Mass Transformation

The next step is turning their swords into plowshares.

Forced Transformation can be a potent weapon under the right circumstances. Why not amp it up into an area effect if you can?

This is usually an antagonist's ability or plan. The purpose behind the event can range from simply incapacitating an enemy force to effectively committing genocide by transforming an entire species into another.

A common result of a Viral Transformation that runs out of control.

Limit examples to ten characters affected or more.

A Mass Super-Empowering Event might overlap if it causes physical transformations. Expect Stumbling in the New Form writ large.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You:
  • Chapters 84 and 167 are redos of Chapter 28's Baby Morph Episode courtesy of Kusuri's baby transformation drug. The first time it happened, there were seven girlfriends in the harem, and all the girls except Hakari were transformed. The second time it happened, there were 17 girlfriends in the harem, and all the girls who weren't transformed the first time became babies (11 girls in total.) The third time it happened, there were 27 girlfriends in the harem, and the 10 girls who hadn't been transformed before became babies.
  • Chapter 148 has all the girls undergo a "Freaky Friday" Flip courtesy of Kusuri's "reborn-as-a-new-you" drug from Chapter 23. The first time it happened, there were six girlfriends in the harem, while the second time involved 25 girlfriends.
• Animal Detectives Kiruminzoo : Misa Hatori’s main goal. She started the animalian revolution to transform the entirety of the human population into animalians, a species of human animal hybrids who can animorph into both animals and human. Her plan was to no avail at the start; however she was able to turn a good chunk of the Kamihama citizens into animalians thanks to a special gas created by Futatsugi, although this only affected those with animalian genes, which as it turns out is pretty common.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Eldians are treated as second class citizens in the Marley empire. They're only allowed to hold limited social standing with direct approval of the government, and are repeatedly told to be ashamed of their ancestry. As such, many Eldians are conditioned into "repenting" by joining the military as voluntary Titan Bombs by consuming the spinal fluid of Zeke Yeager, the Beast Titan. Using airships to drop over enemy forts, Zeke uses his scream to transform them after they drop out. The transformation in mid-air increases their mass, which lets them literally bomb into the structures, where they then mindlessly consume enemy soldiers.
  • Zeke, in a supreme dick move, does this to Levi's squad in order to buy time for his escape and get rid of Levi. The soldiers in question had consumed wine that Zeke had laced with said spinal fluid, resulting in Levi having to kill them when they are all transformed and try to eat him alive. Needless to say, when Levi catches up with Zeke, he is pissed.
• "Twinkle" Maria Murdoch, the leader of an Animal Wrongs Group and the antagonist of the Cowboy Bebop episode "Gateway Shuffle", seeks to unleash a virus called "Monkey Business" onto Ganymede that will transform those infected into monkeys.
• The first episode of the 2018 reboot for GeGeGe no Kitarō has Kitaro and his friends investigate why an entire city turned to trees following an internet celebrity making a fool of himself in the middle of the crosswalk. Charatomi broke the seal of the Yo-kai responsible not out of malicious intent, but rather purely for internet cloud.
• The Hwalipon saga in Go, Go, Loser Ranger! has the Invaders slowly gain sympathy from the local populace because of the dual efforts of the Faux Affably Evil Horse Executive Hwalipon and the Invader Rights Association, who humanize the plight of the otherwise comparatively innocent Dusters. When Invader sympathy is at its highest, Hwalipon and the IRA invite new recruits to their base with the promise of making humans and Invaders equal. Too bad the groups failed to explain that they only believe equality could be achieved by everyone becoming Invaders, and transform the whole audience into monster-type Invaders. The higher ranking members of the Association meanwhile transform themselves with a special serum.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stone Ocean: Most of the population of Orlando, Florida gets turned into snails when Heavy Weather is activated. However, since the effect is triggered by subliminal messages, it's debatable whether the transformations are a case of Your Mind Makes It Real, or simply a mass hallucination. Everyone gets turned back after Weather Report dies, deactivating the ability.
  • Steel Ball Run: At a mountain village, Johnny and Gyro have to contend against all the villagers, animals, and themselves being transformed into dinosaurs when Dr. Ferdinand uses his Scary Monsters to effect everyone in the vicinity.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Yubel uses Professor Viper's bio bands to drain the students' energy and converts a large portion of the student body into her Duel Ghouls. By the end, the only people left are Jaden, the four transfer students, Alexis, Bastion, Hasslebery, and Blaire.

