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You've got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl
Bending? Hell, it's a gender moebius strip....
As mentioned in the crossdresser trope, anime likes to play with the roles of men and women.
Nowhere is this more seen than in the Gender Bender. Simply put, through no fault of their own the main character has completely changed gender physically, usually through magic or Phlebotinum. This may be a one-time change, or they'll jump the gender line often, multiple times in a single episode even. If it's a one-time change, it may be undone by the end credits, or it may be permanent.
Sometimes it's the same person, sometimes it's a man and woman sharing one body. If a man and a woman swap bodies, it's a variant of Freaky Friday Flip.
For some reason, the majority of these transformations are male-to-female, though women being turned into men is not unheard of.
This trope is also very common in webcomics, especially those with a strong anime influence. Many series have had at least one such storyline, and several have it as a major or even main premise (e.g., Abstract Gender , Misfile, Discordia, Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, El Goonish Shive, The Wotch, The Dragon Doctors). The popularity of these series, as well as ones dealing with more real-world transgender issues (e.g., Venus Envy, Closet Space, The Saga Of Tuck), among a predominantly non-transgendered fanbase has been a widely commented on phenomenon.
Compare with Somethings Different About You Now. See also Mandys Law Of Anime Gender Bending, Man I Feel Like A Woman and Attractive Bent Gender. For this trope's impact on relationships, see Dropped A Bridget On Him and Jumping The Gender Barrier. See Gender Flip for when it always had the character as the opposite sex in the story . Contrast Transsexual and Hermaphrodite, which are real-life phenomena, and Male Pregnancy which is not, at least not in the human species or with our current level of medical technology.
Not related to Was Once A Man.
Examples:
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Advertising
- In one Mountain Dew commercial, a guy finds out his car remote can transform objects. Having just broken up with his girlfriend, he uses it to turn his best friend into a girl.
Anime and Manga
- Ranma 1/2 is wholly built around Involuntary Shapeshifting, with the main character being an example of this trope. Both of Ranma's forms have their own Love Dodecahedron.
- Birdy The Mighty, in which the female title character has to share her body with a boy after she accidentally kills him.
- In Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, Hazumu has Hidden Eyes throughout the first part of the series. Only when he gets turned into a girl does the audience get to see his/her eyes. One might dismiss this correlation seeing as the show starts with Hazumu having just been turned down by the girl he asked out...until they show flashbacks of Hazumu a month or so earlier, and even as a young child and show that he still had Hidden Eyes in all those cases. Hazumu stays a girl, and seems quite a bit happier that way.
- He doesn't seem to care about being turned into a girl either.
- .hack//SIGN does it a bit differently; one character is a Cross Player; trapped in a game which perfectly replicates sensation.
- Maze Mega Burst Space
- The Sailor Starlights from the final season of Sailor Moon (in the anime — the manga had them as simple crossdressers). Just to clarify, they aren't "men who turn into women to fight" but "men who revert to being women to fight", everything points to them having been born female. In the Sailor Moon manga, and it's parent manga Codename Sailor V Usagi and Minako use their disguise devices to disguise themselves as men on a few occasions. It isn't clarified how far reaching this disguise magic is.
- Naruto has a special technique called "Oiroke No Jutsu" (usually known in Western fandom as "Sexy No Jutsu" thanks to fan translations, officially translated by Viz as the "Sexy Jutsu"), used occasionally near the beginning of the series, where he temporarily turns into a cute, naked girl in order to give his opponents The Nose Bleed. It's stated that this is a "very easy technique" as the normal disguise technique is standard for any ninja (this one just transforms into a non-existent female); however, it's also a reference to the fact that Naruto has a kyuubi fox spirit within him. Traditionally, they had the power to shapeshift into beautiful human women.
- Prince of Tennis has special 'chibi' episodes, where Fuji, Oishi, and Momoshiro are all female. (And Eiji's a cat, to boot.)
- Tenshi Na Konamaiki — a mischievous spirit twists a young boy's wish to be a "man among men" and turns him into a beautiful girl instead. No one except she and her best friend remember she was ever male. It's eventually revealed that she'd been a girl all along and the spirit had hypnotized them into believing she'd once been male because he lacked the power to actually change her sex.
- Everyone in the world of Simoun is born female, and doesn't commit to a permanent sex until age 17.
- Also not quite an example, Cinderella Boy is about two detectives (a man and a woman) who are badly injured in a car accident and put back together in the same body by an ambiguous doctor — they switch places with each other at the stroke of midnight, with the twist that neither one can remember what the other did while in control of the body.
- Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: Berg Katse changes gender, at first at random, then on whim. In the heavily edited dub, s/he became two people.
- Vision Of Escaflowne: Allen Schezar's long-lost sister Celena isn't so much lost as "transformed by lunatic Emperor Donkirk into Ax Crazy antagonist Dilandau."
- A case of a voluntary gender bender is Kuugen Tenkou in Wagaya No Oinari Sama. Kuu can be either female or male and is comfortable in either form. This is because Kuu lived for so long s/he forgot what gender s/he was, and being a fox spirit, can change at will. Kuu seems to prefer female form, though.
- One episode of The Tower Of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk had the entire main party switch genders as a result of a magical trap. Ahmey and Kaaya in particular found the experience quite distressing, as they were unaccustomed to walking with the, er, alteration in body balance.
- Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Yubel seems to self identify as female but is a hermaphrodite, with the Japanese version possessing a male voice about half the time. Further complicating issues are the fact that in the past lives of Yubel and Judai, they were apparently both male.
