Objectshifting

"Did the water cooler just go "ahhhhhh"?"

Arthur Dent: I think I'm a sofa.
Ford Prefect: I know how you feel.

— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Most shapeshifters tend to prefer transforming into organic life-forms, taking the shape of animals, monsters, fellow human beings and other entities. Similarly, when it comes to characters with the power to transfigure others via the power of magic or highly-improbable science, it's very common to for them to chose the shape of an animal to the exclusion of all others.

And then you have these guys.

Regardless of whether they're experts in transforming themselves or others, they have the ability and the inclination to make someone into an inanimate object. The reasons vary: perhaps becoming an object is more useful for camouflage than that of an animal; perhaps a Forced Transformation scenario involving an inanimate item will be harder to cure.

However, unless Animate Inanimate Objects are in play, this may be an easy recipe for A Fate Worse Than Death.

A Supertrope of Chest Monster and Toy Transmutation. May overlap with Equippable Ally, depending on exactly how said ally is equipped. See also Taken for Granite and Transflormation, which involve very different kinds of inanimate transformation.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• In one Doraemon story, Shizuka turns her body into a ring.
• Oolong and Puar in the Dragon Ball franchise can transform into anything, whether it's human, animal, monster, or an inanimate object. Oolong's is limited who can only stay in a form for five minutes and having imperfect transformations because he was expelled from shapeshifting school.
• The Edel Raids of Elemental Gelade are female characters who form a bond with a human to transform into absolutely devastating weapons — mainly melee weapons, but guns are not unknown.
• In Kemono Jihen, tanuki are all masters of transformation and illusion. While they usually transform into human guises to walk among modern Japan society without arousing suspicion, they have trouble hiding their tails. Inugami catches one of his younger peers snooping on him after spotting his tail on a garden statue.
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam: Neo Holland's Nether Gundam transforms into a windmill. Neo Holland's Gundam Fight representative manages to make it to the tournament's finals by hiding in plain sight in windmill mode among a bunch of regular windmills during the preliminary matches and only leaving once all Mobile Fighters have to travel to Neo Hong Kong, thus avoiding fighting until then. Once the finals start and the Nether Gundam has to actually participate in battles however...
• This is the fate of anyone failing a contest at the Colosseum of Dressrosa in One Piece: they are dumped into a pit and turned into Living Toys. While they retain human memory and personality, they are unable to do anything but the bidding of the Donquixote Family and are, for the most part, unable to say anything about it; plus, almost everyone who ever met them will be made to forget that they were human.
• Pokémon: The Original Series: In the episode "Ditto's Mysterious Mansion", the titular character transforms into a cannon in order to launch Pikachu at Team Rocket's balloon.
• The lone dynamite seen in Shouan Days. completely turns into a human girl no bigger than the size of a human palm.
• In Soul Eater, the ability to turn into a weapon is essentially an ability some people happen to have.
• Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid features the Arms Virus, which turns women into Liberators or Exters; Exters temporarily transform into a weapon when sufficiently sexually aroused. Main character Mamori turns into a sword, for example.

Audio Plays

• In The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief, the Elephantoplasty sketch features surgeon Reg LeCrisp explaining the various operations he's performed, most prominently hybridizing an unsuspecting human with an elephant. He admits that donors aren't easy to come by, meaning he often has to make use of inanimate objects in order to remake his patients, including "chairs, tables, floor-cleaning equipment, drying-out racks, pieces of pottery." Finally, he reveals that the chair he's sitting on is one of his former patients.

Comic Books

• In the title story of comics anthology Cecil And Jordan In New York, Cecil, feeling neglected in her relationship with Jordan, transforms herself into a chair in order to "finally be useful to someone".
• Morph of Exiles possesses near-limitless shapeshifting powers that not only allow him to transform into animals, humans and fellow superheroes, but also into objects with complex moving parts. At one point, he even turns himself into a catapult to drop water balloons on the rest of the team.
• In PS238 Victor Von Fogg transforms the mayor into a lamp; to his credit, he makes it so the transformation is completely painless and avoids the expected And I Must Scream elements by making it enjoyable for the mayor.
• Sensation Comics: In the Wonder Woman feature, Mona Menise was drawn to a wooden bangle that gave her powers, and was later revealed to be a siren that Aphrodite had transformed as punishment in antiquity but had retained her sentience and was driven mad by the experience.
• In Soulsearchers and Company #1, Grand Guignol is transformed into a plush toy when one of his spells backfires, leaving him to be used as set dressing on one of the kiddie TV programs that he hates so much.