Comic Books

• The Incredible Hulk: Multiple story arcs have revolved around villains using gamma radiation to turn large numbers of people into gamma mutants.
• The Justice League of America crossover arc JLApe involves Gorilla City in a war against humanity after the murder of their king and transforming as many humans as possible into gorillas, including most of the League members.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): The second story arc has Dr. Eggman create the Metal Virus with the intent of turning mass groups of people into Zombots. When the Zombots start raging out of control, Dr. Starline tries to get Eggman to do something about the problem but is merely dismissed as nitpicking. Frustrated with his idol's seeming ineptitude, Dr. Starline calls upon the Deadly Six to help him, only for them to betray him and take control of the Zombots themselves in order to bring the world to ruin. Several issues later, Sonic and Silver use their Super forms to extract the Metal Virus from each Zombot and send it all to the Sun, undoing the zombification effects.
• Wolverine: One story started with a butcher in Canada murder a rival and dispose of the remains by grinding it up and mixing it with hamburger that he sold to a sky resort. Because of an ancient curse, any act of cannibalism inside Canadian borders causes the person to turn into a Wendigo. Cue most of the people at the resort suddenly being transformed into monsters that hungered for the flesh of humans.

Fan Works

• The premise of A New World, A New Way is that the legendary Pokémon have decided to send a lot of humans and Pokémon to another world to start afresh, and they transformed all the humans into Pokémon.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami can technically do this:
  • Applying her Sailor Mercury transformation to everyone and everything in her dungeon, unless wards are placed on her dungeon heart properly.
  • Just letting go of her Metallia energy and flooding everything around her results in Animate Inanimate Object-s Born of Magic. Which is also classified as a magical catastrophe when it happens to Salthalls.
• Flawed Crystals: The game starts out with all of the Crystal Gems transformed into Corrupted Gems after they shatter all 3 members of the Great Diamond Authority. It's implied that the same thing has happened to all of Homeworld after all 3 Diamonds were shattered later on.
• The Nuptialverse: The side story Metamorphosis reveals that Chrysalis was once an ordinary pegasus soldier who made a deal with Discord and helped him take over Equestria in exchange for gaining the powers of an alicorn. To give her an army, he transformed the entire Flutter Pony race into changelings and her into their queen.
• Pony POV Series:
  • When Fluttershy becomes Princess Gaia/Nightmare Whisper, her goal is to remove all suffering from the world. To this end, she magically de-ages everypony in Equestria into foals so she can watch over and take care of them as their "mother," which she accomplishes by absorbing all their unhappiness and suffering into herself.
  • When Discord was ruling Equestria, he forced the seaponies to write songs for him every day. One day they didn't meet their song quota, so he punished them by turning their ocean into a desert. He meant it to be temporary, but his card game ran long and he forgot to turn it back. Most of them died, but the alicorn Galaxia was able to successfully save some by giving them an Emergency Transformation into buffalo and earth ponies. He also transformed some of the Flutterpony race into parasprites (the ones he didn't include in his "public butterfly collection").
• In the finale of Scootertrix the Abridged, this happens as a side effect of Princess Luna defeating Queen Chrysalis. With help from the mane six and their friends, Luna creates a spell to forcibly remove the shapeshifting powers from every changeling in Equestria. When Rarity casts the spell, hundreds of changeling infiltrators, disguised as ponies at that moment, are forcibly transformed back into their normal insectoid form before the Shapeshifter Mode Lock kicks in.
• Deconstruction Fics and War Fics based on The Conversion Bureau have the ponies employ this in order to transform as many humans as possible into newfoals in one go.
• In Hard Reset (Eakin), Queen Chrysalis gets blasted with the Elements of Harmony—and since the entire changeling hive is mind-linked with her, they all get a huge dose of Harmony magic as well. Chrysalis dies instantly, but all the changelings are permanently transformed into ponies.

Films — Animation

• In the Back Story of Beauty and the Beast, an enchantress visits the castle of a cruel and selfish prince and asks for shelter from a winter storm. When the prince refuses, the enchantress not only transforms the prince into a beast as punishment, but she also transforms his servants into various objects such as a clock and candelabra.
• Despicable Me 2: Big Bad El Macho woos Dr. Nefario away from Gru and has him concoct a serum that mutates who/whatever consumes it into a depraved monster. He then kidnaps all but two of the Minions and changes them from nice, cute yellow guys into depraved, snaggle-toothed purple creatures in a ploy to get Gru to help him take over the world.
• Heavy Metal: The Loc-Nar falls onto an alien world, crashing into a mountain. A throng of people come for a closer look, then the Loc-Nar erupts with a torrent of green ooze that floods the area, seemingly drowning everyone in the vicinity. As the ooze subsides, it's revealed the victims weren't drowned, but rather transformed into lawless, amoral, bloodlust barbarians. Their first order of business is to invade the nearby town, where they conduct an orgy of killing and looting.
• Pinocchio 3000: Scamboli uses an amusement park ride to turn the children of the city into robots and use them as slaves.