- Futaba Kun Change has a rather unfortunate scenario. The title character's entire family changes sex whenever they get sexually aroused. which means his the person he always thought was his mother is actually his father.
- Not quite an example, Pretty Face is about someone whose face was constructed to look like a girl's, but still remained physically male (except for some fake breasts that he occasionally uses).
- CUTE x GUY follows the life of Sumi Takaoko, a girl whose father promises her a serum he concocted will make her mature looking and sexy. She uses it because she hears that's the type of woman her crush likes; sadly, her eccentric dad neglected to tell her that it will make her a mature and sexy man. One she turns into whenever her heart rate increases, which happens all too often when she's near her crush. She goes on to make friends with several guys who turn into girls, all with different triggers.
- Vampire Doll (with the added subtitle of Guilt-Na-Zan in the west) is a Gender Bender story about a vampire aristocrat called Guilt-Na-Zan who was vanquished many years ago and later brought back by the descendant of the man who offed him. Because the descendant is a perv with a Moe obsession, he brought Guilt-Na-Zan back in the form of a cute teenage girl by placing the vampire's soul into a wax doll, Guilt-Na-chan. Guilt-Na-chan can become Guilt-Na-Zan for brief periods when (s)he drinks the blood of the girl Guilt-Na-chan was modeled on (the resurrector's little sister, which implies he has a crush on his sister).
- The second half of the manga Gacha Gacha, Gacha Gacha Secret (volume six and onward) has a malfunctioning virtual-reality pod turn a guy into the game's female instructor whenever he sneezes. Unlike most he ''never even tries'' to reverse it, and instead becomes friends with the girl he likes to get to know her better and get closer to her as a guy.
- Towards the end, the game's developers get him to try to cure it, as -per the manga's approach to science- each switch causes reversible (but fatal without treatment) brain damage.
- In the Cute Witch series Ultra Maniac this is the first major spell we see Nina cast. Ayu needed to beat Hiroki in a tennis match as the girls' and boys' tennis clubs were feuding over the use of the school tennis courts and had bet on a match between the two. So when Ayu says she could use a spell to make her strong, Nina casts a Gender Bender spell without thinking much. While Ayu was able to pass herself of as her own cousin all the spell did was throw Ayu's balance and timing off because of the size and strength difference. Later Nina and Ayu both use the spell because of mildly convoluted reasons surrounding a triple date.
- In To Love Ru, Ren/Run switches gender at a sneeze.
- And in the manga, Rito switches gender when Lala misfires a rocket designed to improve women's physical appearance.
- Then she creates a Transformation Ray for the express purpose of doing this. Lala uses it at least 3 times, usually so that Rito/Riko can go on a date with his male bast friend. He obliges once, but whenever she tries it again, he runs.
- Akane-chan Overdrive is a short, humorous ecchi manga where the main character, Amamiya, gets knocked unconscious and then sucked into the body of an attractive high school girl (Akane).
- Later in the story Amamiya manages to return to his own body, but his best friend Murai is then sucked into Akane's body. Amamiya proceeds to propose marriage.
- One Piece has "Miracle Worker" Emporio Ivankov, a man who ate the Horu-Horu Fruit, which allows him to affect the hormones in a person's body, to the point where a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man, with Ivankov refusing to say which of the Newkama were altered and which weren't.
- Yuuri in Tayutama has a magic charm that can turn him into a girl, mostly used for infiltrating Flawless Girls' School for purposes that are honestly good. As long as he doesn't make a habit out of it.
- One reason why Chrome remains relatively popular in Katekyo Hitman Reborn, a series whose fandom is dominated by Yaoi Fangirl is probably because half the time she turns into local Draco In Leather Pants Mukuro.
- In the first season of Ojamajo Doremi, the girls once use their magic to turn into boys, in order to investigate in their stolen Magic-Shop. Doremi, however, blew the cover by chanting her Catch Phrase ("I'm the unluckiest pretty Girl in the whole world!!") upon seeing magic charms who are claimed to be able to prevent said Catch Phrase.
- Boku no Shotaiken is perhaps the Ur-example of Gender Bender Friendship : After an accident, the main character has its brain transplanted in the body of a young girl.
- In Kampfer, Natsuru Senou, the (orignally) male lead character, transforms into a girl whenever he becomes a Kämpfer whether he wants to or not.
- In the manga Otome no Iroha, twins Iroha (female) and Hifumi (male) are transformed into their opposite genders by their grandmother because Iroha is so masculine and Hifumi so feminine that they would never get married and have children. The supposed cure is to act as closely to their original gender's stereotypes as possible, so either way, the grandmother wins.
- Ichinensei ni Nacchattara: Iori gets rebuilt as a girl after making a fatal Diving Save. To make matters worse, he (a highschooler) also gets aged down to 7 years old, and the one responsible is a rabid lolicon.
- The premise of Kedamono Damono revolves around this: the main character's boyfriend, Haruki, turns into a lascivious girl at night. Naturally, it involves some Bi The Way.
- Homura in Sekirei had an unstable sex, and so started turning into a woman in response to the main character. It's not been revealed if the transformation was complete or not, but Homura now has a more feminine body and face as well as breasts.
- This troper is pretty sure it was just a partial transformation, but the point still stands.
