Defeat by Transformation

Some conflicts are inevitable, but not all of them can be won through force alone. Perhaps your opponent is too strong to be fought, too dangerous to be conventionally captured, or has an army at their back; maybe you honestly don't want to hurt or kill them — not necessarily out of genuine mercy; or maybe this is a G-Rated work where death or serious harm is out of the question.

Whatever the case, the best path to victory in this case is simply to transform the enemy into something harmless.

Common to the science-fiction and fantasy genres, this can occur under a variety of circumstances. In cases where an actual fight scene is involved, it's usually the method of ending the fight once and for all, often through the use of a powerful weapon kept in reserve until the end of the story — or perhaps, in the case of villains who enjoy inflicting Forced Transformations, reflecting their attacks back on them.

However, it's also a tactic of sneakier combatants who feel like sabotaging their more formidable opponents without a fight or even tricking them into misusing some spell or machine to transform themselves into some apparently desirable form with massive caveats.

Whatever way the transformation occurs, two important qualifiers must be in play for an example to apply: first, the defeat has to be inflicted deliberately, so no pure accidents need apply. Second, no actual shapeshifters defeated through trickery — that's a completely different trope.

Note that since a key aspect of this trope is for the opponent to be rendered harmless, so it's rare for a Terminal Transformation to be involved except in direst necessity. Instead, it's more common for this to end in a Humiliation Conga, with the victor gleefully Taunting the Transformed — especially if some form of Karmic Transformation is involved.

Almost always a Forced Transformation. However, depending on the nature of the opponent and the nature of the transformation itself, this trope can overlap with Bewitched Amphibians, Taken for Granite, Sleep-Mode Size, Brought Down to Normal, or Fountain of Youth — in which case, a Raise Him Right This Time scenario may be the end result... provided it doesn't end in a Death by De-aging.

May also be the result of an Assimilation Backfire.

Compare Defeat by Modesty, which is a different but equally sneaky and embarrassing path to victory. Compare Tricking the Shapeshifter, another method of sneaky victory involving transformation — though in this case, it's used exclusively against opponents who are already shapeshifters and uses their own powers against them rather than an outside source of power.

NOTE: as this is a trope very commonly connected to final battles and endings, beware unmarked spoilers below. You have been warned.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball: Majin Buu has the ability to transform people into candy; he uses it as a trump card when finding himself overmatched. Subverted during the battle with Vegito. Buu transforms him into a piece of hard candy, but Vegito is still able to move around fast enough to deal damage to him. Buu actually finds it harder to fight Vegito this way, and willingly undoes the transformation.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Disaster Curse Mahito uses his technique "Idle transfiguration" to alter the soul of anyone he touches, forcing their body to morph into the shape he desires. He uses this either as a Touch of Death or to transform his opponents into helpless mishappen horrors.
• My Hero Academia: Seiji Shishikura, Aka Sisicross, has the Quirk Meatball, allowing him to manipulate the flesh of himself or others. If he can grab hold of someone he can knead their flesh into a mishappen meatball of flesh, unable to move or attack. The effect wears off if he takes too much damage.

Comic Books

• Transformers: Spotlight Soundwave: Soundwave is defeated by the renegade Decepticon Bludgeon's troops when he's shot with an experimental weapon that reformates his alt-mode into a minicassette player and leaves him stuck in that form for decades until the events of The Transformers: Maximum Dinobots.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: The Cybertronian serial-killer Sunder had a rather horrific means of ustilizing this trope. He could broadcast the idea to his victims that the best way to defeat or escape him was by transforming into their alt-modes while simultaneously causing them to forget how to do so, resulting in his victims turning themselves inside out and being unable to move or fight back.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: After an entire arc of dealing with his troublemaking clones, Calvin is able to get rid of them by having them hide under the cardboard box that serves as the duplicator, converting it back into the transmogrifier, and using it to turn them into earthworms. For their part, the clones don't seem to mind.

