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AD&D's Fireball is notorious.
It makes a sphere of fire 20 feet in radius.
If the room is smaller than the 33,000 cubic foot volume of that sphere, it will go down halls and holes until it's filled out that volume.
AD&D maps are made from 10' cubes. Each of the squares on the map is 1,000 cubic feet, so a fireball will fill 33 of these squares and do the damage indicated by the spell level to everyone and everything in them.
I saw my first total party kill when a new player with mid-level magic user said, "I cast fireball on the kobolds."
The screams of, "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" from the rest of the party were not heeded by the DM and everybody died.
The GURPS Fireball spell is a lot... um... more user friendly.
It's a fist sized globe of fire the mage lobs directly at a point target.
There's an Explosive Fireball too, but its effects are a lot more restrained than the AD&D one.
Rain of Fire comes closest to the AD&D spell, but the area can be closely tailored to the geography with GURPS that's not possible with the older game.
AD&D Fireball is pretty much for use outdoors only. As you note, rarely in a "dungeon" are there big enough spaces to avoid what you describe. Of course a lot of DMs may have let players get away with it. Good ones wouldn't of course. I could see someone like Standing Bear being almost giddy at catching such a faux pas. I know he sure did times when people proverbially and occasionally almost literally shot themselves in the foot with things like wish spells or magic artifacts.
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