Basic Trope: The shapeshifter transforms back to true form upon death.
Straight: Maxine, the werewolf, gets shot in the head with a silver bullet and turns to her human form upon death.
Exaggerated: Maxine, which as been transformed into a grotesque, incomprehensible and massive bio-weapon is finally destroyed by the army with a tactical mini-nuke. However, as her mutated parts crumble away, her lifeless, but cleansed of corruption, human body emerges from it without a single scratch.
Downplayed: Maxine, the vampire, loses her fangs, her skin recovers her tone and her previously pitch-black hair returns to her original color after her heart is impaled by a stake.
Justified: Maxine's transformation is a psychoactive power; once her brain functions ceased, she could no longer sustain the change.
Inverted: Maxine, the shapeshifter, gets shot in the head and starts to erratically change shapes before dying as an amorphous amalgamation of all the forms she even took.
Subverted:
When Maxine drops dead, for a moment it looks as if she were returning to her human form, but the process suddenly reverses and she dies as a full werewolf.
Maxine dies on a transitory form between human and werewolf.
Double Subverted: ...However, when the doctors check back her body to perform the autopsy, she has finally reverted to her human form.
Parodied: After AdonisNarcissus dies by tripping with a banana peel, all the plastic surgeries and the bodybuilding he did on himself starts to undo, revealing the goofy appearance he had before becoming a film super-star.
Zig Zagged: whether or not a werewolf returns to their original human shape is completely random. In fact, some shape shift into human or animal shapes that aren't theirs once dead!
Averted: Maxine gets shot in the head with a silver bullet and dies in her werewolf form.
Enforced:
The actress that played Maxine under the werewolf makeup wanted to show her real face at least once, so that fans could recognize her to ask her for autographs and stuff.
The authors wanted it to be harder for the heroes to reveal that werewolves are real.
Alternatively, this is in place as a plausible reason to maintain the in-univer Masquerade.
Invoked: The anti-werewolf weapons work by attacking the anomalous cells, effectively destroying the mutation but killing the subject in the process. This is useful to identify those carrying the virus in order to find the source.
Exploited: Maxine was mode locked into her werewolf form as result of a powerful curse/virus/etc. However, now that her body has reverted to her original state, her friends can try to revive her as a human.
Defied: Maxine doesn't want her killers to find out her human identity, because that would compromise the safety of her werewolf comrades; so she either rigs her body to be obliterated as she dies or with her last strength she finds an impromptu way to destroy it.
Discussed: "Killing Maxine won't be the hard part. That'll come later, when we help her family bury her human corpse."
Conversed: "Wait, if killing a werewolf turns them human, how come The Hunter has werewolf skull trophies?"
Deconstructed: That Maxine turned human represents the evil not of lycanthropy, but of Mina, The Hunter who killed her. Regardless of whether Maxine herself was evil or wanted to be killed to protect others, Mina has committed murder and is just as much a killer as the beast she slew. Potentially a worse one. Furthermore, a human cropse means she's now a wanted fugitive.
Reconstructed: As Mina suffers a Heroic BSOD over Maxine's dying and reverting body, she manages to comfort Mina by revealing that the reason she is turning human is that she is dying at peace. She can rest easy because Mina stopped her from killing others, and since the curse of the werewolf has no hold over a peaceful spirit she expelled it. Armed with this knowledge, Mina stops crying and will try to cure other werewolves she encounters first.
Plotted A Good Waste: Prior to Maxine's death, the characters thought that the metamorphosis into werewolf was irreversible, but this phenomenon indicated there must be a way to undo it, therefor, they could find a cure for their transformed comrades.
