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Stumbling in the New Form

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"The only thing I know, is that one minute I am a prince, charming and handsome, cutting-a-rug, and the next thing I know— [falls] I am tripping over these."
— Prince Naveen (talking about his frog feet), The Princess and the Frog

Shapeshifting can be a disorienting experience for the unprepared. Seeing an unfamiliar face and physique in the mirror can leave you startled. Worse, the mere act of moving around can suddenly become more difficult if the new body is sufficiently unlike your old body.

Take, for example, a bipedal character changed into a quadrupedal form or vice versa. The sudden need to walk on a different number of limbs can be disorienting, and you would likely trip constantly as you tried to adjust. Even if your new form has the same gait, a change in bulk can give you an inconvenient shift in your center of gravity that can still send you tumbling. And then there are the cases where you gain or lose appendages entirely, whether that be growing Cumbersome Claws that suddenly impede your attempts to grab things or becoming a limbless creature that can't grab things at all. Individuals who go through this can eventually move about more gracefully, but not without a lot of trial and error and after getting over their confusion.

This is more common with transformations that are forced and/or oblivious, as someone capable of Voluntary Shapeshifting tends to at least implicitly have the knowledge and experience to know how to adjust to such physical changes (unless it's the very first time the voluntary shapeshifter tries out that specific form). In particular, characters with the ability to transform others may exploit this by changing opponents into awkward-to-control forms that are easier to fight or escape from. Nevertheless, transformations that characters undergo regularly can still leave them careening if they are sufficiently sudden and/or painful. Sometimes even shapeshifters' natural bodies can become hard to steer if they've spent a long enough time in another form, essentially a psychological version of Not Quite Back to Normal. If Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing, then the transformed character can also be impeded by clothes that are now too tight or loose. Since walking and other physical actions are primarily controlled by the unconscious parts of the brain, this may also involve the Centipede's Dilemma — as long as you don't actively think about movement, you might do better at it.

Often paired with Bemoaning the New Body, Does Not Know His Own Strength (if the new form is much more muscular), Limb-Sensation Fascination and Voice Change Surprise. May involve Graceful in Their Element, when newly transformed characters don't know what "element" their new forms are best suited to. Contrast with Like a Duck Takes to Water, for cases where characters don't struggle with transformations, and Reveling in the New Form (though there are times when characters enjoy being in new forms despite also stumbling in them). This is also less likely to pop up in stories where The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body. See also How Do I Shot Web?, which deals with characters struggling to handle superhuman abilities; there can be overlap if a New Superpower also causes a physical change.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Daredevil: In one issue where Doctor Doom swapped minds with Daredevil as part of a plan to ambush and destroy the Fantastic Four, Daredevil awakens in Doom's body. Daredevil is especially disoriented, as he's gone so long without being able to see that it takes him time to readjust to no longer having his radar sense and having to rely on vision instead. In addition, Doom's armour-clad body is far bulkier than his own, and this further causes him difficulty.
  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comic story "Descendants", two apparent humanoids emerge from the wormhole and arrive on the station, and are immediately assumed by most of the Bajoran population to be the Prophets. Odo is immediately suspicious of them, and his suspicions are confirmed when he witnesses the awkward way one of them lays his hand on a baby after being asked to bless him and realizes that the being doesn't actually know how to use his hand — which, as a shapeshifter himself, Odo knows to be trickier than actual humanoids realize. They turn out to be space-borne dragon-like creatures in disguise, who were plotting to use the station as a nesting site for their young (with a plentiful supply of food available).

