History Main / RacialTransformation

* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': At least one story has stated that putting a human being through [=SCP=]-914 on the 1:1 setting changes their race.

** One incarnation of Franchise/IrisWildthyme who appears in the Literature/EighthDoctorAdventures, in particular ''The Blue Angel'', is black and has a TextualCelebrityResemblance to the singer Shirley Bassey.

Through scientific or magical means, a person's apparent race or ethnicity is changed in-story, in a manner that may not be completely permanent, but is more drastic than make-up. The reasons for this are as varied as for anyone who completely changes their outward appearance. It may provide a contrast in highlighting how the same character's perception by society might have changed. However, the race change itself may not even be actively discussed in terms of social context. For instance, if it is simply used to render someone incognito and making it more unlikely for their new identity to be traced back to their old one. Popular methods include MagicPlasticSurgery, BrainUploading, and GrandTheftMe.

* ''Film/GhostInTheShell2017'': Major Mira Killian is a {{Cyborg}} who resembles a caucasian woman in her mid-30s (played by Creator/ScarlettJohansson), but is in fact [[spoiler:a young Japanese woman named Motoko Kusanagi whose brain was placed in a different shell against her will. The same thing happened to her best friend, who changed from a Japanese teenager into a white man.]]

** After Takeshi Kovacs (Asian) is arrested and placed into a CryoPrison for 250 years, he wakes up in a new body (referred to as 'sleeves' within the show) that used to belong to a white man. In Season 2, he is re-sleeved into an enhanced soldier's body, outwardly appearing as a black man, but according to his profile he also has ''canine DNA''.

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': In of "Old Stan in the Mountain", Stan is cursed to become elderly. At the end, he manages to lift the hex, but he suddenly turns into a black man, the apparent result of ''another'' hex.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': In the episode "He's Bla-ack!", Peter and Cleveland swap skin and hair colors through sheer concentration when Cleveland's wife Donna was spotted outside the Drunken Clam, looking for him.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': [[spoiler:Arne Darvin]] is revealed to be a [[spoiler:Klingon]] disguised as a human.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': William Riker undergoes cosmetic surgery to evaluate whether a planet is ready for first contact. He is injured in an accident/attack, leading to his hospitalization, and causing the aliens to discover his non-alien nature.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': B'Elanna, upon discovering that her child would inherit her Klingon heritage, attempts to force the Doctor to [[DesignerBabies engineer the Klingon genetics out from her baby]].

* The DC character Father Time changes his appearance every time he is seriously injured. In his first appearance, in ''ComicBook/SevenSoldiers of Victory'', he was a black man. Later, after being mutilated by Black Adam, he became a white man. He later became black again. In the ComicBook/New52 universe, he became a little Japanese schoolgirl.
* In the comic ''ComicBook/{{Lazarus}}'', each of the Families that rule over the world in a FeudalFuture has a chosen champion known as a Lazarus, who are upgraded to superhuman capabilities through various means such as BioAugmentation, the use of [[PlayingWithSyringes drugs]], transformation into a {{Cyborg}}, etc. The family in control of the UK uses a form of BrainUploading on Sir Thomas Huston, their Lazarus, and as such the same mind and personality can be adopted into different bodies. After the first Sir Thomas we see in the story (who is a white man) is killed [[spoiler:in battle against another Lazarus, the Zmey]] a side comic shows a new Sir Thomas, now in the body of a black man, acting with all the memories of his predecessor, including going on a date with a woman that had been set up by the first Sir Thomas.
* It happened to ComicBook/ThePunisher once: he was heavily disfigured and asked a drug addict doctor to change his face so nobody would recognize him. The doctor [[https://www.cbr.com/remember-to-forget-that-time-the-punisher-became-a-black-guy/ went a bit too far]]...

* In ''Superman's Girlfriend, ComicBook/LoisLane #106'', Lois uses a superscience machine to turn her into an African-American woman, so that the inhabitants of Metropolis's black district will talk freely to her.

* [[Characters/MarvelComicsPsylocke Psylocke]] from various ''Franchise/XMen'' titles has a messy history with this. She was originally a white British woman called Betsy Braddock (sister of Captain Britain) but underwent a forced bodyswap with a Japanese Hand assassin named Kwannon. Unfortunately, Kwannon-as-Betsy died before the bodyswap could be undone, leaving Betsy permanently in an ethnically Japanese body. The racial implications of this became increasingly uncomfortable (especially given that the pseudo-Japanese Psylocke rapidly became a particularly notorious MsFanservice), and eventually Marvel briefly tried to declare Betsy to have been a British-Japanese woman all along before during the ''ComicBook/HuntForWolverine'' event Kwannon-as-Betsy was finally resurrected and the bodyswap undone, around thirty years in real-world time since the original arc.

