A Rotten Time to Revert

Maybe he shouldn't have let her touch the wrist with the hologram watch.

When it comes to shapeshifters, not all of them can remain in a single shape indefinitely: in the case of transforming characters who are still bound by Drama Preserving Handicaps, they may have to revert to their Shapeshifter Default Form every now and again to recharge their batteries. Maybe they operate on Hour of Power. Others are only shapeshifting due to a one-off incident and will have to permanently return to normal eventually. Even those who can theoretically stay transformed indefinitely aren't above having to revert in the case of a Shapeshifting Failure or similar incident. In some cases, the shapeshifter may have to change back or experience extremely negative symptoms, or they may simply revert back regardless of whether they want to or not.

One way or the other, a shapeshifter has to return to their true form...and Rule of Drama holds that it'll happen at the worst possible time.

The consequences of such a reversion can range from the merely embarrassing to the downright terminal, especially if you happened to be flying or swimming at the time — or in a battle to the death with the Big Bad. In some cases, it might not even look like a bad time at first, but only becomes one due to an unexpected development, like an enemy or muggle walking in at the wrong moment, in which case the shapeshifter may find themselves having to escape being captured/killed or go to extreme lengths to avoid breaking the Masquerade.

This is a common trope for a villain to exploit in order to expose a shapeshifted or disguised hero, either to get them in trouble or expose their Secret Identity, especially if a large crowd of people happens to be around.

Depending on the circumstances, shapeshifters may be able to switch to another form and wriggle out of danger if they act quickly enough, but others will have no choice but to suffer the consequences. If the "permanent reversion" is involved, a Death by Depower may ensue.

Compare Inopportune Impersonation Failure, the comparatively mundane, non-shapeshifting equivalent of this trope. Can be the result of a Heroic RRoD if the hero ended up overtaxing his transformation.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Inverted in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. In Chapter 59, Rentarou and the girls get stuck in a photo booth due to Kusuri aging herself up by taking the neutralizer. Normally, there would be time to wait for the neutralizer to wear off, but the girls are suffering a Potty Emergency in this case, and they don't have time to wait for Kusuri to regress back to her child form.
• Ayakashi Triangle: Shirogane getting a cold messed with the male-to-female transformation he inflicted on Matsuri. Matsuri briefly has his penis alone return, right when Rochka undressed him to treat his cold. Rochka understands human biology so poorly she thinks it's some kind of malignant growth that she offers to freeze off.
• Dragon Ball: Oolong the Pig has the ability to shape-shift; unfortunately, due to taking shortcuts with his training, his powers have limitations, with one of them being that he can only transform for five minutes and needs a minute to recover afterwards. This was on display when Goku first met him, with Oolong taking the form of a rocket to flee while Goku gave chase on his Flying Nimbus, during which his five minutes expired and he turned back while in midair. Fortunately, Goku caught him before he fell to his doom.
• Heaven's Lost Property: Tomoki turns into a girl named Tomoko so he can get into the girl's bathhouse to satisfy his usual desires. He's able to successfully gain the trust of the school by acting like the female anime characters he's familiar with, but once he's in the bathhouse, his perverted excitement causes the transformation to abruptly give out, exposing him to the girls and resulting in him ending up on the receiving end of a karate chop from Sohara.
• Osomatsu-san: "Iyami and Chibita's Rental Girlfriend" centers around the titular duo disguising themselves as rental girlfriends to swindle the Matsuno brothers out of millions of yen. They are successful for the majority of the episode up until they go on a dinner date with them, where the transformation starts to wear off. They immediately try to hide the changes and escape, but are ultimately exposed, leaving the enraged brothers to get their revenge by locking Iyami and Chibita in a tiger cage in the middle of the woods and charging them an even larger sum of money to rent the key (with the price going up every time they accept).
• Ranma ½: Saotome Ranma was born a boy and became cursed to transform into a girl whenever he's doused with cool water and is restored to male with warm water. Unwillingly being turned female is the more common hazard for Ranma, but the opposite is more potentially humiliating, since it turns the occasions girl Ranma wears feminine clothing into Unplanned Crossdressing.
  • Girl Ranma substitutes for Tendo Akane in a rhythmic gymnastics match against the shameless minx Kuno Kodachi. Kodachi tries splitting open a hot tea kettle, aiming to scald Ranma with it. Amid the cloud of steam, Ranma reverts to his male body, though still in a girl's leotard. Fortunately, Akane is able to douse Ranma with cold water before anyone notices that Ranma isn't a girl anymore.
  • When girl Ranma takes the Tendo sister's place as Picolet de Chardin's fiancee, part of her bridal training is being locked into a corset made of steel. It's fit so tightly that Ranma's slightly larger male form can't breathe in it, effectively trapping her in girl form. Ranma takes advantage of this when preparing for a Cooking Duel to nullify the engagement, using hot water, and thus strangulation, as negative enforcement.
  • Ranma only appears to his mother Nodoka in girl form, pretending to be Akane's cousin "Ranko", because he's afraid his mother will make him kill himself if she finds out about the curse. Naturally, Ranko then becomes a magnet for things like spilled cups of tea or broken hot water pipes. One particular incident has Nodoka give Ranko a new girly outfit and a trip to a spa, including a hot water treatment. Girl Ranma puts the clothes back on and tries to bail, but the hot water comes out unexpectedly, and so when Nodoka sees him running away she believes he's an anonymous sexual predator who mugged Ranko for her clothes.
• In one episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Legend of the Supermutants, our heroes have fused bodies into an all-powerful "Turtle Saint" mode; unfortunately, the fusion will only last 60 seconds. Doubly unfortunately, the Turtle Saint is in outer space, and once they revert, they'll begin fatally asphyxiating. Somehow, during the time between reverting into their own bodies and dying in space, our heroes get picked up by a space shuttle.