Comic Books
Film
- The 1940 Hal Roach feature Turnabout concerns a bickering husband and wife, each of whom wishes they could have the "easy" life of the other gender. Their wish is subsequently granted by an enchanted Indian sculpture sitting on their mantelpiece. By the end of the film things are seemingly back to normal...until the Indian god confesses that he screwed up and informs the husband that he's now pregnant.
- Zerophilia, a live-action Futaba-kun Change-style genderbender, directed by Martin Curland. The story concernes a young man named Luke who obtains the rare Z chromosome after a sexual encounter with a mysterious woman which turns him into a zerophiliac, a person whose sex changes with the act of sex(either by your lonesome or with another person). For more information just go here.
- Blake Edwards' Switch is about a womanizing playboy dying and being resurrected as a woman.
- The same premise was used a couple of decades earlier in Goodbye Charlie.
- All of Me uses the "shared body" variation, as Lily Tomlin's character dies and partially inhabits Steve Martin's body.
- The Hot Chick has lowlife Rob Schneider accidentally swapping bodies with a teenage girl.
- There are several films which take the story of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde and, while keeping Jekyll male have Hyde be a beautiful but evil woman.
- Such as the Hammer production 'Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde', made to exploit the startling similarity in appearance of two actors, one male, one female.
- Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, starring Tim Daly of Wings, is my favorite one of those.
Literature
- The premise of the Sex Gates trilogy by Darrell Bain & Jeanine Berry: Portals appear at random all over the world. If they don't make you vanish when you pass through them, they cause you to emerge as a flawlessly healthy 18-year-old...of the opposite gender. Hilarity Ensues. Well, not so much hilarity as extreme societal upheaval.
- This troper found the Middle Eastern response, namely, chucking various imams and abusive husbands through, to be highly amusing.
- In Iain M. Banks's Culture novels, citizens of the Culture are able to change their gender at will. The process is slow, taking several months, but is done entirely using consciously-released hormone, not requiring any external assistance. The change is so complete that they begin to produce the appropriate sex cells, and a newly-female person can get pregnant and give birth. Most people in the Culture will spend a year or two as the opposite sex at some point in their lives, just to see what it's like. A popular expression of love is for a couple to conceive a child, then change gender and conceive another, so both partners are pregnant with the other's child at the same time (they are also able to temporarily arrest the development of the embryo/foetus, so that they can time it so they come to term together — if the embryo is only just conceived, they can even keep it alive while they become male).
- In Gael Baudino's Dragon trilogy, an enemy wizard does this to an entire troop of soldiers from an extremely sexist country. The transformation is permanent, and the characters' adaptation to their new state is dealt with at length.
- Princess Ozma of L. Frank Baum's Oz series was magically changed into a boy as a baby, and grew up this way (under the name "Tip") until the spell was discovered and she was changed back.
- The fact that their personalities are total opposites have led to at least a century of many fans trying to explain this away via either Dis Continuity or Ret Con. Lampshaded when the Gump mentions he thought Ozma was nicer when she was a boy.
- The Gump also mentions that Ozma didn't much like him talking since she changed her name.
- Lois Mc Master Bujold's A Civil Campaign has, as a significant character, Lord Dono Vorrutyer...formerly Lady Donna Vorrutyer.
- Not to mention Bel Thorne the hermaphrodite, who, while technically both male and female, is quite fond of switching its perceived gender around just to mess with people's heads.
- A common motif in Jack L. Chalker books. Usually it's a) to show just how indomitable the transformed character is, and b) to showcase the sheer evil of the individuals responsible...and make their eventual Karmic Deaths—or at least karmic comeuppance—all the more appropriate.
- Appropriately enough given how deeply Chalker is associated with this trope, his immortal hero Nathan Brazil's last act in Chalker's final book is to "accidentally" inflict a Gender Bender on himself. though it may have been a Freudian Slip on the character's part.
- Stardust by Neil Gaiman has Bernard the goat herder who is turned into a goat by the Big Bad, and later into a woman to pose as her daughter.
- A short story by Neil Gaiman called Changes has Gender Bending as its premise, as a cancer cure called Reboot that works by altering the patients DNA has the side-effect of transforming the patient into a fully functional and fertile member of the opposite gender. the story takes place over several decades, analyzing how society would react to the effects introduced by such a drug.
- The entire basis of the plot of James Alan Gardner's novel Commitment Hour.
- Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is basically 'what if everyone were of negotiable sex'.
- An important point in Charles Stross' Glasshouse is that the characters come from a society where Gender Benders are ridiculously easy.
- John Varley's Eight Worlds stories and novels.
- The is pretty much the point of Virginia Woolf's Orlando.
- This was the first thing that happened to Elminster when he agreed to serve the goddess of magic: she teleported him to unknown location and turned into Elmara, "to see the world through the eyes of a woman" (and to hide him from murderous Magelords, besides). Having nothing on
him her save half of broken ancestral sword and no magic abilities save his innate magic vision. Without any warning. In next book, Mystra pushed into his mind a silent sex-inverting spell, as a mean to disable controls built into his body by his current master via becoming "Elmara" again. While embraced restrained by his current Love Interest, no less.
- In The Wheel Of Time, after Balthamel dies, he is resurrected as the beautiful woman, Aran'gar. This is situational irony, because Balthamel had been known as a tremendous lecher.
- In the french 1952 short story Héloïse by Marcel Aymé, the thirty-five-year old Martin turns into the titular female character on each evening, causing her to clash with his wife. Things get complicated when Martin falls in love with Héloïse, and when Héloïse gets out and sleeps with other men. At the end of the story, Martin's wife gives him out that Héloïse is pregnant ; Martin/Héloïse will give birth to a boy who will soon turn into a girl. Ouch.