Comic Strips

• One strip in Calvin and Hobbes features a helium balloon carrying Calvin into the stratosphere, before abruptly popping and sending him plummeting back to the ground. Fortunately, Calvin finds his transmogrifier gun in his pocket on the way down, and transforms himself into a cast-iron safe to survive the impact.
• In a superhero themed strip of What's New? with Phil and Dixie, Gazebo Boy finds that his singular power of metamorphosis is useless against the evil termite (Dragon Magazine #75)

Fan Fiction

• Anchor Foal: Discord can turn himself into basically anything, including inanimate objects like piles of leaves and a Animate Inanimate Object chandelier.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: in "Catastrophic Failure, Part 1," Ami has a potion that can transform fish ^note and presumably any other animal, since in that universe transformations don't care about the starting state into harpoon-like spears:
  One of the spears had reverted back into a fish. The tiny animal was alive, and most importantly, had passed unharmed through the field of killing magic covering the entrance while transformed into a lifeless object.
• Gravity Falls Dark Fic All The World's a Toybox features the Shapeshifter transforming into the doormat of a dodgy hotel in order to get the drop on Mabel and the others when they arrive. In an amusing twist, a huge crowd of guests arrives ahead of her, meaning that in order to maintain his disguise, the Shapeshifter has to suffer in silence while being trodden on by several extremely dirty feet.
  • This is something of a recurring theme, given that the fic is based around the Weirdmageddon trilogy.
• Honoka's Bizarre Adventure: Inverted with Hoshizora Rin's Stand 「Cat Scratch Fever!」, which releases a venom that turns inanimate objects into cats which Rin can control and she isn't allergic too.
• In The Land of What Might-Have-Been, members of the Amorphous League have the power to transform into almost anything, including inanimate objects. One of them saves Elphaba and Glinda from drowning in an underground lake by transforming into an island - resulting in a good deal of shock when the two realize that the ground beneath their feet is alive and taking great delight in their confusion.

Films — Animation

• The climax of Aladdin features Abu being transformed into a Cymbal-Banging Monkey wind-up toy when Jafar unleashes his magic powers on Aladdin and his companions.
• Beauty and the Beast offers one of the most famous examples of this trope: while the Enchantress's curse transformed the prince into a monstrous beast, it transformed his servants into Animate Inanimate Objects, including clocks, candelabras, tea sets, mops, wardrobes, musical instruments, and many others.
• During the climax of the first chapter of The House (2022), Van Schoonbeek transforms Raymond and Penny into an armchair and a set of curtains, leaving them almost completely paralyzed and fully aware of their plight.
• Secret Magic Control Agency: Hansel and Gretel are briefly transformed into an armchair and teapot (respectively) by magic potions.
• In Time Masters, Onyx introduces himself and his abilities by transforming into a vase of flowers; as it happens, his part in the plan to gain access to the Reform cruiser is to impersonate a stockpile of treasure.

Films — Live Action

• As with its animated predecessor, Beauty and the Beast (2017) features the prince's servants becoming Animate Inanimate Objects while their master becomes a beast, but with a major twist: if the Beast cannot find love and break the curse, they will not only remain in their current forms, but lose their animate nature and become ordinary objects. Major horror ensues in the climax when this very fate begins to play out, though thankfully the curse is broken before the process can be completed.
• Return to Oz partially adapts the plot of Ozma Of Oz, and thus the climax features the Scarecrow being captured by the Nome King and transformed into one of the ornaments in his collection. Dorothy and her friends are roped into playing a guessing game to rescue him, but losing three times in a row will result in them being transformed into another ornament. Dorothy is eventually able to figure out that her friends have all been turned into green objects and save the day.
• The T-1000 of Terminator 2: Judgment Day is largely a Human Shifter with Shapeshifter Weapons but can also take the form of simple objects - though only those of equal mass. While this naturally prevents it from transforming into a pack of cigarettes as John Connor suggests, it does transform into a stretch of floor tiles in order to sample the form of a security guard when he walks across it.
• Thor: Ragnarok: After Doctor Strange teleports Loki away and leaves his card behind, Thor pokes it with his umbrella asking "Loki?", thinking that Loki has just shifted into it.
• In the anthology film Tokyo, Hiroko begins to feel invisible in her relationship with Akira, and eventually wakes up one day to find herself undergoing a Body Horror-iffic transformation into a chair as a result. Horrified, she wanders into the street, growing progressively less human with every step - losing first her shoes and then her pants as her lower body becomes the legs of a chair and her torso becomes the back rail. Unable to find help, she pauses in the middle of the street... and when the camera cuts back to her, Hiroko has been replaced with a chair draped in her jacket. Nobody appears to notice.
• At one point in We Can Be Heroes (2020), Wild Card accidentally turns himself into a toaster. (He gets better offscreen.)
• Late in X-Men, Mystique shapeshifts into a scale model of the Statue of Liberty before ambushing the X-Men in Wolverine's form, only being given away by her eyes briefly flashing yellow as the group walk past her.
  • Incidentally, this is the only time in the films that she uses her powers to disguise herself as an inanimate object. But given that the object is basically just a green skinned human, all she would have to do is stand still for instant statue.

