Of all the Ancient Artifacts, be they good, bad, deadly, empowering, dominating, or just plain attractive, one of the most unusual and versatile variants involves mysterious objects with the power to transform or mutate the user.
Devices such as these can appear in a huge variety of shapes, sizes, durations, and effects: they can be thimble-sized medallions, medium-sized books, full-body cloaks, life-size statues, and machines the size of buildings. They can be always active, or they might need someone to go looking for an on switch, perform a special ritual, or even put some fuel in the tank.
The effects can be seen immediately, or they can take hours, days, months, or even years for the transformation to be completed. They can make the user younger, older, bigger, smaller, change their sex, change their species, alter their evolutionary advancement, make them immortal, make them intangible, change the ownership of their body, and sometimes inflict even weirder transformations.
However, they all sport a few common ground rules:
- They can't be easily controlled. These aren't benevolent user-friendly Transformation Trinkets or Transformation Rays. Either the artifact is always active, has a will of its own, compels people to use it, is prone to errors that make it act unpredictably, or is missing an instruction manual so that the users don't know how to control it... and in some cases, a character with no knowledge of the rules might even be tricked into using it by someone who does know the instructions.
- They can't be consumed or exhausted. While mystic liquids and other substances may be emitted or even enchanted by the artifact, the artifact itself is not a Transformation Potion.
- The transformation must be at least part of the artifact's intended effect, not an accidental result. The user may have their own idea of what the item will do, but the transformation must be deliberate or at least expected, regardless of whether it's been combined with another effect like death, immortality, domination, or pure evil. Freak accidents do not count.
- The effects are either permanent or come with a serious risk of becoming permanent. As for why this happens, it can be due to the sheer power of the artifact, the aforementioned lack of instructions, or The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body. This permanence can either be made apparent immediately, or the problem won't become clear until later in the story for maximum drama, forcing the heroes to race to figure out a means of controlling the artifact before it's too late — or else settle for remaining Transformed Ever After.
Now, it’s very rare for the heroes or the villains to have items like these just hanging around their bases, so in the event that the characters haven’t just stumbled upon an artifact like this by accident, it’s very common for it to become a MacGuffin, with heroes and villains alike struggling to get their hands on it — only to find too late that the effects can’t be controlled.
However, though it's astronomically rare in these stories, it might just be possible for a user to beat the odds and find the off switch, tame the artifact, fix the bugs, find the instruction manual, or do whatever needed to be done to make it more controllable. Whether the item is abandoned for safety's sake or becomes a permanent part of the character's arsenal from then on will not be so easily determined, though...
A possible form of the Fountain of Youth, Cursed Item, Mask of Power, or Evil Mask.
Compare Fisher Kingdom, in which an entire location induces transformations automatically and uncontrollably.
Contrast the Transformation Ray, The Transmogrifier, or the Transformation Trinket, which almost always feature transformations that can be easily controlled, and MacGuffin Turned Human, in which the artifact transforms instead of the user.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: DIO becomes a vampire using an ancient stone mask
; once the artifact is activated by blood, its effects set in immediately and transform him without any semblance of human control over the process — and cannot be reversed.
- Rave Master: While most Dark Brings simply grant powers to their users while steeping their hearts in evil, rare Secret Dark Brings such as King's "Monster Prison" also permanently transform their users into rampaging monsters that act purely through instinct, never to return to human form even if they regain their senses.
Comic Books
- Locke & Key: Several Keys can be used for the purposes of transformation, and many of them have been rendered dangerously uncontrollable due to being left in the hands of family members who have no idea how to use them, with the risk of being trapped in their new state always a possibility, since their use is often tied to a very specific door rather than a portable device. And on occasion, they've also been deliberately misused by more anti-heroic figures or even outright villains to trick other users into irreversible transformations...
