History Main / TurningBackHuman

-->--''Human Again'', ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast''

This describes an event where someone, who is something that is not... themselves (be it a case of ForcedTransformation, TakenForGranite, etc), is turned back into their original form.

The methods often involve reversing their conditions, e.g if he's cursed then there would be a CurseEscapeClause, if he touched GreenRocks then it either must be destroyed/removed or neutralized in some ways; sometimes, however, there might be attempts to get around this instead (e.g a human-turned-insect or other small creature may take a MobileSuitHuman that looks like him, or a petrified person can have its soul extracted and put in a new body). Effectively, a ResetButton for said character's form.

Supertrope to ThisWasHisTrueForm when a death or grievous injury is the trigger. Compare DyingAsYourself when death brings their mind back. Compare also BecomeARealBoy and HumanityEnsues when a natural non-human becomes a human. Compare BackFromTheDead if they turn back from death. See SelfPerceptionShapeshifting if they just needed to see themselves as human.

* In the "Waking the Dragons" saga of ''Anime/YuGiOh'', it's revealed that the three legendary dragons were actually warriors that were cursed by Dartz. During the climatic battle with Dartz, the pharaoh manages to set them free.
* Turniphead, the scarecrow from ''Anime/HowlsMovingCastle'' [[spoiler:is the cursed prince of the neighboring kingdom. He gains back his human form thanks to Sophie's kiss.]]
* Creator/HayaoMiyazaki's ''Anime/SpiritedAway'' has Chihiro's parents dine upon food meant for ethereal guests of Madame Yubaba's spa. Their punishment for this affront is being transformed into swine. Madame Yubaba later gives Chihiro the opportunity to restore her parents, if she can correctly identify them out of a pen of twelve. The attentive and judicious Chihiro succeeds, effectively pressing the ResetButton on her family's adventures in the SpiritWorld.

* Ben Grimm of the ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' had long ago resigned himself to being "The Thing." However, after spending some time on the alien battle-world in Marvel Comics' ''ComicBook/SecretWars1984'', Ben's fondest wish comes true: he loses his orange-rock body and becomes a regular human again. [[AlwaysNeedWhatYouGaveUp Unfortunately, the change comes at terrible time, when there are villains galore that need clobberin']].
* Creator/DCComics just had an inverted Covergence in which Metamorpho had been HappilyMarried to his true love, only to have his powers return while they were getting snuggly in the shower. He was thrilled to be human again, and transforming back meant part of him was phosphorous which immediately burned his wife. To her credit, though, she didn't angst, and immediately reassured him she loved him.

* The classic fairy tale ''Literature/TheFrogPrince'' ends with the titular prince turning back into a human.
* In ''Literature/SnowWhiteAndRoseRed,'' the talking bear whom the girls had befriended turns back into a prince when he kills the dwarf who cursed him.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/BlueSky'' eventually reveals that [[spoiler:Wheatley]] was a normal person, one who regains their body at the end of the story.

* At the end of ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'', both Tiana and Naveen turn back into humans when the spell that turned them into frogs is broken.
* In Disney's ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'', not only the Beast, but also his servants are cursed - the latter shapeshifted into household objects. At the end of the movie, all of them turn back into humans.

* At the end of ''WesternAnimation/{{Brave}}'', [[spoiler: Queen Elinor and the triplets]], turned into bears by the witch's spell, turn back into humans. [[spoiler: Mor'du on the other hand, while he WasOnceAMan, dies, and we see his human spirit get released from his body and turn into a will-o'-wisp.]]
* Once the evil sea witch Ursula from Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'' is defeated, the weed-people that occupy the entranceway to her lair transform back into merman / mermaid form and swim away. This change also applies to the reduced King Triton, who restores to normal, complete with crown and trident.
* Subverted at the end of ''WesternAnimation/BrotherBear'' where Kenai [[IChooseToStay decides to become a bear again to look after Koda]].
* Downplayed with Susan Murphy from the Creator/DreamWorksAnimation film ''WesternAnimation/MonstersVsAliens'' starts her day as a human bride-to-be, until a strange meteor crashes near the chapel, exposing Susan to [[GreenRocks quantonium]]. Shortly thereafter, Susan grows to giant size, terrorizing the wedding party. The villain captures Susan, and drains the quantonium from her body, which restores her to normal. However, Susan has gained confidence in herself, so she confronts the villain, and succeeds in regaining the quantonium, and her enormous size with it, which inverts this trope.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', in the climax, Mei, her family and friends have to work together to turn her mother back human and reseal her mother's panda spirit.

