The Transmogrifier

The reverse of Voluntary Shapeshifting, this character's powers lie in the ability to transform others, not themselves.

Though commonly targeted at individuals, this power can be extended to just about anything, and used in a variety of ways: targets can be transformed into inanimate items, lowly animals, plantlife, giant monsters, or even into beneficial shapes; they can be grown, shrunk, aged, regressed, expanded or contracted — the list goes on and on. These powers could involve magic, super-science, or even a very specific form of reality-warping.

In any case, what distinguishes the Transmogrifier from literally every other witch or wizard who's ever turned their enemies into toads is a matter of specialization: transformation seems to be this character's first and foremost tactic.

The possible reasons for this vary: maybe transforming others is literally all they can do; maybe they're still learning how to use their other powers; or maybe they're fully capable of using other abilities — and might do just that if pressed — but ultimately find transforming people more amusing than doing anything else.

Compare and contrast Transformation Ray, which is usually applied to objects and machines instead of people.

PLEASE NOTE: for a character to apply for this designation, they need to have the power of transformation as a specialty, a preference, or their sole ability. A character who has this power but uses it only occasionally compared to other abilities does not count.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bungo Stray Dogs: Teruko Okura's Ability, 'Gasp of the Soul', allows her to manipulate the age of those she touches as well as her own. While she can use this Ability to disguise herself and her allies, Teruko mainly employs her powers as a method of torture, rapidly aging her victims up and down until they lose their minds.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Golden Wind: Giorno Giovanna's Stand, Golden Experience, can infuse whatever it touches with life energy. Used on inanimate objects, they temporarily transform into living animals, and though he has no further control over them he manages to use this to great effect.
  • The JoJoLands: Usagi's Matte Kudasai can transform into an existing thing that someone else wants, provided the request was said by that person.

Comic Books

• X-Men: Recurring foe Masque has the ability to change the form of anyone he touches. He's quite angry that it doesn't work on himself early on, as he has an ugly, warped appearance. He likes twisting the forms of others in horrific ways until they're driven mad. When he finally resurfaces in X-Treme X-Men (2001), his powers work on himself, but he still enjoys using his powers to twist the forms of others (for example, he turns Callisto's arms into collections of Combat Tentacles).

Literature

• In Badjelly The Witch, the eponymous witch is infamous for turning kids into sausages so she can eat them. She also turns a police officer into an apple tree for no apparent reason.
• Of all the Workers featured in The Curse Workers, Transformation Workers are the rarest and arguably the most dangerous: their sole power is to transform their victims in almost any way — into other human beings, into animals, or into inanimate objects. People who are transformed into animals can be reverted to normal by the Worker responsible, but those who've been changed into objects are dead from the word go. The big twist of the first book in the series is that Cassel is a Transformation Worker that's been brainwashed into thinking that he's A Muggle Born Of Mages; his brothers have been secretly using him as an assassin, employing the Objectshifting trick to eliminate targets without leaving evidence.
• In Lady: My Life as a Bitch, Terry the homeless man has the power to transform people into dogs. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the ability to control it to any degree, and it usually activates when he's angry at someone, as is the unfortunate case with the main character. Worse still, he can't reverse it. By the time Sandra meets him, he's accidentally transformed his mother, father, wife, and daughter — and all four have died or run away since then, leaving him a friendless alcoholic tramp.
• The goddess Juno of The Metamorphoses likes to use transformations to punish her husband Jupiter's lovers/rape victims. Among other things, Callisto was transformed into a bear and Io into a cow. In another case, Lucina (goddess of childbirth) was ordered by Juno to prevent the birth of one of Jupiter's illegitimate children but was tricked and ridiculed by the maid Galanthis, who in turn thereafter had to live as a cat or weasel. Transformations are the major theme in the epic.
• In Monster, the mysterious Crazy Cat Lady Lotus is capable of many powerful feats of magic thanks to her connection to the Stone. However, her favoured method involves transforming individuals into other species: her house is populated by numerous cats, and all of them were previously other life-forms, including nosy neighbours, elephants, and even a dragon (which can still breathe fire, incidentally). Her two human minions, Ed and Ferdinand, used to be a horse and a cow. Finally, her Evil Plan is to transform the entire human race into cats so that the Stone can't use human beings to correct the balance of the universe.
• Baba Yaga from the Wild Cards universe can use her saliva to irreversibly turn people into some chairs, sofas, church pews and other sitting implements, all of them made of some material that lies between flesh and wood. The process is apparently incredibly painful, and the victims are alive and aware for a brief amount of time in their new form.
• The eponymous child-hating villains of The Witches are capable of many magical feats, but their preferred one involves transforming their victims in some way. Part of this is due to the need for secrecy: if they simply killed children, it'd draw too much attention, while transforming them would make it both untraceable and impossible for the families of the victims to admit to. Among other things, they have turned children into chickens, statues, porpoises, even characters in a painting, and American witches are supposedly known for turning kids into hot dogs. And of course, the Grand High Witch's Evil Plan is to turn England's children into mice... though she's more than capable of frying people to death with her magic, as one unfortunate witch finds out.
• In the Xanth series, in which each character has a unique and specific magical Talent, Trent has the Talent of transforming people reversibly, which he can use for benevolent or harmful purposes. Most prominently, he has a habit of turning his enemies into trees — not fish, as the Malicious Slander claims.

