i imagine knowing anything about fighting, weapons or armor is very annoying in video games but knowing what gems look like is kind of a curse and a burden
I regularly scowl at games that make up fake mushrooms or blame things on spores that spores can't do. And mushrooms don't grow in caves! If plants don't grow there, there's nothing for them to eat! I shouldn't be finding mushrooms in caves, even cool looking glowing ones.
Cordyceps and other stuff that parasitizes arthropods relies (among other things) on them not having a dedicated circulatory and lymphatic system, that's why fungal infections in mammals look so different. TLoU gets a pass because clickers look cool and everyone is gay.
Because of some cultural differences mushrooms were legal in Japan, and the culture around them was similar to American psychedelic culture, so mushrooms making you big/small makes sense. A. muscaria are a common symbol of the subculture but rarely consumed because of side effects. So, accurate-ish.
(mushrooms filled this role because cannabis was highly criminalized and socially stigmatized similar to heroin or meth here in the 20th century, I don't 100% understand how that happened)