    Fan Works 
  • Ashes of the Past: Ash's Larvitar evolves twice over the course of a single battle. It turns out that Pupitar uses an internal pneumatic system to move, which is supposed to carry over into the Tyranitar stage. Even though Ash's Pokémon only spends a few minutes as a hovering, jet-propelled pupa before going back to the same number and arrangement of limbs, the internal workings of those limbs changed enough to make the newfound Tyranitar exceedingly clumsy until he's able to spend some time with his mother helping teach him how to move.
  • The Awakening of a Magus: It's implied that Tonks' clumsiness is because she is normally using an appearance different from her real one, and the difference in the build makes her balance wrong.
  • The Bridge: Most of the kaiju who were ported to Equestria didn't have this problem, as all had prior experience walking on four legs before (or six legs in the cases of Mothra Lea and Destroyah). Rodan, meanwhile, went from a bipedal pterosaur-kaiju to a hexapodal, quadrupedal griffin. He falls flat on his face the first few times he even attempts to stand, and stumbles clumsily for a few chapters afterward.
  • Mente Materia: A Changeling takes human form but quickly falls over because she's not used to moving on two legs.
  • The Omnitrix Hero: When Flash Sentry first obtains a new alien form, Lindwhirl, he has a hard time just standing as it due to it lacking any legs.
  • The Portal: Thomas has a bit of trouble moving around after he becomes a dragon due to the fact that he now has four legs instead of two.
  • Project Sunflower: It takes Erin a lengthy adjustment period to figure out how to move around and do things after getting turned into a pony, and even afterwards, she retains a certain clumsiness when it comes to fine-control things like using utensils. One of the side stories has a scene where Erin comes back to Equestria after getting turned back into a human, and Twilight remarks that it's the first time she's ever seen Erin eat a meal without fumbling. In the sequel, Erin goes through another phase after getting turned into a mashup of all three types of pony, particularly with her newfound wings.
  • We Are All Pokémon Trainers: A common occurrence when Pokémon evolve or otherwise transform:
    • After Thresher evolves to Ferrothorn, he has some initial issues walking around as opposed to hopping.
    • When Abby gets forcibly turned human, she has problems walking and Thresher, also turned human but more used to walking, has to help her.
  • If Wishes Were Ponies: The portal tree between Equestria and Earth turns anyone with magic from a pony to a human, and vice-versa. Neither species minds being turned from one species to another. Switching from being a biped to a quadruped or vice-versa takes some getting used to, and transformed people need a lot of time and practice before they can effectively walk around as their new species. Ponies also express disappointment that some of their favorite foods don't taste as good to human taste buds.
  • the city has no warmth for me: The ghost Navarre is resurrected. Almost immediately after awakening, he forgets that he can't float and trips over his own feet.

