Basic Trope: A character, voluntarily or otherwise, ends up transforming into an animal.
- Straight: The evil sorceress Alice turns Bob The Hero into a rat.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is constantly turning into various animal forms, to the point where we hardly see him in human shape anymore. Some of said forms are truly bizarre.
- There is a montage of Alice turning a succession of heroes into various sorts of animals, but then moving on to plants, fungi, etc. When confronted with Bob, she just disintegrates him before ranting about how she's used up all her ideas.
- Downplayed: Bob turns into a human-rat hybrid.
- Justified: Alice doesn't have the power to kill Bob, so she puts his soul in the body of a rat instead.
- Inverted: Humanity Ensues
- Subverted: Alice threatens to turn Bob into "something nasty with whiskers": a bearded man.
- Double Subverted: Alice, after threatening to turn Bob into "something hideous and helpless," merely turns him into an ugly human ... which turns out to be a sort of transition form as he then shifts into a mutant rat.
- Parodied:
- Alice turns Bob into a snake. He then bites and kills her, laughing at her stupid mistake.
- Alice turns Bob into a kitten. She is then too distracted by having a kitty cat of her very own to manage any more evil for a while.
- Zig-Zagged: Sometimes the hero is just a dumb animal when he's around strong instinctual triggers in his new form, sometimes he's not; the voluntary and involuntary aspects of the transformation seem to come and go as well.
- Averted: Alice does not transform Bob into an animal, or even hint at the idea.
- Enforced:
- This is a fantasy story for kids, so it can't be too scary, but the evil sorceress needs to punish the hero — how about she turns him into a cute animal for a bit?
- Or: "I'm tired of drawing humans. I want to draw the main character as a tiger. Oh look! A wizard!"
- Lampshaded:
- "Ha, ha, turning adventurers into animals is my favorite spell."
- "Call me sentimental, but I've always loved cats."
- Invoked: Bob asks Alice if she could spare his life and maybe just turn him into an animal instead.
- Exploited: Bob uses his new animal abilities to accomplish his goals: to break down doors and walls if he's turned into a larger animal, to fit into nooks and crannies if smaller, and to move more quickly relative to his size regardless.
- Defied: Alice refuses to learn any animal-transformation spells because she finds them a waste of time compared to more lethal ones.
- Discussed: "Oh no, the evil sorceress turned him into a rat! ...But wait, couldn't she do something better, like kill him? Oh well, good luck for us!"
- Conversed: "Wait a minute, she turned him into ... a large dog? Why would anyone do that — I guess the writers just can't stand to have their hero take any real harm."
- Implied:
- What was the Five-Man Band that confronted the villain now consists of four people and their new Team Pet.
- The Five-Man Band got split up, and The Big Guy finds the villain stroking a Right-Hand Cat — but as far as they know, the villain has never had a cat.
- Deconstructed: The trauma of all the matter changing, including brain cells, leaves Bob little but an ordinary rat when Alice changes him, no trace of his old self remaining.
- Reconstructed: The initial transformation is horribly traumatic, but with gradual adjustment the hero gains from his new form and altered perceptions.
- Played for Laughs: Bob is unused to being anything other than human, and bumbles around constantly as such.
- Played for Drama: Bob is the breadwinner in his family, and can't really work at his existing job as an animal. Likewise, his spouse, children, and their extended relatives likely won't know how to react to his no longer being human and could well shun him.
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