* In ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanTheCurseOfTheBlackPearl'', Jack's former crew suffers the curse of Cortez, being undead pirates that are skeletons in moonlight. Their goal in the movie is to end the curse and regain their humanity, which they do get back...right during a battle where their immortality was giving them an edge.
* ''Film/SinbadAndTheEyeOfTheTiger.'' Near the beginning Prince Kassim is changed into a baboon by a curse. He is eventually returned to normal through ancient magic.

* Creator/JimHenson's ''Film/TheDarkCrystal'' recounts how the Ur-skeks, in their arrogance, split off a shard of the great crystal for study. This caused them to diverge into two separate races: the gentle Mystics and the sinister Skekses. In their journey to the Skekses' stronghold, Jen and Kira encounter an abandoned temple that chronicles in pictographs that fateful day. They were able to reattach the missing shard onto the darkened main crystal, which then merged the surviving Mystics with their counterpart Skekses. The result was the Ur-skeks being restored, after a thousand years of being divergent beings.
* ''Film/WeirdScience'': Because Chet was such a {{jerkass}} to his kid brother Wyatt, Lisa transforms him into a dung heap with eyes and a mouth. However, before she vanishes, Lisa undoes all the damage she's done, including restoring the now-penitent Chet to normal.

* Deliberately averted in ''Literature/TheWitches''; [[spoiler: the protagonist doesn't have any way to turn back after the [[BigBad Grand High Witch]] is defeated, and will die of old age in 9 years thanks to his slightly boosted mouse lifespan]]. Played straight in [[Film/TheWitches1990 the 1990 film adaptation]], which apparently [[DisownedAdaptation upset]] Creator/RoaldDahl.

** [[spoiler: Peter Pettigrew]] spends the first two books and the majority of the third in the form of [[spoiler: Scabbers, Ron's pet rat]]. He is forced to turn back into human at the end of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'', and remains human for the rest of the books. In this rare example, the shapeshifting is [[VoluntaryShapeshifting absolutely voluntary]] rather than ForcedTransformation; the character just stays in animal form to hide from the public.

* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', Oreg was MadeASlave and ''also'' made the GeniusLoci of castle Hurog. After [[spoiler: Ward kills his fake-body]] he is no longer bound to the castle [[spoiler: and can shapeshift into a dragon again. As he's quarter-dragon, this is his true form.]] Technically, he is able to materialize a human body before, but it lacks some features, like, [[CannotSelfTerminate being able to commit suicide]]
%%* TheNutCracker.
* In ''Literature/OzmaOfOz'' the Nome King has turned the Royal Family of Ev into knickknacks and Ozma, Dorothy and the rest of the Oz group have a challenge: If they can find the right ones the Evans will be restored, but if they don't find any of the right ones then they themselves will be transformed forever. Billina the hen manages to learn the secret via ExactEavesdropping: The Ev family are all purple.
* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'':
** ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'': a bunch of statues are seen; but they're not statues, they're people/fauns/dwarfs/giants/etc. that the White Witch has turned to stone. Late in the book they're de-stoned and become people/fauns/dwarfs/giants/etc. again, thanks to Aslan killing the witch.
** In ''Literature/TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader'' Eustace's greed turns him into a dragon. Once he has learned humbleness and getting along with others Aslan rips the scales off of him turning him back into a human.