- The Ghost Key, when used in conjunction with the Ghost Door, automatically sets the user's spirit loose as an Astral Projection. With all three of the Locke siblings at their least aware of their family's secret history at the time, it's at first uncontrollable, since it’s activated just by walking through it. Worse still, if a user can't access their body through the Ghost Door — due to the door being closed before they can return, for example — they'll be trapped in astral form permanently. This is the fate of Sam Lesser at the end of "Welcome To Lovecraft."
- The Gender Key transforms the user into a member of the opposite sex, and at first seems to be one of the most functional of the Lockes' creations, but unfortunately, it will only work in conjunction with the corresponding door in Keyhouse. As such, if anyone using it loses the Key or access to Keyhouse, the transformation doesn't wear off on its own and can't be controlled by the user, leaving them trapped as their new sex. This was the well-deserved fate of Louis Dassin in Grindhouse, who was tricked into following Jean Locke through the door during an attempted rape — before being beaten bloody and sent screaming out of Keyhouse.
- The Animal Key, which allows the user to transform themselves into an animal; this requires users to step through another door on Locke property, and it's not clear if the transformation can be controlled or if it's a natural reflection of the user's personality. However, the transformation is essentially permanent until the user returns through the Animal Door, with the same risk of being trapped in the new form if the Door is shut, hence why Dodge has to sneak back through before Bode returns and shuts it behind him.
- Metamorpho: Rex Mason, Adventurer Archaeologist, became Metamorpho after being exposed to the Orb of Ra, an artifact made from a radioactive meteorite. It gave him the ability to change shape and transform parts of his body into any element found in the human body. It also turned him into a bald man with a white head and lumpy skin divided into areas colored white, orange, brown, and purple.
- Metamorpho later gained a female sidekick, Element Girl, who suffered the same fate after also getting exposed to the Orb of Ra.
- Power Company: Carl Bork was once a normal man until he saved a native boy in the South Pacific. The boy's grateful people rewarded him with a magical statue that granted him enhanced strength and invulnerability, but at the cost of transforming him into a hulking monster. He tried to make a go as a supervillain, but surrendered himself when his mother got sick and needed medical attention. After getting released from prison, he was unable to find work anywhere because of his appearance and criminal record, so Josiah Power offered him a job in his new superheroes-for-hire company.
Fan Works
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "A New Arrival", it's revealed that Ami has made an amulet that warms up to tell its wearer that they're nearing a restricted area, and supposedly, if they enter such an area, the wearer will turn "into a turtle".
- Prince Charming (Miraculous Ladybug): The ring Plagg gives Prince Adrien. Every night, if Adrien is wearing the ring, he will transform into a cat-human hybrid and be stripped of his blessing of brainwashing anyone he meets into an adoring slave until the sun rises again. Notably, since Adrien wants to be cursed (as it's the only way of removing his blessing), the ring is not a Clingy MacGuffin: Adrien can choose not to wear it if he doesn't want to be a werecat for the night.
Film – Live-Action
- Cronos: The Cronos Device is a spider-like machine that grants eternal life by gripping and injecting hosts with a serum that gradually turns them into artificial vampires. The device itself works by being wound, but over time, Gris becomes intoxicated with his newfound youth and subjects himself to repeated use...
- In the Mouth of Madness: Sutter Cane's last novel has the power to induce mutations and insanity in anyone who reads it, resulting in several characters mutating into Lovecraftian servants for the author and his "new publishers". Nothing can protect readers from the results, and nothing can reverse the change. By the end of the film, the novel's widespread popularity ends up converting a huge swathe of the human race, who then go on to slaughter anyone who hasn't read the book or seen the film adaptation, effectively ending human civilization.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Choosing and drinking from the wrong cup in a room full of potential Holy Grails causes the drinker to age rapidly until death, as part of a Goodness Exam to prevent the true Grail falling into the wrong hands. Exploited by Elsa when she purposely chooses a False Grail for Donovan, though she doesn't know what the effects will be until she is forced to witness it in all its gruesome glory.
