Real World Origin:
Film, The Blob (1958)
In-Universe Description:
When teenagers Steve and Jane go looking for the meteor they saw fall to Earth, they didn't expect to find anything but a rock. However, the first person to find the rock, an old man, discovers that a jelly-like creature was living inside. The creature latches onto the man's hand, causing him to panic. Steve takes the man to a doctor, but it does him little good. The blob grows as it consumes the old man, the doctor, and his nurse.
Seeing the blob absorb the doctor, Steve and Jane unsuccessfully try to rally the townspeople. Only Steve's friends believe him and join in the effort to warn the town's citizens. In the meantime, the blob continues feeding: a mechanic, a janitor, barroom customers, and a theater projectionist all become a part of the alien mass.
Only after the blob attacks a movie theater do the people believe the teens' story. By then, however, the monster is building-sized. Soon Steve, Jane, and Jane's little brother find themselves trapped in a diner with the owner and a waitress while the blob engulfs the building. The authorities finally believe Steve's story, but what can they do about it now?
The Blob spawned a sequel, Beware! The Blob, in 1972. The sequel effectively rehashed the original, with the monster starting out small and then gradually increasing its mass as it consumes its victims. Once again no one believes in the creature's existence until it makes a large-scale attack; this time on a bowling alley and an ice skating rink.
The Blob was remade in 1988. The remake followed the basic plot of the 1958 film while adding a typical '80s subplot in which the blob is revealed to be the result of biological warfare experiments. The 1985 movie Return of the Living Dead also used military experiments gone awry as the explanation for its titular zombies.
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