Shapeshifter Mode Lock / Video Games

• Cornell, the werewolf protagonist of Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, spends the entirety of Castlevania: Judgment trapped in wolf form as a result of the time rift.
• In Devil May Cry 4, Nero had his right arm injured after a run in with a demon, only for it to heal exceptionally quickly and become a demonic Red Right Hand. While he think's he's being turned from a human into a demon, in reality the attack awakened his preexisting demonic power with his arm just being stuck in Devil Trigger, which usually transforms the entire body into a more powerful demonic form. After he gains full control of his demonic power in Devil May Cry 5, Nero's arm returns to its human form and he is able to activate his full Devil Trigger at will, which transforms his entire body rather than just his arm.
• In The Elder Scrolls, the Bosmer (Wood Elves) possess the innate ability to transform into nightmarish beasts as a final desperate act of defense against invaders, known as "the Wild Hunt." However, there is no known way to reverse this transformation, leaving them permanently stuck as these monsters. As such, it is only known to have been used twice in recorded history.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, there are a race of humanoid shapeshifters called Laguz who transform between Little Bit Beastly mode to their respective form and back, mostly at will but balance-wise restricts how long they can fight. Eventually, antagonistic Laguz appear that are stuck in their combat form, and their berserk, slave-like nature heavily implies that they are not this way by choice. It's revealed that Mad Scientist Izuka used a Psycho Serum on several laguz, causing them to go insane and become what's known as the Feral Ones. One of his victims was Rajaion, a Dragon Laguz Prince, forcing him to stay in his dragon form and make him go insane; from then on he was enslaved by Izuka's boss Ashnard, who used poor Rajaion as his Dragon Mount. He was only released by the time Ashnard was slain in battle... but by then he was so weakened and wounded that he died almost immediately afterwards.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, the Avatar's dragon friend Lilith claims she has a human form but cannot use it any longer because she has used up her energy. She only shapeshifts back into it as she's dying.
• In Golden Sun, the party visits Garoh, a village whose inhabitants, due to proximity to the Air's Rock, turn into werewolves in full moon nights. The mayor, though, as Kraden explains to him, he has absorbed too much Psynergy to go back to his human form.
• In Hearthstone, this is the default setting for transformations. Whenever a card transforms, whether by its own power or other cards' effect, the card will remain as its transformed state for the rest of the match. For example, if you play your Molten Blade that has transformed into Arcanite Reaper, once the Reaper breaks, your Rummaging Kobold can only fetch back your Reaper, not your Molten Blade.
• A variant of this trope appears in inFAMOUS: Second Son: when Delsin absorbs a new power, he becomes unable to access any other power until he masters the one he absorbed. Augustine tries to use this against him in the final battle, willingly giving Delsin her concrete powers, knowing that Delsin would be at a disadvantage since she had seven years to master her own.
• Not quite Shapeshifting, but in Kingdom Hearts II, abusing Sora's drive forms can lead to him accidentally drive into the infamous Anti Form. Along with weakened attacks, reduced damage resistance, no healing and no allies, Sora can't exit this form until his drive gauge depletes, making it a temporary (but still often fatal) example of this trope. And woe betide you if you gave yourself abilities that increase drive form duration, since they prolong Anti Form just like any other.
  • In the same game, it's revealed that an apparently revived "Ansem" is actually Riku. The first time he transformed into the "Ansem, Seeker of Darkness" form was in the first game, and happened because "Ansem" possessed him and then kicked his heart out of his body, causing the vessel to stay in the Heartless' own image. The second time, though, he willingly transformed into the form to defeat Roxas prior to the beginning of II; he has full control of himself, but is unable to change back until near the end of the game.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link gets stuck in wolf form whenever he goes into a area covered in twilight. The only way he can change back, is by returning the 'Tears of Light' to the spirit in that area. Later in the game however Zant curses Link, locking him in his Wolf form (despite there being no twilight covering the land) Once removed, said "curse" can be re-applied and removed at will, allowing Link to change whenever he needs to.
  • Majora's Mask begins with this trope. Link is changed into a deku scrub until he gets his Ocarina back and learns to play the song of healing. Of course later on you can change at will by applying various masks.
• Towards the end of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Samus goes to Phaaze, the source of all Phazon. However, the concentration of Phazon is so high that Samus gets thrown into a dangerous Hyper Mode has to drain all of her energy tanks in order to prevent instant corruption. And even that doesn't stop the problem since it just delays the inevitable where sooner or later, the Phazon will consume Samus so it becomes a Timed Mission from the landing to the end of the Final Boss battle.