[[folder:Films - Live-Action]]

* Future version in Larry Niven's ''Literature/KnownSpace'', Beowolf is a "Crashlander", an albino LightWorlder at first but later undergoes a nanotech treatment that reconstructs his body into one better adapted to higher gravities and adds some pigmentation.

* Non-human example: The Sneetches in ''Literature/TheSneetchesAndOtherStories'' by Creator/DrSeuss are shown as a species with two races? "star-bellied", with a star-shaped mark on their stomachs, and "plain-bellied", with no mark. At the start of the story, the plain-bellied Sneetches are discriminated against by the star-bellied ones, but then a con artist comes along with a machine that allows them to gain stars on their bellies so they can join the star-bellies' society. The star-bellies don't accept this, and they use the machine to remove their stars, so they can retain their separate, privileged status. The two groups continue doing this over and over again until neither one can remember who the original star-bellies or plain-bellies were, and they ultimately conclude that their prejudice was pointless.

* ''Literature/Black Like Me'': True story of white journalist who used drugs and tanning devices to live in Jim Crow South, should also be added to real life if a better editor steps up; a very important work.
* In the ''Literature/TakeshiKovacs'' novels people can swap bodies through BrainUploading with little more difficulty than changing wardrobes. The titular character was born to an Asian-descended "sleeve" but spends most of the first book, ''Altered Carbon'' in the body of a white man. While in ''Broken Angels'' he's sleeved in an "Afro-Caribbean combat sleeve with scrapings of wolf genes". He spends the first third of ''Woken Furies'' in a robotic "synthsleeve" but soon acquires a new Asian sleeve, from his homeworld even.
* ''Literature/AfterTheRevolution'': Black SuperSoldier Roland has advanced cybernetic implants that lets him change his appearance. He uses them to take on the identity of a dead (white) Texan in order to infiltrate the (openly white supremacist) Heavenly Kingdom. Roland's disguise never gets found out, but he gets to repeatedly watch his Latin-american friend Manny get accosted due to his race.

** Reileen Kawahara [[spoiler: (Takeshi's sister in this adaptation)]] has a collection of different sleeves of varying ethnicity and gender.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has this happen a surprising amount, although it's usually reversible. It's common for Starfleet officers going undercover to have some form of cosmetic alteration so that they can blend in.
** Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries: [[spoiler:Arne Darvin]] is revealed to be a [[spoiler:Klingon]] disguised as a human.
** Series/StarTrekDiscovery: [[spoiler:the Klingon Voq]] undergoes extensive surgery to [[spoiler:be converted from a Klingon into a human]], one of the few cases of a permanent change.
** Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: William Riker undergoes cosmetic surgery to evaluate whether a planet is ready for first contact. He is injured in an accident/attack, leading to his hospitalisation, and causing the aliens to discover his non-alien nature.
** Averted in Series/StarTrekVoyager: B'Elanna, upon discovering that her child would inherit her Klingon heritage, attempts to force the Doctor to engineer the Klingon genetics out from her baby.
** Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds: The crew of the Enterprise undergo a temporary race change using a gene mixture that caused them to develop similar enough features to the Kyrians.

** At the end of season 2, [[spoiler:the white Dolores' consciousness is transferred into a clone body of the biracial Charlotte Hale after murdering the original so she can escape into the real world. Although technically, with Dolores being a "Host", really a very advanced android, she isn't really "white" to begin with.]]
** In Season 3, [[spoiler:Dolores did the same with her four copies who she tasked to infiltrate the real world. While it's confirmed that host-Hale is a copy of Dolores, the other three copies possessed the host copies of an elderly white man who is the head security of Incite, a Japanese Yakuza leader who is based from a Shogunworld host, and a Mexican revolutionary who is based from a familiar Westworld host.]]

* ''VideoGame/Bioshock2'': Discussed in one of Charles Porter's Audio Diaries in ''Minerva's Den'' when he recalls a businessman asking him why he didn't just splice himself from Black to white so that he could "get ahead". Porter's response is to first say that he 'is'' ahead and that in Rapture his work should be more important than his race.
* Subverted in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain''. At the start of the game, Venom Snake, recently awakened from a coma, is scheduled to undergo plastic surgery to change his identity. [[CharacterCustomization You're able to choose what he will look like]], ethnicity included, but XOF soldiers storm the hospital before the surgery can take place. [[spoiler:Double subverted when it's revealed that this custom appearance for Venom Snake is actually his original identity as Big Boss' top medic in MSF, and the planned surgery, intended to turn him into a body double for Big Boss, actually ''did'' happen.]]