Films — Live-Action

• In the Back Story of Beauty and the Beast (2017), an enchantress visits the castle of a cruel and selfish prince and asks for shelter from a winter storm. When the prince refuses, the enchantress not only transforms him into a beast as punishment, she also transforms his servants into various objects such as a clock and candelabra, and it's stated that if the curse isn't broken in time, they'll be permanently transformed into lifeless bric-a-brac. Unlike the animated film, this version tries to justify the staff and guests falling under Aesop Collateral Damage by pointing out that they could have spoken up on the enchantress's behalf, but failed to do so and deserve to be punished, too. Mrs. Potts also remarks that the servants watched the young prince go from a sweet little boy to a heartless tyrant at the hands of his father, but again never did anything to help, and thus bear some responsibility for his actions in the present.
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action: This is the core of the Acme Chairman's Evil Plan. He intends to capture the Blue Monkey diamond, then install it on his orbiting satellite. From there, the diamond's arcane power will transform everyone on Earth into monkeys, which the Chairman (shielded from the effect) will put to work in Acme factories as unpaid labor.
• Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead: The customers of American Chicken Bunker got turned into zombie chickens after eating tainted fried chicken.
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu: During the Pokémon Parade, the R gas is unleashed on the city from giant Pokémon-shaped balloons, causing everyone to fuse with their Pokémon as part of Howard Clifford's Evil Plan.
• TRON: Legacy: A part of Clu's ultimate plan is to use the facilities onboard the Rectifier to convert dissident programs into a massive army of loyal, obedient soldiers.
• Willow: When the heroic allied army marches off to confront Queen Bavmorda, the evil queen proves she's not to be trifled with by casting a spell that turns everyone present — including her daughter Sorsha, now one of the good guys — into pigs.
• Wishmaster: In the Distant Prologue, a Sultan wishes for the genie to show him "wonders". The Djinn responds by forcibly transforming the members of his court into monsters, such as a man turning into a crocodile, and forcing a man's skeleton to rip out of his body and attack bystanders.
• In X-Men, Magneto's plan is to use the kidnapped Rogue's Power Parasite mutant ability, his own powers, and a machine hidden in the Statue of Liberty to transform the gathered world leaders into mutants. Ultimately Subverted, not only because the X-Men stop him, but because, unknown to him, the transformed mutants aren't stable and he would have ended up killing all of his targets after a few days.

Gamebooks

• In Seas of Blood, one of your possible encounters is lifted directly from The Odyssey, with you encountering a witch who transforms your crew into birds. Depending on your choices, you may or may not suffer the same fate and turn into a bird (if you do, Game Over for you) - should you escape, you'll need to kill said witch to restore your crew.

