Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic

A non-human character in a series, often an animal, is turned into a human. The major difference between this and a Pinocchio figure wanting To Become Human is that the transformed character usually doesn't want to be human. Such changes are, more often than not, involuntarily forced upon them, like the inverse of a Baleful Polymorph.

Sometimes, immediately after such tranformation follows a Humans Through Alien Eyes sequence as the newly transformed inspects their new, strange pink extremities with five wriggling tentacles, the strange growth infecting the very top of their body and the bizarre inability to see in ultraviolet.

Once experiencing what it's like, the creature often can't wait to turn back to normal. The most common version of this trope will involve cats, due to the sly assumption that cats already think they're the best creatures, and also... well, you know. This can also be a Cool and Unusual Punishment for supernatural beings, as the loss of their powers forces them to be Brought Down to Normal. If the character is a nonhuman who hates the human race this may be a Karmic Transformation as they discover Being Human Sucks.

If the change is voluntary, the character only occasionally puts up with it for the sake of convenience. Very often, they are simply so bad at acting human that it's better for everyone that they aren't.

Sometimes the character flips between both, and has no specific problems with it, but does it selectively because it makes other characters feel more comfortable. This trope preferentially happens to the Non-Human Sidekick, where it can't be permanent because it might disrupt the premise of the character.

Naturally, the mascot-dominated demographics of Shonen and Shojo will result in the transformation into a character who is incredibly adorable or attractive, providing eye candy for the audience while not invoking romantic notions in the established cast.

See also A Form You Are Comfortable With. Contrast Animorphism, which is kind of the opposite (humans turn into non-humans). May result in Alien Among Us or a Shapeshifting Lover. Contrast Humanity Is Infectious, where it's the human mindset that is catchy.

Examples of Humanity Ensues include:


Anime and Manga[]

  • Played with in Bleach, where Yoruichi first appears as a snarky, deep-voiced cat, but is later revealed to be a hot, dark-skinned woman.
  • In one episode of Keroro Gunsou, Kururu invents a device that turns animals into humans, and the Keronians take a trip to the zoo to find recruits for their forces. Despite their best efforts, they don't find any animals who are either able or willing to act as soldiers.
  • Tony Tony Chopper of One Piece is a textbook example of the mascot variant. He got this way from eating the Human Human fruit, and unlike most examples of this trope, prefers to stay in his hybrid form.
    • Well, what do you expect? He's a doctor. And he's become less of a textbook example after the Time Skip; now he doesn't mind being called a monster.
  • Hippo in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch is a penguin that, when he has been living on the surface long enough, attains an alternate form of a cute little boy. Oddly enough, he finds his human form ugly and his penguin form attractive. Additionally, the Dark Lovers are actually sea animals turned into humans. Same with the Black Beauty Sisters, who become kemonomimi instead.
  • Ryo-ohki gets one of these in the Tenchi Muyo! OVA series. This leaves her with four forms: cute cuddly critter, little kid, sexy teen/adult, and Cool Ship. She's usually shown in either critter or little kid forms. For the record, she started with just the battleship, and was given the cute critter form on her rebirth.
  • Subversion in Ranma ½: most animals don't care much about being turned into humans (or even other animals, for that matter.) The creatures conquered and captured by the Musk Dynasty, however, are justified in their hostility by virtue of being naturally aggressive, powerful beasts that take issue with being domesticated in the first place; the rage they express after being dunked in the Spring of Drowned Girl and locked in the form of women comes less from the shock of being human than from simply wanting to rip their captors a new one.
  • Katy the cat in The Fantastic Adventures of Unico wants to be a witch, so the kind-hearted little unicorn transforms her into a human girl (complete with cute outfit!). Katy doesn't believe Unico transformed her, so he returns her to her original form and refuses to make her human again because she's selfish (well, she is a cat). After Katy saves the life of the old woman she thought was a witch, Unico changes her back into a human.
    • Similarly, Kukuru the Big Bad of Unico and the Magic Island is a simple puppet who willed himself to life through sheer anger and hatred (and sunlight) to avenge his abandonment by humans.
  • The title character of Princess Tutu is a duck who is granted the power to transform into a human, and then again into a Magical Girl. Her name in Japanese is, in fact, Duck (Ahiru), and she regains her duck form whenever she accidentally lets slip a quack.
  • One chapter of Urusei Yatsura has a bat working for a loser vampire, and recruits Ataru to find a fair maiden for the vampire to bite (or alternatively just a decent amount of blood from a maiden). Payment for services is a kiss from a pretty girl, but since the bat doesn't know any girls (he hired Ataru for this), it secretly turns itself into a hot babe... and is thoroughly creeped out by her reflection. She struggles to give Ataru a very brief peck, then flees in abject nausea, and is later seen (in bat form) furiously gargling and brushing his teeth.
  • In the Sailor Moon franchise, Luna the cat is shown capable of attaining a human form in every permutation of the franchise. In the anime, she turns into an adult human briefly in the S Movie, which was based on an arc in the manga where she also attained human form. In the manga, she does so more than once, as do her fellow cats Artemis (her lover) and Diana (their child). In the live-action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Luna can turn into a small child and even a Sailor Senshi, though sneezing changes her back into a cat.
    • In the manga only, Rei's crows, Phobos and Deimos, briefly become humans in order to grant Rei the Mars Crystal during the Dead Moon Circus arc. They're later revealed to be denizens of the planet Coronis, where Sailor Lead Crow also hails from. Just in time for them to both get killed by her.
  • Cubex Cursedx Curious provides an unusual variant, in that the ones gaining human forms are inanimate objects. Still, the idea is the same.
  • In Kanon, Makoto is an updated version of the Japanese kitsune fox-woman, a fox who takes female human form to seduce a man.
  • Ponta of Guru Guru Pon Chan becomes human by eating a magic bone.
  • Inverted in Digimon Frontier; one of the main themes is of the human children coming to terms with their new identities as digimon. For example, this theme becomes apparent in one episode in which Duskmon inflicts a Lotus Eater Machine on Takuya, sending him back to the human world, on the day he left for the digital world, in the form of a childlike digimon. Due to this, Takuya starts to realise that he's no longer completely human.
  • Rayflo's cat in Manga/Vassalord.