Literature

• Alice, Girl from the Future:
  • In Alice and the Enchanted King, the main villain's entire scheme depends on transforming people into dolls.
  • In The Secret of the Black Stone, Hrem kidnaps children by turning them into the titular black stones.
  • In The Sorcerer and the Snow Maiden, a retelling of Ghosts Don't Exist for younger readers, Snow Maidens get turned into dolls.
  • In The War with Lilliputians, it's mentioned that Rat escaped from prison by turning into a vacuum cleaner.
• The Curse Workers, the incredibly-rare Transformation Workers have the power to turn their targets into almost anything, including inanimate objects. Unfortunately, people transformed in this way are effectively killed and cannot be restored. It turns out that Cassel is actually a Transformation Worker brainwashed into serving as an assassin: whenever his brothers need someone eliminated with no evidence, they have him turn the target into an inanimate object and leave at that.
• In Deltora Quest, while Grade 1 and 2 Ols can only transform into living things. Grade 3 Ols have no such restrictions and can turn into anything. The Ol known as Dain turns into Dain's own dagger, which Lief picks up. This is ultimately used to out him as when Dain reappears, his human form once again has the dagger he supposedly lost.
• Discworld:
  • In Lords and Ladies, a bandit chieftain makes the mistake of trying to accost Mustrum Ridcully - the Arch-Chancellor of Unseen University; it ends with the unfortunate bandit being turned into a pumpkin. Defeated, the humiliated pumpkin orders his fellow bandits to get him into the shade and never speak of this incident again.
  • The Last Continent features the Librarian being afflicted by a magical strain of the flu that warps his already-twisted morphic field and causes him to transform at random - most commonly into an inanimate object: a chair, a hot water bottle, a book - all of them recognizable by a covering of red fur.
• In Goosebumps: Attack of the Mutant, the comic-book supervillain known only as the Masked Mutant has the power to transform into any being, animal or object. This comes back to bite protagonist Skipper Matthews when he infiltrates the Mutant's office, only to find too late that the Mutant is already there - disguised as the desk. His only weakness is that he can't reform after shapeshifting into a liquid... which Skipper manages to trick him into doing by posing as a superhero whose only weakness is sulphuric acid.
• Harry Potter:
  • A possibility when it comes to transfiguration, as some spells are used to transform living beings into inanimate objects.
  • Horace Slughorn transfigures himself into an armchair early in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to avoid detection while squatting in Muggle houses and hiding from the Death Eaters. He jokes that the stuffing comes naturally to him.
• In Journey to the Dream Land by Dmitry Drimov, it's ultimately revealed that the phantasaurus Phantik turned into a ring after getting mortally wounded.
• Land of Oz:
  • In The Marvelous Land of Oz, Mombi threatens to turn Tip into a statue, which is when he has a Screw This, I'm Outta Here moment. Later, Mombi herself becomes a flower to hide from the heroes.
  • Ozma of Oz: After the Royal Family of Ev is sold to the Nome King, he uses his magic to turn them into ornaments. When Ozma and her friends come to his underground kingdom to free them, the Nome King gives them a challenge: identify which ornaments are the Royal Family to free them or be changed into ornaments themselves. Ozma and almost all of her friends fail the test and are changed into ornaments as well. Later, when leaving the Nome kingdom, the heroes have an army chasing them, so Dorothy changes the front ranks into eggs, which Nomes are scared to death of, making the rest of the army flee full speed.
  • In The Magic of Oz, the shapeshifting incantation allows transforming into anything, including inanimate objects. Of course, that stops the caster from speaking the incantation to turn back. As a result, Kiki Aru spends most of the book struggling to keep the secret from his accomplice, suspecting (quite correctly) that a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness situation will be inevitable otherwise.
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Witch disguises herself and her dwarf as a rock and tree stump, when Aslan's rescue party turns up to save Edmund.
• Red Dwarf: Last Human introduces the Symbi-Morphs, genetically-engineered prostitutes capable of shapeshifting into just about anything their symbiotically bonded clients desire - including objects. While Lister is imprisoned in Cyberia, he's assigned one by the name of Reketrebn as a reward for participating in a Suicide Mission. Unfortunately, Reketrebn doesn't like being separated from her previous master, and protests by transforming into a sofa so the guards won't be able to get her through the door - and when that doesn't work, turning into a huge pile of dung in order to deter them. After getting to know Lister, however, she transforms into a vase of white roses as a sign she's beginning to warm to him. Later still, when she and Lister decide to escape the prison together, she turns into an impenetrable sphere of reinforced glass in order to protect him from attack.
• In Princess Wennie, Tragimor turns a talkative craftsman into a door.
• Puck of The Sisters Grimm is able to turn into objects. In particular, he is fond of pretending to be a chair and then vanishing right when Sabrina tries to sit on him.
• Sonic the Hedgehog in Robotnik's Laboratory: Robotnik invented a machine that turns the inhabitants of Mobius into inanimate objects, mostly electrical appliances but not always (Johnny Lightfoot for instance becomes a mop).
• Strange Kid Chronicles has Gina Burrito, who can transform herself into a person-sized burrito.
• In Ron Goulart's short story Subject To Change, a woman has developed shapeshifting abilities while training at an experimental school of acting; along with using it to take on the forms of animals and humans, she's also in the habit of turning into inanimate objects - admitting to spending a whole evening as a footstool. In the end, a combination of kleptomania and difficulty with her husband eventually drives her to transform into a perfect replica of her sofa in order to avoid conversation. Unfortunately, a fire breaks out in the building and her husband has only enough time to save one of the two sofas - and he has no way of knowing if he's rescued his wife or an ordinary chair.
• In the semi-Lost Media Dutch children's book Super-Brikke (translated in English as Super-Giles), Brikke/Giles is a kid obsessed with gas pumps who, through the help of a talking streetlamp, actually manges to transform himself into one. Oh, and that streetlamp is actually a former human himself.
• The eponymous character in Sylvester and the Magic Pebble ends up turning himself into a rock to protect himself from a lion. The rest of the story deals with his efforts to turn himself back into a donkey.
• In Wayside School, the evil Mrs. Gorf had the ability to transform her students into apples, which she did when they caused problems of any kind. She gets thwarted when she is also turned into an apple.

