Adaptation Species Change in Western Animation.
- Arthur:
- Originally, in the Arthur books, the Tibbles and their grandmother were humans. In the animated series they are bears.
- Applies to Arthur's second grade teacher Mr. Marco. In the books, he was a moose; in the cartoon, he's an aardvark.
- Avengers Assemble:
- In Marvel Comics, Iron Man villain the Ghost is a human in a high-tech stealth suit. The cartoon version starts out as this, before turning out to be an Inhuman and gaining innate phasing abilities through terrigenesis.
- Cobalt Man is a robot instead of a human inside a suit of Powered Armor.
- In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Michael Korvac's wife Carina is giving a minor Adaptation Name Change to Corrina, and is a human rather than an Elder of the Universe.
- In the original Blue's Clues, the teacher Miss Marigold is an African-American human woman. In Blue's Clues & You!, she is a pink hippo.
- Bunnicula:
- Potentially. In the Bunnicula books it is suggested that Chester is an Unreliable Narrator and Bunnicula is a normal rabbit. The cartoon makes it clear that he is a vampire.
- Chester's breed was changed. In the books he is a tabby but in the cartoon he is a Siamese cat.
- Cleopatra in Space has Akila changed from a human girl in the graphic novels to an alien-like fish girl in the series.
- Curbside curiously changed Terrytoons characters Heckle and Jeckle from magpies to crows, though they don't look too different from their usual depictions.
- DC Animated Universe:
- The Imperium, the alien invaders from the first three episodes of Justice League, are heavily based on the White Martians from the comics. Instead of being actually from Mars, they're a species of unknown origin who invaded Mars and wiped out all but one of the natives inhabitants years ago.
- In Justice League Unlimited, Brimstone is a nuclear-powered robot built by the military of a fictional Asian country instead of an artificial being created by Darkseid.
- Superman: The Animated Series:
- The series changed Brainiac into a Kryptonian AI, instead of the Coluan he is in the comics.
- The obscure Golden Age Doctor Fate villain Ian Karkull was reimagined as a tentacled demonic entity known simply as Karkull.
- DC Super Hero Girls: Downplayed. Dexter is usually a short-haired blue tabby, but the cartoon depicts him as a long-furred Persian-looking grey.
- DuckTales (2017):
- Bombie the Zombie in the comics was a primate-like caricature of an African man. The Bombie in the show is a bulldog.
- The SDCC 2019 panel revealed that Rhinokey of The Wuzzles has been changed from half-monkey to half-gorilla.
- Garfield's Babes and Bullets deviates from the prose story in the Garfield: His 9 Lives graphic novel by making the rest of the cast human with Garfield being the only cat, when all characters were cats in the original story.
- In Gargoyles, the Weird Sisters from Macbeth are recurring antagonists, but are members of the Third Race rather than human witches. Some characters still refer to them as "witches," though, which is perhaps an In-Universe explanation for Shakespeare's "error."
- G.I. Joe:
- While originally seemingly human, G.I. Joe: The Movie retconned Cobra Commander into a snake person from the ancient civilization of Cobra-La. Larry Hama, who helped create the characters for the comics and cartoon (even writing the original version of the former), hated the Cobra-La origin and every other iteration has kept the Commander human.
- Serpentor is still genetically-engineered by Dr. Mindbender in G.I. Joe: Renegades—only this version is a giant snake, not a man.
- In Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., Sauron is an intelligent pterosaur from the Savage Land (and he's seen in the prehistoric era in "Days of Future Smash"). In the comics he was a human called Karl Lykos who was bitten by a Savage Land pterosaur, and mutated into intelligent-pterosaur form.
- Iron Man: Armored Adventures made several of Iron Man’s human enemies from the comics like Sunturion, Grey Gargoyle, Melter, Dreadknight and Firebrand into ancient creations of the original Mandarin.
- Iron Man: The Animated Series changed Firepower from a man in a Mini-Mecha to a robot.
- Jellystone!:
- Ruff, Reddy, and the Cattanooga Cats are changed to robots.
- The Great Gazoo is just a video game character... maybe.
- In The Legend of Vox Machina, several NPC characters from the original Critical Role have their species changed. Kerrion Stonefell goes from being a human to a duergar (gray dwarf), while Archibald Desnay also goes from being a human to a dwarf.
- In Loonatics Unleashed, even though the main characters are all Funny Animals of the same species as their ancestors, there are characters based on (and sharing the surnames of) Pepe Le Pew and Foghorn Leghorn who are human.