Comic Books[]

  • In the Marvel Universe, the Heroes for Hire incarnation of the White Tiger was an actual tiger, transformed into a human being. She eventually chose to be changed back into a tiger as being a human was too confusing for her.
  • Happens quite frequently in Fables, mostly because Fables who are nonhuman (or at least don't look human enough) are forced to live in a secluded area called the Farm where they can't leave. As a result, Fables try to save up to buy a glamour spell to give them human appearances. Snow White helps give Bigby the ability to turn into a human with a lycanthropy-stained knife. There is also the case of Colonel Thunderfoot, a rabbit who is turned into a human by the angry mother of a rabbit who dies after Thunderfoot leads the troops into an unwinnable battle. She tells him he can only change back from this "hideous form" if he can find a female rabbit that loves him regardless. By the end of the chapter, his chances look rather bleak.
  • A variant happens in Archie Sonic the Hedgehog, when Princess Sally's AI sidekick constructs herself a holographic mobian body after experiencing it first hand during a Freaky Friday Flip.
    • An issue of Sonic the Comic has an issue where Sonic is a human. As the issue goes, Sonic wakes up one day in a strange bedroom as a human. As he wanders around the house he meets a woman who says he's mother and makes him believe that Mobius and Sonic the Hedgehog were All Just a Dream. As it turns out though, it's just a trap by Robotnik.
  • Howard the Duck accidentally became human once, and boy, did he hate it.