- In the Chanur novels, the trigendered Stsho change gender when "phasing"(a personality breakdown and reformation caused by emotional or physical trauma).
- In Walter Jon Williams' Cyberpunk novel Hardwired the rich elite often transfer their consciousness to a younger body to extend their lives, and the book introduces one, who used to be an elderly man, but got himself transferred to a young, female body to live his sexual fantasies of submission and vulnerability. S/He got what s/he asked for, and more when Sarah, one of the protagonists seduced, and then murdered him/her.
- In the novel Cycler by Lauren Mc Laughlin, the main character Jill changes in to a boy, Jack, before(or during) her period.
- In the Safehold series by David Weber, Nimue Alban (or, specfically, the robot with Nimue Alban's personality) crafts the persona of Merlin Athrawes. Her robotic body has the capability to shift genders, which she uses to complete the image.
- The whole idea of a man being turned into his own fantasy woman is brutally deconstructed by Angela Carter in The Passion of New Eve
Live Action TV
- Delenn from Babylon 5 was originally supposed to have been male or neuter in the first season, before entering the chrysalis, but the idea was dropped when they couldn't get Mira Furlan's voice quite right.
- In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Glory, a female goddess, goes around as her "brother" Ben most of the time. When she decides to let Ben take his body back, he generally finds himself in a glamorous dress somewhere.
- The 1998 version of Fantasy Island has the episode "Estrogen," where a man asks Mr. Rourke to give him a better understanding of women; guess what happens.
- In Heroes Whats the first thing Sylar turns into after getting the ability to transform?
- In Monkey (also known as Monkey Magic, based off the Chinese epic Journey to the West) features this on occasion:
- Buddha, in order to become more "compassionate" appears in his female incarnation.
- The bodhisattva Quan-yin (Guanyin) the Compassionate is only seen in her "male incarnation", in pale blue robes and a lacey veil
- The priest Tripitaka is a man, played by a woman, who when entering the City of Nightmares is magically transformed into a woman as a disguise. (And is promptly hit on by Pigsy).
- Monkey transforms into a woman in order to trick the Unicorn King.
- In Red Dwarf, the hologram Arnold Rimmer changes his appearance to that of Lister's dead love interest, Kochanski. Even though he is a hologram he is quite able to...touch himself.
- Not to mention Holly, who redrew himself after an encounter with his Distaff Counterpart. And became male again.
- Sabrina The Teenage Witch has an episode where Sabrina, Hilda and Zelda use a magical potion in the form of a soft drink called "Boy Brew" to become temporarily male. Though Zelda only briefly.
- In a minor example, Dax from Star Trek Deep Space Nine by way of The Nth Doctor. She was female through both incarnations in the main series, but Sisko (who knew her before the current incarnation) called her "old man" (despite appearing to be a young woman). One of her male forms was seen in a flashback, and others were seen through a psychic-body-swap-thing, including one of her previous female forms in a male host.
- An episode of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno featured a fake advert for something called For Men Only (a parody of men's haircare products) which was a liquid that turns men into women. There are several male to female morphs in it including Jay himself using the product. Another episode had Jay in drag (a supermodel with his voice). And on the episode where Pam Anderson was the guest- Jay asked several questions about implants and then asked her.."If you could be a man, who would it be?" Pam responds "I could be you!" Jay then exclaims "That's perfect. Why?" Pam's answer is "So I could sit there, torturing you, asking about your implants."
- Season One of The X Files devoted an entire episode to the subject—with "Gender Bender" as the actual title. The episode revolves around a sect of humanoid aliens with the ability to switch genders at will; they also have a voracious sexual appetite—which is unfortunate, as mating with one them is inevitably fatal to humans.
- In the Doctor Who Affectionate Parody, "The Curse of Fatal Death" (created for the 1999 Comic Relief appeal night), the Doctor cycles through all of his remaining regenerations in quick succession at the end, with the final one being Joanna Lumley. The Doctor's female companion (who was engaged to him) is understandably rather disturbed; his arch-nemesis, The Master, somewhat less so. The former enemies walk off arm in arm.
- In the French TV series Vice Versa, due to a lab accident the main character Thomas turns into his female self Emmanuelle (then Julia, in season Two) whenever he hits his elbow.
- An episode of Tomica Hero Rescue Force has the Big Bad, inspired by the sex changing ability of clownfish (see the fish example under "Other"), create a virus to turn all men into women, thus robbing humanity of their ability to reproduce, and eventually causing our extinction. She's stopped, naturally, but not before she manages to transform the male heroes.
Mythology
- Greek Mythology had the gods transforming the prophet Tiresias into a woman, first as a punishment for looking down at sex, then to settle an argument over which gender enjoyed sex more, thus making this Older Than Dirt. And for the record, Tiresias said women enjoyed it more; depending on what version of the myth you're reading, Hera's response to that is why he was known as "the blind prophet".
- In his Metamorphoses Ovid wrote of Iphis, a daughter of Telethusa and Ligdus, who Ligdus had said - when Telethusa was pregnant - he would kill if born a girl. The goddess Isis told Telethusa to bring Iphis up as a boy, and Iphis eventually fell in love with a woman - Ianthe. So Isis turned Iphis into a man. They lived happily ever after.