    Films — Animated 
  • Brave: When Elinor first turns into a bear, she has trouble walking without bumping into anything because she's so big.
  • Brother Bear: In a more subtle take on the trope, when Kenai is transformed into a bear he spends some time on hind legs, possibly out of stubbornness as he hates bears. This proves awkward but not impossible, which is true to real life as bears can actually walk this way and will do so to get better vantage points sometimes. But it's not the most efficient way for him to travel, so he eventually switches to all fours.
  • The Emperor's New Groove: Before Kuzco realizes he's been turned into a llama, he tries to run on two legs after waking up at Pacha's place, only to hilariously stumble and fall. And after he finds out, he starts his trek home by attempting to walk on his hind legs while using a fence as support.
    Kuzco: Hey, Tiny, I wanna get out of this body! Wouldn't you? Now, let's go!
  • The Last Unicorn: After Schmendrick turns the unicorn into a human being, she rises, takes a couple of unsteady steps before leaning against a tree for support. She tries to walk again a moment later, only to fall to her hands and knees.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: After turning into a human upon her arrival in the parallel world, Twilight struggles to walk on two legs after initially trying to crawl on all fours. Learning to use her new fingers also takes a bit of practice.
  • The Little Mermaid: Prior to her first transformation, Ariel never had to support her upper body thanks to water buoyancy. As a human, she quickly realizes that human legs don't work like her mermaid tailfin and trips over twice. Out of sheer determination, she manages to learn how to stand, walk and run (courtesy of Eric's dog) on two legs in less than five minutes.
  • Luca: When Luca first transforms from a sea monster to a human, he has to learn how to walk before he can do anything else.
  • Pinocchio: Not a new form, but more a newly-animate one. When The Blue Fairy brings Pinocchio to life he wobbles on his legs as he attempts to stand for the first time.
  • In Playmobil: The Movie, Marla initially struggles with moving in her new plastic body, particularly with the stiff limbs.
  • The Princess and the Frog: We see Tiana struggle with her flipper like frog feet and hopping as a method of travel after she's transformed. Naveen references experiencing the same thing himself, though by the time we see him in frog form he seems to have gotten a handle on hopping.
  • The Sword in the Stone: When Arthur (a.k.a. "Wart") first turns into a fish, Merlin has to teach him how to swim.
  • Turning Red: When Meilin Lee first starts transforming into the red panda, she has a lot of trouble maneuvering its eight-foot-tall body and long fluffy tail. The fact that she only transforms when she's excited or upset about something doesn't help. She wrecks her bathroom, she wrecks her bedroom, and she does a lot of accidental damage at school and in town. Eventually, however, she gets a handle on it and even finds herself enjoying it.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Aquamarine: Mild version as she gets a handle on walking pretty quickly but the titular mermaid Aquamarine attempts to stand on one leg the first time she becomes human and promptly falls over, she also audibly (off screen) crashes through the storage area she initially is hiding in.
  • Avatar: Jake Sully's first use of his Avatar sees him awkwardly stumble around the medical bay and accidentally give one of the doctors a Tail Slap. This is an unusual case where his new form isn't radically different from his real human body (the Na'vi being Humanoid Aliens), but Jake had been so out of practice with walking due to his paraplegia that it's as good as a new experience for him.
  • Captain America: The First Avenger: While a newly empowered Steve chases after a HYDRA saboteur, he has trouble controlling his momentum with his much larger, more powerful body, and ends up crashing through a storefront.
  • Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle features four teenagers transported into the bodies of video game characters. They all struggle with being a different size or sex - girly-girl Bethany is particularly freaked out about how to pee in her new, male body.
  • In The Little Mermaid, much like in the animated film it adapts, Ariel stumbles when she first gains human legs. She also references the experience during the new Internal Monologue song "For the First Time".
    Don’'t mind me
    As I climb, for the first time
    Jump, for the first time
    Trying to stand, but this gravity's pulling me down
  • Men in Black: When "Edgar", a 12-foot-tall, multi-legged insectoid alien super-criminal, wears the flayed skin of human farmer Edgar, he staggers and jerks around in this tiny bipedal form as if his body is barely contained and aching to burst free. It doesn't help that his new "suit" is un-refrigerated and slowly decaying over the course of the film, so it's beginning to stiffen and wear down.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: After Blackbeard's zombie officers trip while carrying Syrena the mermaid in a glass container, emptying her onto the ground, her tail turns into a pair of legs, whereupon Blackbeard orders her to walk with the rest of the crew. As soon as she tries taking a step forwards, Syrena falls to the ground, unused to walking. As soon as Blackbeard makes it clear he'll kill her if she doesn't walk, Phillip the missionary helps Syrena out by picking her up in a Bridal Carry.
  • Revenge of the Sith: Darth Vader's first steps after his cyborg transformation has been fully completed aren't particularly graceful. Calling it "walking" would be rather generous. This gets a follow-up in Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader in which it takes him a while to master the powerful gait that he becomes known for. There was Enforced Method Acting involved, as George Lucas made the boots and helmet heavier than Hayden Christensen expected, lending an authentic sense of not yet being used to the cumbersome suit Vader would wear for the rest of his life.
  • Spider-Man 3: When Flint Marko first becomes the Sandman, there is a poignant, dialogue-free scene when he first emerges as a vaguely human-shaped pile of sand. He struggles to get up and keeps collapsing back into the sand. Eventually, he's able to stand up in a human-like shape. When he sees his locket, he attempts to grab it, but it goes through his sandy hand. Soon, Sandman figures out how to make his body solid, and he is then able to make his sand body look exactly like his original body.
  • In the movie version of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2 we see a new werewolf have trouble walking after his first transformation.
  • Wolverine is suddenly much heavier and his claws much longer and sharper after the adamantium is fused to his skeleton in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He accidentally wrecks a nice old couple's bathroom as a result.