Fan Fiction[]

  • Take ANY canon that has a non-human character. Guaranteed, there is fanfic where a machine/magic turns them into a human. Usually a very hot one, at that. This is done for the express purpose of the non-human character being able to connect on a more "human" (pardon the pun) level with their human companion as they feel that they can't properly convey their feelings as a non-human. Shippers LOVE this, though it has its platonic uses.
  • It's a common trope in Fan Art in general to take one's favorite non-human characters and show what they'd look like as a human.
  • In episode 44 of Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy, Pittan gains the ability to become human from Queen Aida, and is absolutely displeased with this, even refusing to go to school with the other girls. He does go anyways.
  • For a long while, this happened so often in Nine fandom that the beginnings of a backlash were starting to brew. Fortunately, it seems that nothing too terrible came of it, as there was never any massive, public clash. It was more or less resolved when many artists/writers began more clearly marking their humanform work as such.
  • The Incredibles: Rise of the Galeforces gives us a variant on this concept, with a little help from Genetic Memory. While it helps explain why the cloned Supers can access memories of their past lives, it also applies to non-human creatures as well. Thus, if a non-human creature, such as a Pteranodon in Adam's case, is cloned such that the copy has a predominantly human form, the copy would thus feel as though he were actually transformed into a human being.
  • In the Death Note fic Constant Temptation Ryuk is caught and punished for interfering in human affairs and being turned into a human is his punishment. Ryuk decides it's totally worth it when Watari shows him how to make apple pie.
  • The fandom of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic had this happening long before Equestria Girls showed up.
  • Has also happened in quite a lot of Transformers fanfics. Usually as a curse (when it happens to the Decepticons) or a chance to learn more about humanity (when it happens to the Autobots).

Films — Animated[]

  • Every human-appearing character in Spirited Away, except Chihiro and her parents. If some of them look human-like, it's only because it's a matter of convenience. This, of course, make sense, since Japanese folklore is rife with this.
  • The shape-changing foxes and tanuki of Pom Poko do their best to blend in with humanity after they lose their fight to save their forests. Some even become real-estate developers themselves.
  • In The Sword in the Stone, Merlin forces Archimedes (his pet owl) to obey him by threatening to turn him into a human. This sequence is especially funny because Archimedes's shocked reaction ("You wouldn't dare!") suggests that he considers it to be the most degrading fate imaginable.
  • In Shrek 2, Shrek gets turned into a human after drinking a potion. It's also revealed that Harold, Fiona's father, got turned into a human from a toad by the Fairy Godmother.

Films — Live-Action[]

  • In City of Angels, angels can choose to become human...but they have to commit angel suicide to do it. Nathaniel Messenger (Dennis Franz' character) did so before the beginning of the movie and Nic Cage's character does it near the end.
  • The vampire film, Daybreakers has two interesting examples. In a vampire-ruled world, human blood is running out. In their search for a cure to vampirism, the remaining human rebels find out that rapid exposure to sunlight, usually lethal, followed by immersion in water, can revert a vampire to human form. The cure is impractical to use on the billions of vampires, but they discover that drinking cured blood cures the feeder. This creates a sort of positive virus effect, the starved vampires feeding on cured people, getting cured, then being fed on themselves, curing more people.

Literature[]

  • This happens to Nanny Ogg's horrible cat, Greebo, from the Discworld novels. Normally, he's ugly and foul smelling, but when transformed into a human (in Witches Abroad and Maskerade), it is claimed that "His left eye glittered with the sins of angels, and his smile was the downfall of saints (female ones, anyway)". He has been described as looking evil in an interesting sort of way, like a pirate who really understands the term of 'Jolly Roger', or a romantic poet who gave up the opium and tried red meat. In fact the best brief descriptions are that:
Cquote1

 He could swagger while asleep. Greebo could, in fact, commit sexual harassment while sitting very quietly in the next room.

Nanny: "He looks aristocratic."

Granny: "He looks like a beautiful, brainless bully."

Nanny: "Same thing."