- In the Mahabharata, Shikandin, the reincarnation of Amba was born specifically in order to kill Bhishma. He was born as a girl but was brought up as a boy due to Prophecy Twist. He exchanged his female body with a Yaksha and was turned into a man.
- The God Vishnu in Hindu Mythology turned temporarily into a beautiful woman called Mohini in order to seduce the demons away from eating nectarine that would lead to immortality. He coyly teased them about it, transformed back to his original self and gave the pot to the gods.
- Norse. Mythology. The gods hired a contractor to build their heavenly city. They let him name his price after he did the work, he asked for the goddess of love's hand in marriage. He was a giant, with a giant horse, so they had to distract the horse and get him outa town. How'd they distract the horse? Why, by having the trickster god Loki, noted male, transform into a hot mare, of course!
- Incidentally, Loki got pregnant from this and bore the eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, who Odin nicked to be his warhorse. Loki didn't mind, presumably wanting to drown the memories in mead as quickly as possible and never see a reminder again.
Newspaper Comics
- In a parody of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Jason was transformed into a miniature version of his own sister during a week-long arc in Fox Trot. Thankfully, it was All Just A Dream.
- Filmore the sea turtle turned into a female for a while early in an early arc of Sherman's Lagoon. Then he turned back.
Fairy Tales
- In the Albanian story The Girl Who Became A Boy, uh...well, Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Similar to Mulan, a girl pretends to be a boy to give her family honor. After adventures and even getting married, she gets cursed into changing gender.
- This is surprisingly congruent with Albanian culture. The practice is dwindling now, but Albanian girls would swear themselves to celibacy and be considered men socially. This was often done to make sure there would be a 'male' head of the household.
Tabletop RP Gs
- Dungeons And Dragons has the "Girdle of Feminity/Masculinity".
- The Changeling race from Eberron can change sex at will.
- Most shapechanging magic (such as Alter Self) allows the caster to choose the gender of the assumed form, along with more typical alterations such as height and build.
- Many "random" magic effects in D&D include involuntary sex change as one possible result.
- In the Animesque Tabletop Games Teenagers From Outer Space, the Boy/Girl Gun is a standard item, and one alien power replicates the effect on the user. It's probably best to not speculate about the non-standard items.
- In GURPS, "hermaphromorph" is a cheap (5 point) advantage that allows a character to change sex at will.
- In Exalted, the Lunar Exalted have access to a charm which allows them to change sex at will. Their God/Patron Luna enjoys the same power and has no set gender.
- If that wasn't weird enough, Luna is the lover of Gaia, who is very female. Make of this what you will.
- Also one of the forms that Luna appears in to his/her exalts is the Pregnant Boy.
- Not to mention that Alchemical Exalted have a charm that allows them to shapeshift their physical appearance, allowing them to be males, females, and even hermaphrodites or sexless. Since they are sterile in any case, the changes are purely cosmetic, thou.
- Also from our friends at White Wolf, Scion has an Epic Appearance perk mentioned in the God rulebook (Although it could, in practice, be learned at Hero or Demigod tier, as well), that does just the same as the aforementioned Alchemical charm: The Scion can change everything about his/her body, including gender, and becoming a hermaphrodite. The main difference with Alchemicals is, the Scion is fertile, even when being a herm.
- So are Lunars.
- There are at least three permanent ways to magically change your character's sex in Unknown Armies, a few more temporary methods, and several canonical one-off accidents. This is in addition to the fact that as a game set in the Present Day, gender-reassignment surgery is also available - and explicitly necessary for correcting some magical accidents.
- In Warhammer 40000, the Chaos God Slaanesh typically uses the pronoun 'He'. However, he in fact is neither male nor female yet both at the same time. He assumes whatever form the person viewing him would find most attractive, which means that he can either be a fully functioning male, female, hermaphrodite or whatever else a person finds attractive at the time at any given time. Its traditional form is a weird sort of hermaphrodite, being split down the middle vertically as a woman on the right side of the body and a man on the left.
- Cthulhutech has a First Order (low level) spell of the Transmogrification style called "Beckon the Unexpressed". It's other names are Aphrodite's Touch and Gender Bender, which sums it up fairly well. By magically 'tweaking' the target on a chromosonal level, the target switches gender in a painless fashion over a period of three days. The ritual is legal, though requires a permit, and implicitly a person "switched" in this manner is fully functional in their new role- the spell has replaced surgery for gender reassignment. Because the ritual only requires an effigy of the target and not the target's actual presence, it's noted that immature occultists like to use it for pranks. Especially in college. As well as merely switching men to women and vice versa (the change is permanent, but easily undone with a second spell), casters with sufficient occultic skill and knowledge of physical medicine can use this spell to create different varieties of fully functional gender ambiguities (people with the body of one sex and the reproductive organs of the other, or a "true" hermaphrodite with the body of one sex and the organs of both).
Video Games
- Microprose's Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender was probably the earliest game to use the term "Gender Bender" (if not its Trope Namer).
- A series of ero Dating Sims known as X-Change is centered around this trope (with a boy becoming a girl).
- Visual Novel Ying-Yang X-Change Alternative uses both this and Transsexual, and despite its comedy tone plays both surprisingly seriously at times. With the Phlebotinum being a medicine designed to increase the feminine attributes of women, the scene where the doctor who made it has to explain quite why it worked on the ‘male’ main character is one of the funniest in the game… yet explains and adds considerable pathos to his late father’s constant attempts to beat the slightest hint of femininity out of his son.
