Shapeshifting is a tricky thing. If a day came that the bodily form you'd spent your whole life in suddenly underwent a massive and entirely unexpected change that converted it into a different form entirely, your reaction could be one of many. You might love the transformation, or at least the form that comes with it. You might find your interest piqued, wanting to thoroughly inspect your new form and test out all the things it can do. Or, more realistically, the transformation might be a very unpleasant one and your new form one that you wish to be rid of as soon as possible.
Regardless of how you felt about the situation, however, it would be a fairly safe bet that the average outsider's response to seeing someone else's body suddenly start mutating in all sorts of crazy ways would be one of shock, disbelief, and possibly outright panic. This would be especially bad out in public with several people around, where even if you didn't quickly find yourself surrounded by Torches and Pitchforks, you would be incredibly fortunate to not cause a bad case of Crowd Panic and wind up having your half-altered face plastered all over international news with nerve-wracking headlines. In particularly extreme cases, you could even wind up abducted for sinister purposes.
If you want to remain on the down-low and guarantee that you won't trigger a Panic Attack in anyone that happens to be around, you're going to have to keep your shifting form under wraps.
More often than not the result of a Forced Transformation that catches the victim off-guard at the worst possible time and forces them to perform some serious on-the-spot improvisation to keep their changes obscured. If their hands are starting to look distinctly un-hand-like, they'll likely put some thick mittens over them or swing them behind their back. If they're starting to grow or shrink, they'll start shifting their body into different positions to make it seem like little more than a perspective change.
This can still occur during entirely Voluntary Shapeshifting if the shapeshifter is unexpectedly caught in the middle of their transformation, forcing them to hastily conceal the parts of one form or another while the shift continues. It can also occur in cases where someone has already fully transformed, but has only just done so and has little or no time to keep anyone else from seeing their new form, thus forcing them to dash into whatever hiding spot they can in as short a time as possible, often in plain sight.
Sub-Trope of Shapeshifter Struggles. Often also happens in cases of Slow Transformation, especially of the bit-by-bit variety. Compare Hiding the Handicap, especially given how a character might lose certain abilities (such as dexterity) as they transform, and Hide Your Otherness, which can apply to cases where the transformee has been transformed for so long that they've more or less adjusted to their new form and to keeping it hidden. Also compare Bemoaning the New Body, Masquerade, A Rotten Time to Revert, Secret Identity Change Trick, and Trickster Transformee.
Compare and contrast Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder. Contrast Liberating Transformation, New Form, Old Fashion Sense, Oblivious Transformation, and One-Winged Angel.
Not to be confused with Transformation Discretion Shot, which is when a character's transformation is obscured from the viewers instead of in-universe witnesses.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In The Fledgling Demon Lord's Starter Shop, Villager is transformed into a half-demon and the new Demon Lord after Mao gives him her blood. While he looks like himself during the day, he undergoes Involuntary Shapeshifting at night, becoming a Horned Humanoid with Mystical White Hair and Supernatural Golden Eyes with Hellish Pupils. Given that demons are seen as enemies of mankind, drama and comedy are derived from Villager having to hurriedly hide his demonic features when night falls to avoid persecution. This can be as simple as throwing up his hood to hide the changes to his hair and face or as bizarre as haphazardly wrapping his face in bedsheets from a hotel mid-conversation.
Comic Books
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:
- In Volume 1, Allan Quatermain and Dr Jekyll are scouting around the criminal operations of the mysterious "Doctor" of Limehouse, only to end up blundering into the presence of the Doctor himself. Jekyll is so shaken that he spends the meeting keeping Hyde at bay while Allan does the talking, until Jekyll's face begins visibly contorting and swelling out of shape as Hyde gets closer to taking over, forcing him to keep his back to the Doctor's henchmen - and forcing Allan to make excuses for Jekyll's unusual behavior so nobody takes a closer look. Fortunately, the meeting ends before it gets any worse.
- In The Black Dossier, Orlando recounts an amusing anecdote in which they were due to model for a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci when Orlando began slowly transforming into a man, which they did their best to conceal... though Orlando being Orlando, they just couldn't resist smirking about it, much to Da Vinci's confusion.