Cquote2
    • This also falls in line with the Disc's general opinion of cats; Elegant, beautiful, brainless bastards.
    • In Witches Abroad, Granny's evil sister Lily also did this to a wolf, partially anthropomorphising it to fulfill the Big Bad Wolf role in a living fairytale. This is treated as a monstrous act, because predator minds having to think like a human drives them insane and makes it impossible to live as either a wolf or a human. In the end a woodcutter gets called in for a Mercy Kill. (This doesn't apply with Greebo because cats have enough poise to pull anything off).
    • Averted by the Librarian, who was a human to begin with, and has carefully destroyed all evidence of who he was so no-one will get the bright idea of trying to change him back.
  • In the book The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, the unicorn is turned into a human for about a third of the story to protect her from the Red Bull that had hunted down all the other unicorns. She is horrified at first, mostly because the transformation makes her mortal, something she's never experienced before. However, the longer she remains transformed the more human she becomes and the more she loses her own identity, until eventually she wishes to stay human and spend what short life span she has as a human with her human true love. The end of the story leaves her quite melancholic, a unicorn once more, but not as pure and aloof from humans as her kind is, since she has experienced human emotion.
  • This trope is the entire point of the novel Shoebag, in which a cockroach finds himself transformed into a human and wants to transform back.
  • In Kockroach, a cockroach inexplicably turns into a human being. Rather than trying to find a way back, he makes good on his predicament, taking advantage of everything that comes his way and thriving, because despite his new body he's still a cockroach.
  • In the Tom Holt book Snow White and the Seven Samurai, the big bad wolf is turned into a handsome prince (by way of a frog), and isn't very happy about it.
  • In Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger, turtle wizard Clothahump coerces Mudge the otter into assisting Jontom by threatening to transform Mudge into a human if he refuses. In Paths of the Perambulator, in the same series, Jontom's animal companions are all unwillingly transformed into humans by a surge of wild magic, and he has to play Rick Springfield's Human Touch backwards to change them back.
    • In his other boot Kingdoms of Light the familiars of a fallen wizard are transformed into humans and forced to cross a weird dimension that represents the land of light (in the form of a huge rainbow) in order to bring back the power of light to a now darkly colored world. Needless to say with a snake, two cats, a dog, and a bird all turned human with a sudden realization of human feelings and emotions things get a little...odd.
  • Animorphs: There are two examples of animals gaining morphing power from touching the morphing cube. One, an otherwise incredibly dangerous Cape Buffalo, nearly achieves sapience but then gets killed off. The other is an ant that partially morphs into Cassie.
  • The dragons in Dragons in Our Midst. Though technically voluntary, there was pretty much no other option they could take, and most if not all of them certainly would have rather stayed dragons.
  • Treasure in the Heart of the Tanglewood has one of the few true subversions of this trope. Year after year, one Knight in Shining Armor after another rides into the Tanglewood to fight the monster within, and year after year, they never come out again. The beast within turns each knight into an animal, then kills them, and tells the protagonist that these were the true forms of the knights, which they had been shifted out of for use as Cannon Fodder. The subversion is that he lied, and shapeshifted beings in this setting don't die as themselves. The knights were human all along.
  • In On A Pale Horse, to grant a client's last request for a good story, Death tells a story about a whale who gets transformed into a woman. She falls in love with a man, but gets disgusted when she finds out he's a whaler. Her lover tries to explain that whale meat is the village's main source of food, but she dumps him and returns to the sea. However, she eventually meets a whale who is really a transformed squid. He is trying to investigate why whales hunt his kind. She tries to explain that squid are the whale's main source of food, then realizes that humans and whales are Not So Different. She returns to human form, reconciles with her lover, and they get married, presumably Happily Ever After.
  • The titular character of the Dutch children's novel Minoes by Annie M. G. Schmidt. She was a cat, and one day she woke up as a lady.
  • Bulgakov likes to play with it, usually for ironical purposes, like in Heart of a Dog.
  • In one of the Goosebumps books, a bee's mind is accidentally swapped into the body of a human boy. The bee does not seem very comfortable in a human body--it continually makes buzzing noises and attempts (unsuccessfully) to eat nectar from flowers.
  • In the first Keys to the Kingdom book, it is mentioned that being made mortal is one of the punishments for disobedient Denizens.
  • Tales of Kolmar's got the king of the Kantri, Akhor, become human at the end of Song In The Silence. As the one Kantri most fascinated by humans - he actually used to try to walk on two legs like them, but it hurt too much - he's initially very happy about it, enjoying the stronger sense of touch and the much more dexterous hands. There's a point in The Lesser Kindred where he realizes he can't fly, and later when it really sinks in that who he was is gone, which are both marked with grief and sorrow. It's very mixed. But it does mean he can be with his beloved. In Redeeming The Lost he becomes a Kantri again and mourns his human shape.