- This is hammered in further by the refusal of several characters to buy the Phlebotinum excuse and proceed to refer to him as a post op transsexual. Even he eventually gives in to the description, at one point shouting it down the phone at his parents amid mad cackling.
- Darkstalkers: Demitri Maximoff (or Maximov; it changes) has a move called Midnight Bliss, in which he turns an opponent into a woman before sucking the life out of her. (What happens when he uses it on female opponents varies wildly between victims.)
- In regards to this, in SNK vs Capcom Chaos, Goenitz is one of the playable charcters. His Midnight Bliss form (called Goeniko) has become very popular as a result, ironically turning every gamer's worst nightmare into every hentai artist's dream.
- Zohar, The Rival in Silhouette Mirage, has two forms with opposite attributes and gender. As Zohar Metatron, he's a Silhouette-attribute who wields a sword; as Zohar Sandalphon, she's a Mirage-attribute with a gun.
- Edwin in the Baldur's Gate series is transformed into a woman by a Netheril practical joke in Shadows of Amn (he believed it would transform him into a lich), and is unable to turn back. The game even gives him a second soundset for his female form (though it does nothing to his portrait). He is eventually turned back after many trials, tribulations and being snarked at by most of the other party members. However, by keeping Edwin in your party through Throne of Bhaal, his Where Are They Now Epilogue reveals that he later tried to make his name by challenging Elminster to a magic duel, who had apparently heard of his previous mishap and made sure to apply the effect permanently this time...
- Nights into Dreams has a rather interesting example. NiGHTS, the character of the games gender depends on what gender the person viewing NiGHTS sees NiGHTS as. Since NiGHTS combines with people to escape the Ideya Palace, you've got to wonder what happens when someone sees him as the opposite gender...
- Disgaea allows you to transmigrate any non-story character into another class, with the option of changing gender in the process. If that's not enough, you can choose to turn him into a penguin instead.
- In the Japanese version of Bonk's Revenge, your secondary form is not a scarred Bonk like in the overseas version, but rather a female Bonk! This occurs at around 1:30 of this video if you don't believe me.
- Neo Mr. Do has a powerup that turns the titular character into a woman, as if Mr. Do wasn't creepy enough...
- In Persona4, Shadow Naoto tries to turn its creator into a adult male through body alteration. Luckily, you can stop it before that happens.
- In the upcoming Persona3 PSP remake, there is the option to play the game with a female Main Character, which has repercussions for at least one other. I give you Female Main Character and Male Elizabeth◊.
- Look behind Female Main Character (or, as she's called by fans, "Minako" - to match Male Main Character's "Minato") and you'll see they've even genderbent her starting Persona, Orpheus.
- In Fable II, The Temple of Shadows has the "Wheel of Misfortune", which kills human sacrifices through random means. Among its possibilities are electrocution, impalement, beheading and "Gender Change."
- The player has a chance to use a sex changing potion after buying Castle Fairfax. This potion is one-time use and irreversible (the game saves immediately after you use it), unless you play Co-Op online and use someone else's potion. This generally is acknowledged by the NP Cs, but not for this troper's in-game wife and son. The wife could care less and the son readily started calling me 'mum'. Good thing I married a bisexual, huh?
- Toward the end of Ocarina of Time, Sheik, in a shocking twist everyone knows, turns into the princess herself. There's contradictory information on whether the change was just clothes and hair (and color contacts), but it certainly looks magical.
- It is now possible to have different body types across different costume slots in City Of Heroes. In combination with the option for alternate builds, I do this to simulate a brother/sister pair that are similarly trained and take turns taking on crime fighting duties.
- In Pokemon, Azurill is 75% female and 25% male, while its evolved forms, Marill and Azumarill have an even 50/50 split. Think that just means you find more female Azurills in the wild and everything remains consistent? Think again. One-third of female Azurills become male upon evolution. This one's subtle enough that it's likely a bug.
Web Animation
- In Homestar Runner, Strong Bad explains what he would do if he ruled Free Country USA. Things start out plausible, like the King of Town being stuck in a box of peas, Coach Z getting a new jacket, and Homestar leaving, and then they get weirder (such as Pom Pom looking like an ABA basketball and Strong Sad being the devil). The weirdest of all? He plans to turn Homsar into a "modestly hot" girl. After realizing that this is Homsar he's talking about, Strong Bad proceeds to decide that his imagination is broken.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive is notable for the sheer number of gender-bending gags and storylines; all of the major characters have had their gender swapped at least once (for a birthday party!), and one character, Ellen, was created accidentally when Elliot tried to use the Dewitchery Diamond, a literal green rock, to return himself to his normal male form. On the sidelines, the character Grace is a natural shapeshifter and could change genders at will, but seldom has an actual reason to do so, while Elliot ended up with the same ability but doesn't use it because, honestly, ew.
- So, of course, the phlebotinum behind Elliot's hijinks has been building up and forces him to use it several times a day to keep it controllable. The author is on record on how much fun it is to torment Elliot.
- Similarly, The Wotch is pretty much based around the trope; whole groups of male students at Tandy Gardens HS (note the initials) have been permanently transformed into females (four of whom would later be featured in a Spin Off series, Cheer!), and some of the other male characters seem to have become addicted to being temporarily in female form. (The authors of both comics readily admit to being a little too interested in Shape Shifting. Their readership is in the tens of thousands. We blame 1980s cartoons.)