Comic Books

• The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill: The Mighty Thor falls victim to this in his first fight with Beta Ray Bill, aboard Bill's ship. During the fight, Thor gets separated from his hammer Mjolnir. He also fails to notice that the ship is entering Earth's environs — which means he's now subject to the enchantment that transforms him to his human form of Donald Blake if he doesn't at least touch Mjolnir once every sixty seconds or so. When the sixty seconds are up he promptly transforms, so the very ordinary Don Blake is now facing a furious, super-strong alien cyborg who was able to fight the God of Thunder to a standstill.
• Secret Wars (1984): Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four has long since given up on ever returning to human form again and must remain evermore The Thing. However, on the ersatz Battle World, during a pitched battle against an assembly of superpowered baddies, Ben finds himself transforming into his original human self. At any other time, this would have made Ben ecstatic; in this case, he's distressed, as he's facing a hostile force that badly needs The Thing's clobbering. The transformation turns out to be a side-effect of Battle World: it has an inherent capacity for wish fulfillment.
• In Teen Titans Academy, Shazam is flying when he involuntarily changes back into Billy Batson (his powers had been unreliable since the wizard who gave him his powers was killed). He embarrassingly has to be rescued by Jon Kent, and his secret identity is outed to the entire school.
• The Ultraverse: Prime was a teenage boy with the power to grow an external body that looked like an adult man and had Flying Brick powers (he didn't actually change his shape, it was more akin to an organic suit of Power Armor). Unfortunately, he couldn't maintain this form for very long so whenever he used it for an extended period of time he risked de-Priming while in a fight, flying, or some other circumstance that put him at profound risk.

Fan Works

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: During the chapter "What if Rachel's mom was a controller?" the predictably treacherous David decides to infiltrate Rachel's house while in flea morph, and though it's not clear if he was there to spy on her or kill her (or her sisters), he eventually has to demorph... only to get caught in the act and stomped to death by a terrified Sara before he can finish.
• In Eleutherophobia: Escape From L.A., Tom becomes lost in the sewers while in king cobra morph. As in Animorphs canon, if he stays in morph for longer than two hours, he won't be able to turn back. He barely has enough time to demorph in a relatively wide part of the sewer, and it's incredibly painful. Amazingly, he survives.
• Rannaro's alternate Harry Potter continuation, Miles to Go Before I Sleep, sees Severus Snape infiltrate the surviving Death Eaters after Voldemort's final death, and arrange for some of them to be captured without incurring suspicion on himself, by deliberately giving them Polyjuice Potion with a reduced effect time, so they transform back in public and get caught. He even takes care to strictly warn them to be back in time but ensures that the length of time they get is less than they expected.
• Paper RWBY: The Thousand Year Door: Invoked by Tharja, who places a hex on Doopliss that, while allowing him to still shapeshift, ensures that the transformation ends or glitches out at the worst possible times for him.
• Medicated:
  • Anne fully reverts back into a human for the first time when she has to take the potion that turns her into a frog for 32 hours in the afternoon, but the tax collectors slap her vial of potion out of her hands before she can drink it. Fortunately, she uses her human form to scare them away.
  • Marcy first reverted when she lost track of time while in the library and forgot to drink her potion. She's so horrified by the experience that she refuses to go back to the library for years, and the incident becomes an urban legend.
• In Project: Harmony, a changeling attempting to infiltrate the Harmonics facility on the magic-less Earth is near-instantly forced to drop its disguise when it runs out of magic, revealing the existence of changelings to both humans and ponies.