Live-Action TV

• In Doctor Who, the Weeping Angels have evolved to turn into stone statues whenever something is looking at them. Since they're inanimate in this state, they become virtually impossible to kill by normal means. It also lends into their hunting habits, as they're a completely harmless object until the viewer so much as glances to the side, allowing them to sneak up at incredible speed. But their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness, as all you have to do to disable them is to keep one eye on them at all times. And they can also never look at each other, lest they both permanently turn to stone until someone pulls one of the statues away.
• Goosebumps (1995):
  • As with the original book, the Masked Mutant of "Attack of the Mutant" can transform into any animal or object; however, instead of being disguised as a desk when Skipper and the Galloping Gazelle infiltrate his office, he takes the form of a chair and waits until the Gazelle makes the mistake of sitting on him. Cue immediate constricting attack.
  • In a departure from the book, "Revenge Of The Lawn Gnomes" features the obnoxious next-door neighbor getting turned into a lawn ornament.
• The Monster Squad episode "Ultra Witch" had the titular villain use a ray gun to transform Dracula, Frank N. Stein and Bruce W. Wolf into cardboard cutouts. Worse still, the victims are still able to feel and think, but can't move. After Walt turns the monsters back to normal, Ultra Witch tries to use the weapon on him, only for a mirror to reflect the beam back at her and turn her into a cardboard cutout instead.
• Red Dwarf
  • In "Polymorph", the Dwarfers face a genetically modified life-form that can transform into anything and feeds on negative emotions. Along with the various human and animal life-forms encountered throughout the episode, it also transforms into a radio, a ball, a kebab, and Lister's boxers.
  • The gang face a tame version in "Emohawk." This one sneaks onto Starbug disguised as Lister's hat and gets the drop on the Cat while disguised as a can of beans.
  • ... And a whole litter of them in "Can of Worms" after a polymorph uses Cat as a host for its eggs, all of which end up leaving his body in a number of extremely uncomfortable forms.
  • Meanwhile, in the novel Better Than Life, the original polymorph takes numerous other forms in addition to the ones featured in the episode: in fact, its first form is that of a wad of chewing gum, then a feather, and then a bullet. Later, after getting cornered by the crew, it takes the form of a wrought-iron lamppost so they won't be able to damage it.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • In "Babel", Odo turns into a trolley to spy on Quark.
  • In another episode, Odo turns into a glass to spy on some aliens who were drinking together.
  • In the episode after Worf's first Deep Space Nine appearance, he's having trouble with Odo's unorthodox surveillance methods as opposed to his own by-the-book methods. Worf arrests a criminal and finds that the "bag" he was carrying is actually Odo in disguise, hoping to be taken to the ringleader of the operation.
  • Discussed when a little girl asks Odo if he can turn into bread, and he says, "Why? So you can gobble me up?" He later turns into a spinning top to entertain the girl.
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "By Any Other Name": aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy have a device that can change people into a small geometric solid. The resulting solids can be easily crushed, killing the original person.
• The 1990s BBC kids' show Watt On Earth was about a shapeshifting alien whose lack of experience meant he was almost exclusively restricted to inanimate objects (known in-show as "transanimateobjectifying"). He wasn't very good at it, and every one of his forms had something wrong with them (his introductory scene had him first as an apple with a blue stalk and then a teapot with an extra spout for a handle). He was able to assume one human form (whose ears were on backwards), but changing to other people required a different technique, "transanimatepersonifying", which he'd never mastered.

