Morphic Resonance / Video Games

• Altered Beast (2005): Luke keeps his cross-shaped scar in all his forms except the UWH.
• Ao Oni: In Version 6 onward, your friends will transform into an Oni if they are killed... but retain their human hairstyle.
• Banjo-Kazooie: Banjo always has his yellow shorts and blue backpack.
• Bayonetta:
  • The titular character can transform into a Panther, a Crow, a swarm of Bats, or a giant Snake, all of which keep a bit of morphic resonance with her normal appearance, usually through the shared color of black and similar accessories. These even change between games, with her transformations being more black and red in the first game, while in the sequel they are black and blue, following her new color scheme. Unlockable characters keep this same motif going, with Jeanne's transformations all being red, Rosa's all being dark like her daughter's but more regal-looking, and Balder's being white and gold, all similar to their default appearances.
  • In the first game, there are one species of angels called Joy, which act as a Mirror Boss to Bayonetta right down to copying her appearance if they choose to. They actually do this in an attempt to trick Cereza into following them; however, once the real Bayonetta steps in, it's obvious the Joys suffer one crucial bit of Morphic Resonance, the glowing Holy Halo above their head.
• The Binding of Isaac: The True Final Boss for the Afterbirth+ DLC, Delirium, is a prolific shapeshifter, but always keeps his bone-white coloring and melted-looking mouth no matter the form he takes, which helps distinguish him from the enemies he summons. Most of his forms also keep his yellow eyes, though their location and quantity can vary wildly.
• Breath of Fire III: The status effect Ovum turns the affected into an egg. Your party members keep their primary color scheme as eggs (and, in weretiger Rei's case, his tail).
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: When Alucard uses his bat transformation, the wings match the color of his currently equipped cape (including if said cape is translucent).
• Catherine: All the characters that appeared in both the Nightmare and Stray Sheep retained elements of their design in the Nightmare, despite being sheep. Even Vincent, although we don't see him as a Sheep, is referenced to be a sheep with a fro.
• The Dead Case: Ghosts' spiritual forms are influenced by how they died, so their forms give a clue as to the circumstances of their deaths.
  • The hospital ghost died due to doctor error, likely being poisoned by the wrong drugs. His form is that of a green, dripping, humanoid blob.
  • The church ghost was killed in a fire, and appears as a woman formed entirely from raging flames.
  • The schoolyard ghost hanged herself after her daughter died of SIDS. Since she constantly talks about how sad she was, her watery appearance is likely due to constantly shedding tears.
  • The protagonist was shot in the head. His form is bloody and he's missing an eye, suggesting that's where he was shot.
  • The library ghost is a former police detective that was forced to quit due to health problems. He died from heart failure, so his spiritual form is mostly unmarred.
• Diablo III: The Demon Lord Belial appears at several points disguised as a human,Hakan the child-emperor of Caldeum. As part of this disguise, he appears to be wearing an oddly shaped and ornate hat that mimics the horns of his true form.
• EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: When Blackberry transforms herself into a mouse, either as her form of combat dodging or for infiltration, she is exactly a mouse in size and shape except her fur is dark blue like her normal hair. As shown in her dialogue portrait while in mouse form, she even keeps mouse-sized versions of her hair decorations.
• Final Fantasy: A rare occurrence:
  • Final Fantasy IX: Both of Regent Cid's Forced Transformation-induced forms — an oglop and a frog — retain his characteristic crescent-shaped moustache.
  • In the remake of Final Fantasy IV — characters turned into frogs or pigs will bear a resemblance to their original selves. In the original, you just turn into a generic looking pig/frog/tiny person.
  • In World of Final Fantasy, Lann and Reynn meet distressed ribbiting toad with this trait. It has grey skin, a distinctive tuft of blond hair, and a bandana — an early tip-off that it's actually Snow when you cure him of his Toad status shortly afterward, since they have the same color palette and bandana.
• During the Shannon boss fight in God Hand, Shannon can turn Gene into a chihuahua with one attack. His fur keeps the skull pattern from his jacket.
• The Good Life: Naomi's dog and cat forms translate her blonde hair into golden fur and keep her green eyes as well as the Cool Shades she wears on her head.
• Harvest Moon: Light of Hope: The blue-haired Harvest Goddess can turn into a Blue Bird at will.
• Shows up in the Kingdom Hearts series from time to time.
  • In the first game, Donald Duck and Goofy change into a half-octopus (cecaelia) and sea-turtle respectively in the Atlantica level, though they still have their distinctive faces.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, in addition to the Atlantica level, there's also the Pride Lands level. Donald is a bird, and Goofy is a tortoise, both with their own faces. Sora is also transformed for the Pride Lands level; he's a lion cub, with his blue eyes, crown pendant, and distinctive Anime Hair.
  • Furthermore, abuse of his Super Mode can randomly transform Sora into a Heartless version of himself, completely black and with glowing eyes. Which is funny because he actually became a Heartless in the first game, and he looked like a small basic enemy indistinguishable from any other Heartless.
• In King's Quest VI, the genie appears throughout the game, spying on or trying to trick Alexander. His glinting Supernatural Gold Eyes are always a dead giveaway.
• League of Legends: Champion Nidalee retains the green gem on forehead whether in human or cougar form. Additionally, the painted stripes on her human body resemble the natural ones in her beast form.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Early on, you could encounter a "bully and his friend" within the Dark World. The bully's friend takes on a form of a spherical creature due to him "not being able to make up his mind". By sheer coincidence, his human form face happens to be just as round.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: When in a mask transformation, Link always has his green hat, although it becomes the size of his entire body in Deku form for some reason, and in Zora form it's the tail-like head extension colored green.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Link retains his blue eyes and earrings in his wolf form.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Zelda's Light Dragon form has similar green eyes and blonde hair. And Ganondorf's Demon Dragon form shares his red hair, Hellish Pupils, and Beard of Evil.
• Gandrayda always has the same pink spark effects left behind no matter what she turns into in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, although this is pretty easy for her to hide when she actually cares about blending in.
• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe: Toadette's Peachette form retains her Girlish Pigtails, gray eyes, mushroom-like spots on her dress, and brown shoes despite otherwise looking just like Princess Peach. The artwork◊ showing the before and after of the transformation even gives her the exact same pose in both forms.
• Nobody Saves the World: No matter what form Nobody takes, that form always has black, hollow eyes.
• Ōkami: The Oina tribe can shapeshift to and from wolf or dog forms. They all wear masks in their humanoid forms, while their canine forms have faces closely resembling those masks as well as fur coats the same color as their clothes.
• Paper Mario: The Origami King: Olivia can transform into any of the four Vellumentals after Mario defeats them. Her versions of the Vellumentals have her eyes (the originals don't have eyes at all) and her crown. Olly does the same thing with his Vellumental transformations, which all share his purple color, eyes, crown, and bangs.
• Plants vs. Zombies: The Imitater will turn into any non-upgrade plant, but will stay in grayscale after transformation.
• Pokémon:
  • At least in early generations, any Ditto who used Transform would become a perfect copy of the enemy sprite, but would retain its purple palette.
  • As in the anime, the Ditto in Pokémon Snap also have a problem with their faces not changing. In fact, it's the only way to tell them from normal Bulbasaur (which they will register as) until you hit them with a Pester Ball to make them change back.
    • The Clefairy that appeared for Bonus Rounds on the Slot Machines in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl occasionally had a similar Ditto face.
    • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, one of the side stories involves a Ditto who is attempting to protect a Time Gear. In doing so, it poses as a Bellossom and a Sentret, and in both cases it retains the traditional Ditto face in its character images.
• In Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, one of the earlier "miracles" by the Masked Gentleman had him turning random townspeople into horses, with the victims retaining a few items of clothing. In reality, this was just an invoked trope. The Masked Gentlemen had accomplices hidden in the crowd, who (whilst the crowd were distracted) slipped away, replaced by horses (wearing the same clothing items) which were sent out from their hiding places in alleyways, tricking people into thinking that a transformation had occurred.
• In Puyo Puyo, apart from the crown and medallion he wears in his two forms, several physical traits of the Ocean Prince's fishy form match his appearance as a human: the color pattern of his fishy form's underbelly matches with the clothes he wears, his limbs are of the same color as his gloves, and they have the same Exotic Eye Designs.
• In Scaler, after being turned into a lizard, Scaler retains the blue-and-yellow colour scheme of his clothes, and also a sort of scaly, spiky version of his blonde hair. Likewise, when transformed into other types of lizard-y creatures, Scaler still keeps a blue-and-yellow colour scheme.