Fan Works

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: In "What if Jake was stuck in morph?", the war ends far earlier when Jake and Arbron spread the message that any Yeerks that surrender their hosts will be allowed to gain morphing powers — on the condition that they become nothlits. Enticed by the prospect of finally being freed from their helpless bodies, numerous Yeerks accept and are peacefully assimilated. Visser Three attempts to stomp out desertion by promising execution for any Yeerks thinking of accepting the offer... only to end up spreading the message to any Yeerks who weren't already aware of it. Within six months, the entire Yeerk empire is simply too depleted to continue operating and forced to surrender.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Marda (a male human) is reduced to hiding out on a spur of land instead of winning because Mukrezar transforms him into a female troll.
• Fallout: Equestria: Despite being a Villainy-Free Villain, Spike's mother counts. The dragon has slept under Canterlot for centuries by the time Littlepip and co arrive, and her breathing of Pink Cloud has kept the city covered in poisonous gas for that time. She's pacified by being transformed into a mouse, and then kept in a hamster ball (still filled with Pink Cloud), after which the city begins its slow recovery process.
• Spider-Ninja: In Chapter 38, Spider-Ninja, the Turtles, and Dr. Octavius are hunting down/fighting Leatherhead (aka the transformed Dr. Curt Connors). Doc Ock wins the fight by pinning Leatherhead to the wall while Spidey pours gene cleanser down his throat. This transforms him back into Doc Connors, winning the fight.

Film — Animated

• Aladdin:
  • Once Jafar has used his second wish to become the most powerful sorcerer in the land, he uses his powers to instantly shut down enemy combatants by transforming them: he regresses Rajah into a Cute Kitten in mid-leap, takes out Abu by turning him into a wind-up toy, and reduces the flying carpet to a spool of thread.
  • During the final battle, Aladdin finds himself unable to defeat Jafar in combat. So, Aladdin points out that the Genie is still more powerful than Jafar, tricking him into using his third and final wish to become a genie. For a moment, Jafar revels in his newfound powers... only to find too late that he's now bound to a lamp of his own.
• The Ant Bully: After a long battle with the wasps and the ants, Stan Beals the Exterminator is finally defeated when he’s injected with the same shrinking potion that was used on Lucas. Instead of simply shrinking him, the potion turns Stan into a short, disfigured man, unable to use his equipment and forced to retreat on a tricycle while chased by a swarm of wasps.
• The Emperor's New Groove:
  • Discussed in Yzma's initial idea to off Kuzko: Turning him into a "harmless little flea" so she can put him inside a box, put that box inside another box, mail it to herself, and smash it with a hammer. She decides to just poison him in order to save on postage.
  • Implied and downplayed with the ending. While Yzma becoming a kitten doesn't make her any less malicious, it does make her easier to knock out. At the end of the film, Kuzco has become human and regained his place on the throne while Yzma is still stuck as a cat.
• Help! I'm a Fish: In the climax, Fly tricks Joe into drinking more of the potion so he can boost his intelligence further and more easily answer Fly's questions. The potion ultimately turns Joe into a human... whereupon Joe figures out too late that humans cannot breathe underwater at the very second the potion removes his gills. He immediately drowns.
• Minions: The Rise of Gru: The Vicious Six are ultimately defeated via Gru using the Zodiac Talisman (which the group had used to take on animal forms) to turn them all into harmless rats.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: After the Mario Bros. give Bowser a beating with the power of the Super Star, Peach decides to force-feed him a Mini Mushroom to shrink him, and Toad puts him in a jar so he can't do any more damage.