* In ''Literature/AWizardOfEarthsea'' Ged spends too much time in the form of a hawk (and focused on nothing but survival), so he has to be turned back into human by his teacher and even then it takes a couple of days before his mind is back to normal.
* In ''Literature/{{Bisclavret}},'' the protagonist [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent turns into a wolf]] for three days each week; he takes off his clothes to change and regains human form by putting them back on. His wife takes this news badly, takes a lover and has him steal the clothes, trapping him for a year. The protagonist winds up as the oddly-tame pet of the local king who eventually figures out the truth and gets him turned back.
* In ''Literature/ThisIsNotAWerewolfStory,'' loosely based on ''Literature/{{Bisclavret}},'' Raul's mother has been {{Shapeshifter Mode Lock}}ed as a wolf for a few years, and Raul winds up in the same predicament for a few months. He regains human form when one of the perpetrators, [[spoiler:Vincent]], feels guilty and gives the stolen clothes back. His mom is still trapped when the story ends, though.
* PlayedWith in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}:'' one of the main characters, Tobias, gets {{Shapeshifter Mode Lock}}ed as a red-tailed hawk by staying in morph for more than two hours. Eventually, [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien the Ellimist]] repays a favor by giving him his morphing power back. This means that Tobias can take human form for two hours at a time, ''or'' do it permanently but then never morph again. It gives him something new to angst about, but at least alleviates his ongoing LossOfIdentity a tad.
** Elfangor, after getting trapped as [[spoiler:a human]], winds up regaining his original Andalite form, also thanks to the Ellimist. He didn't really ''want'' to, but did so in order to help protect the Earth.

* In ''Series/ForeverKnight'' this is Nick's goal. He hopes that if he saves enough people as a VampireDetective he'll regain his soul/humanity. [[spoiler:He fails, and commits suicide.]]

** The Shanshu Prophesy says that the Vampire with a Soul will die after saving the world - which is to say, after saving the world he'll be rewarded by becoming human again, and thus eventually die of old age.
** In an early episodes, the vampire Angel gets cured of being a vampire and has a romantic weekend with Buffy. Then he realizes that as a regular human he can't fight the forces of darkness, so he asks for his transformation to be reversed (and nobody but him remembers it).

** The character of Amy spent a couple of seasons as a rat after a magic misfire before eventually regaining human form. Her somewhat hedonistic behaviour after return to humanity is probably best blamed on her time lost as the rat.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger''. Frog turns back into a human in the ending cinematic, though how is not explained (another ending links it to the death of the OptionalPartyMember responsible for the curse, but it happens whether or not you killed him).
* In ''VideoGame/StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm'', Sarah Kerrigan is de-infested of the Zerg. Subverted in that she re-infests herself right back to take control of the Zerg Swarm again, although she manages to hold on to some of her humanity this time around.

* For a canon ''Mario'' example, each world of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' has its respective king transformed into one of the game's creatures by Bowser and the Koopalings. Retrieving their power wand from a Koopaling will allow them to return to normal and [[YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle give you a letter from the Princess.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'':
** For a [[AmbiguouslyHuman given definition of "Human"]], you can turn Zombified Villagers back to their human selves via dousing them with a Splash Potion of Weakness followed by feeding them a golden apple, then waiting for a few minutes.
** The short video ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgO5hKOA3rI Human Instead]]'' is [[DemBones a skeleton]] singing about how much he wishes he was a living human again. At the end, a god appears and grants his wish, bringing him back to life... [[ShootTheShaggyDog and he is promptly shot dead by another skeleton]].
* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' DLC ''Dawnguard'', it is possible to convince Serana the FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire to seek a cure for her vampirism with careful dialogue choices (in which case she disappears after completing the DLC's main quest and returns a few days later as a human).
* In ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot3Warped'', if you get hit by the frog enemies in the medieval levels, the frog will kiss you, then turn into a prince.
* Played quite cynically in the ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' series: The {{Player Character}}s start off as Hollow (i.e. zombies) but by stealing the living humans' humanities (which are an actual item in the games), can restore themselves to almost-human form. Nonetheless, since the Undead Curse is still on them, they revert back to the Hollow form upon being killed and need to steal more humanities to revert again as often as they like. Oh, and just to up the cynicism, humanities are most commonly found on rat corpses (because of all the human corpses they've eaten).

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* In ''WebOriginal/LinkAndMage'' following a Witch's defeat those turned into their Familiars turn back to normal. This also applies to Witches if they're exorcised by a Link Striker.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' episode "Betty",[[spoiler:the magic in the Ice King's crown fails, letting him regain the mind of Simon. Unfortunately, without the magic, Simon [[NoImmortalInertia begins to age]], so by the end of the episode he's turned into the Ice King again. His fiance Betty, vows to find a way to save him...]]

* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible''. Gill Moss was a boy who became a fish-like mutant after swimming in a polluted lake. After being cured, he realized he liked the power that came with his mutation and decided to become a mutant again.
In ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', [[spoiler:Eda ends up being turned into the Owl Beast when she's fully consumed by her curse during the penultimate episode of season 1, but Lilith splits the curse with her an episode later. She's still cursed, but at the very least she's back to her original witch form and the elixirs she uses to keep it under control are working again.]]

Supertrope to ThisWasHisTrueForm when a death or grievous injury is the trigger. Compare DyingAsYourself when death brings their mind back. Compare also BecomeARealBoy and HumanityEnsues when a natural non-human becomes a human. Compare BackFromTheDead if they turn back from death. See SelfPerceptionShapeshifting if they just needed to stop seeing themselves as inhuman.

Supertrope to ThisWasHisTrueForm when a death or grievous injury is the trigger. Compare DyingAsYourself when death brings their mind back. Compare also BecomeARealBoy and HumanityEnsues when a natural non-human becomes a human. Compare BackFromTheDead if they turn back from death.

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* In ''WebOriginal/BusterGirls'', after a Heartless is beaten, it and all its minions revert back to human.

This describes an event where someone, who is something that is not... themselves (be it a case of ForcedTransformation, TakenForGranite etc), is turned back into their original form.

* Played quite cynically in the ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' series: The {{Player Character}}s start off as Hollow (i.e. zombies) but by stealing the living humans' humanities (which are an actual item in the games), can restore themselves to almost-human form. Nonetheless, since the Undead Curse is still on them, they revert back to the Hollow form upon being killed and need to steal more humanities to revert again as often as they like. Oh, and just to up the cynicism, humanities are most commonly found on rat corpses.

* Creator/ScottAdams' ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' for Monday 1 March 2010 has Dilbert and Asok take over Victor's project. The peculiar device transforms Asok into a goat-head minotaur. Wednesday's strip has Alice repeatedly smack Asok in the head for two hours until he's part dolphin. "Dolphin is close. One more should do it."

* In Disney's AnimatedAdaptation of ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'', not only the Beast, but also his servants are cursed - the latter shapeshifted into household objects. At the end of the movie, all of them turn back into humans.

* Downplayed with Susan Murphy from Creator/DreamWorks' ''WesternAnimation/MonstersVsAliens'' starts her day as a human bride-to-be, until a strange meteor crashes near the chapel, exposing Susan to [[GreenRocks quantonium]]. Shortly thereafter, Susan grows to giant size, terrorizing the wedding party. The villain captures Susan, and drains the quantonium from her body, which restores her to normal. However, Susan has gained confidence in herself, so she confronts the villain, and succeeds in regaining the quantonium, and her enormous size with it, which inverts this trope.

Supertrope to ThisWasHisTrueForm when a death or grievous injury is the trigger. Compare DyingAsYourself when death brings their mind back. Compare also PinocchioSyndrome and HumanityEnsues when a natural non-human becomes a human. Compare BackFromTheDead if they turn back from death.

This describes an event where someone, who is something that is not... themselves (be it a case of BalefulPolymorph, TakenForGranite etc), is turned back into their original form.

** [[spoiler: Peter Pettigrew]] spends the first two books and the majority of the third in the form of [[spoiler: Scabbers, Ron's pet rat]]. He is forced to turn back into human at the end of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'', and remains human for the rest of the books. In this rare example, the shapeshifting is [[VoluntaryShapeshifting absolutely voluntary]] rather than BalefulPolymorph; the character just stays in animal form to hide from the public.

* In ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'': [[spoiler:Three of the villains: Sandman, Lizard and Electro have been turned into non-human beings but are restored to their human condition in the course of the film.]]

* In ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome: [[spoiler:Three of the villains: Sandman, Lizard and Electro have been turned into non-human beings but are restored to their human condition in the course of the film.]]

* In ''Film/Spider-ManNoWayHome: [[spoiler:Three of the villains: Sandman, Lizard and Electro have been turned into non-human beings but are restored to their human condition in the course of the film.]]

* Inverted in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' when Odo is made human as a punishment from the Founders, and hates it for half a season before getting his {{Shapeshifting}} form back.