- Do I remember right that the Wotch has an older brother who likes to relax by taking the form and personality of a four-year-old girl?
- In Order Of The Stick, Roy has to don the mystical "Belt of Feminity/Masculinity" to escape a pair of would-be assassins. This is an actual magical item in Dungeons And Dragons, though this one reacts to Remove Curse better. Breaking the trend slightly, Roy is NOT a beautiful woman, and is still bald.
- The basic premise of Misfile has Ash, the hero, getting accidentally "misfiled" in heaven by a stoner clerk. This not only changes him from a teenage boy to a teenage girl overnight, it changes the entire world to fit. Some aspects are convenient (no need to explain anything or shop for new underwear), some are comically disturbing (Bikini shots and prom pictures in the photo album,yaoi magazines under the bed), and some are not-so-comically disturbing ("girl-Ash" had reconnected with her estranged mother via a letter that "boy-Ash" had been too ashamed to send and had already lost "her" virgnity to his oldest and best friend.)
- Umlaut House has a gender-bending Transformation Ray, originally built by Mad Scientist Dr Hundecoph to help his transsexual friend Dr Pegasus become female, but later accidentally set off by Volair, who takes it in stride before changing back a few days later. For the second series, author Allen Ecker explains elsewhere that when Hundecoph reformed, he took the unusual step of releasing the design to the public (he'd already made a fortune selling his other inventions, but he wanted to make sure that this particular one was open-source).
- A storyline near the end of It's Walky switches the genders of Walky, Joyce, Head Alien, Monkey Master, and the aliens' computer due to Unpredictable Results. Head Alien outright says that entropy will keep them from ever turning back.
- The trope is played with somewhat as well. Joyce points out to Walky that despite having changed genders, they're still straight, leading to humorous moments between them and their team mates. It's later revealed that male-Joyce's "equipment" was bigger than Walky's regular package. Walky is not happy to know this, to say the least.
- Done briefly in The Last Days Of FOXHOUND, in which Decoy Octopus (who, through drinking their blood, can take on another person's appearance) disguises himself as Sniper Wolf. It's a very complete transformation.
- In Narbonic, Mad Scientist Helen Narbon invents an instant gender-change formula. She gleefully uses it in several storylines, not least to make her sex life more interesting (along with the antigravity generator, and the nutrient vats, and the teleporter...)
- The Insecticomics has several instances of characters spontaneously changing their gender, although being that they are mostly androgynous Transformers gender isn't much of an issue for them. The most notable was the time that Lazorbeak was voted female in an effort to make the comic less male-dominated.
- In a later strip, the resident Moral Guardian Lady Jaye protested that the male Thrust was pursuing a relationship with Dreadmoon (also male), whereupon Thrust promptly declared himself female and went off to hit on Dreadmoon again. Since the characters and the author both refer to Thrust as "she" from this point on, apparently Thrust never bothered to change back.
- DDG explains why, when you are a disembodied soul you shouldn't fool around with magic cloaks. Something recently deceased Zip wishes s/he had known to start with.
- The misogynistic Stunt from Dominic Deegan was briefly turned into a woman after defiantly taking a bite of an onion labeled "do not eat" in a land of chaos magic.
- Exiern is about a mighty barbarian who went to save the Damsel In Distress princess from the evil wizard. Accidentally nullifying his own ability to cast dark magic, the wizard resorts to pouring all the power he can into a light magic spell, transforming the barbarian into a beautiful woman.
- The What If donation comic Exiern: Dark Reflections has an Alternate Universe take on this. In this, the aformationed Damsel In Distress ends up possessed by the evil wizard, or the evil god the wizard was summoning, or something. The result is a Princess with Evil Overlord ambitions, a very◊ Stripperific outfit, and a mildly annoyed evil male spirit having to deal with the Princesses's libido taking over every few minutes.
- One of the many cameos in the Fan Web Comic Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha R'r by Entropy Max are the space aliens from Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, making this trope inevitable for a feminine-looking male down on his luck in regards to the (ambiguously lesbian) girl he likes. Meet Yuuno◊ Scrya◊ (second image NSFW).
- A major plot-point of The Dragon Doctors, affecting the aforementioned doctors, every (former) male in the first town the Doctors visit, and several minor characters.
- MSF High: See especially Rainer. Though it frequntly happens to others as well.
- Various Slipshine comics, but most prominently The Key To Her Heart.
Web Original
- This is a major point of many of the Whateley Universe tales, due to them taking place in a LGBI dormitory at the titular Boarding School. Several of the main characters are gender bent by an "Exemplar" mutant power, which involves involuntary shapeshifting to a "BIT" (Body Image Template). A BIT is that person's mental image of a perfect body, which is occasionally the "wrong" gender — although Exemplar mutations tend to have a side effect of a certain level of acceptance. It should be noted that Mandy's Law is in full effect in the Whateley 'verse — as a rule, it is not possible to undo or really change an Exemplar mutation.
- Other than the Exemplar mutants, one main character is changed to a girl by being bonded with a powerful female elf spirit, another due to a poorly worded prank by her little brother, another by a magic sword, and yet another hasn't changed at all but is actually a Transsexual trying to find a way to become a real girl. Oh, and then there's Hank, who's gender bending the other way.
- In ''Take a Lemon'', Marshall Steen wakes up one day as Marsha. S/he decides that it was caused by a scientific experiment gone awry and then decides not to change back for a few months, just to prove that s/he can cope with the situation.
