Shapeshifter Guilt Trips in Comic Books.
- Astonishing X-Men: Subverted (and inverted?) in Joss Whedon's run. Kitty is confronted with Piotr (the genuine article); not believing it's really Piotr, Back from the Dead, she tells him that if he's a robot or a clone, she'll understand, but if he's a shapeshifter or illusionist, he's in for a new meaning of pain.
- Early on in Avengers: The Initiative, Trauma had difficulty controlling his fear-based transformation powers, causing him to freak out Cloud 9 by transforming into a zombified version of MVP, who was killed while protecting Cloud 9 from an errant rifle blast. When Hank Pym tried to intervene, Trauma transformed into an extremely battered version of Janet Van Dyne, reminding Hank of his domestic abuse incident, which sent poor Hank scrambling for his anti-anxiety meds.
- An inadvertent version occurred when the Runaways visited the Avengers Academy. Reptil tried to entertain the guests by showing off his dinosaur-transformation abilities. He made the mistake of turning into a deinonychus in front of Klara who, up to that point, still believed that she was responsible for Old Lace's apparent death, resulting in Karolina having to rush over and calm the poor girl down before her powers started kicking in.
- The Batman '66 story "The Fiend is False" has False-Face attempt to deter Batman from knocking him out by assuming the likeness of Abraham Lincoln. It doesn't work.
- Elementals by Bill Willingham did an elaborate variant which revealed that a shapeshifter that the Elementals had fought before had, over the course of a Story Arc gotten one of the team, Morningstar, to fall in love with him/her.
- Green Lantern: The Red Lantern Rankorr used his power ring to make constructs resembling Abysmus' victims, paralyzing him with guilt and allowing Atrocitus to defeat him.
- The Punisher: A man tried to defeat the Punisher by surgically altering assassins to resemble his past victims, thinking that he would be able to rattle him by showing him the "ghosts of those who haunt him." Frank mows them down and kills the man after explaining that he doesn't care about his victims; he sends them to Hell and doesn't think about them afterwards.
- Runaways: Xavin shifts into the late wife of a man-turned-monster to talk him down from his destructive rampage.
- In The Sandman (1989), Loki attempts to pull this on the second Corinthian, cycling through a series of forms (starting with Dream, followed by a dragon, the Corinthian himself* , the toddler who the Corinthian is supposed to be rescuing, a flame, and finally his true form) trying to find one the Corinthian won't strangle. The Corinthian, needless to say, is not impressed.
- During Secret Invasion, several Skrulls shapeshift into corpses and claim to be victims of the Stamford Incident. Although it works on Penance at first, he remembers the faces of everyone who really perished and attacks.
- During an issue of Sonic Universe, Amy is facing off against the wizard Naugus when he suddenly takes the form of Sonic, her crush. She immediately mocks him for trying that trick, decides that he's too pathetic for her to bother, and lets Knuckles and Shadow — neither of whom would be very torn up over having to beat up Sonic — finish him off.
- Pictured on the main page is Mimic the Octopus from Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW); as his name would imply, he's an octopus capable of mimicking others (to an extent) through shapeshifting. Being the manipulative backstabbing sociopath he is, Mimic enjoys playing on others' feelings and employs this trope from time to time, such as when Whisper has him dead-to-rights during their first encounter by assuming the forms of their dead Diamond Cutter comrades in a bid to throw her off, or when making a point to Tangle that attachments are a weakness by taking the form of her close friend Jewel, thus preventing Tangle from attacking him despite knowing it's Mimic.note
- Supergirl faced a psychic, sentient dinosaur called the Empathosaur in her '00s series. It probes her mind and makes his head look like her father. Supergirl is completely unimpressed, commenting that a man's head sticking out of a dinosaur's body isn't going to fool anybody.
- When the Teen Titans and the Justice League of America collided, the Titan Mirage went up against the Martian Manhunter by posing as his dead wife.
- A rare heroic example comes from Wild C.A.T.s (WildStorm). When the team was fighting Lord Entropy, an impossibly powerful madman who wanted revenge against Lord Emp for killing his wife, Voodoo used her illusion to look like her. Entropy was so confused that Emp had enough time to prepare to wipe the floor with him.