Film — Live-Action

• Bedknobs and Broomsticks: At the end of our heroes' expedition to the Island of Namboobu, King Leonidas belatedly realizes that they've stolen the Star of Astoroth from him and goes charging after them in a rage. Fortunately, Miss Price still has her rabbit transformation spell on hand and is able to transform the lion into a rabbit in mid-leap, leaving him to awkwardly hop back into the forest.
• Blues Brothers 2000: After the final performance, the concert is crashed by the Russian mobsters and neo-confederate militia that have been following the titular band through the whole movie to try and get revenge. Queen Mousette resolves the conflict pretty handily by using her Hollywood Voodoo to turn both groups into rats.
• Daybreakers: Edward Dalton has been restored to humanity by his jerry-rigged cure for vampirism, but Bromley isn't interested in taking the cure or letting it become public knowledge, and Dalton doesn't have the backup needed to defeat him. Instead, he goes out of his way to press Bromley's Berserk Button until the CEO flies into a rage and bites Dalton, whereupon it turns out that the cure is transmissible by blood: Bromley is restored to humanity, then tied to a chair and put in an elevator bound for the lobby, where he's promptly eaten alive by his starved troops — who are all restored to humanity as well.
• Descendants: Maleficent is defeated by being transformed into a tiny, harmless lizard by her daughter Mal.
• Subverted in Ghostbusters (1984), where Ray Stantz tried to do this by having the Destructor take the form of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, the cutest and most harmless thing he can think of. Unfortunately, this spawns a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man the size of a kaiju in the middle of Manhattan. The fact that it's, well, a giant marshmallow man means that the Ghostbusters' proton packs are able to fry it, but it otherwise causes a ton of chaos along the way, and it leaves everything around it covered in gooey marshmallow slime when it explodes.
  Stantz: I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never, ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay-Puft.
• Maleficent: Mistress of Evil: At the end of the film, Maleficent turns Queen Ingrith into a goat as punishment for her genocide against fairies, indicating that she’ll be less of a problem for the protagonists.
• Nutty Professor II: The Klumps: Subverted. Sherman is able to trick Buddy into accidentally ingesting a dose of the Fountain of Youth serum, instantly regressing him to infancy, ending Buddy's attempt to sell the stolen serum to a biotech firm, and leaving him ready to be absorbed back into Sherman's body. Unfortunately, the plan goes off the rails when Buddy turns out not to be so easily defeated by his transformation: in short order, he pisses in the Dean's face, rips the top off a female secretary to abseil down from the table, and hightails it out of the boardroom stark naked, leading Sherman on a mad chase through the building in an attempt to recapture the fleeing toddler — even as Buddy melts into an animated puddle of blue slime.

Literature

• Animorphs: In the last book, the Animorphs get the already-decimated Yeerks to surrender by giving them the option to become nothlits of other species, effectively freeing them from parasitism once and for all. The Yeerks accept.
• The Belgariad: In demon-summoning, the summoner controls the demon by holding it in a form of their choice through pure willpower. Any lapse of focus lets the demon revert and take bloody vengeance.
• Dragon Rider: Unbeknownst to Nettlebrand, his armor polish was switched with brownie spit so when the dragons breathe fire at him, his armor dissolves and he reverts back into a toad. Adaptation Deviation occurs in the 2020 film in which he just melts into liquid gold.
• Harry Potter: Played with regarding Boggarts. They can only be defeated by laughter — but given that they transform into whatever you fear the most, the only reliable way of provoking laughter is to use the Riddikulus spell to transform them into something more comical.
• N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy: The first book's Divine Conflict ends when the protagonist's allied gods trap the god Itempas in human form and suppress his power. It's both an ironic sentence since he disdains humans and had similarly enslaved several gods, and a chance for him to earn forgiveness rather than simply kill him. They lift his punishment at the end of the trilogy.
• In the Nursery Rhyme "Little Bunny Foo Foo", the fairy punishes Little Bunny Foo Foo for bopping other creatures on the head by turning him into a "goon".
• In The Magic of Oz, the plot is centered around a magician's son who learned a Game-Breaker-level transformation spell his father kept hidden. He and his accomplice Ruggedo are only defeated after the Wizard learns that secret himself and transforms them into nuts.
• Shrinking Pains: In the finale of the novel, after Doug, Milo, and Cass escape from the death trap that Jannings and Amelia left them in, they quickly realize that since the two villains are much older than they are, they can't hope to defeat them even once all three of them are back to their true ages. So, they load up some water pistols with the Fountain of Youth water and ambush Jannings and Amelia, shrinking them down to toddlers so that they'll remain helpless until the police arrive to arrest them for their crime spree.
• The Wheel of Time: Attempted when The Chosen One Rand attacks Rahvin the Forsaken. Rahvin can't win the Wizard Duel by power alone, so he retreats to the World of Dreams, where he uses the Clap Your Hands If You Believe nature of the place to try to transform Rand into a mindless animal. Rand fights it off long enough to be saved by a timely distraction.
• Wings of Fire: In the tenth book, Darkness of Dragons, Darkstalker is defeated by being tricked into eating a strawberry that was enchanted by having a fragment of Darkstalker's Scroll (into which he previously put his magic) in it to turn the eater into a Rainwing/Nightwing hybrid dragonet named Peacemaker, with none of Darkstalker's memories or power. Considering that he had made himself invincible, immortal, and immune to all magic other than his own, this was the only way they could have defeated him.
• The Witches: Because the protagonist has been turned into a mouse by the Grand High Witch's Formula 86 and his only ally is his elderly grandmother, neither of them is up to defeating an entire hotel of Witches plus the Grand High Witch herself through physical force. Instead, after stealing some Formula 86 from the Grand High Witch's hotel room, they spike the Witches' soup with it at dinner that evening — resulting in a huge number of "mice" being killed by the hotel's staff, eliminating a vast swathe of England's child-killers and putting an end to the Grand Witch's plan before it even begins.
• Xanth: Evil Magician Trent's talent lets him turn any living creature into any other living creature. Turning people into harmless animals is his go-to move to quickly end any conflict. After he was ousted from the throne, rumours spread that he would even turn his opponents into fish on dry land and let them suffocate, which is only half true — he did turn people into fish, but always in water.
• In Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, the painters patrol cities like Kilahito, searching for nightmares that threaten to harm the sleeping civilians. These nightmares are fought by painting an image of something harmless nearby; the nightmares are highly suggestible, and thus transform themselves into whatever is being painted. Nikaro, the titular painter, often just transforms the nightmares into bamboo.

