Basic Trope: When someone shapeshifts, the appearance of their new form has some traits in common with their normal one.
- Straight: A brown haired person, Alice, changes form into a dog that has brown fur.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice shapeshifts into a dog, but still has a human head.
- Alice's dog form has brown hair, except for the dog's torso, which is the same color and pattern as Alice's clothes, and also has an ear piercing and a tattoo just like Alice.
- Downplayed: Alice's dog form has a small scar under her jaw just like Alice's human form.
- Justified:
- The rule of the Functional Magic are that something has to remain the same for them to be able to return to their original form.
- Alice wants her allies to recognize her somehow while she's in dog form.
- Inverted: The Applied Phlebotinum is only supposed to change certain aspects like age, size, gender, but the new form has different unrelated features like eye or hair color anyway.
- Subverted: A black dog is shown which the audience or a character is lead to believe is a black-haired shapeshifter in disguise, but it was really a different blond shapeshifter.
- Double Subverted: The blond shapeshifter isn't a natural blond...
- Parodied: A shapeshifter's resemblance to his old form leads people to instantly figuring out that he's in disguise and telling him how bad his skills at shapeshifting are.
- Zig Zagged:
- The apparent identity of a werewolf is repeatedly shifted between someone with the same hair color and a different hair color.
- The shapeshifter's opponents seize upon an animal that resembles him, but that's just a coincidence. The real shapeshifter goes unnoticed.
- Averted: A red haired person is turned into a dog with black fur.
- Enforced: "You need to visually indicate to the audience that this is someone taking a different form. Give both forms the same scar."
- Lampshaded: After one person changes into an animal in front of another, the other person question why he is still wearing his hat (answer: because it's awesome).
- Invoked:
- Someone needs a black dog, so they find someone with black hair and turn them into a dog.
- Alice intentionally retains some traits of herself when shapeshifting so that her friends can recognize her.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Someone turns into an animal but deliberately makes sure every feature of it is completely different, so no one can tell it's them.
- Alternatively, they dye their hair before turning into a dog.
- Discussed: Two shapeshifters are talking to each other and mention how hard it is to avoid having no resemblance to their regular form.
- Conversed: One person asks another why people on TV that change shape always look slightly similar to their real form even if it's supposed to be a disguise.
- Deconstructed: The shapeshifter's enemies pick up on the fact that his hair color always remains the same. Since the shapeshifter has green hair, he sticks out like a sore thumb, no matter what form he takes. The shapeshifter is tragically gunned down.
- Reconstructed:
Oddly enough, the
Morphic Resonance page
looks like an ordinary TV Tropes page even when transformed.
