There are many penalties for failure in fiction, but by far the strangest is transformation. Here, the loser in a battle, duel, or contest is transmogrified into a new and usually detrimental shape — often automatically.
The reasons for the transformation are many and varied: maybe it's part of some kind of supernatural contest, with losing resulting in automatically being punished by transformation; maybe there's a magical contract that punishes those who renege by failing; maybe the victim is a shapeshifter that's lost control of their power due to injuries sustained in defeat and doomed to a Shapeshifter Mode Lock.
Whatever the case, the character has been defeated and the consequence is transformation into something that leaves them unable to fight back — usually weak, disgusting, monstrous, or just plain pathetic-looking.
Contrast Defeat by Transformation, which is when the transformation is the cause of the defeat. Compare Forced Transformation and Karmic Transformation and contrast Bemoaning the New Body: the former is often a punishment or curse that overlaps with this, and the latter results in a sense of defeatism. Compare This Was His True Form, contrast Shape Dies, Shifter Survives. May overlap with I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure. Depending on how painful the transformation and/or how gruesome the end result is, this trope may result in Body Horror.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Fighting Foodons, King Gorge punishes each of his top minions for failure by transforming them back into the animals they originally were.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- During Pride and Ed's battle, with Kimblee's aid, Ed destroys all but one of the souls powering the Homunculus. This is not fatal, but strips Pride of his powers and memories, reducing him to a minuscule fetus that eventually grows into a normal human child.
- Both of Envy's defeats result in them being worn down to their true form, a shrivelled green worm-like creature. On the first occasion, they eventually manage to escape and recover somewhat; on the second occasion, Ed manages to break him by talking which prompts them to commit suicide by removing their Philosopher's Stone.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who: "The Magic Mousetrap", it's eventually revealed that the Celestial Toymaker has finally lost one of his games and been transformed into a toy like all the other losers — in his case, a ventriloquist dummy. Unfortunately, the Toymaker still has enough power to start another series of games with the inhabitants of the sanitorium, offering to grant their deepest wishes if they win... but if they lose, they'll be turned into wooden dolls — as is the case with Ludo, Mrs Kniddle, Harry and Herbert, and Lola.
Films — Animation
- Cars: In a deleted version
of the nightmare scene, Lightning dreams that the people of Radiator Springs put his engine in a steamroller (basically putting his brain/mind in a new body) so he could fix the road, as punishment for not agreeing to do a race that would put their town back on the map. The movie's story was revamped shortly after (namely to make the townspeople look more sympathetic). For obvious reasons, this scene was cut and replaced with something a little less... morbid.
- The Little Mermaid: Right before Ariel can get her kiss of true love from Eric, the sun sets and she turns back into a mermaid as per the contract she signed with Ursula.
- Wish Dragon: Long eventually reveals that in life, he was a selfish emperor who sought out wealth rather than doing anything to help his people, even sending his son to die in battle and forcing his daughters into loveless marriages, all for the sake of money. When he died, the gods punished him for his greed and selfishness by transforming him into a wish dragon and forcing him to serve ten masters before he could enter the afterlife.
Films — Live-Action
- The Dark Crystal: When Jen returns the missing piece to the Crystal, the Skekses are immediately defeated, with the Garthim army literally falling to pieces and their decadent palace shaking itself apart around them. Then the urRu Mystics arrive on the scene, and with no troops left alive to stop them, the Skekses are unwillingly fused with the Mystics to become the urSkeks.
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: After the teens win the game, Van Pelt is transformed into a colony of rats as punishment for abusing the jewel's power.
- Labyrinth: In one of the early scripts of the film, upon being rejected for the final time and defeated by Sarah, Jareth degenerates into a petulant little goblin virtually identical to the rest of his minions. note
- Return to Oz: In the climax, the Nome King challenges Dorothy and her companions to a game to decide the fate of Oz: if they can guess which object in his extensive ornament collection is the Scarecrow, he'll be restored to normal. However, if they fail all three allotted guesses, they'll be transformed into knickknacks themselves — and the Nome King doesn't tell them this until the Gump has lost the game. For good measure, the Nome King also grows progressively more human for every defeat that Dorothy suffers. Once Dorothy figures out the hidden key and begins winning, the Nome King is progressively reverted to his monstrous earth elemental form for every friend she restores.
- Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince: When Robin finally works out the way to destroy Taminella's power, the loss of it causes her to revert from her royal finery to rags, collapse into a puddle, and finally turn into a bird, to which Robin can only respond by bemusedly stating the obvious.
Literature
- The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, This is how Drosselmeyer's nephew becomes the titular Nutcracker: after breaking Princess Pirlipat's curse, he was supposed to make seven steps backward without stumbling. Lady Mouserinks throws herself under his feet, so he fumbles the last step, making the curse pass onto him.
- The Horse and His Boy: After his military defeat, prince Rabadash is punished for his pride by Aslan transforming him into a donkey, in the most hilarious and embarrassing public way possible. This comes with the stipulation that the transformation can be reversed at the temple of Tash, which is in his capitol city in full view of all his subjects, so there's no escaping the public Humiliation Conga.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Celestial Toymaker", Steven and Dodo face two clowns, Joey and Clara, in a deadly game of Blind Man's Bluff. The clowns are made to replay the game when it is clear they are cheating, and the second time round, Joey loses his footing on an obstacle course and the challengers are transformed into twisted dolls on the floor.
- In the climax of "The Sun Makers," the Doctor is able to finally defeat the Collector by programming a 2% growth tax into his computers, causing an inflation spiral that would leave the Company bankrupt, so the Collector won't be able to recoup his losses from the revolution — which finally catches up with him as he frantically reviews his records. The Collector's Villainous Breakdown is so extreme that he loses his humanoid shape and shrinks back into his original form, quite literally going down the plughole of his wheelchair. For good measure, the Doctor ensures he won't leave by jamming a champagne cork in the plughole.
- Power Rangers:
- Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: In the season 2 opener, Lord Zedd makes his displeasure over Rita Repulsa's losses over the Rangers by shrinking her, shoving her in another space trash can, and tossing her into space.
- Power Rangers Time Force: Each time the rangers defeat a mutant, the mutant shrinks into an inanimate toy-like thing.
- Power Rangers Dino Fury: Upon being destroyed by the Rangers, the Sporix Beasts revert into their inanimate Sporix cell forms. The Sporix cells are powerful energy sources in their own right, and so in addition to defeating the monsters, the Rangers also need to gather them before the villains do.
- Star Trek: The Original Series: In "Catspaw", the villains are a witch and warlock who are really aliens that use "transmuters" (gemstones that are really sophisticated technology) both to use "magical" powers and maintain humanoid form. Their real form is a small furry insect-like creature. Once Kirk defeats them and destroys the transmuters, they revert to their true forms; for good measure, they can't survive without the transmuters and die in an apparent inversion of This Was His True Form.
- The Tomorrow People (1973): In the season 3 finale, evil alien shapeshifter Jedikiah is defeated, and allowed to live... as a mortal man stripped of his powers. He is last seen hobbling out of the Tomorrow People's lab in rags.
Multimedia Franchises
- Transformers: Trypticon was once a Decepticon soldier loyal to Megatron, up until he was heavily damaged over the course of a mission to the point that Shockwave said he may never regain full mobility. Megatron, disgusted at Trypticon's failure, ordered him to transform (which, due to his injuries, made his alt-mode his only mode and took away his ability to transform). Megatron then used Trypticon's comatose spacecraft body as his flagship for the rest of the war. This came back to bite him in Transformers: Prime when a surge of Dark Energon awoke Trypticon, allowing him to take the entire crew hostage as revenge.
Tabletop Games
- In the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons & Dragons, when a Drow who follows Lolth reaches a certain level of power, they undergo the Test of Lolth, which is administered by the Spider Queen herself. Those who fail this test and manage to survive are transformed into half-drow, half-spider monsters known as Driders as punishment.
- In F.A.T.A.L., this is one of many possible results from a Magic Misfire.