Films — Animated

• Alice in Wonderland: Alice, having briefly grown gigantic after eating a piece of the Magic Mushroom she collected earlier from meeting the caterpillar, starts boldly giving the Queen of Hearts a "Reason You Suck" Speech, rounding it off by calling her a "Fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant". Sadly, whilst Alice is calling her out, the effects of the mushroom wear off, and Alice shrinks back to her normal height, leaving her at the Queen's mercy.
• DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp: In the climax, the villain Merlock uses his magic talisman to change into a Gryphon so he can take back the genie's lamp from Scrooge, who is plummeting down to Earth from Merlock's Ominous Floating Castle. In the ensuing fight, Scrooge manages to not only keep the lamp but also knocks Merlock's talisman out of his hand, reverting him back into a human who then falls to his death.
• Encanto: Camilo transforms into a taller form when trying to help Mirabel as Casita is breaking down around them. The faltering magic forces him back into his smaller real shape and Camilo falls, unable to reach her in time.
• FernGully: The Last Rainforest: After belatedly realizing that Crysta has accidentally shrunk him down to fairy size, Zak demands to be restored to normal on the spot, and to her credit, her first attempt does begin restoring him to human proportions. Unfortunately, this reversion takes place while Zak and Crystal are still up in a tree, resulting in Zak smacking headfirst into the branch directly above him. He immediately shrinks right back down again.
• The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea: After tricking Melody into handing over her grandfather's trident, Morgana seals her in an underwater cave blocked by a thick layer of ice, while warning her that her temporary transformation into a mermaid is just about to wear off, leaving her to drown. She almost does, but Tip and Dash are able to save her.
• Luca: Sea monsters can shapeshift into humans, but involuntarily revert back to their sea monster forms whenever they get wet. Luca and Alberto, while pretending to be human in Portorosso, spend much of the movie trying not to get any water on them. During the last stretch of the Portorosso Cup just as Luca is biking to the finish, it starts to rain, forcing him to hide under a shop awning to avoid getting wet. Luckily, Alberto suddenly appears at that moment, running toward him with an umbrella...only for Ercole to ride by and kick him directly into the rain, exposing him as a sea monster in front of the townsfolk.
• In Megamind, the titular character Megamind is a blue alien with a high-tech watch that can let him disguise himself as whoever he wants. While he's an infamous supervillain, he gets tired of it, and to change things up he disguises himself as a human named Bernard so he can go on a date with a reporter named Roxanne. The date with Roxanne goes pretty well, with the two kissing ... until Roxanne touches his watch and accidentally reveals his true form. Safe to say, the idea that she's dating an alien supervillain isn't one she was too fond of. Or at least not at first.
• The Princess and the Frog: Lawrence uses a talisman given to him by Dr. Facilier to take on Prince Naveen's appearance, all so he can marry Charlotte as part of Facilier's plan to get Big Daddy LaBouff's money. The talisman's magic is fueled by Naveen's blood, so when it starts to run out following Naveen's escape, Lawrence starts to revert back to his normal appearance in a Bit-by-Bit Transformation just as he's about to propose to Charlotte. Lawrence is barely able to hide the changes before he succeeds in proposing to her, with the talisman's magic wearing off after she leaves. Unfortunately for him, Lawrence still has to actually marry the girl, forcing Facilier to ask for help from his Friends on the Other Side to recapture the real Naveen.

Films — Live-Action

• Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Hyde:
  • While seducing a colleague in her lingerie, Helen Hyde begins shapeshifting back to her male form of Dr. Jacks. Jacks locks himself in the bathroom before the guy can see and is forced to climb down a fire escape while wearing Helen's underwear.
  • An inversion is attempted in a later scene when Jacks tries to get Helen fired by scrawling obscenities all over his naked body and waiting to transform into her during an important meeting. She manages to delay the transformation entirely, leaving him humiliated (and fired by his perplexed bosses).
• Fantastic Four (2005):
  • During the bridge sequence, Susan attempts to use her recently gained Invisibility powers to sneak by the crowd. But since her powers don't affect her clothing, she has to take them off and she naturally loses control of her powers just as she's down to her underwear, right in front of everyone. Her ensuing Naked Freak-Out manages to flare up her emotions, and she turns invisible again, causing Reed to notice that their powers are tied to their emotions.
  • Late in the film, Victor Von Doom reverses Ben Grimm's transformation, not out of the goodness of his heart but because he needs Grimm out of the way so that he can kill off the rest of the Fantastic Four. Grimm figures this out just after he's been returned to his human state, leaving him unable to help as Doom captures Reed Richards.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the finale, Mr Hyde is pitted against Dante, who has massively overdosed on Jekyll's formula and is now bigger and stronger even than Hyde. While Dante is burning through his dose of the formula faster, Hyde's dose runs out first and he soon reverts to Dr Jekyll, forcing him to beat a hasty retreat with Captain Nemo... but he still winds up better off than Dante, who ends up getting buried under a ton of rubble and is presumably crushed to death when he reverts.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: During the Final Battle, Will Turner manages to end the curse by returning the last of the Aztec gold with the necessary blood sacrifice, restoring the crew of the eponymous pirate ship to full humanity, just as they were hoping for... right when they're in the middle of a battle with Commodore Norrington's forces. As a result, at least one of them ends up being killed before the rest belatedly realize that they're no longer invincible undead, and hastily surrender to Norrington. Captain Barbossa is fresh from having been shot by Jack Sparrow, so he dies almost instantly.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales: The undead crew of the Silent Mary are restored to humanity when Henry destroys the Trident before Captain Salazar can use it... and unfortunately for Salazar and his crew, this reversion couldn't have come at a worse time, as the destruction of the Trident causes the previously divided waters to close back in on everyone, leaving the now-human crew to drown in the ensuing deluge.
• The Smurfs 2: After getting zapped by Gargamel, Victor becomes a talking duck. Unfortunately for him, when Victor finally turns back to a human, he's in mid-flight at the time, so he ends up plummeting from the sky (stark naked). Thankfully, he doesn't fall from a fatal altitude, and he has the good fortune to land in a laundry hamper.
• Van Helsing:
  • Mr Hyde does battle with the title character early on, and over the course of their duel, proves capable of surviving traumas that would kill ordinary human beings, including being sliced across the belly with circular saws and impaled through the chest with Van Helsing's grappling hook. Unfortunately for him, a tug-of-war with said grappling hook results in Hyde accidentally getting catapulted off the top of Notre Dame Cathedral... and on the way down, he reverts to the all-too-human Dr Jekyll. The poor bastard has just enough time to look down and realize what's happening before he hits the ground with a crunch.
  • Late in the film, Van Helsing himself is bitten by a werewolf and realizes that his new form might be the only thing that can kill Dracula — if he can do so before midnight of his first full moon, after which he'll be under Dracula's control. During the final battle, Van Helsing has the upper hand over the vampire's gigantic bat form... right up until a cloud covers the moon just as Van Helsing is about to land the final blow, causing him to revert to human form. Consequently, he's forced to make a hasty exit before Dracula can recover and spends the rest of the battle on the backfoot as his opponent advances on him.