- Looney Tunes: Back in Action: The Blue Monkey diamond has the supernatural ability to turn people into monkeys and vice-versa. The heroes at first don't know how to use it properly, so DJ accidentally uses it on himself, to then be re-evolved by Daffy Duck.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: The treasure that the crew of the Black Pearl originally sought out was a chest of 882 Aztec gold pieces given to Hernan Cortez. Unfortunately for them, the gold was cursed by the Gods as punishment for Cortez's continued slaughter of the Aztec people: anyone removing a single gold piece from the treasure will be cursed with undeath, rendering them effectively immortal and indestructible, but making it impossible for them to feel anything; to add insult to injury, their monstrous undead nature will be instantly revealed in moonlight. Worse still, the crew of the Black Pearl didn't believe in the curse until after they'd spent the lot around the Caribbean, sending them on a decade-long quest to recover them and break the curse.
Literature
- Axtara: Magic and Mischief: During an excursion out in the woods, Axtara and Princess Mia come across an Ancient ruin containing a mysterious glowing orb on a pedestal. They are magically dragged toward it, and Mia accidentally touches it and is unable to pull her hand off. Axtara tries to free Mia by giving the orb a Tail Slap, but the moment they are both touching it they magically swap species, with Axtara becoming human and Mia becoming a dragon. The orb glows more weakly and touching it now doesn't undo the change; Axtara and Mia deduce that its magical energy has been temporarily depleted and decide to go inform the latter's parents and the royal guard of what happened while they wait for the orb to recharge. Unfortunately, the orb gets stolen while they're away, forcing them to try and figure out where it went for most of the rest of the story.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Chapter 7: An ear-shriveling cursed hat sent to express being offended:
Bill had a pen-friend at a school in Brazil … this was years and years ago … and he wanted to go on an exchange trip but Mum and Dad couldn’t afford it. His pen-friend got all offended when he said he wasn’t going and sent him a cursed hat. It made his ears shrivel up.
- The Knight in Screaming Armor: One plot path leads you and your cousins to discover an antique clock... and while it's not the Cuckoo Clock Of Doom, it's every bit as dangerous: playing around with it results in all three of you being regressed to infancy, with a Death by De-aging on the horizon if you can't stop the clock in time. You manage to rewind the damn thing and save your cousins, but for reasons unknown, you can't get it to restore your current age, leaving you trapped as a baby.
- The Lord of the Rings:
- The nine Rings of Power given to the great kings of men allowed their wearers great power and virtual immortality but gradually transformed them as they fell under the influence of the Rings' creator, Sauron. Over time, they slowly withered away into ghostlike, invisible undead monsters, to the point that they have to wear cloaks just to have a visible presence in the world. Once this was complete, they were the Nazgûl — AKA the Ringwraiths — and in permanent thrall to Sauron.
- Similarly, the One Ring has the power to extend the life of its users beyond their natural span as long as they possess it, but without actually giving them any real vitality — a consequence of Sauron's spirit within the Ring corrupting them over time. As a result, long-term users find themselves slowly degenerating into withered, distorted parodies of their original selves over the course of centuries, to the point that Gollum has degenerated so far from his original Hobbit self that he sports Glowing Eyes of Doom.
- The Moomins: The hat from Finn Family Moomintroll. Anyone or anything placed inside it transforms after a while, in a completely unpredictable manner.
- Shrinking Pains: The fountain in the backyard is a literal Fountain of Youth, with anyone drinking or touching its waters being instantly regressed to half their current age. The main characters spend most of the book learning its rules and limitations, often with results that range from the amusing to the downright dangerous. In the finale, it’s also discovered that overdosing will result in the user being permanently reset to infancy.
Live-Action TV
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Diviner turns any normal human that touches it into stone. However, if an inhuman touches it, nothing happens until it is placed on an altar in a Kree temple, at which point the terrigen crystals are released, unlocking the inhuman's power. Terrigen crystals usually leave an inhuman powered but otherwise unchanged, but occasionally the transformation will be grotesque. Raina was transformed into a monstrous form covered in quills, Gordon lost his eyes, Triton was turned into a green aquatic creature, and Eldrac was transformed into a wall with a face.
- Once Upon a Time (2011): The Dark One's Dagger is an item of dark magic that corrupts whoever uses it into a malevolent entity known as the Dark One. It transfers between hosts by someone using the dagger to kill the current Dark One, and there's no way to remove the curse. The transformation itself varies — most of the time, they look scaly, but some (like Emma) look like a corpse.
- The D.N.A.-altering machine found aboard an abandoned spacecraft in the Red Dwarf episode titled, appropriately, "D.N.A.", can transform any living thing into any other living thing. Complete with modifications, as the three-headed corpse encountered by the Dwarfers proves.
- Stargate Atlantis: In "Tao Of Rodney", a newly discovered machine zaps Rodney, altering his DNA and slowly transforming him into a psychic superhuman. However, it's eventually discovered that this machine was designed to prepare the Ancients for Ascension, condemning their bodies to progressively shut down as they grow closer to no longer needing them. As a result, the team is left struggling to either teach Rodney how to achieve the serenity needed to Ascend or figure out how operate the machine long enough to stop the process, because if Rodney continues advancing and can't Ascend, he will die.
- The Twilight Zone (1959):
- In "Dead Man's Shoes", a gangster is killed by rival members, and his body is dumped unceremoniously in an alley. A homeless man finds the body and steals the man's shoes. The shoes allow the ghost of the murdered gangster to possess the new man's body, transforming his mannerisms, memories, tone of voice, everything but his appearance. The possessed man first visits the gangster's girlfriend, making sure she's okay, before going to confront the man who ordered him killed.
- In "The Masks," dying millionaire Jason Foster challenges all four of his estranged family members to wear a set of masks as part of a Mardi Gras tradition, mentioning that they are "created" instead of "made," and noting that they must be matched up with the antithesis of the wearer. For good measure, he presses the issue by telling them that they will only inherit his fortune if they wear the masks until midnight. They comply, not taking the more mystical instructions seriously, but after he dies, they take the masks off to find that their faces have permanently transformed to match their masks.
Tabletop Games
- Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus: The Sword of Zariel, the very blade she once carried before becoming an archfiend, will cause an Angelic Transformation on any mortal who attunes to it, complete with wings, True Sight, the ability to inflict extra damage to fiends, and a variety of resistances. Unfortunately, it also overwrites the wielder's personality, forcibly changing their alignment to Lawful Good and giving them a new set of personality quirks instead of their original ones. The transformation cannot be undone, though the personality change insures that anyone thus-transformed wouldn't want to anyway.
- Pathfinder: Girdles of Opposite Gender are likely to forcibly change the wearer's gender and unlike the Dungeons & Dragons original, the girdle is not depowered upon inflicting its curse, but just make the afflicted unable to use the girdle to undo its own effect.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Inverted with Relic Weapons, a disastrously backfired (from Chaos's perspective) attempt to forge a Chaos Weapon out of a holy creature. The blade does a great job of slaying daemons and minions of Chaos — a popular pastime for minions of Chaos — but it slowly purifies the wielder of Chaos's influence, starting with mutations and progressing to the more esoteric gifts of the Dark Powers. Once they're all gone, the wielder's soul is free from Chaos.
Toys
- BIONICLE: The Mask of Life, an extremely powerful Mask of Power designed to rejuvenate the Great Spirit should he ever die, is locked away on a treacherous island and will curse anyone who isn't destined if they touch it. These curses are supposed to protect the mask from further harm and basically force the cursee to deliver it to the mask's rightful owner, but these curses often do more harm than good. Some curses only last as long as the unworthy carry it, but some are permanent. Mantax became invulnerable as long as the mask was in his possession, which made it next to impossible to get it away from him. Dekar tried to destroy the mask, and it transformed him into an exact copy of the long dead jailer Hydraxon.
Video Games
- Ancient Domains of Mystery: Some powerful artifacts of Chaos will corrupt and mutate characters simply by being in their possession; actually equipping them will only amplify the effect. On the upside, some of these mutations can be beneficial... but if your corruption is allowed to progress too far, you will dissolve into a writhing mass of primal chaos, ending the game.
- Atlas Fallen: After the opening stage where you play as Nyaal, the God of Chaos, the game then introduces your (unnamed) character, a hunter in the wilderness who comes across Nyaal's discarded gauntlet. Putting it on leads to the gauntlet automatically binding to your arm turning you into a half-human, half-godlike being with powers you struggle to control, and you're then tasked by Nyaal to continue his mission whether you want it or not.
- Baldur's Gate: The Cursed Item "Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity"'s curse forcibly switches its wearer's sex and makes it so the girdle cannot be removed after being worn, and unlike the Dungeons & Dragons original, the girdle cannot be depowered by inflicting its curse, nor removing it by removing the curse on the afflicted, and it can be reused by a wearer if somehow it is removed.
- Cactus McCoy: The Thorned Emerald is cursed so that anyone who takes it will transform into a humanoid cactus, with the added caveat that the thief will be fatally turned to stone as well if they don't return the Emerald to its true home. Needless to say, McCoy himself didn't listen to the warning about the curse and suffers the first half of it, forcing him to spend the entire game struggling to return the Emerald to its place of origin. The game ends with him successfully returning it just in the nick of time... but unfortunately for him, the cactus transformation cannot be reversed.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Hircine's Ring is a Daedric artifact in the game which normally would allow a werewolf to control whenever they transform; however, Hircine punished a werewolf who stole it by making the transformations uncontrollable and making the ring impossible to removed. If the player completes Hircine's quest and gets the curse removed, the original effect returns and they can transform into a werewolf whenever they want.
- Elona: Ether material equipment is just as mutagenic as Etherwind, resulting in an increasingly devastating series of mutations the longer you wear them, and though they are theoretically curable, the harder it is to cure all the symptoms... and at twenty symptoms, the results are fatal.
- Geneforge: The Geneforge is a major MacGuffin of the early games, capable of rewriting the genes of the user and making them incredibly powerful — if they can deal with megalomania that comes with it. Improper use of the Geneforge, however, will result in a very painful death as the user's body is unable to withstand the sudden modification and tears itself apart.
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Colossus at the heart of Atlantis is a skyscraper-sized machine for transforming human beings into gods through the power of Orichalcum; however, the Atlanteans required a lot of experiment to get that far, resulting in a huge population of hideously deformed mutants before they finally produced Nur-Ab-Sal. In the present, the Colossus is the ultimate goal of the Nazis, resulting in a final showdown as Kerner and Ubermann test the device and try to work out what dosage of Orichalcum will make them into a god. Kerner's attempt to use it results in him being transformed into a horned dwarf that instantly commits suicide; the next test — conducted either on Indy, Sophia, or Ubermann — finally transforms the subject into a god... which can't maintain cohesion and disintegrates a minute later, resulting in a chain reaction that destroys Atlantis.
- The Rise of the Golden Idol: The Whishbloom is a Lemurian artifact in the shape of a flower that transforms anyone who smells it into an immortal animal hybrid.