Music

• Imaginos from Blue Öyster Cult's Rock Opera of the same name turns into a pinwheel at one point, along with the more conventional humans and animals.

Mythology and Folklore

• Bunbuku Chagama is a Japanese folktale about a Tanuki who took the form of a tea kettle until someone tried using him to make tea, at which point he sprouted legs and leapt off the fire.
• In Celtic Mythology, the Shapeshifter Showdown between Gwion Bach and the goddess Ceridwen ended with Gwion transforming himself into a single grain of wheat and hiding himself in a whole pile of it. Ceridwen just transformed into a hen and ate the lot, Gwion included... only to somehow become pregnant with him as a result. Eventually, the ex-apprentice was reborn as Ceridwen's son, Taliesin.
• Many gods in Greek Mythology exhibit shapeshifting powers, most prominently the minor deity Proteus - who is often transforming on a near-constant basis. According to Ovid's The Metamorphoses, this extends not only to the shapes of humans, animals, flowing rivers and even tongues of fire, but also inanimate objects like trees and boulders.
  • There's also Phantasos, the God of Real Dreams are Weirder, who exclusively takes on the shape of inanimate objects in dreams.

Radio

• The Goon Show episode "The Great Nadger Plague" features Neddy Seagoon and Eccles taking a magical potion to transform themselves into inanimate objects - the latter to avoid the eponymous plague, the former to frighten Moriarty and Grytpype out of stealing his money. With Neddy having become a clock and Eccles having become a gas stove, the plan goes perfectly... up until the two of them realize that, being inanimate, they can't reach the potion that can return them to human form - and Neddy's brilliant plan has scared off anyone who could help them. According to the announcer, the two of them are still there three hundred years later, along with Neddy's money.

Tabletop Games

• Champions: The Shape Shift power allows a character to change into an object (such as an easy chair) as well as a creature.
• In Changeling: The Lost, some Changelings have been turned by their masters into inanimate things such as rocks or even sky.
• Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition Advanced D&D:
  • The Shapechange spell allows the caster to change into any living being, "pool of water, or just about anything else." So the caster can change into an object if they wish to.
  • The Polymorph Any Object allows the caster to change a living creature into any object. The duration of the transformation depends on how closely related the creature and object are. E.g. turning an elephant into an elephant's tusk would be permanent.
  • The Mimic is an iconic Dungeons and Dragons monster that takes the form of an innocuous object (usually a treasure chest) to lure in unwary adventurers and then grapple and devour them.
• In Golden Sky Stories, Tanuki can transform themselves into inanimate objects, and pass off a handful of leaves and sticks as money (until morning). While Foxes can make any inanimate object look like a different one, for the remainder of the scene.
• Tzimisce players in Vampire: The Masquerade possess the clan-unique Discipline of Vicissitude, allowing them to shape flesh like clay; given that the clan has a rather shaky grasp of morality, it's not unknown for their servants to end up getting sculpted into furniture, decorations or even wallpaper - all while still alive and fully conscious. One Tzimisce fleshcrafter boasts that, even after losing all traces of humanity, his fainting couch is still capable of crying when sat on.

Toys

• BIONICLE: One minor Rahi, the Archives Beast, lived in the underground Archives and disguised itself as an empty room.
• Transformers: The Transformers species consists of Transforming Mecha who usually pick vehicles or everyday objects as their alternate modes with animal modes being rare outside of Beast Wars. The franchise slogan "robots in disguise" comes from the idea that their alternate modes allow them to blend in with the machines on Earth. Characters like Soundwave who turn into small appliances (a cassette player in this case) are depicted in fiction as being able to shrink so that their alternate mode will be the right size to fit alongside regular versions of the object but still have a robot mode the same height as characters who turn into cars or planes that rely on the mass from their vehicle modes to make up their bulk.