- Warhammer40k:
- The Imperium has a ban on thinking machines because A.I. Is a Crapshoot. But computers are really useful, so how do you get around this ban? By tying a human mind to it, resulting in what is known as a servitor. Needless to say, it's not a procedure that people are signing up for in the numbers necessary so The Imperium — being the nightmare, fascist theocracy that it is — often use servitor conversion as a punishment for lack of faith... or because you were late on rent payment, or one of numerous other reasons. Really, it doesn't take a lot for the Imperial bureaucracy to invoke You Have Failed Me.
- The powers of Chaos reside in, and use the powers of, a mirror-plane of reality known as the Warp. The Warp is shaped by mental aptitude, and thus if you have the willpower you can bend it to your will to make the impossible, possible. But this works both ways: if you cannot handle the sheer amount of contradictory nonsense that the Warp throws at you, your mind breaks, which means there is no longer any mental barrier preventing the warp from suffusing your body and twisting it into a Chaos Spawn, a horrid amalgamation of tentacles, teeth, gibbering mouths, and so forth. The four Gods of the warp, or their agents, sometimes intentionally suffuse servants who have failed them with pure warp energy, intending to trigger this descent into a Chaos Spawn as punishment, though this does offer them a last-minute Die or Fly redemption: if they manage to keep their mind intact, they get to live, likely with a few sweet new Transformation Horror-fueled powers. If not, it's Chaos Spawn a-go-go.
Video Games
- Baldurs Gate 3: Wyll is an infernal pact warlock, whose contract requires him to carry out various hits on behalf of his fiendish overlords (he tried to get it limited to the infernal, the demonic, the heartless, and the soulless but...). At one point, he's hunting Karlach, who he has been led to believe was a renegade devil who escaped hell to wreak havoc in Faerun, but is really a tiefling who was conscripted into Zariel's army and just wanted to escape. Refusing to kill Karlach (who is a recruitable party member) will result in him being turned into a tiefling-like being, marking him as someone in hell's service and earning him a lot of scorn from most people.
- Club Penguin: During the 2013 Medieval Party, there was a potion-making minigame that allowed penguins to brew potions to transform into various new forms such as dragons and hybrid puffles. However, if you got even one ingredient wrong during the potion-making process, you would always be automatically transformed into a chicken puffle. Luckily this could be undone by clicking the "reverse spell" button on your user profile like with the other transformations.
- Devil May Cry: From the third game onwards, some certain demon bosses will turn into Devil Arms after they're defeated. The third game implies that this is a sign of the demon surrendering themselves and their power to the one who defeated them, usually Dante.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 4: Slimes' physical attack have a chance to transform the target into a slime if luck is on their side. Which is basically the same as luck not being on the target's side.
- Final Fantasy XIII: The Fal'cie, the god-like beings that rule the world, can transform a human into a servant called a l'Cie, branding them with a magical mark that requires them to fulfill a specific purpose (known as a Focus) in a set amount of time. If the human fails to complete their Focus, the mark mutates them into a zombie-like monster called a Cie'th, "damned to wander the world unliving and undying, until their corrupted flesh at last can move no more."
- Home Safety Hotline: If you give callers incorrect information too many times and receive a Game Over, you get a cutscene from the player character's point of view where they are transformed into a mouse by Carol. You receive emails throughout the week from your predecessor who suffered the same fate, and a few calls from irate people whom he gave the wrong information to previously.
- Kingdom Hearts II
- In gameplay, failing the minigames presented by either the Gambler Nobodies or Luxord himself will transform Sora into either a hovering card or a harmless die that can either let out a weak attack or wander around until the Drive Gauge is emptied.
- Out of gameplay, Xemnas is said to have the power to turn other Nobodies (in this case Axel) into Dusks in punishment for failure or defiance, one of the lowest forms of Nobody. However, it's never actually seen, though Axel takes the threat seriously.
