It's pretty funny actually, history is - it turns out - often more incredible than what you would consider a really bad plot point ("naaaaah c'mon that could never happen!"). And many organisms on Earth exceed even really poor middle-grade-school-level-b-movies.

As a favorite example, the cordyceps fungus which infect the host and affect the behavior of the host to more easily spread the fungus (eg climb higher before dying). Immortalized via BBC Planet Earth, and PE inspiring the game The Last of Us (filming as a series for HBO).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps