Morphic Resonance / Webcomics

• Awful Hospital:
  • Jay◊, Chip◊, and Crash◊ are all subjected to a "Q-36 Procedure", which swaps their "cores" (essentially, their consciousnesses) between bodies; Jay is placed in Chip's body, and Chip in Crash's.^note Crash's core was placed in a pocket dimension where he was neither alive nor dead, and Jay's body was left empty. Jay-as-Chip◊ ('Joe') has Jay's lanky build and blue coloration, while Chip-as-Crash◊'s computerized head retains Chip's coffee-mug head and apron.
  • You can always tell which Slobs used to be instances of Fern by the fact that, no matter how severely they mutate, they'll always◊ retain her iconic hairstyle. For some reason, though, that doesn't seem to be the case for Jayslobs.
• Each of the Mons in But I'm a Cat Person has a few visual traits that stay consistent across all human and animal forms, if only for the convenience of the reader. Cybele's pink eyes, Patrick's brown-and-blond hair/fur, Reseda's sharp teeth and claws, and so on.
• Whenever Myan transforms in Cat Nine, she gets to keep her magic collar, her facial markings and her eye and hair color.
• In Charby the Vampirate Tony does this on purpose seeing as the yellow eyes with split slit pupils he maintains across all of his transformations are not what his eyes actually look like when he's not transforming them. His tarnkappe on the other hand will always be on him when he transforms as he can't do so without it.
• In DHS Comix, shape shifters often to have a similar colour scheme in whatever form they take, and always have to same markings in each form.
• In El Goonish Shive, the artist Dan Shive often draws characters transformed into animals or anthropomorphic shapes (sometimes pertaining to the storyline and sometimes not), but they always retain their original hairstyles. Often, the fur will be the same color as their hair. As for Grace, well, her use of this trope is apparently down to the strange synergy of her mixed Uryuom and Lespuko genes, which enable her to instinctively blend the most desirable features of all her available forms — such as maintaining the expressiveness and speech-ability of a human face while in an animal-form.
• Evilish features a character that can change into almost anything, but will always keep triangular facial markings under his eyes.
• FAITH (Miyatoriaka) is a Pokémon fan comic where Misty is turned into a Pikachu. She keeps her eyes and hairstyle, but Ash still doesn't notice the resemblance (unlike Gary).
• In Grrl Power, Dabbler the Succubus can take many appearances thanks to her glamour, but she tends to keep her blue eye and green eye.
• In Gunnerkrigg Court, when the Kershaws undergo a Metamorphosis into birds, the feathers on their heads mimic the hairstyles they had as humans.
• The Handbook of Heroes: As seen for example in "Tournament Arc, Part 5/8", Druid can wild-shape, but she keeps her braided hair and color scheme whenever taking an animal form (or plant form), as well as a tell-tale green leaf on her head.
• In one of the more fantastical arcs of Housepets!, Thomas Milton gets turned into a camel for trying to take cursed gold out of the temple in the forest. His new form has a dark area along his snout that resembles his moustache.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Princess Voluptua's alien butterfly form retains her long red hair and has roughly the same silhouette as her human mask (except for the wings, of course).
• Inverted in The Last Days of FOXHOUND , where resident shapeshifter Decoy Octopus creates such perfect copies of whoever he's imitating that it's impossible to tell apart. The trope comes full circle when it's revealed that his image of himself is just a trenchcoat and fedora without anybody inside them.
• Last Res0rt has this enforced on Alice, sort of; she can't change the color of her eyes. This would be more of an issue if her eyes hadn't already changed into the same red-pupils-in-black "Dead Eyes" that every Djinn seems to have, but among the limited cast, it's trouble enough.
• Latchkey Kingdom: Bridget keeps her barcode-like stripes when she shapeshifts.
• Maliki:
  • Mnesic crystallisations physically mirror the cats they reincarnated from; for instance, LadyBird's clothes and hair bear the same spotted pattern as Lady's fur and both share the same yellow eyes and line mark on their cheeks, while ElectroCute's clothes sport the same stripes as Flèche's fur and they both have large blue pupils and a lightning-like mark under their eyes.