- There's a Looney Tunes short where Goldilocks is a mouse and the Three Bears are replaced with the Three Cats (Sylvester and his family).
- In the Marvel's Spider-Man storyline "Maximum Venom", the hosts of the Scream, Scorn and Mania symbiotes are unknown aliens rather than humans. Notably, Scream has Super-Scream powers to fit her name, which apparently come from the host, not the symbiote.
- In M.O.D.O.K. (2021), Poundcakes is a mutant rather than a human who got superhuman abilities from the Power Broker. She mentions that this cost her a career as a professional athlete after it was discovered, which is presumably why she became a supervillain in the first place.
- In the comics, the OMACs are former humans transformed into cyborgs by a nanotechnology based virus. In My Adventures with Superman, the OMACs are completely robotic.
- My Little Pony:
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In G1, Scorpan was a human turned into a monster by Tirek. The G4 Scorpan is a natural-born Gargoyle.
- In G1, Somnambula was a human witch. In G4, she is a pegasus.
- Numerous pony characters from previous gens have their types changed. For example, Rainbow Dash was an Earth Pony in G3 but is a pegasus in G4.
- My Little Pony Tales featured the first canon appearance of Winged Unicorns in the franchise. The episode "Up, Up and Away" features the Glow 'n Show Ponies as having both horns and wings, despite the fact they were all either pegasus and unicorns in the toyline.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Ygramal in The Neverending Story is a swarm of poisonous wasps sharing a Hive Mind that can assume whatever shape they like. In The Neverending Story: The Animated Adventures of Bastian Balthazar Bux, she's just a Giant Spider.
- The Oddball Couple, a Saturday-Morning Cartoon with a cat & dog living together a la The Odd Couple.
- Good Will to Men, the remake to Peace on Earth changes the squirrels into mice.
- Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars changes Vanessa into a Twi'lek (or maybe half-Twi'lek, if you assume that "Darthenshmirtz" is still her biological father).
- Random! Cartoons: The short "Solomon Fix" is a loose adaptation of a comic by Doug TenNapel, where the title character was an anthropomorphic cat rather than a sentient teddy bear.
- The Red Planet miniseries changed it so that the story took place on a fictional planet called New Aries rather than Mars like in the original book. Consequently, this means that Willis and the locals are not Martians.
- She-Ra: Princess of Power has Catra as a human woman who can transform into a feline beast using a magical mask. The 2018 reboot She-Ra and the Princesses of Power has her as a Cat Girl with regular dose of Furry Reminder.
- In the original Redwall novels by Brian Jacques, the Painted Ones were a tribe of rats who wore colorful war paint, giving them their name. In the animated TV series, they appear to be monkeys instead. Odd, considering all of the other characters were animals native to Britain.
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series sees Madame Web, a mutant in the comics, reimagined as a cosmic entity like the Beyonder.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In Legends, the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, Asajj Ventress was Rattataki and Darth Maul was a pure Zabrak. In this show, they were both retconned into Dathomirians. This is downplayed in Maul's case, as the Dathomirians are a Zabrak subspecies (Zabrak-human hybrids in pre-Legends supplementary material), with the males looking more like their Zabrak ancestors, and a lot of characters unfamiliar with Dathomirians assume Maul to be an Iridonian Zabrak as a result.
- Superfriends: Wonder Woman's enemy Giganta in the comics was an ape who was transformed into a human woman. Challenge of the Superfriends gives Giganta a different origin in the episode "History of Doom", where it is shown that she was always a human woman and gained size-changing abilities by swiping the same magic powder that gave Apache Chief his powers and using it on herself.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- The Shredder/Oroku Saki was changed to an Utrom, whose real name was Ch'rell, disguising himself as a human in the 2003 series. Although it was eventually revealed that Oroku Saki was once a real human being who lived during the time of ancient Japan, and became the original Tengu Shredder. Ch'rell simply based his human identity on the original Saki.
- Splinter was originally the pet rat of his human owner Hamato Yoshi prior to his mutation. In the 1987 and 2012 cartoon, he was made into a Composite Character where he formerly was Hamato Yoshi himself, before being mutated into a rat.