Literature

• What with Jack Chalker's obsession with transformation stories, it was inevitable that he would do mass transformations a few times:
  • In the Soul Rider series, powerful Flux wizards can transform dozens or even hundreds of people at a time.
  • At the end of Soul Rider: The Birth of Flux and Anchor, the supercomputers that control World implement a mass transformation of the population that makes them all the same race and religion, where before the colony was a polyglot of many ethnic types and many religions.
  • In The Return of Nathan Brazil, the supercomputer Obie recreates the entire planetary population of Olympus. The changes are primarily mental and cultural, but he does physically modify them all so that none of them have tails, where before about 70% of the populace did have tails.
  • In the backstory of Rings of the Master, Master System's mission was to spread humanity into space, so humankind would survive no matter what happened on Earth. So it found several dozen suitable worlds in different star systems, then sent a colony ship to each with a cargo of humans in suspended animation on board. Upon arrival, the colonists were transformed into a new form that was more suitable for the new world, then transported to the surface so they could begin settling it.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio: All the boys including Pinocchio were having fun in the Land of Toys, until a few months later when they all get turned into donkeys. The Land of Toys has a law that whenever everybody slacks off, they get turned into donkeys as a result. The coachman had waited patiently for the boys to get turned into donkeys so he could sell them as slaves.
• All Tomorrows: After losing a war to The Qu, humanity is forcefully devolved into horrific, animalistic abomination creatures as punishment for their pitiful attempt at resistance.
• Duting the final confrontation in The Book of Eve, the Mother transforms the convent's defenders into a forest of hardy trees so that they can withstand Brother Abramo's assault.
• The Broken Earth Trilogy: It's revealed in The Stone Sky that the first Stone Eaters were human Precursors, created when the Evil Earth hijacked the Obelisk Gate while they were attuned to it. Nassun's plan to save Schaffa's life is to reactivate the Gate and transform all humans into immortal Stone Eaters — the Gate doesn't work small-scale.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Willy Wonka mentions that he tested the three-course meal gum out on twenty Ommpa-Loompas and they got turned into giant blueberries after they had reached the desserts.
• The Daevabad Trilogy: The daeva were originally spirits of smokeless fire, but the Prophet Suleiman forced them into shorter-lived flesh-and-blood forms and stripped away most of their magic as penance for preying on humans.
• Goosebumps: At the end of Calling All Creeps!, Ricky and the Creeps had turned all the students into Creeps with cookies filled with Creep seeds. He eats a cookie so he can be a Creep as well.
• Iron Council: Travel through the Cacotopic Stain, an Eldritch Location poisoned by Wild Magic, has many hazards, worst of which is a train car full of people spontaneously merging into a giant amoeba. Everyone hopes that the organelles waving from within aren't sentient anymore.
• The Magic School Bus:
  • In Inside a Beehive, Ms. Frizzle turns herself and her students into bee/human hybrids as part of the lesson on bees.
  • In Going Batty, the kids and the bus are transformed into bats, so they can spy on Ms. Frizzle and their parents, who are in an old house checking out the bats that live there.
• The premise of Metamor Keep is that the dark wizard Nasoj laid three curses on the defenders of the titular castle. One to turn them into infants, one to transform them into horny women, and a third to change them into animals. The Keep's mages managed a partial counter-curse, but now any human who spends more than a few days there gets transformed into an anthropomorphic animal, the opposite gender, or regressed to childhood.
• Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: It's revealed that the first Mistwraiths were once humans. The Lord Ruler transformed his own countrymen as a Cruel Mercy when he temporarily wielded divine power during his ascension.
• The Odyssey: Circe transforms Odysseus' crew into pigs, Odysseus himself evades the curse through divine intervention and forces her to restore his men.
• The Secrets of Droon: At one point, hundreds of Ninns are turned into (or back into) Orkins, the race they were originally transformed from. It's unknown if these particular Ninns were originally Orkins.
• Wayside School: In the first story of Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Mrs. Gorf turns all the students on the thirtieth floor into apples. The transformed children attack Mrs. Gorf and demand that she change them back to normal. She does what the children tell her to, but she decides to change them back into apples.
• The Witches: A rare heroic example. At the climax, the boy puts a magic potion called Number 86 Delayed Action Mouse Maker, which the witches had been planning to use on the children of London, into the witches' soup. This turns all the witches in England and the Grand High Witch into mice. The hotel staff kills off the transformed witches.
• This trope is the basic premise of the Xanadu (Storyverse). Eric Winters unwittingly fooling around with a magic raven mask results in everyone in a fan convention being turned into what they were dressed up as.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • In the special "The End of Time", the Master uses an alien medical device to transform all humans on Earth into copies of himself.
  • Attempted inversion in "The Zygon Inversion", as Bonnie desires to use the "Osgood Box" devices to force every Zygon in the world, currently masquerading as humans, to be forcibly un-transformed back into Zygons. On the flip side, one of the Osgood Box's failsafes is that it has two functions, one of which will lock the Zygons into the transformation they assumed forever.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Genesis" has Lt. Reg Barclay visit Doctor Crusher for flu symptoms. She gives him synthetic T-cells to activate some dormant genes. While this works on Barclay's flu, it also starts to regress his physiology. This effect proves contagious, "de-volving" the Enterprise crew into primitive lifeforms.
• In the later episodes of Season 3 of Stranger Things, Bill Hargrave, who has been possessed by the Mind Flayer and has turned many Hawkins residents into Flayed, has all the Flayed turning into a big Spider Monster.
• A benevolent version of this is a key part of the lore of the Ultra Series, as the activation of the Plasma Spark on the Land of Light transformed the planet's people, who at that point were just Human Aliens, into the first generation of Ultra Warriors. The power of the Plasma Spark's Differator Rays, which drove this transformation, went on to reach the planet of L77 (the homeworld of Ultraman Leo), turning its people into Ultras too.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: In the episode "Wembley and the Mean Genie", the Genie hypnotizes all the Fraggles but Wembley and turns them into a mindless army wearing identical clothes and standing with arms directed to the sides (which resembles a totalitarian regime).

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: The ritual "Mists of Change" blankets a large area in a Fog of Doom that transforms every human into a random animal for a year.
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition gives Tieflings a shared origin in Bael Turath, a decadent human empire that signed a collective pact with the Nine Hells. The act transformed the aristocracy and all their descendants, giving them horns, tails, innate magic, and other devilish features.
• The mythic, augmented Baleful Polymorph spell available to certain characters in Pathfinder acts this way, by applying the spell's effect of turning one creature into a helpless animal to nearly every creature over a one-mile radius.
• Mice and Mystics: The Mouse World began when the Court Mage Maginos transformed most of the castle's occupants into small animals in a last resort to escape an evil usurper — at least, according to the bedtime story that serves as Framing Device for the game.
• Shadowrun: Twice this has happened in the Sixth World. First was Goblinization, an event where humans all over the world spontaneously mutated into orks and trolls as a result of the world's ambient mana levels becoming high enough. The second was the SURGE event, when world mana levels spiked in conjunction with Haley's Comet returning and causing many metahumans to develop physical mutations (typically animalistic ones, like becoming Cat Folk or A Little Bit Beastly). In both instances, the newly transformed became heavily discriminated against.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:
  • Skaven poisoned the backwoods fief of Uesin's water sources with warpstone and attacked as the population began to mutate. An unusually level-headed local lord rallied the people, saved the fief, and took it off the map so it became a benign Monster Town.
  • One Black Magic Ritual transforms every human within a mile into berserk, rampaging Beastmen for 24 hours. Survivors are left with the memory of their actions and a heap of Insanity Points.