Live-Action TV[]

  • Luna of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has the ability to turn into a human girl. However, she still acts like a cat sometimes and can be turned back by sneezing.
  • The Red Dwarf episode "DNA" had Kryten turn human, much to his surprise and pleasure — until he found out his spare parts (most notably his spare heads) hated him for it. Just take a look at the scene. And the photos were an example of Enforced Method Acting.
    • And his eyes no longer have a zoom mode. And his nipples no longer pull in radio signals.
      • And the whole last-chicken-in-the-shop look for certain body parts.
  • Being stuck in his human-like form was a punishment for Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Interestingly, the condition lasted several episodes before it was finally reversed.
  • It was also a punishment for Q in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He did not deal with it very well.'
    • He spent a fair amount of the episode lamenting that he should have asked to be turned into anything else other than human.
  • Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager started out as human, became a Borg as a kid, and was forcibly brought back down to human (more or less) by the crew of Voyager. While initially not happy about it (to say the least), Captain Janeway guided her through the process of rediscovering her humanity through time, patience, care, Les Yay...
    • Also, it was impossible to communicate with Species 8472 before they started taking on human form, and afterwards we never saw them in their tripedal, purple-skinned, cross-pupilled Eyes of Gold form again.
  • In the new Doctor Who, Time Lords have a technology called a "Chameleon Arch" which can rewrite their biology, it's described as a "biological cloaking device", to turn them into any Human Aliens while storing their "Time Lord-ness" and memories into a receptacle, usually a watch fob which will turn them back into Time Lords when they open it. The difference from most examples of this trope is that Time Lords, while transformed, have no real memory of their former selves. The Doctor, as a human, has strange dreams of his Time Lord life, and the Master hears drums, but they still don't doubt their humanity and seem perfectly content.
    • Also occurs in the episode "The Doctor's Wife", in which the TARDIS's soul is ripped out and stuffed into a human body.
  • In the "I Will Remember You" episode of Angel, the titular vampire is made human by accidentally mixing his blood with the blood of a demon with regenerative powers. After becoming a Sense Freak, noting that he doesn't like yoghurt, having mucho bed-time with Buffy (in a Contrived Coincidence Crossover) and generally enjoying the sun he employs an in-universe Reset Button when he learns that his humanity will prevent him from fighting in the upcoming apocalypse and thus cause the deaths of many people, including the Slayer. His reward and punishment (two for one!) was being the only person to remember the lost day.
    • Anya from Buffy is another example. Anya was originally a thousand-year-old vengeance demon who took human form to curse unfaithful men. Then in "The Wish" she loses her powers, and becomes human. She eventually resigns herself to being human. Her unfamiliarity with human social conventions (particularly not talking about sex in public) is a running gag/theme.
      • Or so it seems, at first; it actually turns out she originally was a human, born in Sweden during Viking times. And she was just as weird back then, while other vengeance demons like Halfryk don't seem to have any such foibles.
  • Used in Wizards of Waverly Place when Alex gets Justin to turn a couple of guinea pigs into humans for some information.
  • Samantha of Bewitched turned a horse into a woman just to understand what the horse wanted to say. The changeling was not happy with this: "I've got nothing to swat flies with!"
    • She did this in another episode as well, turning a cat into a woman to model for her husband's boss. In this case, though, the cat-turned-woman actually likes being human.
  • In Charmed, a snake, a rabbit, and a pig were turned into humans by a group of girls who wanted a date for a dance. The spell was temporary but the transformed men wanted to remain human permanently.