- RuneScape: The Moksha device is a large machine created by the Dragonkin that performs Freaky Friday Flips. It was initially used by a Dragonkin sect as a kind of Fantastic Drug, but Skeka saw the potential for it to alleviate the Dragonkin Curse and attempts to use it to swap with Raksha; for unknown reasons the machine failed, and Skeka's consciousness was split into dozens of pieces and put into a den of salamanders instead. Thousands of years later the player re-discovers the device and, not knowing what it does, repairs and activates it; it ends up swapping the minds of the local disagreeable site supervisor with a nearby salamander. It turns out that the thing at the bottom of Daemonheim that Bilrach was after was a second Moksha device built inside of a dimensional rift which allowed the dragonkin to switch body with creatures in other worlds, which they used to take over the bodies of demons. Bilrach wanted to use it to bring Zamorak's mind back to Gielinor, thinking it would be a loophole in the Edicts of Guthix that keep gods from entering Gielinor, though a test the player runs on it indicates that it wouldn't have worked.
- The Secret World: In the Besieged Farmlands mission "Revenge Served Hot," players discover that the Morninglight have been trying to smuggle a rare artifact out of Transylvania: known only as the Contaminator, it projects pure Filth into the world, exposing everyone and everything around it to the Blackworm Jism, and though it's not clear if this was its intended purpose or if it was corrupted to that end, it's currently meant to transform its victims into loyal servants of the Dreamers. Anyone exposed to it undergoes a very rapid form of Filth infection, developing oily black skin, glowing red eyes, and tentacles within hours at the least... and as with all forms of Filth infection, it's irreversible. Laurent Giroux, who was forced to recover it on behalf of Adrian Zorlescu, was infected before he could escape the werewolf lair, as were the Morninglight smugglers sent to meet him. Even the Illuminati agree that retrieving the Contaminator is too dangerous and accept your decision to destroy it.
- Unicorn Overlord: The Bastorias Blue, an azure jewel associated with the Bastorian royal family, has the power to transform people into bestrals. Centuries ago, when the Zenoiran Empire invaded the northern region of Fevrith, the elves residing in the region use the Bastorias Blue to transform into bestrals as a mean to fight back against the invaders. The jewel's power would be used again several years before Alain begins his journey, when the previous lion king of Bastorias transformed his daughter, implied to be Yunifi, and Morard to save their lives when Morard betrayed his Zenoiran employers to save her. Yunifi was turned into a human, while Morard was transformed into a lion.
Webcomics
- My Impossible Soulmate: Many thousands of years ago, the ancient nation of Nicopolis was ruled by a Caligula-wannabe named Themis. He was a hedonistic tyrant more interested in womanizing than actually ruling. One of his advisors tried to humble him by cursing him with an unremovable Gender Bender choker that changed him into a woman at 9am and back into a man at 9pm while he wore it. Rather than being humbled, however, Themis just executed the advisor out of anger for cursing him, and then died less than a month later from the excruciating pain of the transformations. The choker still exists in the modern age; Jude's parents had found it and put it in their personal artifact collection. Jude found it when he was younger and tried it on, only to end up with the Gender Bender curse himself. However, it's even worse for Jude because the choker was specifically made for Themis, so Jude's face has also been changed to match Themis' face. So not only does Jude suffer the same excruciatingly painful male-female change, he's even lost his own appearance. Jude has somehow managed to live with this for three years while he desperately searches for a way to remove the choker, but he's starting to accept that he probably won't be able to live with it for much longer.
- The Order of the Stick: The Order finds a Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity, a Cursed Item which inflicts a Gender Bender curse on the wearer and can only be removed by magic. Roy, much to his annoyance, has to use it to bluff his way out of an ambush, and is glad to have a teammate with the necessary Dispel Magic spell at the ready.
- Out-of-Placers: The main plot of the comic is set off by Kassen purchasing a shiny object from a street vendor which later bursts opens and sprays him with a strange liquid that causes him to transform into a female yinglet. Since magic doesn't exist in this setting as far as anyone knows and it is common for people to dig up strange artifacts of unknown origin, the object is suspected to have been a piece of Lost Technology more advanced than anything previously discovered.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation:
- SCP-051 ("Japanese Obstetrical Model") is a small ivory model of an anatomically correct woman; pregnant woman in its vicinity will be compelled to touch it, and in most cases, this will result in a miscarriage within a matter of hours. If the fetus survives long enough to be born, it will usually be hideously mutated, featuring things like a body twice the size of a normal infant's, decomposing grey flesh, a segmented lower body, an open chest cavity, and a touch that can blister and crack human skin on contact, usually prompting the attending obstetrician to kill them immediately.