Literature

• Animorphs:
  • The Andalite morphing technology has a very serious drawback in that users can only remain in morph for two hours at a time. Anyone breaking the two-hour limit will be trapped in that form permanently... and given that the main characters are using this power to operate an underground resistance movement against a secret alien invasion, they often end up having to demorph in high-risk scenarios. This most commonly involves having to avoid being seen by civilians or Controllers, but there have also been cases in which the Animorphs have had to demorph while flying, while in the middle of the ocean, while captured by the Yeerks...
  • In #29: The Sickness, Ax catches a virus and becomes seriously ill. The first symptoms are him losing the ability to maintain his human morph while attending the human Animorphs' school dance, forcing the others to awkwardly cover for him until they can evacuate him.
• Books of the Raksura: Invoked when Moon fights an enemy who can psychically override Raksura shapeshifting. Moon's wings are injured, and when he's forced into human form, the injury transfers to his chest and back muscles, becoming much worse in the process.
• Cinderella and its various adaptations commonly feature Cinderella's coach turning back into a pumpkin and her servants reverting to assorted animals When the Clock Strikes Twelve; given the Rule of Drama, this usually happens while Cinderella is struggling to get home before anyone notices her absence, resulting in utter chaos on the road.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Harry and Ron attempt to uncover information about the Heir of Slytherin by using Polyjuice Potion to transform into Crabbe and Goyle so they can spy on the Slytherins up close. Unfortunately, the potion starts to wear off while they're questioning Draco Malfoy in the Slytherin common room, forcing them to make excuses about needing medicine for a stomachache and leave as quickly as possible before the reversion becomes noticeable.
• In The Reckoners Trilogy, supervillainess Loophole is killed when her Kryptonite Factor (making her sneeze) is triggered while she's shrunk into a tiny crack in the ground, crushing her to death.
• In E.M. Goldman's novel Shrinking Pains, the literal Fountain of Youth's effects are only temporary, leaving the main characters at risk of getting caught while busy with their various antics. More dangerously, the climax features the villains capturing Doug, Milo, and Cass while the former two are still regressed, tying them up in a basement with a boiler rigged to explode. Though our heroes initially think that reverting to their true ages might allow Milo and Doug to break free long before the boiler explodes, Milo realizes that the ropes will fatally slice open their wrists in the process... and they've only got a few minutes left before then. Fortunately, Cass uses a bottle of Fountain water to regress out of her restraints and cut Doug and Milo free before they revert.
• In the climax of Thorn Ogres Of Hagwood, the eponymous monsters attack the Werling village in pursuit of the stolen Soul Jar. Naturally, the Werlings use their shapeshifting powers to escape as per usual... but unfortunately, thanks to Terser Gibble's cowardice, the Thorn Ogres now know the Magical Incantation normally used to undo Shapeshifter Mode Lock, and begin reciting it throughout the attack, reverting the Werlings to normal and leaving them at the mercy of the attackers. The only character who escapes this is Gamaliel, and that's only because he's accidentally turned himself into a Shapeshifter Mashup that's immune to the spell.