Tabletop Games[]

  • In the Old World of Darkness roleplaying game Werewolf: The Apocalypse, some of the werewolves originated as wolves. These, though as intelligent as the others, usually find shapeshifting less than pleasant and make use of it only for special purposes. Some factions, such as the genocidal (and all-wolf) Red Talons rarely take on human shapes at all.
    • This was also part of the backstory for the changelings of Changeling: The Dreaming. With the encroachment of Banality and a severe decrease in all-around belief, the faeries who were unable to make it back to Arcadia bound their souls to human bodies. A changeling generally goes through a normal childhood until their fae soul goes through "Chrysalis," at which point they begin to perceive the world of the fae and start recalling information about their past lives.
    • In the reboot of the same game, Changeling: The Lost, those humans who were taken and turned into Beasts and Elementals have a hard time adjusting back to being human again. The Beasts have a hard time thinking non-instinctively after being animals for so long, and the Elementals have trouble relating to other people after spending so long as flames or trees.
    • And again with the old World of Darkness, in Demon: The Fallen, demons who'd escaped from the Abyss had to take empty bodies (the brain-dead, the severely insane, and the recently dead) to remain on Earth. This actually grounded a lot of them and made them less demonic, seeing as they were experiencing human emotion and sensation for the first time after millennia in a featureless abyss.
  • Shadowrun has rules for playing a character who can shift between human and an animal form. The main drawback to such a character isn't the hefty investment of character generation resources, it's the fact that such characters are supposed to be played as animals that turn into people, not people that turn into animals, which makes justifying why they're hanging out with a bunch of gun bunnies in a smelly city sprawl rather than climbing trees a bit difficult.
  • More or less applies to a couple of NPCs from the Carnival supplement for Ravenloft. One is a former snake familiar of an evil wizard, whose master used to turn her into a sexy elf for "companionship"; gaining her freedom when she joined the Carnival, she now works as a snake-charmer/dancer. The other is either a leopard who turns into a man, or vice versa: he's not sure which.

Videogames[]

  • In The Legend of Zelda : A Link to the Past there is a hidden Easter egg. If you go into the northwestmost house in Kakariko village, there's a vase which has a Cucco (basically an in-universe chicken) hiding under it. Part way through the game you get the "Magic powder" item. If you sprinkle it on this Cucco then it turns into a woman and complains about the shift. The effect is reset when you leave the house.
    • The Cucco-turned-woman also gives a hint about the town's statue being not quite what it seems.
  • In Dark Cloud Xiao, Toan's pet cat, is turned into a catgirl once you give her a potion, and declares that she wants to help "Master" reassemble the Atlamilla, donning a slingshot and becoming your second party member.
  • It's implied that Nastasia from Super Paper Mario used to be a bat who became humanoid to repay Count Bleck for freeing her from a trap.
  • An interesting example from the Touhou Project: most fairies in Gensokyo are perfect mooks, lacking in personality but able to endlessly respawn if killed. Ice fairy Cirno, on the other hand, has quite a personality, and is several magnitudes more powerful than the average fairy. When she encounters Shikieiki Yamaxanadu, the yama conjectures that because Cirno's the strongest! so powerful and able to move around and cause trouble, she's coming closer to becoming a Youkai and therefore mortal. The conversation goes completely over Cirno's head, of course...
    • Plus, of course, there are all the Youkai that take the form of cute girls, but which originally came from animals and inanimate objects lasting a hundred years, per Japanese mythology.
  • Some of the beastmen in Golden Sun Dark Dawn originated as animals and became more human-like after Alchemy was released, and will happily chat with the heroes about how weird it is to be walking on one's hind feet, wearing clothes, and eating cooked meat instead of raw.
  • Happens to Aigis, the team robot in Persona 3 and Teddie, the Team Pet in Persona 4.
    • Ryoji is probably a better example for P3, as Aigis never actually physically turns human - she's just a case of Humanity Is Infectious.
  • Riviera the Promised Land's true ending. Rose turns from a cat familiar to a Catgirl with random magic powder that has a power to grant any wish.
  • A wolf in Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning is cursed with humanity by a gang of mischievous Sprites in a sidequest. He is pissed about the change — he can't hunt well without his fangs and claws, his own pack drove him off thinking he was just another human, humans think he's just a lunatic and forced him to wear pants. The Fateless One can help the unfortunate wolf by killing the sprites and undoing the curse.