    Literature 
  • Animorphs:
    • Ax (a centaur-like alien) is amazed that humans can balance on two legs without a tail. The first time he morphs into one, he nearly falls over, and he remains somewhat awkward in human morph throughout the series.
    • All the characters, Ax included, tend to stagger or outright fall over while morphing. Often they're briefly clumsy while in a new morph as they sort themselves and the new animal instincts out, but they get the hang of it quickly.
  • Ascendance of a Bookworm: One of the younger characters undergoes a significant Overnight Age-Up. The first few hours after the fact include a lot of clumsy walking and bumping into random things.
  • In Ptolemy's Gate from The Bartimaeus Trilogy, during the spirit revolt, the spirits trick the magicians into summoning their essences directly into their bodies and then consume their brains. Following doing this, they have a terrible time at first of controlling the bodies. On the other hand, Nathaniel and Bartimaeus master it much more quickly due to it being a mutual partnership, with Bartimaeus not consuming Nathaniel's brain.
  • The Belgariad: In Guardians of the West, Garion needs to get back to Riva as soon as possible. Belgarath gives him flying lessons, which start with multiple attempts to get the falcon transformation good enough to actually fly. Once he's got the form (mostly) right, Garion beak-plants into several things trying to get into the air.
  • Books of the Raksura: Due to a population imbalance in his colony, Chime the Raksura involuntarily metamorphosed from the wingless Arbora subspecies to a winged Aeriat. He struggles to adapt to the new body, and remains a relatively poor flyer even years later.
  • Dinoverse has a form of Intangible Time Travel that always involves possessing the bodies of prehistoric animals. Most travelers throughout the books adjust fairly quickly to their new shapes - the first set of kids struggle somewhat with Cumbersome Claws, but in the second and third set any dinosaur that's not quadrupedal has Humanlike Hand Anatomy - but Janine has to put real effort into learning to fly.
  • In Dr. Franklin's Island, Semi physically acclimates to being shaped like a small manta ray quite quickly and with little difficulty, but when she becomes (mostly) human again a couple of months later she struggles on limbs that aren't used to being arms and legs and has to focus hard to use her fingers.
  • Harry Potter: A metamorphmagus is a variety of witch or wizard with the innate ability to change their appearance to anything human. Nymphadora Tonks uses this talent for infiltration purposes, and struggles to keep her balance because constantly changing her height and weight that way throws off her center of gravity.
  • The premise of Log Horizon involves players of the MMORPG "Elder Tale" being transmigrated into their in-game avatars in the game's world. Early in the novel, it's noted that small differences in their meatspace and cyberspace sizes (like an inch or two in height) already need some adjustments. Akatsuki's in-game avatar is a lot taller than what she actually is as well as being of the opposite biological sex, making her situation disabling; she needs to beg Shiroe for a gender swap potion so that her body can turn to something more similar to her meatspace body.
  • Mother of Learning: One of the big advantages of full-blown "shifters", who actually have two souls fused together, over temporary potion-based transformations, is that shifters get instincts to go with their second form, allowing them to easily run with four legs as a wolf or fly as a bird. When Zorian tries an eagle transformation potion, he has to allow enough money for several potions, so he can get the hang of flying, before using it in earnest. When he later tries brewing more potions for some of his friends, they struggle even more because they're not "Open" aka psychic, which allows a mind to adapt better to new stimuli.
    Originally Zorian intended to drink his potion first to reassure the others that it worked correctly, but apparently Kirielle didn't need convincing and immediately drank hers when Zorian handed a bottle to her. She transformed without any issues and the rest of them were treated to a sight of a brand new female falcon flailing around on the grass for a good minute or so. She had attempted to take flight immediately and found that it was not nearly as easy as one might think.
  • In the last book of The Saga of Darren Shan, when Darren is pulled out of the Lake of Souls, and again when he is turned into a Little Person, a kind of short, grey undead servant of the Big Bad. In the first transformation, he has forgotten how to even speak, and must re-learn basic functions. The second is a more regular use of this.
  • Discussed and explicitly averted in the Well World series by Jack Chalker: when an Entry is remade by the Well into a new form, they are given whatever knowledge, motor reflexes, etc. that they might need to feel comfortable in their new form, including knowing how to eat, drink, walk, and talk.
  • Xanth: Dolph is a Magician whose talent is that he can transform into any living creature, but he's aware that when he does transform he has to be careful. If he becomes a winged creature he can't fly very well due to having little practice, and if he becomes a four-legged creature he stumbles and often tries to use his front legs as hands/arms.
  • In the X-Men novel Dark Mirror, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler are all kidnapped and endure body swaps with five inmates at a mental asylum, forcing Jean to get used to having a male body, while Wolverine and Cyclops struggle to deal with having female bodies, and Rogue gets stuck in the body of a haggard old woman. With the exception of Nightcrawler, who got a male body, they all have to adjust to moving around in bodies with different anatomy.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Tsuyoshi Kijino in Avataro Sentai Donbrothers sometimes trips up in battle, because his KijiBrother form has longer limbs than his human form.
  • 8 Simple Rules: The show did an episode parodying Freaky Friday where Cate dreamed that she and Bridget switched bodies. There's a joke where Bridget has some trouble standing up because of Cate's larger breasts.
  • Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure when most mermaids first walk on land they have trouble standing up for very long and their brand new leg muscles ache from the lack of use, the exception being Weilan who grew up spending plenty of time on land hiding from the Water Dragon.
  • One episode of What We Do in the Shadows (2019) features the Cloak of Duplication, which allows the wearer to take on someone else's form. Laszlo, Colin, and Guillermo all attempt to woo a girl whilst disguised as Nandor - Laszlo yells about not knowing how to get his body to work whilst being thrown out of the gym where the girl works.