Video Games

• Age of Mythology: The Greek "Curse" god power can transform a group of enemy units into pigs, which can then be killed for food. Appropriately, during the first campaign it gets used on the player's units by Circe (the hero units become wild boars who have to defend the others from villagers until the curse can be reversed.)
• Age of Wonders 4: A selection of permanant transformation spells can be applied to your empire's primary race, as well as any additional races you become the "keeper" of. Transformations alter the appearance and stats of a race, such as angelize bestowing an Angelic Transformation and the ability to fly. While a race can only have a single "major" transformation, the more common "minor" transformations can be applied without limit and in any combination.
• ANNO: Mutationem: In the past, the world underwent the spread of the Mechanika Virus, a mysterious disease that spurred from the Limen crater which slowly turned people's flesh into machinery. In the most advanced stages stated during the pandemic, the virus would seriously degrade the consciousness and ability to rationally think, turning all infected into suffering, mindless, and violent berserker cyborgs that has caused the rise of cargo cults praising it as the next awakening of humanity. By the present, a vaccine has been developed and delivered widespread, and it has gone down to becoming a manageable part of everyday life, though the damage obviously remain.
• Black & White 2: The miracle "Verdant" transforms everyone in its Area of Effect into barnyard animals. As it functionally destroys the original units without harming the Karma Meter, it serves as the Good god's answer to the Fireball.
• Shows up multiple times in the Dragon Quest series:
  • In Dragon Quest VII, when the heroes arrive in L'Arca for the first time, they find that every human has been transformed into an animal, and every animal into a human.
  • In Dragon Quest VIII, every resident of Trodain except for the protagonist has been transformed. Princess Medea became a horse, King Trode is a green humanoid monster, and everyone else became human-shaped plants.
  • Dragon Quest XI
    • One Tickington side quest sees the party visit the town of Moonahan from Dragon Quest II. In the original II, the Princess of Moonbrooke was transformed into a dog by Hargon's forces and had to wait for the two Princes to find a mirror that could change her back. In the Tockington quest, however, the mysterious character altering the stories of the previous Dragon Quest worlds made it where the Princess was able to change back prematurely at the expense of everyone else in Moonahan becoming dogs. She asks the Luminary to find the necessary item that will turn her into a dog again so the people of Moonahan can be uncursed.
    • During Act 2 of the game, where Mordegon's monster army has taken over Erdrea, most residents of Octagonia have been transformed into monsters, including Jade. They're shown turning back to normal after Booga's defeat. Somewhat humorously, prior to defeating Jade and Booga's boss fights, you can talk to the monster NPCs and engage in the town's services.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • According to legend, the Orcs were transformed from elven stock when their Patron God Trinimac was cursed in a Divine Conflict. The god became the Daedric Prince Malacath and his faithful became the Orsimer, the Pariah Folk.
  • The Dark Elves owe their current appearance to the Daedric Prince Azura. When their Tribunal broke their vows and ascended to godhood, Azura cursed their entire nation with ash-grey skin and fire-red eyes as a mark of their betrayal.
• Fear & Hunger: Termina: Over the course of the three-day-long Festival of Termina, all contestants (baring August and Pav, who always perish before they get the chance to) that are not killed beforehand are "moonscorched", the light of Rher violently transforming them into vicious monsters. By the time Night 3 strikes, all contestants (even the ones you have added as party members) fall victim to this divine scrouge, with your selected protagonist becoming moonscorched as well if you skip to Day 4. Due to it taking place exclusively on Night 3, the game's Masochism difficulty also causes all contestants outside of your protagonist to be moonscorched from the get-go, with your protagonist being transformed as well if they stay outside for more than thirty seconds.
• Final Fantasy
  • Almost immediately upon arriving in Academia 400 AF in Final Fantasy XIII-2, the Proto Fal'Cie Adam takes notice of Serah and Noel and begins transforming the humans of the city en massed into monstrous C'ieth to fight them. As you continue through the city, this continues to happen before your eyes, save the few who are able to escape the Fal'Cie's eye. Solving the Paradox allows you to prevent this horrendous future by making it so that Adam was never constructed in the first place.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • Sufficiently powerful primals can temper large groups of people at once. With continued exposure to the primal's energy, the victims will be mutated into nearly unrecognizable monsters. This is shown in the Sastasha (Hard) dungeon, in which Captain Madison, his Serpent Reavers, and their captured sex slaves are all turned into undead revenants, Fish People, and Snake People by Leviathan's aether.
    • In Endwalker, the effects of the Final Days can cause others to mutate into horrific monsters should they fall past the Despair Event Horizon. These monsters inspire fear and despair in others, causing the transformation to spread like a virus. Worse still, it's completely irreversible, so the heroes can do nothing to help the victims except give them a Mercy Kill.
• Golden Sun: The residents of Kolima are all trees when Isaac and party arrive. They learn a tree deity spirit named Tret cursed the town after the town's lumberjacks cut down the Kolima Forest including him to build Lady McCoy a new palace.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Those from Hyrule who enter the Dark World get changed into forms reflecting what is in their hearts. Link is turned into a Righteous Rabbit, a bullied boy and his bully are turned into a ball and a fanged, horned monster respectively, and many of the monsters you fight in the Dark World are either explicitly or implied to be greedy people who once sought the Triforce.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: A fairly large number of Skull Kid's "pranks" involve forcibly transforming people. He turns Link into a Deku Scrub (implied to have involved turning the Deku Butler's son into a non-sentient tree and shunting that form onto Link), youthens Kafei into a child, curses the Spider House inhabitants to become Skulltulas, and causes Pamela's father to slowly turn into a Gibdo.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • Late in the game, we learn that the Shadow Beasts which attack the land are actually transformed Twili, who took on their monstrous forms when General Zant seized the throne from the royal family and tried to conquer Hyrule. Midna is also a victim of the curse, as she's the true ruler of the Twili, but her royal status turned her into an imp as opposed to a monster.