Live-Action TV

• Charmed (1998): The episode "Nymphs Just Wanna Have Fun" features two demons Xavier and Tull searching for the Eternal Spring which would allow them to become immortal. Xavier gets vanquished before he reaches his goal, but Tull manages to become immortal. Unable to properly vanquish him, the Charmed Ones use a spell to turn him into a tree.
• Farscape: In "DNA Mad Scientist," Crichton finds out the hard way that Namtar's genetic enhancements make him too powerful to be killed even with firearms. So, with Aeryn's life on the line, he teams up with Namtar's long-suffering assistant Kornata to develop a serum that can undo the mad geneticist's self-enhancements, then keeps Namtar distracted with "The Reason You Suck" Speech until Kornata can inject him with it. Devolving too quickly to use his powers against them, Namtar shrinks back into his original form — an unintelligent lab rat that Kornata immediately returns to its cage.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In the climax of "Last Supper," Dr. Sinclair holds Danny hostage and threatens to kill him if Frank doesn't give him Jade's blood for his immortality serum. Frank is reluctant, but Jade tells him to play along and allows him to extract a vial of her blood, which Sinclair injects himself with to restore his youth. After a brief Hope Spot in which he looks to have stopped in his thirties, Sinclair continues to regress, suffering agonizing pain as he ages backwards through his adolescence, childhood, and finally infancy before dissolving into a puddle of cells. For good measure, Jade's eerily detached response indicates that she knew that this would happen and arranged for Sinclair to go through with it to remove him as a threat once and for all.
• Viper: In the episode "About Face," the Viper Defender is stolen by a criminal mastermind, forcing the trio to destroy it to keep it out of enemy hands. They do this by using remote control to revert the vehicle from Defender mode to its casual Viper mode, and then fire a laser at a weak point with an aerial drone, blowing the car to kingdom come.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Various polymorph spells exist across the editions. If cast on an opponent, they can convert the opponent into a harmless creature, which can be used to more quickly defeat them.
• Magic: The Gathering: From a story perspective, this is what several kill spells are doing to creatures that they destroy or exile; Pongify is turning a creature into an ape, Beast Within turns it into a beast, and Curse of the Swine turns creatures into pigs.
• Munchkin:
  • The original set has the Illusion card, which can be used to turn a powerful enemy (referred to as a "monster") such as the Plutonium Dragon or Judge Dredd into a weak enemy such as the Maul Rat. The Cthulhu set has a Mutation card that has the same effect.
  • The Polymorph Potion turns enemies into parrots that fly away, leaving behind treasure, although the Munchkins get no levels if they use this.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III: Minthara is an Optional Party Member who was formerly only available to evil characters (recruiting her causes other Good characters to leave) and usually killed as part of a Good-aligned playthrough. However, it was possible to get around that via a Good Bad Bug: By turning her into a sheep and casting the Dominate Beast spell, then cancelling the spell in the right place, she would count as a party member with the good characters not caring about her alignment. The developers eventually acknowledged the desire to recruit Minthara to a good-aligned party and added a much less convoluted non-evil way to recruit her.
• Black & White 2: Killing people penalizes the Karma Meter, but a Good god can achieve similar results by using the Verdant Miracle to transform enemy armies into harmless barnyard animals — permanently.
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time: Part of Dr. Cortex's gameplay is that he can use his Ray Gun to transform his enemies into harmless (normal/bouncy) platforms.
• Counterfeit Monkey: Atlantida is defeated by shooting her with the restoration rifle, which returns her to her original state: a brachiopod of genus atlantida.
• Cult of the Lamb: This can be a potential fate for The One Who Waits; if the Lamb chooses to spare them after the final boss fight, they're turned into a special follower with the "Immortality" trait and can be married, disciplined, or given gifts like any other follower. A later update to the game, "Relics of the Old Faith", added this as an option for the Bishops as well.
• Day of the Tentacle: The endgame pits Bernard, Hoagie, and Laverne against Future Purple Tentacle, who is armed with his Diminuator and blocking the heroes from switching off the Sludge-O-Matic. The only way to stop him is to convince him to take out his frustrations on Dr Fred; as always, Purple aims the shrink ray right at the target's forehead and fires... only for the beam to bounce off Dr Fred's head mirror and hit Purple instead, shrinking him down to thumb-size. The heroes then nonlethally squash him flat, put him in an envelope, and have him mailed to Siberia.
• Usable in Dungeon Crawl:
  • Many creatures with dangerous magic, attacks, or other physical properties you'll have trouble dealing with (like cold resistance when you're specialized in Ice Magic) can be made easier to defeat by transforming them with a wand of polymorph. Partially subverted in that a wand of polymorph can potentially turn creatures into something more dangerous, especially with monsters that have hit dice that are out of line with their threat levels; the normally durable-yet-plodding Gastronok has a good chance of being polymorphed into a high-end dragon, making him significantly faster and giving him access to brutal attacks and a Breath Weapon.
  • Jiyva offers a more expedient version: their Slimify ability turns the next creature you hit into a slime, which are always friendly towards followers of the slime god.