    Toys 
  • Transformers: Sometimes comes up in regards to two scenarios: Emergency Transformation (i.e. into a new body in order to save their lives or to upgrade) or becoming part of a combiner, especially if it's unexpected.
    • Examples of Emergency Transformation include:
      • The Transformers: In "Autobot Spike", Spike is injured during a battle. In an attempt to save him, the Autobots transfer his mind into a spare Autobot body Wheeljack had built for such an emergency (named Autobot X) while the human doctors operated to save Spike's life. When Spike awakens, he's disoriented due to his new form and staggers around, even accidentally activating weapons systems.
      • In Story of Binaltech, the Dinobots are infected with a mind virus that causes them to go berserk. They're put into stasis, and in an attempt to save them the Autobots decide to transfer their minds into new bodies after learning the virus explicitly attacks the minds of particular animal-mode Transformers. Grimlock is the first to undergo the process and is initially very unhappy due to his new Ford Mustang body being much smaller and weaker than his T-Rex one. In addition, his fighting style involves transforming back and forth between robot and T-Rex mode to take advantage of the latter's thicker armour and fire breath. It takes him a bit of time to get used to his new body, which is helped by the Autobots promising to return him to his original once they find a proper cure.
      • In IDW Publishing's comics, the Dynobots, an elite counter-terrorist assault team, find themselves under attack by strange monsters during a mission under Cybertron's surface. Outmatched by the monsters' sheer power, team medic Skarr initiates an emergency reformatting system he'd been developing that allows the team to adopt alt-modes similar to the monsters, giving them the strength and durability to fight back and win. However, since their minds aren't prepared for the accompanying bestial nature, Grimlock winds up killing Skarr in the process.
      • In Spotlight: Orion Pax, Orion is given a new body for a mission. However, he spends much of the issue complaining that the body feels "off". In particular, he misses his signature faceplate, and when during a fight a blade stabs him right through his mouth he grumbles that it wouldn't have happened if his new body still had the faceplate.
    • Examples of combination include:
      • Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015): Due to a series of events (including being bathed by nuclear radiation and the presence of a so-called Crash Combiner), the Bee Team unexpectedly discover they can now combine (with Bumblebee forming the torso, Strongarm and Sideswipe the arms, Grimlock the legs and Drift the sword). Unlike traditional combiners, the resulting "Ultra Bee Team Combiner Form" apparently has no mind of its own, and so is completely useless unless the components are all united in purpose.
      • IDW Publishing: In both continuities, some combiners initially struggle to function. In the original continuity, Menasor barely functions due to the haphazard nature of his creation (and the small fact that all the component Stunticons hate each other) while Bruticus immediately begins rampaging due to his component Combaticons not being united of purpose note . In the 2019 continuity, both Devastator and Computron have an initial phase of not being able to move properly due to the sudden increase in size and mass throwing off their component bots.
      • Transformers: Cyberverse: In "The Immobilizers", the Dinobots combine into Volcanicus for the first time. Unused to the new form, Volcanicus promptly catches his own foot on the ground, tripping himself up.
    • Downplayed examples also sometimes come up:
      • Beast Wars: In "Call Of The Wild", it's revealed that while the Maximals (and presumably the Predacons) adopted beast modes, they'd been suppressing the accompanying beast mode instincts. When the Maximals are trapped in their beast modes, their minds begin to go dormant and the beast take over due to being so unfamiliar with the various senses and urges their beast bodies give them (e.g. Dinobot instinctively wants to hunt). The one exception is Tigatron, who identifies more with his beast mode and spends more time in it.
      • During IDW's Dark Cybertron Crisis Crossover, Starscream (in a body based on his Armada counterpart) is attacked by Mad Scientist Jhiaxus. Jhiaxus uses one of his technologies to duplicate Starscream's body, and his usage of the body lets Starscream realise his body actually had swords built-in. He simply never bothered to put the new body through its paces or ask what features it had.
      • Deliberately invoked in the Spotlight: Megatron comic, where Megatron spends part of the comic getting used to his new stealth bomber body. Partially by beating up Starscream.