    • On the Hylian side, it's revealed that the "curtain of twilight" that blankets Hyrule reduces humans, zoras, and gorons trapped under it into invisible spirits, forever wandering and unable to interact with the world and unaware they have been changed. They also can't perceive Link or Minda but can still see and be harmed by monsters. The only exceptions are Zelda and Link, who are protected by the Triforce of Wisdom and Courage, respectively; Zelda retains her human form while Link undergoes a Painful Transformation into a wolf. Monsters under the curtain of twilight instead turn into shadowy versions of themselves. Rats become squid-like shadow vermin, while other creatures are still mostly recognizable although gain some weird features. It is also hinted that the twilight monsters can turn the spirits into more monsters by killing them, which is extra bad since the spirits can't harm the monsters.
• NanoBreaker has the Nano virus' outbreak in the opening FMV infecting the populace of Nanotechnology Island, assimilating dozens and dozens of civilians and policemen at the same time, and turning them into Orgamech monsters.
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, this is the ultimate plan of the Big Bad of Episode 4. Seeing humanity as stagnant, Adam Sacrid decides to forcibly mutate every human on Earth into Phantasms as part of what he believes will be the next stage of humanity's evolution.
• Saya no Uta: Saya's ultimate purpose is to "bloom", releasing spores that transform all humans on Earth into whatever she is.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Digital Devil Saga:
    • The Atma virus, when it is unleashed in the Junkyard, forces all the soldiers to turn into cannibalistic demons. They can turn back and forth, but many go mad from the transformation and the need for human or demon flesh persists regardless of form.
    • In the sequel, this trope was inflicted on everyone who happened to be outside when God turned the sun black, as the sunlight causes Curvier Syndrome which turns people into stone. If you go out on the streets you'll see a flood of people turned into stone while they were in the middle of running to the nearest buildings for shelter.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: The Black Samurai spreads Literature to the Casualry class of Mikado, supposedly to spread "knowledge and wisdom" to the lower class. However, in Mikado Literature is akin to a Tome of Eldritch Lore; they can understand the content just fine, but the books turn them into demons. It's heavily implied that every demon you fight outside of Naraku or Tokyo was once a plain old human. Later on in the game, there's a second wave of transformations unrelated to Literature, with the victims even including the King of Mikado.
  • Persona 2:
    • In Innocent Sin, this is the fate of every Masked Circle member you encounter throughout the game, as by the end of the game every person who was implied to have a wish granted by the Joker turned into a Shadowman, slowly heading towards Cessation of Existence. In Kasugayama High in particular the classrooms are full of Shadowmen.
    • Eternal Punishment combines this trope with Hate Plague. In this game, calling the JOKER means asking him to kill someone for you. The Conspiracy takes advantage of this by creating a rumour that the Kegare - aka negative energy - created from this act makes all those who called the JOKER transform into JOKERS themselves. Cue people all over the city, including your party member Ulala, suddenly turning into featureless, Slasher Smile, Ax-Crazy maniacs.
• Splatoon 3: Mr. Grizz in Return of the Mammalians has this as their end goal, sending a rocket ship filled with Fuzzy Ooze into space before raining it down onto the planet to convert the current dominant species of evolved sea life into mammals so the latter can reclaim their place. It only comes to fruition if you lose during the final battle, showing the Inklings and Octolings of Splatsville turn into walking fuzzballs as the Fuzzy Ooze corrupts the entire planet.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Super Mario Bros., Bowser's magic transforms the inhabitants of Mushroom Kingdom into stones, bricks, and other objects.
  • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: The Mario Bros. follow Cackletta and Fawful to Woohoo Hooniversity to reclaim Peach's stolen voice and BeanBean castle's Bean Star. As soon as they enter, they find a bunch of scientists running out in terror. They enter further and find a barely conscious scientist who tells them Cackletta and Fawful turned them into monsters and turns into a Laser Snifit which the bros need to defeat.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Chapter 4 has Mario and co. travel to Twilight Town where the residents and anybody they welcome are cursed by a monster to transform into pigs whenever it rings the steeple bell. Both times the monster rings the bell on screen, the active partner is glad it wasn't them. Mario is told he needs the mayor's permission to leave town and enter the steeple. Unfortunately for them, the mayor falls to the curse moments after meeting them. Since the mayor is now a pig, the guard tells them they're not able to leave and is next to transform. The partner decides it works in their favor.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: The Mushroom Kingdom gets beset with a disease called the Blorbs, which causes many Toads to bloat up into spherical forms barely able to move around. This turns out to be part of Fawful's plan to take over the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King: The Toads and Bowser's minions get folded into origami forms by King Olly. The Toads end up as either inanimate objects or mundane animals, while Bowser's minions are turned into Folded Soldiers, essentially 3-D origami versions of themselves.
  • Wario World: Prior to the start of the game, Wario obtained a black jewel. The jewel turns out to be alive and destroys Wario's castle and transforms Wario's treasure into monsters.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Much of the sufficiently pureblooded High Entia population are reverted into their original forms, telethia, shortly after the game's true villain takes center stage, robbing them of their bodies and minds and turning them into his servants.
• Xenogears: A virus is unleashed upon the planet's populace early in the game's second disc, transforming many of those infected into mutant abominations called Wels. They serve two purposes to the villains - their monstrous tendencies make them powerful opponents for the heroes, and their unstable DNA makes them appealing as Human Resources for the plot to resurrect the big bad.
• The plot (as it were) of Zoo Race has all the people in a library spontaneously turn into animals before taking part in the eponymous race.