• Shantae: Shantae can transform into several animals and all of them have something in common with her human form. All of them have her normal eyes and her tiara, the monkey shares her hair color, and the mermaid and spider have her body shape.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • You can always anticipate who "Louis Cypher" will be because he (or she, as the case may be) will always have intensely golden hair and blue eyes, regardless of the setting of the game. Except Shin Megami Tensei IV. And in all but one case, he will also have long hair. Especially notable in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, where he assumes two different forms to mess with you.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, after Jimenez fuses with Bugaboo, the resulting half-demon looks exactly like half-Jimenez, half Bugaboo, with half of the latter's face acting as a mask to cover Jimenez'. This is a very unique transformation because fused demons always result in a completely different kind of demon.
  • In Persona 3, the Ultimate Persona of the Death Arcana, Thanatos, wears a mask that is like a highly stylized version of the Nyx Avatar's head, as both are basically the same being. Additionally, when fusing Thanatos and Orpheus, the resulting Messiah shares traits from both, retaining Orpheus's facial features but carrying Thanatos's coffins.
  • In Persona 4, most of the Personas earned by the protagonists look like the Shadows they originally were, with minor differences to make them less nightmarish and more heroic, not to mention generally more humanoid. Amusingly, although Take-Mikazuchi looks little like Shadow Kanji, he DOES have the skull-and-bones-on-black motif that Kanji's clothes have.
  • Persona 5:
    • Morgana shares his fur color and patterns between his humanoid and house cat forms. Less noticeably, his house cat collar is the same yellow as the bandana he wears in his other form.
    • When party members are turned into mice via either a status effect or a dungeon gimmick, they retain their masks and their eye colors.
  • In Nocturne, Noah, the demonic sponsor for Isamu's Reason, eventually grows a face like Isamu's. And his HAT.
• Skullgirls: Double's attacks generally involve her transforming into another character and using one of their attacks. No matter what form she takes, she retains the color palette that the player selected.
• Splatoon: The protagonists are the Inklings (and later, the Octolings), characters who can shift between humanoid form and squid/octopus forms. Their humanoid form shares several elements with their cephalopod forms, including "hair" that looks like tentacles, large Pointy Ears that look like squid fins (or large round ears resembling dumbo octopus fins for the Octolings), and all their limbs being fully represented in their humanoid forms.
• Super Mario Galaxy: Boo Mario or Luigi both keep their respective hats and mustaches of their true human form. The star-shaped ears of the Lumas' star bunny form keep the same coloring as the body of the Lumas' true form.
• Super Mario Odyssey: Anything that Mario manages to Capture with his hat will gain Mario's cap (regardless of what his current hat is), his mustache and blue eyes. This ranges from Goombas to tanks and even realistic-looking dinosaurs.
• Temtem: Transformed Mimit keep their cyan (or pink, if Luma) colour scheme and resemble holograms.
• Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter: In the TurboGrafx-16 CD version, Adol retains his red hair after Dalles turns him into a monster.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: The Voluntary Shapeshifter Dudu is missing an eye, and as a result every form he takes also has a closed eye with a scar over it.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Druids: Elves keep their long eyebrows and Pointy Ears (even if this makes their bird forms rather silly-looking), and Tauren keep their horns. In Cataclysm, with the addition of Troll and Worgen druids, Trolls keep their tusks and mohawks, while Worgen's forms have glowing eyes and manes.
  • Worgen in general play this trope straight. Every aspect of a worgen's human form has an equivalent in worgen form. For example, darker skin in human form results in darker fur in worgen form; braided hair in human form equals braided hair in worgen form, and so on.
  • Also, Alexstrasza still has her horns, glowing eyes, and necklace in humanoid form as in her dragon form, along with a wing-like cape. Her sister Ysera gets similar treatment. Black dragons also always have humanoid form as humans or elves with black hair.
• While not a "transformation" in the traditional sense, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has the Face Mechons, which are revealed to be mechs piloted by brainwashed and cybernetically altered Homs. They are given weaponized appendages similar to the tools or weapons they used before being turned into Faces. Thus, Mumkhar has his metal claws, Xord has his smithing hammer, Fiora has her twin blades, and Gadolt has his gun. A more traditional example would be the Telethia; any High Entia turned into one sports frills, appendages, and other features resembling the clothing and armor they wore before their transformation.
• Yooka-Laylee: All of the transformations keep the duo's green and purple color scheme, and every one except the piranha transformation keeps Yooka's frills.
• Yoshi's Island: The vehicles are all Yoshi-colored and resemble Yoshi's face with a few vehicular embellishments.

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