Live-Action TV

• In the Black Mirror episode "USS Calister", game designer Robert Daly has complete control over his copy of the VR MMO Infinity. However, because he prefers to roleplay as a starship captain rather than play god, he mainly uses this power to painfully transform any of his clone NPCs that dare rebel. Nannette has her face erased, Shania is transformed into an alien monster, and several other rebellious characters have been transformed and abandoned across the simulation until Daly feels like bringing them into the game's narrative again. Daly has even erased the genitals of all his NPCs for the sake of a wholesome setting! Generally speaking, he doesn't use other powers or techniques unless he's really pissed off and wants to torture someone until they break.

Mythology & Religion

• The demigod witch Circe of Classical Mythology was renowned for transforming people she didn't like into animals — or worse. She turned the nymph Scylla into a monster out of jealousy, transformed Picus into a woodpecker for refusing her advances, and famously reduced several members of Odysseus's crew to pigs. In some versions of the story, her island is infested with various beasts, all of them former explorers who found themselves on the receiving end of her bad mood.

Tabletop Games

• In the Champions adventure The Coriolis Force, the Enchantress' plan is to transform four people into elemental monsters, she has a habit of transforming innocent people into slavering monsters and using them to ambush the heroes, and if she captures the heroes she may turn one of them into a toad.
• Ork Warphead Zogwort of Warhammer 40,000 is renowned for his signature move, "The Zogwort Special", which transforms any affected units into Squigs. In the lore, he uses this ability all the damn time, to the point that his Minderz often ended up being accidentally transformed during the night before Zogwort finally snapped his leash and became a Freebooter; even today, he still travels with a large number of squigs, all former enemies remade into his pets.

Video Games

• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • In the first game, Mumbo Jumbo can use his magic powers to transform Banjo into various forms — including pumpkins, candles, termites, bees, octopi, walruses, washing machines crocodiles, and even tanks and dinosaurs — provided Banjo and Kazooie bring him Mumbo Tokens.
  • Banjo-Tooie: Mumbo Jumbo gets Promoted to Playable here, and the magic he uses in Terrydactland allows him to embiggen a scrawny Triceratops child at his mother's behest. Meanwhile, the role of "shaman who transforms Banjo and Kazooie" has been taken by Humba Wumba.
• Bane the Druid of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. As the Guardian of the Pillar of Nature, he has the power to influence nature in various ways, from directing the minds of animals to controlling plants. However, ever since Nupraptor drove his fellow Guardians mad, Bane has become obsessed with distorting nature, and such, uses his ability to transform the world around him in various ways. In his escalating madness, he's teamed up with Dejoule the Energist and Anarcrothe the Alchemist to create Dark Eden, and under his influence, the area's magical field transforms anyone in its path into hideous mutants — except, of course, for vampires. Furthermore, because Kain's immune to all Bane's usual tricks, his sole tactic in the boss battle is to transform the ground beneath his feet into water, a deadly ability when used against Kain.
• In Fallout 3, the "sorcerer-scientist" Dr. Stanislaus Braun has given himself administrator privileges over the Tranquillity Lane simulation, making him essentially a virtual reality god. However, having gotten bored with doing all the work himself, he most commonly uses this ability to transform his victims so they can better fit in with the sick games he has you perform. Among other things, he regresses you to childhood, is implied to have regressed and aged residents throughout the neighbourhood, has turned James into a dog, and even transforms Timmy into a garden gnome. For added horror, it's not known if any of the residents still retain their original appearance after two hundred years of imprisonment in the simulation — and wouldn't be able to tell you anyway, as Braun has complete control over their memories as well.
• During the Guild Wars holiday events (Halloween, Wintersday, and Canthan New Year), there will always be an NPC that transforms players into a relevant disguise (Mad King Thorn for Halloween, Grenth or Dwayna for Wintersday). In-universe this is not a common ability and is usually only accomplished through drinking tonics. The ability of these NPCs to transform players is representative of their power.
• In League of Legends, Lulu the Fae Sorceress has a major spell called "Whimsy", which gives her the ability to temporarily "polymorph" enemies into a harmless critter (usually a squirrel, occasionally also penguins or cats depending on the cosmetic skin she uses) where they can still move around, but are completely incapable of attacking or using their abilities. Her ultimate ability, "Wild Growth", also causes herself or an ally to rapidly grow in size, additionally increasing their health and allowing them to go on disruptive rampages.
• Yooka-Laylee, the Spiritual Successor to the above-mentioned Banjo-Kazooie, has Dr. Puzz, who serves as Yooka Laylee's version of Mumbo Jumbo. To activate her D.N.Ray, the titular duo has to find a Mollycool in each world.

Webcomics

• Fillbert: An "inexplicable villainous transformation egg" who can transform others shows up.

Western Animation

• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Morpholomew (Experiment 316) is a little red blob-like alien who can change an organism's appearance to that of someone else's, the only limits being that he must have seen the intended person or a visual depiction (like a photograph) of them before he can transform the organism and his target's voice is unaffected. Lilo uses him to change into her crush Keoni Jameson and then a visiting Jake Long (in his human form) to enter a skateboarding competition, but as she learns the hard way, she does not gain their skateboarding skills and she needs Morpholomew to change back into her normal form (as he gets captured by Gantu).

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