Hypno-shroom (PvZ)

Hypno-shroom is a single-use mushroom that appears in Plants vs. Zombies and in Plants vs. Zombies: Great Wall Edition. He is unlocked on the Night levels as the twelfth plant unlocked overall.

Hypno-shroom converts the zombie that eats him to the player's side, causing it to turn around to attack its former comrades. The zombie retains its current health, and in some cases, special abilities when converted. Zombies that run over or smash the Hypno-shroom instead of eating it will not be affected.

Audio
The sound when a zombie has been hypnotized by Hypno-shroom.

About

 * For more information about this character, see Hypno-shroom

Hypno-shroom is the 13th plant received and obtained after beating Level 2-5. As he is a nocturnal plant, Coffee Bean will be required to wake up Hypno-shroom on Day, Pool and Roof levels.

Generally speaking, most zombies will retain their special ability when hypnotized, but will use these for the player's benefit instead: Screen Door Zombies and Ladder Zombies can use their shields to defend themselves from bites, Dancing Zombie can summon hypnotized Backup Dancers, while Jack-in-the-Box Zombie can explode and damage nearby unhypnotized enemies. The latter does not apply to ZomBotany zombies, however, as Peashooter and Gatling Pea Zombie will continue to shoot and damage plants, and Jalapeno Zombie will still destroy all plants in its row when exploding.

Hypnotizing a Dancing Zombie will give the player the Disco is Undead achievement.

Almanac entry


When eaten, Hypno-shrooms will make a zombie turn around and fight for you.

Usage: single use, on contact Special: makes a zombie fight for you Sleeps during the day

"Zombies are our friends," asserts Hypno-shroom. "They're badly misunderstood creatures who play a valuable role in our ecology. We can and should do more to bring them round to our way of thinking."

Cost: 75

Recharge: slow

Strategies
While theoretically introduced as a way to abuse high-threat enemies for the player's own advantage, Hypno-shroom faces several obstacles that prevent it from actually performing the task efficiently: Firstly, most of the more dangerous enemies such as Zomboni and Gargantuar are immune to Hypno-shroom, as they can either crush or bypass plant and will not trigger Hypno-shroom's ability. This reduces Hypno-shroom's effectiveness to mostly Buckethead Zombies, Screen Door Zombies, Football Zombies, Jack-in-the-Box Zombies, Ladder Zombie and Dancing Zombies, which are in most cases not very dangerous. Secondly, the hypnotized zombie's actual performance is only average at best, and will only worsen as the game progresses and the zombie density increases.

Because of these reasons, Hypno-shroom should be best treated as a tool to eliminate select targets in earlier levels, and phased out in favor of more powerful instants such as Squash later on. Dancing Zombie and Jack-in-the-Box Zombie are prime targets for hypnotizing, as the former can summon hypnotized dancers to fight for the player, while the latter may explode and kill all adjacent unhypnotized enemies, which is simply a Cherry Bomb, essentially.

Vasebreaker
In the Vasebreaker level Third Vase, Hypno-shroom should be used immediately against Disco Zombie to prevent them from swarming the field with Backup Dancers. Hypnotized Disco Zombies can also bolster the player's defensive force with hypnotized zombies and help cleaning up the remaining vases.

In another Vasebreaker level Chain Reaction, the Football Zombie is probably the most important zombie to get with the Hypno-shroom, as there are no Magnet-shrooms or Wall-nuts to defend with.

Trivia

 * If a slowed zombie eats him, he will still move slowly at first after being hypnotized.
 * When a zombie eats him, the player will hear a siren. The same sound also occurs when the player gives chocolate to Stinky the Snail or to their plants in the Zen Garden.
 * If the last zombie of a level eats him, said zombie will instantly vanish.
 * If a hypnotized zombie encounters a regular zombie eating a plant, the other zombie will not change targets, allowing the hypnotized one to eat it without being damaged.
 * Gargantuars will ignore hypnotized zombies. That being said, it is possible for a zombie to eat a gargantuar in 15 seconds, if the player somehow prevents the gargantuar from moving.
 * Hypnotized Peashooter/Gatling Pea zombies will still shoot peas at the player's plants, while the Jalapeno zombie will burn the plants without burning the zombies.