Web Comics

• The Dragon Doctors: Some centuries before the main story, an island village created fertility idols that accidentally changed all male animals on the island into females, causing them to die out in a couple generations. The villains move one of the idols to the mainland in the first arc, gender-bending a village and the whole main cast as they attempt to destroy it. And later attempt to recreate one.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Ellen eventually reveals she has a spell to perform a Mass Gender Bender on a group of people in close proximity to each other, but she hasn't used it yet.
  • In the "Family Tree" arc, the Arc Villain enacts a plan to perform Mass Hypnosis at a party by spiking their alcoholic punch. As part of this plan, a Mass Transformation is also performed to make his targets resemble Nanase, as part of his revenge against her aunt, Noriko.
• Housepets!: In the "Heckraiser" arc, Steward, after transforming a few individuals into animals using a cursed coin, makes a Deal with the Devil to become a demon with the power to transform an entire city. After stopping him and the demon he made the deal with, his original victims realize that the world they live in where all animals are sapient but only humans have rights is really messed up and make a Bargain with Heaven to transform a significant chunk of humanity into animals, including 80% of politicians.
• The Wotch: As a Transformation Comic, this is to be expected:
  • In the Myths and Legends storyline, everyone in town gets transformed by the Mythos Virus.
  • In the Dancing Queen storyline, an outburst of Chaos Magic gender swaps everyone at a High-School Dance.

Web Original

• Critical Role:
  • During the Calamity, this happens a number of times due to the insane power of the clashing gods, though the stories supposedly conflict. Ordinary felines are transformed into the first tabaxi, the Horselords are fused with their horses and made into centaurs, a pack of hyenas becomes gnolls, and some elves become orcs.
  • Centuries ago, Molaesmyr was beset by some sort of magical cataclysm, corrupting it and the Savalirwood. Inhabitants who were not killed were mutated and transformed, populating the land with various abominations. It's further hinted that some of the trees used to be elves, given their twisted resemblance to limbs and bones, and may still bear some form of sentience.
• GoAnimate: Some videos have the troublemaker turning a crowd of people into babies, animals, or even clones of themselves.
• Neopets: While color and form changes are nothing strange in Neopia, there have been a few known cases of entire groups or civilizations changing form at once:
  • Darigan Citadel, once a bastion of peace and prosperity, falls to darkness after Meridell steals their all-important orb. This forcibly turns every resident of the Citadel into dark, twisted, aggressive versions of themselves.
  • Qasala, under the effects of Razul's curse, also turns into a civilization of monsters, this time appearing primarily like zombies and mummies. For instance, the Nightsteed was once a regular blue Uni, only to become wrapped in rotting bandages, gain blood red eyes, and hooves of fire.