Video Games

• The ClayFighter series features Blob, a green mass of gunk with eyes and a mouth, capable of shapeshifting into inanimate objects to attack the enemy - like anvils, rockets, cars, boxing gloves, bottles, etc.
• In Cuphead, various bosses can turn themselves into objects, either completely or partially, during their fights, either for an attack or the entire boss phase:
  • Hilda Berg spends her entire fight transformed from a witch into a blimp. In the last phase, she turns herself into a mechanical crescent moon with a face that can deploy laser-shooting Flying Saucers.
  • Croaks can turn himself into a fan to blow a pushing gust of wind and then can turn into a slot machine by swallowing and fusing with Ribby.
  • Beppi the Clown turns himself into a balloon for the second phase of his fight and into a giant swing ride for the final phase.
  • Wally Warbles can turn his head into a trash can and spew out trash at Cuphead and Mugman in the final phase.
  • Grim Matchstick can turn his head into a blowtorch to fire a jet of flame in the final phase.
  • Rumor Honeybottoms shapeshifts herself into a buzz bomber for the final phase of her fight.
• The heroes of Dicey Dungeons are all humans who have been transformed into dice by Lady Luck.
• The Fallout 3 mission "Tranquility Lane" quickly establishes that Dr Stanislaus Braun has complete control over the eponymous virtual reality simulation and the avatars of the people he's imprisoned within it. Having already turned you into a child, he then demands that you entertain him with a series of progressively sadistic "pranks", the first of which is to make little Timmy Neusbaum cry. If you actually go through with this, the kid runs off in tears - and then Braun turns him into a garden gnome. Plus, given Braun's sadism, there's a good chance that Timmy is still fully conscious in this state.
• In Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stone, people with enough willpower can turn into a gem called Chrono Stone. When Beta tried to seal Daisuke in her sphere device, his Heroic Willpower to not be captured manifested into a literal barrier shield that deflected the laser, then he turned into a (still sentient) stone.
• Kirby: Several Copy Abilities allow Kirby to turn into inanimate objects:
  • Stone allows Kirby to turn into a rock, and the developers tend to stick in unorthodox transformations like weights or statues that act as a Shout-Out to other Nintendo games.
  • Missile turns Kirby into a missile that will explode on contact.
  • Among the mix forms from Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is Ice and Spark yielding Refrigerator, where Kirby turns into a fridge and launches out food. Spark and Bomb yields Light Bulb, which allows Kirby to turn into a light bulb to light up dark areas and explode to damage enemies.
  • Kirby's Epic Yarn and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse lack Copy Abilities, but have Kirby able to change into vehicles, ranging from Kirby's Videogame Dashing in Epic Yarn turning him into a car and both games giving Kirby a special rocket form.
• One of the weapons you can find in MediEvil is an enchanted chicken drumstick, a gift from one of the witches Sir Dan can meet over the course of the game. Upon being deployed, it instantly transforms enemies into roast chicken... which can then be used to refill Sir Dan's health.
• This is the most infamous ability of the Mimics of Prey (2017). Essentially Typhon's answer to the Chest Monster, they can disguise themselves as objects of similar mass to ambush their prey, including tables, papers, coffee cups, medical kits, and weapons... making for a nasty surprise if you haven't found the equipment that can reveal them yet. Fortunately, you can learn to do it too, letting you hide from patrolling enemies or pass through small openings as an animate coffee cup.
• The Itemizer Orb in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon does this to an opponent. The items they can change into vary, but include stick, stones, apples, berries, grimy food, and more. Due to the way the game is programed, using the item is considered an attack, thus can be reflected back at the player, fainting them and giving a unique message stating they were turned into an item.
• In Prop Hunt, the prop team has the power to transform into copies of the various inanimate objects scattered around the maps in order to hide from the hunter team, from bottles to park benches. Larger objects are harder to kill when discovered but are much slower and are often trickier to hide, while smaller objects have less hitpoints but are much faster and stealthier. The game also seems to have spawned a lot of clones.
• The Shantae series:
  • Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: Shantae's Gemjug Dance:
    Transform into a JUG OF GEMS and make bank!
  • Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Shantae explaining her Voluntary Shapeshifting to Zapple has the latter ask if she can turn into a key to unlock doors, which Shantae hasn't thought of until then.
• Double of Skullgirls can not only shapeshift into just about anyone and copy their skills in battle, but she's also not above transforming into inanimate objects over the course of a match: among other things, she can turn herself into either a teacup, a barrel, or a fridge - and drop herself on her opponent; she can become a bandwagon and run the enemy over; or she can just become an Easter Island head and attack the enemy with projectiles from her mouth.
• Throughout the Tales Series, a recurring character known as the Wonder Chef will hide himself in various locations by shapeshifting into ordinary objects. Finding him will reward you with a recipe.