  • Can also be turned around onto the player, if an enemy picks up a wand of polymorph; players generally get turned into something heavily disadvantaged like a near-helpless bat or a mushroom that can't move while enemies are nearby. Kirke comes with the Porkalator spell, which specifically turns her target into a hog.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Invoked in Sheogorath's quest "The Mind of Madness". As part of his condition to return to the Shivering Isles, he tasks the Dragonborn to use the Wabbajack to transform the various demons ailing the mind of Emperor Pelagius III, including transforming his night terrors like wolves and flame atronachs into goats and bonfires respectively.
• In Gems of War, one simple way to get rid of complicated enemies is to use lycanthropy or transformation spells to turn them into weaker creatures.
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis:
  • In the finale, the Nazis reach the Colossus at the heart of Atlantis, and Klaus Kerner decides to use it to make himself into a god. However, Indy is able to trick him into thinking that they should power the device with just one Orichalcum bead instead of the suggested ten. As a result, Kerner is transformed into a horned dwarf, and immediately commits suicide by diving into the lava moat below.
  • Soon after, Dr Hans Ubermann decides to use Indy as a test subject in the Colossus so they can work out how to create a god. However, if you can pick the right responses, Indy will convince Ubermann to use the machine on himself: a hundred beads later, Ubermann is transformed into a giant glowing energy being... only to find that his new form is too unstable, dissolving into nothingness less than a minute later — resulting in a chain reaction that destroys Atlantis and the Nazis for good measure.
• King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human: Gwydion defeats Manannan by transforming him into a cat by using the wizard's own spells.
• King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride: The evil fairy sorceress Malicia is defeated when Rosella uses a mysterious device on her, de-aging Malicia into an infant. Malicia's sister Queen Titania aims to raise her right this time.
• Knights of the Old Republic: Played for laughs; an Easter Egg allows you to instantly win the final battle with Darth Malak by using an esoteric Force technique to transform the dreaded Sith Lord into a Twi'lek dancing girl — seemingly in mind as well as body, as she then begins to perform for you like any other Twi'lek dancer NPC.
• League of Legends: This was how the PTSD-striken, civil-warring Darkin were defeated in the past: mortals couldn't handle the Semi-Divine beings scarring the world with their wars, and so prayed to the divine Aspects of the nearby Targon Mountain for a solution. The Aspect of Twilight gave the mortals the means to seal the Darkin in their weapons, meaning the Darkin can no longer harm the world unless someone is dumb, or desperate, enough to pick up the obviously Evil Weapon.
• Mortal Kombat: In response to criticism that the first game's Fatalities were too violent, Mortal Kombat II introduced the concept of the "Babality", an alternate Fatality where the opponent is transformed into a literal baby. These returned in Mortal Kombat (2011).
• At the end of the LucasArts game Mortimer And The Riddles Of The Medallion, the player has obtained the completed Medallion and has been told by Mortimer not to give it up no matter what happens. When Sally/Sid stays true to this advice despite repeated threats, Lodius opts to just turn her/him to stone like all his other victims and remove the Medallion from the resulting statue... only for the power of the Medallion to deflect the spell right back at Lodius, reducing him to a rather surprised-looking statue.
• Nethack: A potion of polymorph can be thrown at an enemy to transform them into a weaker opponent. However, given that the transformation is random in nature, it's very easy for this to backfire by transforming the target into something more dangerous.
• Return to Zork: After a great deal of exploring, you find the great mage Canuck, having been transformed into a duck after a fight with Rooper. Once you've restored him, he offers to help you retrieve a piece of the Flying Disc of Frobozz from his ship in a bottle by shrinking you until you can climb inside and get it. Unfortunately, Canuck has been possessed by Morphius and is trying to kill you: in the event that you escape from the bottle before you drown, he'll just turn you into a duck. The only way to beat him is by having a mirror on hand to defect the spell back at him, turning him into a duck all over again.
• Sorcery School: The Chicken Morph wild card variant can turn a monster into a chicken that's only capable of Scratch Damage. The transformation only lasts three turns but land a hit with your wand and it's a One-Hit KO because they're instantly cooked into a roast chicken.
• Starcraft II: In the final level of Wings of Liberty, killing Kerrigan only causes her to respawn later. So, once her forces are defeated, a Xel'Naga artifact is used to remove the Zerg part of her organism, reverting her to human (mostly, she still has Alien Hair). Unfortunately, she needs to become Zerg again to save the galaxy over the course of the next game.
• In the 8-bit game Stormbringer, one puzzle is to get past Bearwoolf, a gigantic monster that kills you if you stand too close to it or attempt any other form of interaction. The solution is to have another character shoot it with a magical "anti-pollymorph[sic] arrow"; this returns it to its "original form", a harmless teddy bear.
• Super Mario RPG: The Lamb's Lure and Sheep Attack items turn enemies on the battlefield into sheep who then run away, granting no money or experience. Naturally large enemies and bosses are immune to it.
• The polymorph spell in Warcraft II turns an enemy unit into a harmless critter (a sheep, a seal, a boar or a hellboar, depending on the map's theme). Unlike the rest of the series where this spell does little more than temporarily incapacitate a unit, in this game it's irreversible.