- SCP-113 ("The Gender-Switcher") is a piece of polished red jasper that can alter the sex of anyone touching it. On top of being a Painful Transformation, users have little control over the results: subjects in poor health run the risk of dying in mid-transition, the transformation is permanent, and though it's theoretically possible to reverse the process by touching the object again, this can result in a failed transformation, once again with fatal results.
- SCP-531 ("Paired Brass Guard Cats") is a series of ancient cat statues that compel people to avoid walking between them, but only when the statues are facing each other in pairs. Anyone who makes eye contact with a statue that hasn't been paired up will find themselves being irrevocably transformed into another iteration of 531 over the course of the next hour; experiments suggest that the statues are still fully conscious.
- SCP-1226 ("Postmodernism") is a large oil painting of a nuclear detonation over a large city; anyone observing this artwork will instantly devolve into a prehistoric hominid, completely losing human intelligence and reverting to animal instincts. The only way to avoid this irreversible fate is to only view it partially or through a camera.
- SCP-1575 ("Venus Statue") is a fountain that slowly transforms any animal drinking from it into a human being. To date, there's been no way of controlling or reversing the effects, which is unfortunate given that the transformation often ends up killing the subject due to organ failure or massive bone fractures... or worse, transformed parasites.
- SCP-1595 ("Paradise Television") is a TV show featuring sermons by an unusual televangelist, and though the Foundation intercepts and blocks these broadcasts, they still exist as tapes in the Foundation's archives. People watching these tapes will undergo hideous mutations, developing additional sensory organs, wildly distorted limbs, and non-human extremities, until the subject is left an immobile pile of incoherent Body Horror. Even more disturbingly, the victims of this process are completely okay with what they've become.
- SCP-1851 ("Doll House") is an animate doll occupying an abandoned house; this entity is usually docile and preoccupied with household chores, up until a live mammal or bird enters the building. If the intruder takes her fancy, 1851 will immediately transform them into an inanimate doll facsimile of themselves and store them in a toybox, supposedly as presents for the little girl who used to own her. More worryingly, if there aren't any visitors on the property within seven days, 1851 will go looking for more, so the Foundation is obliged to supply her with a rabbit every week just so she won't start preying on the neighbours.
- SCP-3270 ("The Painting That Makes You A Furry") is a painting of a cat in a human-like pose; any human being that views that painting begins experiencing a Slow Transformation which cannot be stopped, only prevented by avoiding or partially viewing the painting. After six months, the viewer will be fully and irrevocably transformed into a cat, with the only benefits being the fact that they still possess human intelligence, speech, and longevity.
- SCP-5917 ("The Map of the Multiverse") is a scroll containing the aforementioned multidimensional map that can allow users to transport themselves to anywhere in one of the labelled dimensions. However, prolonged exposure to the map and its power gradually transforms the users into vulture-like Bird People, supposedly to better survive the rigors of interdimensional travel. By the end of the article, Agent Briggs has already undergone several stages of this transformation, though the Foundation hasn't decided to have him contained just yet.
- SCP-8737 ("Flowers for Nemo") is a booklet containing illustrations of seven yoga-like poses, six of them being anatomically impossible; however, assuming the seventh position while in close proximity to the booklet will result in the user being transformed into an octopus. Not only is this irreversible, but the transformed user will slowly lose human intelligence and memory until they are reduced to a non-anomalous animal.
