[12] The video game series The Last of Us (2013–present) and its television adaptation present Cordyceps as a deadly threat to the human race, its parasitism powerful enough to result in global calamity.

Scientific American notes that some species in the genus "are indeed body snatchers–they have been making real zombies for millions of years", though of ants or tarantulas, not of humans.

Its human hosts initially become violent "infected" beings, before turning into blind zombie "clickers", complete with fungal "fruiting bodies sprouting from their faces".

[14] In an additional detail that reflects Cordyceps biology, "clickers" then seek out a dark place in which to die and release the fungal spores, enabling the parasite to complete its life cycle.

[14] In similar vein, Cordyceps causes a pandemic that wipes out most of humanity in Mike Carey's 2014 postapocalyptic novel The Girl with All the Gifts and its 2016 film adaptation.

In the fiction, Dr. Caldwell explains that the human-infecting fungus is a mutated form of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (a group of species now split off from Cordyceps) which alters the behaviour of infected insects.