- Also in the 2012 cartoon, April O'Neill, previously a 100% pure-blooded human in most other TMNT works, is now made half-human, half-Kraang due to being experimented on by them when she was still in her mother's womb. Meanwhile, Irma and Agent Bishop, who were humans in the previous TMNT cartoons they appeared in, respectively get changed to a Kraang in disguise and an Utrom, respectively. Mona Lisa and Wyrm go from being mutants to being aliens in this version (though still based on the same animals as before), & Scumbug is made into a stag beetle where he was originally a cockroach. (Both incarnations were once humans)
- In Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the titular four are specific species, and each one's is different. Leonardo is a red-eared slidernote , Raphael a snapping turtle, Donatello a soft-shelled turtle, and Michaelangelo a box turtle. This becomes more complicated when it turns out all the mutants (though made in the same way) are artificial youkai, and the turtles were created using regular turtles and human DNA.
- Transformers:
- Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy makes Bug Bite, who was previously stated by tie-in media from Fun Publications to be the GoBot inhabiting a new white Bumblebee-like body after becoming a refugee from the GoBots universe, a natural Cybertronian rather than a GoBot's brain in a Cybertronian body.
- Transformers: Cyberverse:
- Nightbird is introduced in The Immobilizers as a Cybertronian mercenary, when her original incarnation in the Sunbow cartoon was an ordinary robot built by a human scientist.
- Bug Bite takes inspiration from his War for Cybertron Trilogy counterpart by being 100% Cybertronian and having no apparent connections to the GoBots franchise.
- The Trash Pack Mondo TV cartoon plays for an...interesting version of this idea. As the core chunk of Trashies are Animate Inanimate Objects anyways, Putrid Sardine, originally a can of sardines in the toyline, is instead adapted into a juice box in the cartoon. He still keeps his oozy green juice and dent-formed unibrow, however.
- In Voltron, Allura and Coran are Arusians. In Voltron: Legendary Defender, they're the last of the Alteans. Note that "Altean" was what their species was called in GoLion, and Legendary Defender uses the name "Arusian" for a non-humanoid race. Additionally, Keith, who was fully human in the original, is now a human/galra hybrid.
- Zig-zagged in The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald with the McNuggets, who are clearly intended to be the videos' equivalent to the McNugget Buddies from the standard McDonaldland ads. While still anthropomorphic chicken nuggets, they have limbs and distinctively avian features such as wings, combs and beaks like a living chicken would, in contrast to the McNugget Buddies simply being sapient chicken nuggets with eyes and mouths.
- Wild C.A.T.s (1994), based on the comic of the same name:
- In the comics Spartan is an android, here he's a Cyborg instead.
- In the comics Void was a human woman who was merged with an Orb of Power, here she’s a Kherubim supercomputer with a Gynoid body.
- In the comics Jacob Marlowe was revealed to be the Kherubim Lord Emp, here he’s a normal human being.
- In the comics Pike was a human/Kherubim hybrid who worked for the Daemonites, whereas here he is a Daemonite.
- Winnie the Pooh: In the original books, Owl is a tawny owl. In the Disney cartoons, he appears to be a great horned owl.
- X-Men:
- X-Men: The Animated Series makes a few characters who weren't mutants in the comics into mutants, such as the Purple Man.
- X-Men: Evolution split the difference in relation to the Juggernaut. Instead of a full-blooded mutant (seen in X-Men: The Last Stand) or a man given powers by a magical relic (X-Men comics), Juggernaut was described as having a dormant mutant gene that he "awakened with mysticism".
- Wolverine and the X-Men (2009):
- The series makes Nitro into a mutant. In the comics, he was a normal human who was given superpowers by the Kree.
- Sauron also makes a cameo appearance in an M.R.D. holding cell in one episode, indicating that he too is a mutant in this continuity.
- Donald Pierce is a Hollywood Cyborg in the comics but a mutant in the show, seemingly so that the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle would now consist entirely of mutants instead of having Pierce as the Token Human.
- Young Justice (2010)
- Black Beetle is a Composite Character with the comic books' Duwar, and is thus a member of the Reach species. In the comics, he's a human who has a Reach scarab, and at various times has been hinted to either be a future version of Jaime or his former friend Hector.
- Klarion the Witch Boy has a few different backstories in the comics, but is always human (or a variant thereof). Here, he's a Lord of Chaos.
- In the comics by Jack Kirby, Forager was heavily implied to be a New God child that had been raised by the gigantic insects that live beneath New Genesis. In the cartoon, he actually is one of the insects, and has been redesigned to appear less humanoid.
- Mercy Graves was an ordinary human in Superman: The Animated Series and an Amazon in the comics. Here, she's a Hollywood Cyborg.
- Jemm (known as the "Son of Saturn" in the comics) is now a Red Martian rather than a Saturnian.