Web Animation

• In the DEATH BATTLE! between Black Orchid and Ivy Valentine, Orchid eventually wins by turning Ivy into a frog and stamping on her.
• Puffin Forest: The Warriors of Really Shitty Timing defeat the Kraken Melkyzzyack by way of transforming him into a cat. Much to Ben's surprise, the kraken does not have Contractual Boss Immunity to this, and W.O.R.S.T. handily win the encounter. Admittedly, the spell has really shitty timing, so they use it more to get Melkyzzyack into a position for bargaining.

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive:
  • Discussed in the "Painted Black" arc. Tedd's original plan to stop Grace's brothers was to zap them into something less dangerous with the TF Gun. This became a non-starter, however, when he tested it out on Grace; not only could she shapeshift out of forms from the TF Gun, it gave her the ability to return to that form at any time and permanently upgraded her shapeshifting to no longer suffer from baggage.
  • Later in the same arc, after Vlad knocks Nanase unconscious, an enraged Ellen uses her powers to turn Vlad from a male bat monster into a female human, knocking Vlad out of the sky, as the new form is not capable of flight. As for how Vlad reacts to this defeat? She changes her name to Vladia, and decides that she's never turning back because her greatest desire was to become human, and she was likely trans to begin with.
  • Ellen tries using her beam to stop Not-Tengu in "Family Tree". However, he easily resists it.
• Exiern: The plot is kicked off by a failed example: Faden tries to turn Barbarian Hero Typhan-knee into an animal. He messed the spell up however and instead turned him into a woman, who was still more than capable of kicking the wizard's ass.
• Housepets!: The recurring antagonist of Thomas Milton is finally taken out of the game for good when he comes into contact with one of Pete's cursed coins and is forcibly transformed into a camel. Shortly after, he's picked up by a local zoo, where he spends the remainder of his life. His cohort, Herman Steward, is similarly transformed, but only becomes more villainous after this.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: Allison defeats an unbound devil — a fragment of Primordial Chaos — by forcibly naming it, binding it into the form of a lowly imp.
• Lore Olympus: At the end of Episode 275, Hades finds the will to overcome Kronos and compresses him into a gem.
• The Order of the Stick: The Vector Legion subdue Bloodfeast, the giant Allosaurus that the Order are trying to use as a steed, by subjecting him to a Baleful Polymorph and turning him into a tiny lizard. Since his lizard form is more portable, they leave him that way until they get into a fight with a red dragon.