  • Fénimale can still be identified under her human form by her long red hair, her yellow and green eyes, and her plant-like green clothes.
  • In this strip, Fénimale and Maliki are transformed into pigeons, which still sport the same hair as they did before. Fénimale's loincloth also morphs into a collar with a similar pattern.
• In Murphy's Law, Tinder is a green dragon who takes a humanoid form, but he still has green hair, fangs and stunted wings, looking like a half-dragon. This is pointed out as unusual since a dragon's polymorph power is usually perfect, but Tinder is quite young and sucks at changing shape.
• Werewolves in Nightmarish lore retain their eyes and human hair in their full moon state, distinguishing them from regular wolves aside from their ability to walk on both four and two legs.
• NIMONA: Nimona the shapeshifter is a redhead, and thus about all her alternate forms have red or pink tones. She actually exploits it once by using a rat painted pink as a diversion.
• Also seen in The Order of the Stick, where shapeshifters keep their overall color scheme.
  • Like with Leeky Windstaff the druid using Wild Shape to turn into a bear. His skin color become the brown fur of the bear, except for the underbelly which is the same tan as his robe, his grey bread and hair reflect over the claws and fangs, and even the green of his holy symbol ends up as the bear's eye color.
  • Vaarsuvius the wizard, whether they shapechange voluntarily or are victim of a baleful polymorph, keep a pink and/or violet scheme, matching their hair and magical aura.
  • As for Sabine the succubus, when she takes various human forms, she tends to retain her black hair and dusky skin tone (as well as showing red eyes from time to time).
  • Bloodfeast the Extreme-inator is an Allosaurus; when turned into a lizard by a baleful polymorph spell, he's still stocky and with the same brown-and-red stripes.
  • When Durkon turns into a bat as a vampire, he's a bald, bearded bat.
• The Aces (animals turned human) in Pandect have morphic resonance with their animal forms and frequently increase the effect with their clothing and hairstyle.
• In Runewriters, whenever Sev shapeshifts his new form tends to have greenish skin or fur to match his hair.
• In The Sanity Circus, an Instruman's human form resembles their instrument form. Luther (the cello) has a long brown coat with a long black division down the centre and black embellishments on the sleeves resembling string instrument sound holes. Steven (the flute) has a long silver outfit with many band and buttons for the buttons on the flute. Their weapons resembles their instrumental form too — Luther has a bow cutlass, and Steven carries a shotgun. Steven's heterochromia in human form is apparently a carry-over from the damage he sustained as a flute before being brought to life.
• In Satan and Me, Satan and the Archangel Zadkiel both shapeshift fairly regularly. They both keep their eyes and eyebrows no matter what their form looks like, and Zadkiel always has a lip piercing.
• In The Selfish Beast and the Selfless Maiden, the Maiden is transformed into a dragon with red scales, the same colour as her hair when she was a human.
• Danny, the title character in Shifter, has eyes and a mouth that appear on whatever form he takes, identical to the eyes and mouth on his human face.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: A character seen in spirit-bird form retains the haircut they had as a human.
• Khut of Star Trip can change into any creature they can imagine, but they always have a horn in the middle of their head.
• Wilde Life:
  • Cliff is a ginger teenager who can turn into a red wolf.^note Get it? Seems to be common among the wolf-based animal people whom we see. Cliff also has Supernatural Gold Eyes that look more like a wolf's than an average human's.
  • Raven is capable of Human Shifting as well as human-to-animal, but each form looks basically the same, just with different ages and genders. He also has black hair, presumably to match his raven form.
• The students in Wizard School keep their glasses when shapeshifting to play Transmogritus.
• An unusual variation in The Wotch: there's a Running Gag that every time Jason is turned into a girl, he gets red hair (unless the spellcaster specifically wishes otherwise), even though his normal form has blond hair. For him, even transformations unrelated to gender-swapping tend to produce forms based on that redheaded female form rather than his normal form.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Copycat can copy the appearance, abilities, and languages of another person, but chooses to retain his purple eyes. Mao has used this to identify him and distinguish him from who he's previously copied.
• Genome-Heritor in Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game Gusto Fan Comic. When he shapeshifts into another number, he always wears the mask.

---