Webcomics

• Ian Sampson's comics feature a lot of this, usually accompanied by a healthy dose of And I Must Scream:
  • [Super-heroine Synthia Stretch finds herself trapped forever as a bouncy ball toy when Doctor Graviton moulds her out of shape with a core imploder.
  • Clayface's daughter losing her ability to control her form and being turned permanently into a clay urn.
  • A witch, having already ruined her sister's life by constantly turning her into various articles of clothing, assumes that her sister must prefer being an object given that she doesn't have a social life and decides to stop turning her back into a human. Unable to complain, her sister spends the rest of her life trapped as one article of clothing after another.
• League of Super Redundant Heroes: Strip 304: "Gossip" has "Drew from the stapling department", who has a superpower that allows him to spy on people. He can transform into the common office object of, a water cooler.
• In Namesake, Selva the Wicked Witch of the East turns the Munchkin King into a hat box; Selva herself is later turned into a purse.
• In Pebble and Wren, Wren asks Pebble to shapeshift into something scary. He turns into a toilet, because he's afraid of them due to thinking they eat the waste.
• Mimic of Rusty and Co. can turn into objects such as a stool and a guitar amp.

Web Originals

• SCP Foundation: SCP-531 is essentially a series of cat statues that compel people to avoid walking between them - but only when facing each other in pairs. Anyone who makes eye contact with a statue that hasn't been paired up will find themselves being slowly transformed into another iteration of 531 over the course of the next hour; experiments suggest that the statues are still fully conscious.
• In Scrub Club, all seven of the main characters turn into objects related to hand-washing (Tank turns into a sink, Squeaks turns into a bar of soap and so on).