* ''WebVideo/UltraFastPony:'' In "Funk Master Z", the normally black Fluttershy is transformed into a white girl by exposure to poison joke, and the rest of the cast treats this as [[FauxHorrific the most horrifying thing they've seen.]] As this is an AbridgedSeries, and Fluttershy's a yellow pegasus in [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic the source material]], this change is depicted entirely via dialogue. Before the transformation, the only indication of Fluttershy's race was her tendency to shout the names of random black celebrities whenever she's excited--afterwards, she shouts random ''white'' celebrity names instead. The episode ends on a TheEndOrIsIt gag: after she's been supposedly reverted to normal, Fluttershy's last line is "Michael Jackson!" leaving the others unsure if the cure worked or not.

-->'''Hayley:''' Alright, Dad, think. What was the last interaction you had with a black person?
-->'''Stan:''' It was at the T-Mobile store, and it was ''not'' positive.

* ''Series/{{Westworld}}'': At the end of season 2, [[spoiler:the white Dolores' consciousness is transferred into a clone body of the biracial Charlotte Hale after murdering the original so she can escape into the real world. Although technically, with Dolores being a "Host", really a very advanced android, she isn't really "white" to begin with.]]

** After Takeshi Kovacs (Asian) is arrested and placed into a CryoPrison for 250 years, he wakes up in a new body (referred to as 'sleeves' within the show) that used to belong to a white man.

* ''Series/{{Westworld}}'': At the end of season 2, [[spoiler:the white Dolores' consciousness is transferred into a clone body of the biracial Charlotte Hale after murdering the original so she can escape into the real world.]]

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': In most incarnations, the ''reincarnation'' spell can resurrect a deceased character in situations where all other such spells would fail, but with the caveat that it will bring them back in the form of a random humanoid being. A human, for instance, could remain a human, or might instead come back as an elf, a gnome, a dwarf, an orc, a tiefling, a dragonborn, or any other such race. Older editions of the game include wider ranges of random options, including fey beings such as fauns and sapient animals.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/robertdowneyjr.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:To the left, Creator/RobertDowneyJr. On right, [[Film/TropicThunder Kirk Lazarus]].]]

* At the start of ''Film/TropicThunder'', Australian actor [[Creator/RobertDowneyJr Kirk Lazarus]], (known for both his violent temper and extreme MethodActing) undergoes surgery and a change in skin pigmentation in order to convincingly play an African American character in an upcoming [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam War]] movie.

[[caption-width-right:350:To the left, Creator/RobertDowneyJr. On right [[Film/TropicThunder Kirk Lazarus]].]]

Interspecies transformations should go under other {{Shapeshifting}} tropes, with the exception of StandardFantasySetting works where humans, elves, dwarfs and so on are treated as "races" that can interbreed and hybridise without any difficulty.

* In ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' Kiima is a Chinese woman (who is part bird) but takes a dunk in a magic pool to make herself look like Akane, a clumsy Japanese highschool girl.

* ''ComicBook/Eternals2021'': Eternals Makkari and Phastos, both white when last seen, resurrect as Black (Phastos had ''originally'' been a Black man when introduced in a much earlier Eternals series, but had inexplicably become a white man for a follow-up series). Their comrade Ikaris explains that the million-year old Eternals can choose a new appearance when they resurrect, and many do so every 20,000 years or so. The change is also RetCanon, mirroring the RaceLift of those characters in [[Film/{{Eternals}} the Eternals film]].

* One ''ComicBook/SpirouAndFantasio'' episode, "The Black Ray", features a ray that turns those striken by it into black people.
* A prequel comic to ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'' revealed that the Kelvinverse's version of Khan Noonien Singh was Indian, until he underwent forcible reconstructive surgery that made him look like the very white Creator/BenedictCumberbatch.

* [[Characters/MarvelComicsPsylocke Psylocke]] from various ''Franchise/XMen'' titles has a messy history with this. She was originally a white British woman called Betsy Braddock (sister of Captain Britain), but underwent a forced bodyswap with a Japanese Hand assassin named Kwannon. Unfortunately, Kwannon-as-Betsy died before the bodyswap could be undone, leaving Betsy permanently in an ethnically Japanese body. The racial implications of this became increasingly uncomfortable (especially given that the pseudo-Japanese Psylocke rapidly became a particularly notorious MsFanservice), and eventually Marvel briefly tried to declare Betsy to have been a British-Japanese woman all along, before during the ''ComicBook/HuntForWolverine'' event Kwannon-as-Betsy was finally resurrected and the bodyswap undone, around thirty years in real-world time since the original arc.

* ''Film/DownToEarth'': Creator/ChrisRock plays a guy who unexpectedly dies before his time is up, and is given another chance at life by Heaven, who transfer his soul into an old, wealthy, white guy. This results in a bunch of PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy moments, since he still retains his old personality while he may look different to the outside world.