Web Original

• In Myths Reimagined, an online Deviantart series by the web artist Khialat, which, as the title suggests, puts a new spin on ancient myths and legends, the Gorgon Stheno and her new crush Icarus discover that Circe — a significantly more evil version than in the original myths — has been posing as a sculptor of disturbingly realistic statues by using a shard of Phoris (the Gorgons' father and the first person they accidentally petrified after becoming Gorgons) to turn real people to stone and sell them. Since Circe is working with the Stoneseekers, a villainous organization that wants to overthrow the Olympian gods, the heroes have to defeat her, but instead of doing so through force of arms, they do so when she throws a potion at Icarus in an attempt to turn him into a bird, but he deflects it back at her with his magic shield, thus turning her into a harmless lark. Immediately after her transformation, Circe is then killed and eaten by the cat of one of her previous victims.
• Protectors of the Plot Continuum: In one of the Marissa Picard missions, Marissa is killed by being turned into a slug and squashed.
• SCP Foundation: The finale of the Halloween Episode series Black Autumn II: Rise of the Pit Sloth sees the titular creature — a sort of malignant negative space created by forcibly ignoring it for several months — transformed into a two-toed sloth after being injected with a Class-Omega Amnsetic (which is implied to be less "Laser-Guided Amnesia" and more "eradication of sapience") and forced to watch an informative video about actual sloths.