Live-Action TV

• The Boys (2019):
  • "Nothing Like It in the World": Homelander is found to be carrying on a rather bizarre secret relationship with Doppelganger, who uses their shapeshifting powers to appeal to Homelander's sexual peccadilloes in various ways. Unfortunately for both parties, maintaining a shape for long periods of time is painful for Doppelganger. Consequently, while in the form of Madelyn and being used as a Lap Pillow by Homelander, they inadvertently revert to their obese true form — much to Homelander's irritation.
  • "Payback" has a much more violent example. Here, Termite shrinks himself to the size of a flea and climbs into his boyfriend's penis to stimulate him from the inside. Everything seems to be going well, right up until Termite sneezes — and accidentally reverts to full size. Termite survives unharmed. The boyfriend... doesn't.
• Codename Eternity: In "24 Hours", Nathaniel and Thorber find themselves inexplicably reverting back to their original Theran form which will eventually kill them due to not being able to survive in Earth's atmosphere. Turns out they ended up getting mononucleosis from a clubber which, while near harmless to humans, has this effect on Therans.
• Denji Sentai Megaranger/Power Rangers in Space: To begin with, the Silver Ranger's transformation doesn't last for very long (In Megaranger, it's because his suit was the prototype, in Space, it's due to damage after being cryogenically frozen), running the risk of changing back to human form in the middle of a fight. In both versions, the villains try to take advantage of this by timing how long the transformation lasts, then having a monster attach a bomb to Silver just before time runs out (fortunately, both Silvers found a way to fix the problem just before they try this tactic).
• Earthsea: Ged and Vetch transform themselves into mice to infiltrate the temple on Atuan. Unfortunately, the powers of the priestesses around the temple cause them to revert back to human form as soon as they near it. They somehow manage to get inside without being seen anyway.
  Vetch: I think we missed a class.
  Ged: Run!
• Farscape:
  • "Thanks For Sharing": Late in the episode, Rinic Sarova is revealed to have been killed and replaced by a Korlata shapeshifter working for the Peacekeeper retrieval squad. Having managed to force Moya off Kanvia and back into space, the Korlata reverts to his true form in a horrific sequence... only for a pedestrian to walk in on his hiding place at exactly the wrong time. The fully reverted Korlata is able to kill the witness before the alarm can be sounded, but with all the chaos that's already been stirred up on the planet, he has to make a hasty exit in the company of his commander Xhalax Sun before anyone finds the body.
  • "Revenging Angel": Crichton's Adventures in Comaland feature him transforming himself into a cartoon in order to avoid consequences in his feud with the imaginary D'Argo, as his cartoon self can't be realistically hurt or killed. For good measure, whenever he gets too close to failure, he ducks out of the fantasy and tries another. Unfortunately, after his third attempt at stopping D'Argo via Looney Tunes escapades, he tries to fly his module through a wormhole to the real world — only for the wormhole to turn out to be an image painted on a rock wall. Cue massive explosion. Crichton is reverted to his live-action self at exactly the right time to suffer realistic injuries, leaving him crippled as imaginary D'Argo moves in for the kill.
• The Good Place: In the episode "Janets," the humans (now inter-dimensional fugitives) have to hide in Janet's void to escape being sent back to the Bad Place. Because normal humans can't survive the void, they all take on the form of Janet, while Janet herself and Michael try to resolve the situation with the accountants. Their presence threatens to destroy Janet, though she's able to recover after Eleanor resolves her identity crisis, causing the humans to revert to normal in the process. Unfortunately, reverting to their true forms forces Janet to eject them... right in the middle of the accountants' office, triggering the alarm and sending the demons after them.
• In From the Cold: In the episode "Little Bird," Jenny morphs into Damien in order to take his place at a meeting with the Caleros (after the real Damien is mind-controlled into betraying her by Svetlana, forcing Jenny to kill him in self-defence). The meeting appears to be going well at first, but then Jenny's powers begin glitching again, forcing her to excuse herself and head for the bathroom, where she painfully reverts. Unfortunately, she can't resume Damien's form. Worse still, Svetlana arrives at the Calero's mansion soon after, meaning that if Jenny is seen out of disguise this time, she'll be instantly recognized as the Whisper by her former handler; as such, she's forced to abandon the meeting and beat a hasty escape through the bathroom window.
• Misfits: season 1 episode 2 features Nathan falling for a volunteer worker by the name of Ruth and eventually getting into bed with her. However, it turns out that Ruth is actually one of the senior citizens visiting the community center: like the main characters, she was given powers by the Storm — in this case, the ability to make herself young again. Unfortunately for Nathan, this isn't revealed until Ruth loses control of her powers and reverts to her true age in mid-orgasm, resulting in Nathan suddenly finding himself screwing a very old woman.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • As a shapeshifting Changeling, Constable Odo must revert to his true liquid state every 16 hours due to Bizarre Alien Biology, but he finds this deeply embarrassing — hence why he prefers to do so in private. Thus, he is absolutely mortified in "The Forsaken" when he ends up getting trapped in a turbolift with the formidable Ambassador Troi and needs to revert to his liquid form. Luckily, she's understanding and takes off her wig (because she's embarrassed about her "ordinary" hair) so that they can be on an even footing, leading to them developing an Odd Friendship.
  • In "The Search Part 1," Odo and Quark are given shared quarters aboard the Defiant during the mission to make contact with the Founders. Unfortunately, this occurs right when he needs to revert to his liquid form, so he's in an extremely bad mood thanks to the aforementioned self-consciousness (on top of everything else that's already happened in the episode), and Quark's habit of pestering him does not help — even delaying Odo from reverting so they can continue their conversation. All this prompts Odo to explode with rage and order his bunkmate to leave him the hell alone. Only once he's absolutely certain that Quark has his back to him does he finally pour himself into his bucket.
  • A much more dangerous version crops up in "The Die Is Cast": Having realized that Odo is holding back one final detail that might help the Cardassians in their pre-emptive strike against the Founders, Garak tortures Odo by waiting until the need to revert becomes uncomfortable and using a Power Nullifier so he can't revert to liquid. The results are nothing short of agonizing and bring Odo dangerously close to a Death by Depower before he finally confesses to the awful truth: despite having abandoned the Founders to serve Bajor and the Federation, he still secretly wants to go home.
  • In "Broken Link," Odo begins suffering painful fits of Power Incontinence due to an illness inflicted on him by the Founders. With typical stubbornness, he leaves the infirmary and returns to work, even managing to corner a smuggler... but before Odo can make an arrest, he suffers another attack and reverts to liquid on the spot, giving the smuggler the opportunity to escape while he's incapacitated.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: In "Strange New Worlds", the Enterprise's medical staff use an injection to disguise Pike, Spock, and Singh as Rubber-Forehead Aliens to infiltrate the prison on Kiley 279 where Una Chin-Riley's First Contact team are being held. They have some trouble on the ship adapting the treatment to Spock's half-Vulcan physiology, and sure enough, on the ground he starts reverting back to his normal appearance when they're trying to get past the last checkpoint, triggering a brief fight with a group of Kilean prison guards.