* Non-human example: The Sneetches in ''Literature/TheSneetchesAndOtherStories'' by Creator/DrSeuss are shown as a species with two races? "star-bellied", with a star-shaped mark on their stomachs, and "plain-bellied", with no mark. At the start of the story, the plain-bellied Sneetches are discriminated against by the star-bellied ones, but then a con-artist comes along with a machine that allows them to gain stars on their bellies so they can join into the star-bellies' society. The star-bellies don't accept this, and they use the machine to remove their stars, so they can retain their separate, privileged status. The two groups continue doing this over and over again until neither one can remember who the original star-bellies or plain-bellies were, and they ultimately conclude that their prejudice was pointless.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has this happen a surprising amount, although it's usually reversible. It's common for Starfleet officers going undercover to have some form of cosmetic alteration so that they can and blend in.

** Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds: The crew of the Enterprise undergo a temporary race change using a gene-mixture that caused them to develop similar enough features to the Kyrians.

* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' franchise has the Time Lords, who "[[ResurrectiveImmortality regenerate]]" into a [[TheNthDoctor different physical appearance]] whenever they are mortally wounded. Several TV-canon and Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse-continuity stories have made it clear that it is possible for them to change human-terms ethnicity in the process (in every case, from the initial default white of an "aristocratic" character in a British work):

** It was announced in 2022 that the following year's season, Series Fourteen, would feature Rwandan-British actor Creator/NcutiGatwa as the Fourteenth Doctor.

** The ''ComicBook/DoctorWhoTitan'' comic series included an East Asian incarnation of the Master who accompanied the War Doctor for a time during the Time War, and depicted the incarnation of Borusa who actually taught the Doctor at the Academy as being black.

* In the ''TabletopGame/WildTalents'' setting ''Progenitor'', Civil Rights activist Howard "Reddy" March developed a superpower he calls a "Race Reverser Ray" which turns non-black people black, and black people white. In both cases the target gains a new set of memories to help them blend in with their new race.
* The old [=DOS=] game ''VideoGame/WizardsCastle'' lets the player start out as a human, a dwarf, an elf, or a hobbit. This choice will remain stable throughout the dungeon crawl, unless the player chooses to drink from a pool (three pools per level, 24 in total). Among the effects these magic pools have are changing one's race. A player could enter the castle as a male elf, and emerge (or perish) as a female dwarf, for instance.

* ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheFracturedButWhole'': The New Kid can change their identity by talking to the principal, including their ethnicity, nationality and skin tone.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': Time Lords change their appearance whenever they regenerate, and this includes being able to change what human ethnicity they resemble. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent "Hell Bent"]] is the first story to show this on-screen, with Gallifrey's general regenerating from a white male actor to a Black female one; her dialogue after doing so implies that this is actually closer to her other regenerations, with the white man's body being the outlier. Four Black actors would also appear over the years as different incarnations of the Doctor (whose other actors were predominantly white): Creator/ColinSalmon as Doctor Moon in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E8SilenceInTheLibrary "Silence in the Library"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]], confirmed to be a facsimile of a future Doctor per WordOfGod, [[spoiler:Creator/JoMartin as the pseudonymous Ruth in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E5FugitiveOfTheJudoon "Fugitive of the Judoon"]], an uncredited child actor as the first Timeless Child in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E10TheTimelessChildren "The Timeless Child"]]]], and Creator/NcutiGatwa as the Fourteenth Doctor.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': Time Lords change their appearance whenever they regenerate, and this includes being able to change what human ethnicity they resemble. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent "Hell Bent"]] is the first story to show this on-screen, with Gallifrey's general regenerating from a white male actor to a Black female one; her dialogue after doing so implies that this is actually closer to her other regenerations, with the white man's body being the outlier. Four Black actors would also appear in later years as different incarnations of the Doctor (whose other actors were predominantly white): Creator/ColinSalmon as Doctor Moon, confirmed to be a facsimile of a future Doctor per WordOfGod, [[spoiler:Creator/JoMartin as the pseudonymous Ruth in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E5FugitiveOfTheJudoon "Fugitive of the Judoon"]], an uncredited child actor as the first Timeless Child in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E10TheTimelessChildren "The Timeless Child"]]]], and Creator/NcutiGatwa as the Fourteenth Doctor.

* ''Film/BubbaHotep'': One of Elvis' fellow patients at the nursing home is a black man who believes that he's UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, having been subjected to this by the CIA and UsefulNotes/LyndonBJohnson after [[WhoShotJFK the attempt on his life failed]] in order to ensure that nobody would take his claims seriously. The film never answers whether or not he's right, but [[SubvertedTrope it's implied that he's just a crazy old man]] undergoing a NapoleonDelusion.

** Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries: [[spoiler:Armin Darvin]] is revealed to be a [[spoiler:Klingon]] disguised as a human.

* At the start of ''Film/TropicThunder'', Australian actor Kirk Lazarus, (known for both his violent temper and extreme MethodActing) undergoes surgery and a change in skin pigmentation in order to convincingly play an African American character in an upcoming [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam War]] movie.

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