  • Towards the beginning of Metroid Prime, Samus gets Mode-Locked out of her Morph Ball after it malfunctions, forcing her to procure a replacement.
• Two examples from NetHack:
  • The amulet of unchanging will mode lock the player. This is usually a good thing, since most transformations are unwanted.
  • The ring of protection from shape changers will mode lock all enemy shapeshifters, which renders them effectively harmless.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, a certain wonkiness in the nature of things makes it difficult—in some cases impossible—for the local druids to shapeshift. It's a story element and has no effect on the combat effectiveness of your party's druid.
• In [PROTOTYPE], halfway through the game you are given a "cure" that mode locks your ability to shapeshift your body into weapons. Oddly enough though you can still shapeshift.
• An example of the lock out version of mode lock: In the seventh-gen console game of Spider-Man 3, if the player removes the black suit, they have to wait for a small amount of time before they can use it again.
• Implied at the end of Splatoon 3, where Cuttlefish ends up forced into his squid form after Mr. Grizz dehydrates him. Thanks to some moisture from Captain 3 crying over his body, Cuttlefish is able to recover, but despite this, remains in his squid form, even in the post-game, suggesting he may not be able to turn back into his humanoid Inkling form.
• In Super Robot Wars Advance, Whenever the Getter Team gets a new machine, the previous one is modified by Professor Saotome to lose its transformation capabilities so that it can still use 100% of its power without needing all three pilots, allowing spare Getter pilots to ride them. They get brand new regular and Combination Attacks to make up for the lack of transforming.
• The player's mecha in Thexder 95 is unable to change into jet or tank form for the first few levels.
• Leader units in Transformers: War for Cybertron get to inflict this on opponents as an ability, known as Disruption. In addition to causing damage, it forces anyone in robot mode into vechicle mode and vice versa, for a set period of time. This can be either pointless or deadly, given that the opponent has weapons in both forms but also can't access all of their abilties. A Scientist without his jet form will not last long.
  • Grimlock suffers from this in the sequel Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. Shockwave modelocked Grimlock into robot mode as a failsafe until he could fully control his test subject. Unstoppable Rage can let Grimlock temporaraly override the mode lock.
• Warcraft III:
  • Certain units can shapeshift, but the action is considered to be a spell, and costs mana (and sometimes also has a cool down). So, if a Dark Ranger casts Silence on a bunch of Druids of the Claw, then, well, no Bear Form for you. Similar things can be done with Druids of the Talon and Spirit Walkers.
  • A TFT walkthrough states that in one mission, hitting Ilidan with a bunch of damaging spells will have a high chance of distrupting his AI, preventing him from transforming into his demonic form when heavily injured.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The black dragon boss Nefarian has calls out to specific classes with specific effects on those classes. The class call to Druids ("Druids and their silly shapeshifting. Let's see it in action!") will force all Druids to shapeshift into cat form and block them in it for a while. Feral specialized DPS druids may not be affected if they're fighting in this form anyway, but druid bear tanks, healers and spellcasters will be annoyed. Of course, at the time Nefarian was at the top of the food chain DPS-specced feral druids, and for that matter any non-healer druids, were so exceedingly rare in end-game raiding that Nefarian was probably fine discounting their existence entirely.
  • A slightly less obvious example existed for Warriors in the same fight. Warriors, while not traditional shapeshifters, do have the ability to switch between different stances. When Nef called them out, "Warriors, is that all the damage you can do?", they were forced into Berserker Stance — which increases damage done but also decreases defenses. Like the above druids, at this point in the game 99.99% of raid tanks were Warriors and virtually all raiding Warriors were expected to at least be geared for tanking for trash and should a boss require multiple offtanks or should the shit hit the fan. This meant that when Warriors were called the tank suddenly took A LOT more damage, and it was time to blow defensive cooldowns and heal bomb. The entirety of phase 2 of that fight was built around messing with a class's ability to do its (at the time) primary job.
  • In a Played for Laughs example, in Legion's version of Dalaran in the first aid shop, you find a druid trapped in his aquatic form (a sea lion) stuck in a bathtub complete with showerhead and frilly curtains. If you ask him about it he tells you he was doing reconnaissance in the waters off the broken shore and got clobbered by an infernal dropping from the sky, and it's risky to shift back until he's completely healed. The entire situation has him thoroughly embarrassed and he asks you to not tell anyone he knows about it.
• In Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter, Dalles locks you in monster form halfway through the game, and you must go on a Fetch Quest to change back.

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