The Penguin's New Designer Drug Is Based On A Real, Strange Fungus

This week's episode of The Penguin introduced a new drug to Gotham--something to one-up the drug everyone was hopped up on in the The Batman, called Drops by its users, who were known as Drop-heads. The Penguin introduced us to Bliss, a red crystalline drug. Its source, though, has a fascinating if not exactly euphoric real-world origin.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Penguin, Episode 3, which aired on October 6.

Oz "The Penguin" Cobb sees a chance to make it big in Gotham. Carmine Falcone is dead, and the late mob boss' family is in a state of disarray as it figures out how to handle it, with the aftermath of the Riddler's bombing only adding to the confusion. We've been hearing about a game-changing drug, and now we finally get to see it.

Sofia Falcone takes Oz to visit the warehouse where they're manufacturing the drug, and into the grow room where the whole process starts. In there, we see hanging garbage bags covered in fungus--white mushrooms covered in glistening, viscous, crimson fluid. It looks dangerous, like the kind of thing you'd expect to find in a movie where characters are visiting alien planets.

Bleeding tooth fungus

Aside from the dark urban setting and fictional criminals, though, it's not the most unrealistic sight. Both the method and the fungus itself are very real things.

The fungus is referred to in the show as Bleeding Tooth Fungus, and that's basically what it's called in real life--Bleeding Tooth or Devil's Tooth fungus. Hydnellum peckii is the scientific name.

Bleeding Tooth is a particularly striking fungus thanks to the contrast of the pinkish-white cap and the vivid crimson fluid they excrete. Here's where fiction and reality separate, though. While the Bleeding Tooth isn't known to be poisonous, it reportedly has a particularly bitter taste. The fluid, meanwhile, is not known to be psychoactive, but the reality is just as interesting. The fluid has anti-coagulant properties, meaning that it acts as blood thinner, behaving similarly to the common blood thinning medication Heparin. That's right--it's a blood thinner that looks like blood.

The growth method, too, is based in reality. Real mycologists (both aspiring and otherwise) will often grow mushrooms from the sides of hanging bags as a way of maximizing limited square footage.

We don't recommend going out into the forest and putting random mushrooms in your mouth, but the team behind The Penguin has chosen a particularly interesting species of fungus to create its fictional drug from. Just don't try to get high with it, and please don't eat random forest fungus.

Image Credit: Getty Images/DEA/P. PUCCINELLI

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