Western Animation

• In one episode of Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Sunni befriends a bunch of squirrel-like creatures called Bogels that could take the form of inanimate objects for protection. Unfortunately, the other Gummis think the glen is haunted when they things moving around on their own.
• Action Pack: Clay has the ability to turn into inanimate objects. Supposedly this is an extension of his Rubber Man powers, but that doesn’t explain how he can transform into things like electrical devices that work.
• The premise of Atomic Puppet involves superhero Captain Atomic being transformed into a sock puppet by his former sidekick. He can still walk and talk, but can only use his powers when Joey puts him on his hand.
• Meatwad of Aqua Teen Hunger Force has the ability to mold his body into other shapes, most commonly a hot dog and an igloo. From time to time, he shows off more unusual forms: at one point in Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, he becomes an entire office building.
• Best and Bester: The titular duo have the ability to transform into any object they can think of... once per day, and they're stuck in that form until the next day. Also, since the world they live in is populated by Animate Inanimate Objects, this is actually their equivalent of Humanshifting.
• The Casagrandes: In the episode "Phantom Freakout", the ghost of a classical musician transforms various people (four out of the five members of a KPop band that tried to perform in the theatre he was haunting, to be precise) into musical instruments. (Specifically, a French horn, double bass, bassoon, and a violin).
• Dorg Van Dango:
  • Dorg is accidentally turned into a golf ball by Patronella in an attempt to make him a better golfer in the episode "Dorg Plays Mini Golf".
  • Patronella gets turned into a tuba by a magical electric guitar Yooki conjured in "Dorg Wants to Shred". She's back to normal by the episode's end.
• In The Fairly OddParents!, fairies can turn into basically anything including inanimate objects like balloons.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In "The Inconveniencing", the ghosts haunting the abandoned convenience store use their powers to transform one of Wendy's friends into a hot dog in the store's cooker.
  • Having demonstrated his ability to turn into just about any living being or monster he encountered back in "Into The Bunker", the Shapeshifter proves himself more than capable of assuming the form of inanimate objects in "A Tale Of Two Stans": according to the flashback, the first thing Shifty did upon hatching from his egg was transform into the Author's coffee cup.
  • When Bill Cipher unleashes the power of the Nightmare Realm in "Weirdmageddon Part 1", Soos's Abuelita is transformed into a recliner chair. She doesn't seem to mind all that much.
• I Am Weasel: In the episode "Law of Gravity", I.R. Baboon constantly messes up with the document that contains the Law of Gravity. When he replaces the word "lawyers" with something else, they magically turn into that thing, including fridges.
• The Men in Black: The Series episode "Inanimate Syndrome" features a creature called The Inanimate as its alien of the week. It was a terrorist that could take on the appearance of any inanimate object, a skill it used for camouflage when it infiltrated MiB headquarters and offense when it mimicked a planet-busting intergalactic rocket it planned to use to destroy Special Agent Alien's homeworld. It's revealed that the only flaw in the creature's technique is that it reverses any printing on the surface of the object it's duplicating.
• Throughout The Midnight Gospel, Clancy can select a wide variety of avatars to wear while exploring parallel Earths in his simulator, though most of them tend to be organic in form; the lone exception to this can be found in the episode "Annihilation Of Joy" in which he visits a Soul Prison for simulated beings and takes the form of an animated xylophone, complete with musical keys. This actually becomes an important element of the episode when Clancy uses himself to play music in order to spur inmate Bob into rejecting violence, helping him escape from the constant cycle of death and resurrection within the prison.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The Golden Horseshoes, Part 1", when scared, the Skree can turn themselves into rounded boulders.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Changelings can transform into inanimate objects as well as living beings, and occasionally turn into rocks to avoid others' notice.
• In Phantom Investigators, Casey's power is shapeshifting, and this includes transforming into inanimate objects.
• Rick and Morty
  • In "The Ricks Must Be Crazy," Rick reveals that he secretly implanted Morty with the power to turn into a car at will, and tries to use this to catch up with Zeep in the climactic chase... only to realize it'd be simpler just to hail a taxi instead. And then in the after-credits scene, Morty hears the sound of a car being remotely unlocked outside - and promptly turns into a car right in the middle of class!
  • And, of course, there's the now memetic moment of Rick changing himself in order to avoid going to family therapy in "Pickle Rick".
    Rick: I turned myself into a pickle, Morty!
    Morty: And?
    Rick: And? What more do you want tacked on to this? "I turned myself into a pickle, and 9/11 was an inside job"?
    Morty: Was it?
    Rick:' Who cares, Morty? Global acts of terrorism happen every day. Uh, here's something that's never happened before — I'm a pickle! I'm Pickle Riiiiiiick!
• Star Trek: The Animated Series: in the episode "The Survivor", the Enterprise crew encounters a Vendorian, a Voluntary Shapeshifting alien who can turn into another living creature or an object. During the episode, the alien changes into an examination table in the ship's Sick Bay.
• In Steven Universe, Amethyst has used her Gem shapeshifting powers to turn in objects, though she'll still have a visible face and the same color scheme. This has included fully-functional machines/electronics like a boombox, miniature car, and full-sized helicopter. Even beyond any functional use, Amethyst seems to enjoy just being objects for no reason.
  Amethyst: But it's been so long, like months! That's longer than I was a toilet!
• The Strange Chores crosses this with a "Freaky Friday" Flip in the episode "Swap Back That Body Swap", with Charlie and Pierce transferring their minds into a kettle and phone respectively.
  • Similarly, Tracey McBean episode "Swap" has Tracey accidentally transfer her sister's mind into a garbage can.
• Teen Titans (2003): Season 3 episode ""Bunny Raven... or ...How to Make A Titanimal Disappear" sees the Titans trapped inside the Amazing Mumbo's magical hat, where he transforms them all into various animals. Beast Boy's existing ability to transform into animals lets him instantly reverse it, prompting Mumbo to mess with BB's powers. For the rest of the episode, Beast Boy can only transform into various inanimate objects, though he does still make himself useful in defeating the villain (and can talk by turning into appliances that transmit sound).
• Turbo Teen is about a teenager named Brett Matthews, who swerves off a road during a thunderstorm and crashes into a secret government laboratory. There, he and his red sports car are accidentally fused together. As a result, Brett has the ability to morph into the car when exposed to extreme heat, and reverts back into his human form when exposed to extreme cold.
• Teen Titans Go! spoofs this premise with a half hour special where all the Titans undergo a similar accident and turn into cars whenever they're wet, turning back when dry. As cars they each have unique powers, and at the climax of the special demonstrate the inexplicable ability to combine into an aircraft carrier. The big bad of the special chooses to induce the transformation on himself, only fusing himself with military vehicles to become a massive amalgam of them.
• The Smurfs has several episodes involving this trope. One notable example is the episode "All Work and No Smurf". A condition caused by overwork results in several smurfs first losing their tails, then transforming into living versions of the tools they use in their work (Handy Smurf becomes a hammer, Tailor Smurf transforms into a pair of scissors, etc.). The transformed smurfs are still able to speak and move on their own, but they can only think about performing the function of the tool they became (e.g. Tailor Smurf, now a living pair of scissors, is interested in nothing but using his newly-acquired blades to cut things such as fabric and plants).
• Victor and Valentino: Miguel, one of the spirits released in "Folk Art Friends", has the ability to transform people into musical instruments which are then forced to play themselves for him.
• Wunschpunsch: In the episode "Car Wars", the Spell Of The Week turns everyone (except Mauricio and Jacob, who are immune by virtue of being animals; and Bubonic and Tyrannia, who protected themselves from it) into living cars.

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