Western Animation

• Arthur: In "I'd Rather Read It Myself", D.W.'s story about "B.W." includes a visit to a restaurant where all of the adults—including her parents—eat spinach, which turns them into "Spinach Head" zombies. B.W. has to find a magic ring to bring everybody back to normal.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: In the second episode of the "Gamma World" two-parter, The Leader projects a dome of gamma radiation over the entire city of Las Vegas, turning everyone inside into a gamma mutant.
• Ben 10:
  • Ben 10: In "Be Afraid of the Dark," Zs’Skayr succeeds in firing a corrodium ray at the Earth, transforming every human on Earth into a horrifying mutant.
  • Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: Vilgax damages the seal containing the Dagon, releasing an energy wave that morphs all of humanity into Esoterica soldiers of the Flame Keeper's Circle.
• Codename: Kids Next Door has at least three examples of this trope.
  • F.U.T.U.R.E. features Madame Margaret, whose future self invents a laser that turns males into females and has largely gendercided the planet in the future, where only a small group of boys (including an elderly Numbuh 4) remain.
  • G.R.A.D.U.A.T.E.S. shows Father using a device to transform the Kids Next Door organization into animals.
  • The movie: Grandfather turns, in his words, "Everyone who has EVER been a kid" into his Senior Citizombie slaves.
• Gargoyles: When Demona tries to kill Elisa by ordering Puck to "get rid of that human," Puck turns her into a gargoyle. Thinking that Puck just killed her, she orders him to do the same to all the humans in Manhattan, which he does.
• Justice League Unlimited has Gorilla Grodd use his Legion of Doom to gather items necessary to complete a device that he claims will amplify his Mind Control to affect the entire world. When the device is activated, he reveals that it was never his goal - he simply hates humanity so much that the device will turn everyone into apes. His Legion of Doom is not amused, and after the Justice League destroys the device, they even quip about it.
  Superman: Is everything okay?
  Wonder Woman: Well, I'm sort of missing Flash's obligatory joke about how Grodd made a monkey out of us.
  Superman: Just couldn't let it go unsaid.
  Wonder Woman: Obligatory.
• An episode of Lazer Tag Academy has Drear develop a ray that turns humans and animals into Skug-like creatures. He has his own Skugs broadcast the ray over the town to turn the Jarens into Skugs. Due to a mishap, they end up turning the entire town except for the Jarens into Skugs. The effect is reversed at episode's end.
• Miraculous Ladybug: A few of Hawk Moth's Akumatized villains have the ability to pull this off. Some, like Queen Banana and Moolak, turn people into inanimate objects (bananas and gold coins, respectively). Others, like Reflekta and Darkblade, turn people into their own army of minions. Hawk Moth himself can usually only transform one person at a time, but he has ways to circumvent this— if Ladybug doesn't capture the Akuma after defeating the villain, it will multiply and transform random people into copies of the Akumatized villain. Another villain he created, Catalyst, gave him the power to send out as many Akumas as possible, forcing Ladybug and Cat Noir to fight an army of all the villains they've faced so far.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Monkey See, Doggie Do" and "Monkey See, Doggie Two", Mojo Jojo transforms everyone in the world into dogs so they will obey his commands. In the first case, he also transforms the Powerpuff Girls, while in the second he does not.
• Rick and Morty: Twice in "Rick Potion #9". Rick's first iteration of a "love potion" was supposed to help Morty woo his schoolyard crush Jessica, only for it to mix with her flu and affect everyone. The antidote to it makes it worse and morphs everyone into mantis-monsters that are homicidally in love with Morty. Rick makes an antidote for the antidote...which transforms everyone on Earth into mutant Cronenberg monsters.
• The Simpsons: The "Treehouse of Horror XVI" segment "I've Grown a Costume on Your Face" has a witch curse the entire town of Springfield at once by turning them into their Halloween costumes.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Strange Energies", Commander Jack Ransom is hit with the titular "Strange Energies" and gains godlike powers. He transforms the people of the planet the crew is helping into copies of himself and turns random objects into gym equipment. Doctor T'ana says "he's creating his own jacked utopia!"
• Steven Universe: During the Gem War, Pink Diamond is shattered by Rose Quartz in an effort to end the war and save Earth from her. It is later revealed that they're actually the same Gem, and Pink had faked her own death to try and scare the Diamonds off of Earth. The other three Diamonds are so enraged at their sister's shattering that they combine their powers to send a corruption ray across the entire planet before leaving, transforming all the Gems on Earth into horrible monsters. Rose Quartz manages to use her shield to protect herself, Garnet, and Pearl from the blast.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): This is Fast Forward's Big Bad, Sh'okanabo's, plan. He uses his gene seeds to take control of the various species living on Earth and devour the planet's resources dry. The first time he does this, Raphael and Cody discover sunlight turns infected specimens back to normal. Sh'okanabo is furiously baffled as he has invaded countless planets with countless suns and never had this problem until now. Viral's analysis of the planet reveals sunlight combined with oxygen undoes the transformation. Sh'okanabo begins thinking of a way to eliminate the sun. The Fast Forward finale shows he converted the moon base's population.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Kraang invade New York City for the season 2 finale and transform people into human-kraang hybrids with their new mutagen. The turtles, April, and Casey are forced to flee. When they return in season 3, they find the city deserted. The population has been taken to Dimension X for slave labor.
• Wayside: In "Mrs. Gorf", like the book the show was based on, Mrs. Gorf turns the students of the thirtieth floor into apples and Myron into a potato. Maurica is the only student who doesn't get turned into an apple and she decides to save her classmates.

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