The golden apple is an element that appears in various national and ethnic folk legends or fairy tales. Recurring themes depict a hero retrieving the golden apples hidden or stolen by a monstrous antagonist. Gold apples also appear on the Silver Branch of the Otherworld in Irish mythology.

Apples appear in many religious traditions, often as a mystical or forbidden fruit. One of the problems identifying apples in religion, mythology and folktales is that as late as the 17th century, the word "apple" was used as a generic term for all (foreign) fruit other than berries, but including nuts. This term may even have extended to plant galls, as they were thought to be of plant origin. For instance, when tomatoes were introduced into Europe, they were called "love apples". In one Old English work, cucumbers are called eorþæppla, just as in French, Dutch, Hebrew, Afrikaans, Persian and Swiss German as well as several other German dialects, the words for potatoes mean "earth-apples". In some languages, oranges are called "golden apples" or "Chinese apples". Datura is called "thorn-apple".