Video Games

• In 40 Winks, scattered across the levels are jack-in-the-boxes that allow the player characters to transform into one of four different Super Modes: a ninja, a caveman, a fairy/jester, and a superhero. Each of them possesses unique powers in and out of battle, including Super Not-Drowning Skills, but unfortunately, the transformations are on a timer. Reverting to normal can be merely inconvenient if you needed the caveman's ground pound or the superhero's jetpack to access hidden areas, or, if you're in battle or underwater, dangerous.
• Among Us has the shapeshifter role for imposters, which allows them to take on the appearance of anyone else for a period of time before changing back to their original appearance. Care must be taken to not be in view of crewmates when the timer expires.
• Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain allows the eponymous Villain Protagonist numerous shapeshifting powers, but the greatest of these is arguably the Mist Form. While this power is active, Kain can not only seep through gratings into secret areas, but is effectively immune to physical damage, and can even walk across bodies of water unharmed — handily bypassing the normal vampire weakness to H20. However, like Kain's other magical powers, this form drains mana for as long as it remains active, and as soon as Kain's mana meter runs out, he'll automatically revert to his natural state, with potentially lethal results if he happens to be crossing a lake, for example.
• In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Laguz shapeshifters can only fight so often in beast form before they revert to their (much weaker) humanoid forms. Players need to pay close attention to their energy gauge in order to avert this trope.
• In Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, Gabriel and Grace learn that werewolves can be forced into their wolf form by hearing certain sounds, and they try to force a werewolf to transform in a particularly public venue.
• In The Legend of Dragoon, the main characters have to build up at least one full bar of SP before they can transform into Dragoons. Once transformed, they have the advantage of powerful magic, total immunity to status effects, and a very useful defensive buff. The bad news is that while they're in use, their SP bars deplete with every turn, and if the characters happen to run out of SP and revert to normal in the middle of a boss battle, it's quite possible to end up being overwhelmed. This is especially true of the Super Virage in the Forbidden Land, which has a powerful kamikaze attack scheduled after a ten-round timer; you can tank the attack as Dragoons, but if you don't time things carefully, your party will revert back and have to suffer through it as mere mortals.
• Shang Tsung of Mortal Kombat has had this problem in every one of his playable appearances. Though he can mimic any opponent in the game, he will automatically return to his true form after a set time, but there's no displayed timer - and if time runs up at the right moment, your opponent gets a free combo.
• In The Shapeshifting Detective, you can remain disguised as another character indefinitely despite Agent X's occasional warnings about your ability running out. However, if you try to question Zak Weston while disguised as Lexxie and accept his offer of a modeling session, he'll give you a drink... and unknown to you, it's been spiked. A few sips in, the drug causes you to lose control of your powers and revert to your true form — not "Sam", but your real form. The sight is apparently so horrific that Zak doesn't want to speak to you again.
• A careless Spy in Team Fortress 2 can be subjected to this trope in a few ways.
  • While he can willingly transform into a member of the enemy team, it takes about 2-3 seconds where effects and animation would play, which if an enemy were to wander into him while he transforms would immediately reveal his true allegiance.
  • Attacking while disguised will remove the Spy's disguise immediately, which would be a very bad thing if said Spy were to do it in plain view of an Engineer's Sentry Gun, let alone having witnesses around and having poorly planned their escape.
    • A specific example would be the 'Your Eternal Reward' knife; when equipped grants the Spy the ability to immediately disguise himself (without animation and smoky effects) into his victim upon a successful backstab. But if he happens to miss in front of a whole bunch of enemies...
  • Most commonly experienced version of this trope would be the various Invisibility Watches the Spy has in his loadout either running out of juice or setting off the conditions (like physically bumping onto enemies) that would cause the Spy to drop his optical camouflage.