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!: Alexander is ordered to find someone willing to live with the Beast under the threat of sharing the same curse. If he takes too long, he will transform into a Warthog as one of the game's MANY game overs
- Let It Die: The gambleshroom has a 50% chance of restoring your health and Limit Break meter, and a 50% chance of turning you into a frog for 30 seconds.note
- In Link: The Faces of Evil, Harlequin punishes Koridians who lose all their Rubies gambling them away by transforming them into Goriya.
- Rampage: In the original arcade game, whenever a Player Character monster runs out of health and is thus defeated, they transform back to their normal human form, hastily cover their privates, and slink away.
- Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey: Final Boss Spoilers: Contrary to more traditional examples of One-Winged Angel in JRPG's, Mem Aleph's true form actually is the golden Humanoid Abomination that the player fights during her first phase. However, as said phase ends with the player fatally injuring her, she loses control of her stored Hostile Terraforming energy, resulting in her becoming the Eldritch Abomination Fetus Terrible that she describes as "naked power". Due to Gameplay and Story Segregation, this form is mechanically That One Boss and the cause of many Game Overs; narratively, however, she's pulling a desperate Taking You with Me while she has any control left.
- SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos: Should you meet the requirements to fight either Red Arremer or Athena, you're given a chance to win the match. If you lose, your character will be turned into either a lowly demon or an inoffensive creature. Both Red Arremer and Athena are examples of the SNK Boss trope and will unleash their entire arsenal mercilessly on you. Good luck.
- Splatoon 3: In Side Order, Overlorder's defeat resulting from Pearl's Color Wail transforms it into Smollusk, resembling an octopus paralarva. It can, however, re-assume its previous form and does so for rematches, where defeating it again causes it to transform back into its tiny form.
Web Video
- Critical Role: After his defeat at the hands of the Mighty Nein, the half-fiend Obann is condemned by the god he served, Tharizdun the Chained Oblivion, and his corpse is resurrected as a hideous mass of tentacles, teeth and eyes known as "Obann the Punished."
Western Animation
- DuckTales (2017): Back when she and her brother were an evil Brother–Sister Team, Magica and Poe de Spell tormented/enslaved a village, keeping the people under their thumbs by turning them into goats whenever they "failed".
- Gravity Falls: In the episode "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons", Stan and Mabel have to play the titular game against Probabilitor the Annoying. When they win (because Stan cheated), Probabilitor is turned into "pure math" as punishment for failing at the very game he was created for.
- He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002): Skeletor hires a pair of mercenaries named Tuvar and Baddrah to destroy He-Man, but they hate each other and bicker constantly, allowing He-Man to escape their attempt to capture him. Skeletor punishes their failure by fusing their bodies together into a new two-headed henchman, Two-Bad.
- Jumanji: The Animated Series: Peter Shepherd is frequently transformed as a punishment by the game itself for failing, cheating, trying to find a loophole, or doing anything the game disapproves of. Once, Peter even ended up being punished by the game when Judy cheated.
- Regular Show:
- In "Just Set Up The Chairs", the characters have to deal with the Destroyer of Worlds (who'd been freed from an arcade machine by Rigby) by summoning a giant video game character themselves named Lemon Chef. Thanks to Rigby's Button Mashing, the Destroyer of Worlds gets defeated and turns into a pair of cherries, which Lemon Chef eats.
- In "Silver Dude", after losing to Mordecai and Rigby in a street performer battle, the eponymous Silver Dude is punished by the God of Street Performers by being transformed into a mime.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: After Catra has a Heel–Face Turn and frees Glimmer from Horde Prime's ship, Horde Prime punishes her by chipping her, basically turning her into one of his mindless slaves. She-Ra manages to save her, but Catra's left heavily traumatized by the incident.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): As punishment for failing him one too many times, the Shredder, needing a test subject for a teleportation portal, chucks Baxter Stockman through it into Dimension X. Shredder probably didn't realize the fly on Stockman's coat would transform Baxter into a mutated insect-man. But it's not like Shredder was too concerned.
- The same is done in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), where (after failing to provide the Foot Clan with an army of mutants like Shredder requested), Baxter's transformed into a fly mutant. Unlike the above example, this time the mutation was intentional.