    Video Games 
  • When the party first explore the Pride Lands in Kingdom Hearts II, Sora is unable to walk very far on his paws, having magically turned into a lion cub to better blend into the world. This leaves him, Donald, and Goofy helpless as the Hyena pack surrounds them, Scar calling for them the only thing that saved them.
  • Megadimension Neptunia VII: At the climax of the first act Arfoire takes direct control of a Dark CPU and starts pursuing the heroes. They send someone back to scout her out, and discover they have plenty of time — while Dark CPUs don't strictly adhere to the Square-Cube Law, Arfoire's new perspective is all sorts of messed up and she keeps tripping over.
  • Shape Shift Shawn: In the first episode, every time that Shawn undergoes a new transformation, he complains about how uncomfortable his new body feels. In particular, when he transforms into a slime creature for the first time on level 1-4 (Court of the Corrupt), he bemoans the loss of his arms and legs.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario RPG: When the star spirit ♡♪!? from Star Road first takes control of the Geno doll in Rose Town, he initially struggles to maintain his balance and move his limbs properly as he exits Gaz's house.
    • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: Exploited by Fawful as part of his Evil Plan, in both cases involving Temporary Bulk Change:
      • Fawful sells Blorb Mushrooms to the Toads, which causes them to develop the Blorbs, a disease that makes them so large and round that they are hardly able to move beyond awkwardly rolling around. This means that once Bowser has vacuumed up the main heroes, a large number of the remaining Toads are too incapacitated to keep him from taking over Princess Peach's Castle.
      • Later, Bowser is treated to a banquet in his own castle as a reward for defeating Midbus. The food was cooked to be very fattening, making him plump up in seconds. This makes him too slow to run past the brainwashed minions who are now force feeding him the food. He eventually gets so fat that he breaks through and gets stuck in the floor, allowing Fawful to extract Peach from his innards unimpeded.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • City of Reality: Hawk ends up outright blind when turned human, because he's used to having compound eyes and can't comprehend what his human eyes are seeing.
  • El Goonish Shive: When Justin turns into a woman at Grace's birthday party, he ends up tripping and falling when he tries to walk because of his new center of gravity. This isn't an issue for anyone else, however; Tedd explains that transformations normally come with the Required Secondary Powers to avert this and the only reason Justin tripped was that he was overthinking how to walk.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons: When Allison and Cio fused into Allicio for the first time, there was a fair bit of tripping over one another at first, a matter complicated by the fact that they were in the middle of a fight.
  • Ma No Monotachi: Not having the necessary experience to properly move a body very different from one's original is a noted problem with transformation magic/tools. Sir Liebe von Trapp gets the idea to combine the transformation with hypnosis to make the transformees think they have no problem moving their new bodies. This ends up working so well that after prolonged use of the Staff of Transformation he made, his unwitting test subjects forget how to move their original bodies. Which they then fix by using the staff to "transform" into their original bodies instead of "revert" back to them.
  • The Order of the Stick: When Roy Greenhilt is brought Back from the Dead, he promptly falls flat on his face, forgetting that he has to walk instead of float around incorporeally.
  • Out-of-Placers: When Kass first gets turned into a yinglet, he falls over several times due to being unused to his spindly, digitigrade legs. It doesn't help that he initially tries to keep a humanlike posture with a vertically oriented spine; yinglets are physiologically meant to keep their torsos parallel with the ground like a bird. He also has trouble writing with clawed, paw-padded hands, making his handwriting very sloppy until he adjusts.
  • Schlock Mercenary: In the first "Schlocktober" special, almost the entire company gets decapitated and their bodies from the neck down replaced by cloning. Brad, previously a skinny twig of a grunt, turns out to be genetically predisposed to be a bodybuilder (but was malnourished in youth) and his new body is a 230-kilogram (about 507 pounds) behemoth, leaving him a bit temporarily clumsy.
  • Skin Deep: The first arc depicts Michelle turning into a quadrupedal sphinx for the first time and falling over when she tries to pace around on her two back legs.

    Web Original 
  • Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Whenever agents disguise themselves as My Little Pony style ponies, they struggle to walk on all fours and hold things in their hooves. And if they disguise themselves as a flying pony, they'll usually have trouble flying in the right direction as well.