Web Animation

• In Episode 6 of Super Mario Bros. Z, Sonic transforms into Super Sonic through the power of a Starman, allowing him to turn the tide of the battle against Mecha Sonic. He steals back the four Chaos Emeralds Mecha Sonic had stolen, winds up a Wave-Motion Gun attack to destroy him once and for all... and runs out of power just before he can launch it, reverting back to normal at the worst possible time.
  Sonic: Well, that experience was pretty short-lived... [cue freefall]

Web Comics

• Keychain of Creation: Marena's magical disguise spontaneously fails in front of a Secret Police squad, bringing the entire Empire's hostile attention down on her party. As an Exalted of the Trickster God Luna, she assumes it's a sign to set them on a better course of action.
  Marena: Dearest Luna, thief of light, devourer of chaos, hear my words. I beseech you to guide events that my sister will not reveal our nature to our enemies. [SPOING!]
• In Narbonic, Dave and Artie-the-super-intelligent-gerbil are trying to escape a self-destructing moonbase while Artie has temporarily transformed into a clone of Dave. As they run for the escape pod, Artie complains as he starts to fall behind:
  Artie: I'm not used to this body! If only I weren't some huge, flabby, imperfectly bipedal ape, I could...
  (abruptly transforms back into a gerbil)
  Artie: (thinking) Oh, sure, but when I say "if only Congress would unilaterally withdraw troops from the Middle East", ironic wish-fulfillment never kicks in.

Web Video

• Critical Role: Campaign Three: When Fearne transforms into a rat to spy on some city guards, one of them accidentally steps on her, breaking the spell in full view of them. They're not convinced by her claim that she slipped in to warn them about some dire wolves.
• Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story: In "The Clues in the Clink", the Headless Horseman, who has been transformed into mastermind Gentleman Thief Paulie Tahoe ^note  By putting a skull on the Horseman and casting a spell, the Horseman temporarily takes on the identity of the dead person gets thrown in jail with the rest of the group and immediately begins planning their escape... until the spell ends and he reverts back to Headless.