Webcomics[]

  • In Narbonic, Artie the superintelligent talking gerbil is temporarily turned into a human for a specific mission. The transmogrifier ray reacted with his modified DNA to cause him to spontaneously switch between human and gerbil forms. Eventually he learns to control the changes, but he still thinks of himself primarily as a gerbil. Also fits the trope by having moviestar-type good looks, and a voice to match.
    • Also, Caliban the demon renounces his demonic powers and becomes mortal. He looks mostly the same, except for having lost the wings and horns, but that's because even as a demon he appeared as a little blond guy with a British accent.
  • One story in Phil Foglio's XXXenophile involved a witch who had accidentally cast a lust spell on herself. She summoned her patron god, Cernunnos, to, ah, scratch her itch, but even the randy deity can't satisfy her. It turns out her (sentient) cat familiar accidentally dumped a spoonful of a love potion she was making for someone else into something she was drinking. The spell could only be broken by playing with whoever had given her the potion. So Cernunnos turns the cat into a human and had him join in, after which the witch's familiar became the witch's fiance. The cat enjoys being a man-- but also thinks opposable thumbs are overrated and, after the witch declares her love for him, asks "Will you still feed me?"
  • All Ace characters in Pandect are animals that can turn human at will. Since humanity comes with a soul and a greatly extended lifespan, earning Ace is a great reward, albeit one with a lot of responsibility attached.
  • Red from Gunnerkrigg Court is a Regional Fairy who wants to become human, initially. The first time we see her post-Metamorphosis, she's in a barely-contained rage over her new body and over the human classes she has to take.
    • Although, once she learns about haircuts, she is pretty enthusiastic about the misguided notion that you can chop bits off a human's body, and Annie and Kat have to forcibly restrain her from trying it herself.
    • The reverse also happens: humans can become animals through a similar process.
  • The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob has the butterfly creature Princess Voluptua, who spends most of her time in the comic disguised as a beautiful woman.
  • While Aylee from Sluggy Freelance has never become fully human, she has eventually adopted a form close enough that, with a little makeup and contact lenses she can reasonably pass herself off as one. She actually seems quite happy about the transformation (particularly having fingers delicate enough to do things like pick paperclips off a table), though some of her attempts to fit in with humans can be a little frustrating.
  • In Kevin and Kell, the portal from Furth to Earth transforms animals into humans. Except Mrs. Aura and Nigel, who become dolphins.
    • Francis Fennec, the son of a fennec fox and a human-turned-rabbit, spent the first year of his life as what could only be described as a hereditary mess of an unclassifiable animal. Later, though, he turned into a human. Lindesfarne's research revealed that because Danielle was originally a human, any children born to her would eventually turn human...as would her own, since she too came from the human world originally. Funny thing, though, Francis isn't that bothered about his humanity, since he's still a baby, but the uproar that ensued from the general population...
  • El Goonish Shive: after his involuntary transformation from a hideous chimera Vlad/Vladia decides he's willing to accept being female as long as he's human.
  • Subverted in Witchprickers, when Ilemauzer the talking bat asks Old Scratch to change her into a human, only to turn into a Petting Zoo Person instead.


Web Originals[]

  • The Moreaus of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe are Uplifted Animals who were force-evolved into a near-human form. Regardless of their original species, their constant interaction with humanity over the decades have made them all very humanlike psychologically. ** The "Prime" variety of Anthropomorphic Personifications active on Earth in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe (that is, those who are "pure ideas" rather than a normal human who has been merged with the "power of the idea") generally start out as pretty inhuman, psychologically speaking. They get more and more human the more they interact with people. Of course, there are exceptions.
  • Vanguard, which involves a planet where bugs are apparently the dominant species being struck by a strange meteor. A scout goes to investigate...
  • The end of Gaia Online's poorly-named "Demonbusters" event has the central demigod characters stripped of their powers and reduced to mortality. Subsequent events feature them trying to return to being deities, to no avail.