Web Video

• Adventures In Azerim: Bodger gains an enchantment on his war hammer so that every time he strikes an enemy, there's a 1/48 chance that it polymorphs said foe into a random animal. This proves crucial in defeating a stone giant on the Thilivern Islands: after a grueling fight where the stone giant healed itself multiple times, Bodger's hammer activates and transforms the giant into an enormous snail. This isn't immediately deadly — but allows the entire adventuring party to get into position and attack the snail simultaneously, which deals enough damage to break the polymorph spell and kill the giant for good in a single round.
• Critical Role:
  • Vox Machina defeated a handful of enemies this way.
    • In "Into the Grimspire", Scanlan polymorphs an umber hulk into a snail that Vax throws over a waterfall to kill it.
    • In "Skyward", Keyleth polymorphs a wyvern into a rabbit mid-air, causing it to fall to its death.
    • Downplayed in "Consequences and Cows", where Keyleth polymorphs a roc into a cow, causing it to fall to the ground. This does not kill it, but it does get them out of combat so they can continue to follow it as planned.
  • In Campaign 2's "A Turtle by Any Other Name", Caleb polymorphs the giant snapping turtle chasing them into a regular-sized turtle, which Nott chucks into the rift. In "Hunted at Sea", he pulls the same move with a dragon turtle, turning it into a sea slug so they can outsail it, though it later takes its revenge once it transforms back by destroying their other ship, The Balleater.
• Dimension 20: In the first season of the Fantasy High campaign, it's revealed that a few hundred years before the start of the story, the red dragon Kalvaxus, Lord of the Red Wastes, was transfigured into a dragonborn by The Archmage Arthur Aguefort and forced to serve as the vice-principal of his adventuring academy, magically compelled to be unable to directly harm any citizens of Solace.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The Lich is defeated in “Escape from the Citadel” by being transformed into a child named “Sweet P” after getting splashed by Guardian’s Blood.
• Amphibia: Maddie defeats several robots in “Turning Point” by magically transforming them into harmless things like butterflies.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: The episode "Mondo Magic" has Courage defeat the titular magician by using his own bag of magic powder against him, turning him into a rabbit.
• Danny Phantom: In Reality Trip, Danny initially struggles against Freakshow after gains Reality Gems and becomes a Reality Warper until Jazz tells Danny about Freakshow's ghost envy and to use that against him. Danny taunts Freakshow with his powers until Freakshow turns himself into a ghost, which allows Danny to suck him into the Fenton Thermos and win the fight.
• Ducktales 2017: Villainous example; when Webby and Lena venture into Scrooge's other bin, Lena takes hold of Scrooge's 1# Dime and uses it to release Magica De Spell. When Webby finds out about this, she immediately runs to tell Scrooge — until Magica transforms Webby into her Quacky Patch doll, making her effectively lifeless. It was All Just a Dream, due to Lena having opened the door containing a Dreamweaver that shows someone their greatest fear.
• Fairly OddParents: In "Nectar of the Odds", the lemonade at Timmy's lemonade stand gets imbued with wish-granting properties, and one wish results in a Kaiju destroying an office building. At the end of the episode, as Timmy sets about undoing the damage, he uses a wish to transform the kaiju into a tiny, harmless lizard. The lizard, having fallen near some of the lemonade simply sips it and transforms back, only for Timmy to undo it once more and keep him away from the final sip.
• Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs: In "Aagh!", the main characters are tormented by a monster. However, Harry then realises that the monster is a being from his nightmare having come alive. As such, it is influenced by his imagination, so he defeats it by telling it to shrink, have duller claws and a sillier appearance, and turn good.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Bewitched Bunny: Towards the end, Witch Hazel corners Bugs Bunny in a dead-end room — where (for some reason) there's an emergency box with breakable glass that contains a sphere of magic powder. Bugs Bunny throws this stuff like a grenade, and the powder transforms Witch Hazel into a shapely girl bunny. Suddenly, Bugs is no longer afraid of her and instead offers his arm as her escort. She chortles coquettishly at this.
    Bugs Bunny: Sure, I know. But aren't they all witches inside?
  • Broom-Stick Bunny: Bugs tricks his enemy the ugly Witch Hazel into drinking a potion that causes her to become beautiful. When the genie in the mirror sees her, he lustfully chases after her, allowing Bugs to escape.
  • Transylvania 6-5000: Bugs is dealing with Count Bloodcount, who transforms between two different forms via the phrases "Hocus Pocus" and "Abracadabra". Not only does Bugs crush the Count when he tries to lift a brick on him by forcing him back into his bat form, he invokes Inherently Funny Words by using various city names to transform him until he uses "Walla Walla, Washington" to turn him into a two-headed vulture. He then introduces the Count to Agatha and Emily, a female two-headed vulture Bugs encountered at the beginning of the short—who immediately start pursuing the Count, to his horror.
    Agatha: Look, Emily! Isn't it romantic? I always said four heads are better than one.
• Martha Speaks:
  • In "Return of the Bookbots", the main characters have to face up against the Announcer, a villain who makes written nouns come true. They do so by inventing a machine that makes adjectives come true to change the nouns. Eventually, they end up shrinking him by describing him as "tiny".
  • In "Verb Dog: When Action Calls", Martha gains the superpower to make any verb she says come true. As such, when faced up against what appears to be an evil version of Helen, she says, "Helen, petrify!", turning her to stone. However, it later turns out that this was the real Helen and Martha was tricked into thinking she and her other friends were evil... and then, the episode was revealed to be All Just a Dream.
• In Miraculous Ladybug, King Monkey's power, Disruption, allows him to disrupt other people's powers, usually by transforming their weapon into something else. In "Penalteam", for instance, he uses Disruption to transform Penalteam's cleats into rubber ducks, making it much more difficult for her to win her rigged football game.
• The 1969 Pink Panther cartoon "Pink-A-Rella" has a drunken witch drop her magic wand, which Pink finds. At the end of the cartoon, the witch sees Pink with her wand and takes it from him. Pink takes it back, and the two begin a game of Take-N-Zap, each transforming their opponent into something else. Pink's last spell transforms the witch into a pretty girl panther in a tutu. Pink breaks the wand to preclude any more transformations then escorts the girl panther into the distance. Iris out.
• Regular Show: One episode revolves around a group of Upper-Class Twits who annually steal the Park Crew's possessions, use a Transformation Ray to turn it into a toilet, and launch it into space because they find it funny. When the Park Crew fight back after they try to do the same to Mordecai and Rigby, the leader is defeated when he's pushed into the ray himself and promptly shot into space.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster manages to defeat Sandy Witch by using magic dust to turn her into a fish in a bowl.

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