- SCP-9205 ("The Vessel Of Vanity") is a stone jar that emits a clear gel that, when applied to the face of anyone over forty, instantly rejuvenates them to their twenties. Unfortunately, after twenty-four hours after exposure, the user slowly begins to mutate into a bald, grey-skinned, immortal child-monster; this process can't be reversed, only delayed by applying more gel, and the law of diminishing returns applies, so the transformation is basically inevitable. It turns out that this is because 9205 is alive and hates the Immortality Seekers who use it.
- SCP-9292 ("Innset, Finnmark"): Artefact 00495 — The fishing shack:
Organic matter that comes in contact with A00495 or particles taken from it, immediately experience excessive mutations.- SCP-9315 ("Seventy-Three Sextillion Tons of Pie") is a seemingly indestructible apple pie that can transform anyone or anything touching it into more apple pie... and unfortunately, people and objects turned into pies have the same transfigurative powers as the original, spreading the transformation even further. Facing an apple pie-flavoured Grey Goo scenario, the Foundation are keeping it thaumaturgically shielded at all costs.
- SCP-051
Western Animation
- Adventure Time:
- The Ice King's crown corrupts anyone into a replica of the ancient ice elemental Evergreen, granting them his powers but also consuming their sanity.
- In "Daddy's Little Monster", Hunson's amulet has the power to turn others who wear it into a monster resembling his demon form, which is what happens to Marceline and Finn.
- The reboot DuckTales (2017)'s Stone of What Was can be used, very carefully, to produce stable clones of an individual. Used incorrectly (and it does not come with an instruction manual) it merged an entire island of jungle animals into bizarre hybrids. Unlike the creatures from the series it's referencing, these are homicidal monsters.
- Gargoyles: The Eye of Odin is an ancient jewel with the power to amplify the strengths and weaknesses of the wearer, resulting in uncontrollable and potentially dangerous transformations. While wearing the jewel (after having it gifted to her by a clueless Xanatos), Fox is periodically transformed into a werefox to reflect her ambitious nature, while Goliath becomes a god-like being who is at risk of losing himself.
- Jackie Chan Adventures:
- The Monkey King is a puppet with an inscription that tells the user to pull his leg. Doing this will switch the places of the puppet and the victim, turning the latter into a puppet and the former into flesh. The only way to reverse the spell is for the Monkey King to pull his victim's leg, something the Monkey King must be tricked into doing.
- In the final season, the immortal relics used to seal Shendu's demon brethern ended up absorbing the chi of the demons they defeated. As a result, those who comes in contact with the relics will transform into the demons, with the risk of permanence the longer they're transformed.
- Kim Possible: In the episode "The Full Monkey", Monkey Fist tries to steal a necklace that transforms its wearer into monkey, only for Kim to accidentally end up wearing the necklace and it merging with her.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Monkey See, Doggie Do", Mojo Jojo steals a the Anubis Dog Head, a magical bust of Anubis’ head with two magic rubies for eyes. The eyes can fire a magical ray that turns people into dogs. He uses it again in "Monkey See, Doggy Two".
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: In the series finale, Pericles reveals that it's said the being trapped in the crystal sarcophagus under Crystal Cove will grant power to whoever chooses to serve it. He, craving power, offers himself to the Evil Entity... only it turns out that the granting of said power comes in the form of the Entity consuming his victim and using their body to take a physical form.
- Ultimate Book of Spells: Galahad's Throne, the Siege Perilous, has the power to return a magic-user to their magical roots. When Cassie and Gus sit in it, Cassie starts transforming into a Plant Person, based on a story that the first witches were carved from wood, while Gus starts transforming into a Wolf Man since one of his ancestors was a werewolf.
- Xiaolin Showdown:
- The Monkey Staff turns anyone who uses it into a monkey. While the effects can be reversed by letting go of the staff, the user becomes more monkey-like if they keep hold of the staff until they're a feral primate and thus can't consciously drop it.
- The Gills of Hamachi let a person turn into a fish-person, allowing them to swim faster and breathe underwater (though they lose the ability to breathe out of water).