Western Animation[]

  • In one of the "What-If" episodes of Futurama, Bender is turned into a human and discovers the joys of food and dancing. He proceeds to spend a whole week eating, drinking, and partying. By the time the other characters find him, he's an outrageously fat slob in terrible shape. He proceeds to teach scientists how to live it up, and dies mid-party — which still doesn't stop him from saying "woo!"
  • In Gargoyles, Demona gains the ability to turn human by day after a run-in with Puck. Despite initially being repulsed by this development, due to her genocidal hatred of humans, she successfully uses her new form to become a Corrupt Corporate Executive, which leaves her far better equipped to implement her murderous schemes (and even got married to the guy who wants her dead because he didn't recognize her human form).
    • Bet Puck didn't foresee his trick backfiring like that.
    • Puck himself counts, in a way; he created his human identity (Owen Burnett) and voluntarily lived in it for years (very well, too), but when he helps Xanatos and the gargoyles fight Oberon his punishment is being trapped in that form permanently, except when he needs to train or protect Alexander. Since he's Puck, he proves entirely capable of engineering loopholes for himself on occasion.
  • In The Transformers, the episode "Only Human" involves Springer, Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, and Arcee having their minds put into synthoid human forms by the villainous Victor Drath (with the help of the suspiciously familiar Old Snake). While they were "created" with white t-shirts and boxers, by strong coincidence they managed to find clothing that corresponded to their paint scheme hanging on four hooks inside an empty warehouse.
    • An awkward section of this episode featured Rodimus being invited into Drath's beautiful girlfriend's house followed by a fade to black. The next Rodimus-based scene is set the next morning, when Drath's girlfriend betrays him to his father. It's not completely clear what went on that night, but Rodimus seemed very uncomfortable with it.
    • An earlier episode involves Seaspray falling in love with a human-like alien woman, resulting in his entering a magical pool in order to become a "human" man (however, he keeps his metal feet and his 'bubbly' voice"). The alien woman later uses the pool to become a robot.
    • Transformers Animated paid tribute to this episode with the two-parter "Human Error", which starts with the Autobots partying it up on Christmas Eve and going to sleep/"stasis", and then Optimus Prime waking up and finding himself--and all the other Autobots men in human forms.
      • This turns out to be a Decepticon plot to reprogram them into changing sides. They get to indulge their curiousity about food, Optimus appreciates humanity better after trying to manually drive the fire truck, and Prowl figures out the VR world and uses it to gain Matrix-like power to help them return to their robot forms.
  • Disney's direct-to-video Cinderella II: Dreams Come True had a sequence in which the mouse Jacques was turned into a human so he could be more helpful to Cindy.
    • Also, in Cinderella III, the cat Lucifer is transformed into a human in order to drive a pumpkin carriage containing Cinderella off a cliff.
    • And the first Cinderella had the Fairy Godmother turn both Major the horse and Bruno the bloodhound into humans to serve as the drivers for Cinderella's pumpkin coach (since the role of the horses have been taken by the mice).
  • Happens to a wolf named Harry in the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "A Wolf in Cheap Clothing". He's the victim of Professor Nimnul's latest plan which involves swapping species so he can turn into a Wolf Man. (After said experiment goes awry, the episode also includes some spectacularly insane Biological Mashup creatures.)
  • In Ben 10: Alien Force, Albedo builds a copy of the Omnitrix but syncing it to the original's database causes him to turn into a copy of Ben. He was displeased to say the least.
Cquote1

  "I am stuck in a stinky, sweaty, noisy, hungry, hairy, smelly teenage human body, constantly craving chili fries and scratching myself in places I suspect are inappropriate!"

Cquote2
  • A short-lived '90s cartoon based on the movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes in which one of the main characters was a female tomato who could be turned into a teenage female human by sneezing. Sneezing also turned her back into a tomato. It Makes Just As Much Sense in Context.
  • In the Conan the Adventurer episode "Bones of Damballa" Skulkar, an undead skeleton warrior servant of Wrath-Amon is transformed back into his original human form, and tricks Conan and Zula into helping him get his "other" form back.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Equestria Girls spinoff, any creature from Equestria who travels to the human world gets turned into a human. Expect Spike who turns into a dog.
  • Tales of Arcadia:
    • Trollhunters: After being exposed to several chemicals in Gato's stomach, Blinky becomes human for a few episodes of Season 2.
    • The Royals' disguises in 3Below. As Akiridions are Energy Beings Starfish Aliens, their outer shell is transmogrified to become human for twelve hours at a time when they need to go out.
Advertisement