Western Animation

• American Dragon: Jake Long: In the episode "Shapeshifter", Jake consumes a potion that allows him to expand his shapeshifting abilities so he can take the form of anyone else — at the cost of his dragon form. Overusing this ability in his daily life causes him to lose control in front of the Huntsclan, resulting in his capture. Chained to a wall, he begins to revert to his true form one body part at a time while the Huntsman watches, risking his identity being revealed. Fortunately, Fu Dog arrives just in time and shuts off the lights while Jake's head reverts; by the time the lights come back on, Jake has shifted back into his dragon form, simultaneously keeping his identity a secret and gaining the strength to escape.
• Amphibia: In "All In", King Andrias fights Anne using a Humongous Mecha, with the specific intent of stalling for time until her Super Mode runs out. It works; Anne runs out of power just before she can land the final blow, and the only thing that stops Andrias from crushing her is the reveal of a letter from his old friend Leif, which shakes his resolve enough that he actually lets Anne deal the final blow.
• In Bananaman, it's not unknown for the eponymous hero to run out of transformation time in the middle of a crisis and revert to Eric the schoolboy, usually forcing him to hastily eat another banana before whatever villain he's up against mops the floor with him. Of course, it doesn't always happen in battle: in one episode, Bananaman reverts to normal during a live TV interview.
• In Batman: The Animated Series episode "Mudslide", while stealing the MP 40 isotope needed to stabilize his decaying body's integrity, Clayface boards a tram while disguised as a lab assistant. While onboard, however, he can't maintain his current shape and messily reverts to his clayish true form, which not only terrifies everybody onboard, but it also gives away his position to Batman, who soon comes crashing in.
• Ben 10: In Classic Continuity, the Omnitrix automatically reverts Ben to human form after a certain length of time, so Ben turning back to normal at the most inconvenient time is practically a Running Gag; common reversion times include while swimming deep underwater, flying at high altitude, or in the middle of an intense battle.
• Cyberchase: In one episode, the Hacker becomes a giant robot thanks to his transformation machine and tries to lift a castle. However, Cyber Squad manage to reverse the effect, and the Hacker is reverted to normal while he's still holding the castle, resulting in him being crushed under it — though he survives and vows to return.
• Danny Phantom: This is a frequent problem for the title character in the early episodes as a part of his early difficulties of controlling his powers, however as his mastery of his powers increases the frequency of these occasions goes down significantly.
  • Played for drama in The Ultimate Enemy where having used his newfound Ghostly Wail on his Evil future self, Danny returns to human form from exhaustion and is unable to return to ghost form, rendering him powerless to save his friends and family from the exploding Nasty Burger, where they would've died if Clockwork hadn't intervened.
  • "Reality Trip" has this happening big time, as an encounter with Freakshow armed with the powerful Reality Gauntlet ended up momentarily knocking out his powers, causing him to revert back to human in public. Not only that, but since the clash had been at the site of a concert, it ended up being on national television, exposing his identity to the entire country!
    Danny: Uh, nobody saw that, right?
• In The Flintstones episode "Itty Bitty Fred", Fred invents a diet drink which ends up shrinking him to about a foot tall. Barney decides to put little Fred into a ventriloquist act, one impressive enough (no wires attached, can talk even while drinking water) to get them on the Ed Sullystone Show. But right in the middle of the performance, the diet drink wears off, causing Fred to revert to his normal size. They are both promptly kicked out of the studio.
• Gargoyles sometimes uses this trope.
  • In "Awakening, Part Four," day breaks (and Goliath turns to stone) just as some commandos are about to spot him and Elisa.
  • In "The Mirror," after Puck has turned Elisa into a gargoyle but before she learns how to use her wings, Goliath teaches her. He is in mid-glide when Puck turns him into a human, and Elisa has to dive down to save him.
• Jackie Chan Adventures:
  • In "It's All In The Game", Drago absorbs the power of Bai Tsa, the Water Demon and not only visibly changes as a result, but even uses his newfound powers to become a living tsunami... only for Uncle to forcibly revert him to normal by the end of the episode, leaving Drago stranded on a buoy far from the beach.
  • In "Stealing Thunder", Drago has gained Shock and Awe electrical abilities by absorbing the Chi of Thunder Demon Tchangzu, visibly beefing him up and allowing him the ability to enhance his strength through lightning strikes. Unfortunately, he once again ends up having the stolen power taken back, leaving him to shrink back down to normal... right when he was about to bask in another lightning bolt. Ouch.
  • Double Subversion: in "Weight And See", Tohru is infused with Po Kong's Mountain Demon Chi and pretty much hulks out, becoming bigger and stronger than ever before — to the point that he casually uses a bus as a weapon against Drago. Uncle nearly removes the Demon Chi from Tohru, only for Jackie to stop him, as doing so would leave his newly reverted body crushed under the bus... only for Drago to do it anyway less than a minute later, though Jackie saves Tohru from the terminal results.
• Kassai and Luk: Marana's curse that turns her into a gazelle during the day turns out useful for once, when the heroes must follow a bridge made of silk so fragile they need to "tread as lightly as a gazelle". Cue eclipse, turning her back human while still on the bridge...
• Looney Tunes: In the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Transylvania 6-5000", yet another failure to take that left turn in Albuquerque has caused Bugs to end up in Transylvania, where he tries to stay the night in a "hotel" — actually the castle of a vampire, Count Bloodcount. However, whenever Bloodcount tries to get the drop on Bugs, Bugs causes him to transform at the worst possible moment by reading aloud a passage from the book Magic Words and Phrases, with the words "Abracadabra" and "Hocus Pocus" transforming him into a bat or back to human form. In one notable case, Bugs reverts Bloodcount to human form while he's flying over the moat.
• The Mask episode "Little Big Mask" features the Mask testing his own anti-aging cream on himself, only for Stanley to find himself uncontrollably regressing the next day. At a loss as to how the cream was made in the first place, Stanley's forced to turn into the Mask again in the hope that his alter ego can improvise a cure before they both suffer a Death by De-aging, but a combination of meddling hospital staff and the Mask's own hyperactivity keep getting in the way, forcing Peggy to wait until next morning to try to guide the toddler-aged Mask through making a cure... by which time, Stanley's body has deaged to infancy and the Mask has fallen off, leaving him without the ability to speak or any of the Mask's reality-warping powers, and with only a few minutes left to live at the most. Fortunately, Peggy soon discovers that the antidote is a simple baby wipe, restoring Stanley to adulthood in seconds.
• The Midnight Gospel: In the finale of "Taste Of The King," Clancy, Glasses Man, Peggy, and her baby all end up getting infected and becoming zombies. Moments later, the mall scientists arrive in a fleet of jeeps with a cure for the zombie infection loaded into dart guns, and open fire on the horde: the cure works perfectly... but unfortunately, there aren't enough darts for everyone, so the cured characters end up regaining their humanity right in the middle of a crowd of zombies - and are promptly eaten alive. Clancy and Glasses Man are among them, though Clancy is able to exit the simulated world before he can suffer fatal injuries.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "The Times, They Are A-Changeling", Thorax, a good changeling who doesn't want to steal love like the rest of his species, takes on the form of a pony so he can interact with the citizens of the Crystal Empire. But when he meets the young Princess Flurry Heart, the massive amounts of love around her triggers his love-feeding instincts, and he involuntarily reverts to his true form in front of everypony.
• Steven Universe: In "Back to the Moon", Amethyst shapeshifts into Jasper and has the other Crystal Gems pretend to be her prisoners as part of a scheme to trick the Ruby Squad. However, because Jasper is bigger than her, shapeshifting into her puts a strain on Amethyst's body. She's able to hold her form until the end of the episode when she lets it go at the wrong time and the Rubies realize they've been tricked, starting a fight that ends with Steven and the Rubies getting blown out the door of the moonbase.
• Tom and Jerry: In the 1947 short "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", Jerry drinks a potion that makes him far more muscular and more than capable of beating up Tom single-handedly, which he does. However, during the short, the potion's effects frequently wear off during the beatings, reducing Jerry to his original musculature and forcing him to flee for another dose of the potion.

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