during an iteration, it was possible to "link" the globs by using the Link Gun. Since such a feature was quite underused in a fast-paced game, it was eventually removed.
• Valorant: Two of Gekko's Radiovore creatures have goo-based attacks:
  • Dizzy shoots a bolt of plasma at opponents that blinds them for a few seconds and leaves splashes of blue liquid on the ground. From their perspective, their POV is covered by blue goop that briefly runs down the screen.
  • Mosh Pit creates a large puddle of bubbling green slime on the ground that, after a few seconds, deals massive damage to opponents inside the puddle.

Webcomics

• In Jupiter-Men, Quintin's primary superpower is the ability to turn parts of his body into a highly elastic slime. The slime's other properties depend on his intent. It can be sticky for entangling foes, performing a Building Swing, or jamming guns. He can also make it slippery enough for him to skate across the ground at high speeds. He later figures out how to consciously turn his slime acidic, allowing it to burn or even melt objects.|

Web Original

• In this fan video of Frozen (2013), Elsa gets a strange disease that causes her to shoot slime out of her hands uncontrollably instead of ice.
• TheOdd1sOut: In "Garfield Comic Explained", one of the re-drawings of James's childhood drawing of a Garfield comic misinterprets the giant pea as green slime that Garfield is creating with his "special power".

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Slime Princess began as a Blob Monster but later also gains slime elemental powers that lets her shoot slime at will like a hose.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The Northern Air Temple has slime bombs that they rain down on the fire nation.
  • Waterbenders can bend mud, although it's not any more practical than regular water.
  • The Sun Warriors have an entire goo-filling chamber set up to protect their sacred relics.
• Ben 10:
  • Stinkfly can vary the properties of his slime to be sticky/slippery/explosive.
  • The Limax are ameoba like slime monsters. While they love heat, they are extremely susceptible to water.
  • Sludgepuppies are a race of purple sludge aliens. Ben defeats them by using high heat to leave them Taken for Granite.
  • Ben 10: Alien Force: Goop can freely modify the chemical properties of his goo to be as viscous or acidic as he wants.
• Danny Phantom: All ghosts seem able to create goo ectoplasm that can be used for energy blasts and advanced constructs.
• Ghost Force: Andy's ghost form, Fury, has this as his special power. Fury can use Ectoplasm to create powerful goo traps to snare enemy ghosts, however his recklessness can make the traps a hindrance to his allies.
• Grossology:
  • The Slim Slime Man is a sewer worker fused with a slime mold, whose goal is to coat the world in slime.
  • "Go Fish" features a mutated hagfish that creates an extensive amount of slime.
  • "Frankenbooger" features Frankenbooger, a giant sentient mucus whose only weakness is dirt particles that dry him up.
• Kid Cosmic: The olive green stone of power gives the user the ability to turn their entire body into goo.
• Teen Titans (2003): Robin and Red X both have gooey trick attacks. Which is one cue that they are actually the same person.
• Loonatics Unleashed: Tech makes a gel gun that surrounds the target in a giant jello cube.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Badgerclops has a sniper rifle that shoots jello globs and encase the target in a giant cube.
• Mixels: The Glorp Corp are one of the highlighted elemental Mixel tribes of the world. Their elemental abilities are slime, meaning they can secrete it from various parts of their bodies, often using it as sticky traps or long-reach ropes. When they Mix with other Mixels, their slime abilities often overpower the other abilities of the other Mix half. In the toyline, their slime is represented with transparent green LEGO pieces.
• In Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023), one of Moon Girl's main weapons is a gun that fires a slime that restrains anyone caught in it.
• The Owl House: Abomination magic is this: witches with this skill use/conjure purple goo that can form mindless monsters (known as abominations), be used to create numerous tools/weapons, and be blasted at opponents. Amity Blight, Luz's rival turned friend turned girlfriend, is highly skilled in this form of magic.
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "They Call Me MISTER Slimer!", Slimer makes some of his ectoplasm into a baseball bat that he attacks the barrow wights with.

Real Life

• Several animals are famous for producing copious amounts of goo, but the hagfish stands out. It can rapidly expel a binding agent from its skin to create up to 24 liters of slime (that's 400 times its own volume) at will. This slime is used to clog up and choke out the gills of predators attempting to eat them.

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