Western Animation
- Lloyd In Space hung an entire episode on a one-shot who was "Neither Boy Or Girl" and of a species that chooses its own gender at the age of thirteen.
- In The Emperors New School episode "Girls Behaving Oddly" Kuzco and Kronk use one of Yzma's potions to turn themselves into girls so that they can befriend Malina whose "girlfriends" have abandoned her.
- In one episode of Johnny Bravo, "Witch-ay Woman", a fortune teller tries to teach Johnny a lesson in showing women respect by turning him into a woman.
- In an episode of Ozzy And Drix when the Ozzy accidentally ends up in the body of a girl instead of his usual (for the TV show) host Hector, Ozzy's sex starts changing. He very nearly becomes completely female, but never looses his beard... none of this makes any sort of sense but, meh.
- In Codename Kids Next Door, "Operation: F.U.T.U.R.E." a young misandric lass gets a "Girlifyier" gun from her alternate future self. Numbah 4 gets his hand zapped, and in the dystopian alternate future is the only adult male left. He becomes the leader of the Boys Next Door and with the help of Numbah 3's granddaughter develops an "Boyifyier", and a sex-swapping battle ensues. He manages to evade this future by going back in time and changing things.
- And then there's "Operation: C.A.R.A.M.E.L." where Numbuh Five's candy-hunting rival, Heinrich von Marzipan, turns out to have once been a girl, who was turned into a boy through some magic caramels. And, through some very weird logic, this is the reason he has such a big grudge against Abby. There's a reason many fans put this part of an otherwise decent episode straight into Dis Continuity.
- The Fairly Odd Parents episode "The Boy Who Would Be Queen" has Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda all swapping their sexes. Wanda is not a very attractive man. Also in the episode "The Good Old Days!" Timmy wishes himself, his grandfather, Cosmo and Wanda into a 1930s style cartoon where Wouldnt Hit A Girl is a law of the universe, so he wishes that the Vicky analouge was a boy so he can defeat "him".
- On Johnny Test, one episode has one invention which makes Johnny become a hot girl for about 5 seconds till it overpowers and turns him into a hulking (female) monster, s/he turns back to normal a few seconds later. A later episode has an invention having a bad effect on Susan and Mary turning, purple, then huge headed, then male they reverted after a while, but it was All Just A Dream anyway.
- The last episode of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog has Sonic and Tails being transported into various fairy tales. In the first one they visit, they're Hansel and Nettle (Gretel). Sonic is Hansel...and Tails is Nettle. Disturbingly, four-year-old Tails gets boobs as a girl. Also, he lifts up his dress to verify it. "I'm a girl!"
- Bender from Futurama becomes a fighter for the Ultimate Robot Fighting league, and is first "Bender, The Offender", but as his popularity falls, he's forced to play the Gorgeous George Heel role of "Gender Bender", wearing a pink Tutu.
- There's also the episode "Bend Her", in which Bender must get a sex-change after he poses (in drag) as a female from "Robonia" to win 5 gold medals in the Olympics. As the fembot "Coilette," Bender begins a relationship with the robot actor Calculon—planning initially to marry and divorce him so she can take half his stuff. However, it turns out that Calculon is genuinely in love with Coilette, and prepared to give up acting to be with her. Bender and the gang have to hatch an elaborate plot to fake Coilette's death at her wedding, soap opera-style, so Bender can undo the sex change without hurting Calculon.
- Batman Beyond, "Out of the Past" - it turns out Ra's Al Ghul has taken over his daughter's body... which is even more disturbing than it sounds. Ra's can speak with his Ra's voice, even though he he has the body of a woman... the transition is outright creepy. Scratch that - everything he/she says is outright creepy. Furthermore, Ra's still acts in a very effeminate manner, despite the voice. And of course there's...
Terry: Lady, that is the sickest thing I've ever seen. You're creeping me out!
Bruce: You? She kissed me.
Other
- An odd bit of folklore claims that kissing one's own elbow will cause a person to change sexes.
- This happens so often with fanart that some have made it a new "law of the internet' (usually Rule Seventy Five or Rule Sixty Three): if a male character exist there is fanart of him as a woman. It can work the other way, but not as often.
- Real life example: 5-alpha-reductase deficiency (5-ARD), known crudely as "Guevedoche" ("Balls at twelve") in the Dominican Republic and simply "Kwolu-aatmwol" ("female thing transforming into a male thing") in Papua New Guinea, in which a genetic male is born with what appears to be female genitalia under casual scrutiny, only to "turn" male when they hit puberty. This is a rare genetic disorder, rarely seen outside the above-mentioned places, and is inheritable.
- Wow. Just...wow. What can you say about something like this? One hopes that There Are No Therapists is averted for such people.
- Allegedly, because it is comparatively common in a community that is highly insular, most of those afflicted adjust with surprising ease.
- Calliope (later just "Cal") of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides has this
- Real Life Uh... Downer Ending.
- Meet Wolbachia. It is a bacteria that primarily affects arthropods (insects, arachnids, and other bugs). It can, very rarely, turn infected males into completely fertile females. (More commonly, it turns them into infertile pseudo-females, and even more commonly it just kills them).
- Real Life: Some fish start out as male then change gender to female if the female dies. Others do the opposite.
- Real Life: When a coop of chickens are all female, one will stop laying eggs, the red parts on the beak and head will grow (forget what those are called), and will take on all male aspects. Pissed the hell out of my mom who kept trying to buy only females for feeders.
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