    Web Videos 
  • Gemini Home Entertainment: "Fake People" are human doppelgangers resulting from the various Starfish Aliens either infesting human bodies or producing human replicas. They struggle to move around like normal humans; the first episode, "World's Weirdest Animals", shows them either lurching about or gliding across the floor, with one "man" making a series of bizarre facial expressions as if his face doesn't fit right.

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: When Gumball and Darwin temporarily become ghosts on Halloween, they pull a number of pranks. One of them involves possessing Tina Rex to scare some Trick-or-Treaters. However, they quickly realize that moving a dinosaur body is harder than they thought.
    Gumball: Dude it's way more complicated than it looks.
    Darwin: Move the calf!
    Gumball: Yeah well bend the knees man!
  • American Dad!: In "Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth", Stan uses CIA technology to swap minds with a horse to win the race he put it in. Stan (in horse form) is shown trying to get used to walking in his new ungulate body, which Roger thinks is adorable and compares to Bambi.
  • Ben 10: Ben sometimes has trouble figuring out how to move when the Omnitrix glitches and gives him a new alien form. When he first turned into Cannonbolt, he couldn't stand up straight and it took him an entire episode to discover how to curl up and become a Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball. The same was true for Snare-oh since he had absolutely no idea how to stand on legs that are basically made out of strips of paper.
  • Family Guy: In "Switch the Flip", Brian and Stewie swap bodies. Brian initially has trouble standing up due to Stewie's oversized, football-shaped head.
  • Gravity Falls:
    • In "Sock Opera," Bill possesses Dipper's body, and spends a few seconds stumbling around getting used to having a physical form again. Unfortunately for Dipper, Bill delights in harming his host's body, finding pain "hilarious," leading to Dipper's body going through several injuries via Bill's carelessness and active malice. When he gets his body back, Dipper asks to go to the hospital.
    • “Carpet Diem”: An experimental carpet swaps Soos’s mind with Mabel’s pet pig Waddles. While Soos adapts to being a pig fairly quickly, Waddles spends the rest of the episode stumbling around awkwardly in Soos’s body.
  • My Little Pony (Generation 4)
    • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: When Twilight emerges from the portal in a human's body, she tries to walk on all fours like a pony. When she sees a normal human walking, she starts flailing around on two legs trying to keep her balance.
    • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Magical Movie Night: The final "Mirror Magic" segment shows an example of stumbling in the old form. Sunset Shimmer briefly returns to Equestria, where she grew up, to get a new journal and thus transforms back into a unicorn from being a human. However she's lived for such a long time as human that she tries to walk on her hind legs and to pick up items with her hooves and has completely forgotten about unicorn telekinesis.
    • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Growing Up is Hard to Do", the Cutie Mark Crusaders magically turn from foals between the ages of seven and twelve into grown mares. When they try to hoof bump, they miss, not used to having adult-sized forelegs.
  • The Spectacular Spider-Man
    • John Jameson has trouble maintaining his balance as he grows in mass and strength due to alien spores in his system, which results in him plowing through a wall.
    • Mark Allan flails around in surprise upon his transformation into the Molten Man, and falls backward into a table, demolishing it.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In the Season 4 finale, Revenge, after having having his body and mind restored by Mother Talzin, Darth Maul stumbles on his new cybernetic legs for a couple steps, as he hasn't had them since losing to Obi-Wan over a decade prior.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Sometime after Chris Bradford becomes a dog mutant called Dogpound, his newfound strength leaves him mostly immobile and he occasionally knocks over things since one of his arms is much bigger than the other, much to his annoyance. However, this gets fully subverted once he gets mutated a second time and becomes this universe's version of Rahzar.
    Real Life 
  • A mundane version happens when someone wearing footwear of a shape vastly different compared to their usual wear (high heels compared to sneakers for example). Their usual stride can end up awkward and plodding because they have to get used to walking in shoes that may not be a perfect fit.
  • People who have lost limbs or feelings in said limbs, but regain them in some way (like someone who lost a leg getting a prosthetic), also exhibit this, as they have to re-learn how to use that part of their body again while simultaneously battling the "off" feeling.

 
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Luca

Since Luca has no experience on land, his new friend Alberto shows him how to walk.

On Legs! On HUM...

Twilight the human

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Luca

Since Luca has no experience on land, his new friend Alberto shows him how to walk.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (12 votes)

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Main / StumblingInTheNewForm

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Luca

On Legs! On HUM...

Twilight the human