Fan Works
- In the House of Mouse fanfic Midnight Mayhem
, Goofy has a Bit-by-Bit Transformation into a werewolf while he's on duty as a waiter. Not wanting anyone to be afraid of him, he hides in the men's room to transform in private, only to have to leave when Donald really needs to get inside. He spends the rest of the story trying to conceal his werewolf parts, but he is ultimately exposed when he howls while Kylie is performing.
Films — Animation
- Luca: Luca and Alberto, sea monsters disguised in human form, quickly befriend the human Giulia and join her at her house for supper. During the meal, however, they learn that her father is a hard-boiled sea monster hunter, causing Luca to do a Spit Take that sprays water all over Alberto. This causes half of Alberto's face to revert to sea monster form, forcing Luca to tackle him so Giulia and her father don't see it.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks: When the Rainbooms are performing, they start to transform into their Little Bit Beastly selves. Sunset then tackles Rainbow off the stage to cover up her new form, but all this does is make people assume she was tackling her out of jealousy.
- The Princess and the Frog: Lawrence uses a blood talisman given by Dr. Facilier to transform into Naveen's double so that he can marry Charlotte as part of Facilier's plan. During a lunch date, Charlotte notices Lawrence's ear grow, tipping Lawrence off that the talisman's magic is running out of Naveen's blood and is reverting back to his normal appearance. Lawrence covers the ear as a mosquito bite, but the rest of him returns in a Bit-by-Bit Transformation, with his posterior increasing and his jowls returning, and Lawrence has to wrap himself in arms and sleeves before he succeeds in proposing to her, with the talisman's magic wearing off completely after she leaves.
- Shrek:
- Shrek: Fiona is cursed so that by daytime she is a human princess, but by night she transforms into an Ogress. The whole journey to Lord Farquaard's castle she keeps this fact a secret from Shrek by spending the night in a cave where he can't see her, though Donkey finds out when he visits her there and Fiona begs him not to tell Shrek. Once she meets Lord Farquaard, she tries to hurry their wedding along before her transformation happens, at sunset. On the day Lord Farquaard proposes to her, Fiona insists that they get married today, and during the ceremony, she says "could we skip ahead to the 'I do's'?" Soon after this, Shrek bursts in, and as Fiona would prefer to marry him instead of Farquaard, decides to let the transformation happen anyway, because Shrek does not know about it yet.
- Shrek Forever After uses the plot of Fiona hiding her transformations again, but with the twist that in the new timeline created by Rumpelstiltskin, Fiona, in her ogre form, has become the leader of a resistance group of ogres, and she is keeping her human transformation by daytime a secret from them.
- Turning Red: When Mei's ability to transform into a giant red panda first manifests, she tries repeatedly to hide it.
- Upon her first transformation, she is unaware at first due to having just woken up and still being too drowsy to notice. When she sees her new form in the mirror, however, she quickly freaks out and screams in terror, alerting her parents and causing her mother Ming to approach the door and ask her about what's happening. Mei frantically responds by asking her not to enter, then hides in the bathtub behind the shower curtain.
- After unwittingly transforming again at school, she frantically runs through the school halls in the hopes of avoiding anyone's notice, eventually zeroing in on the girls' bathroom and zipping by two students fast enough that they stumble over without actually seeing what tripped them. But the bathroom proves to be already occupied, so Mei quickly dives out the window and runs home to hide there.
- After she gets home and her parents explain what has happened to her, they convince Mei to stay in her room, where her shapeshifting can be hidden from everyone else until the panda spirit can be sealed away in a month's time. It's implied that they would have kept her there for the whole month if she hadn't learned to control the changes.
Ming: No one can see her this way.
- Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: During his fourth change into the titular were-rabbit, Wallace is forced to do this when he's unexpectedly greeted by Lady Tottington at the front door of his house. She attempts to hold a conversation with him as he undergoes a Bit-by-Bit Transformation that requires him to hide progressively more of his body, first holding his hands behind his back as they turn into paws, then hiding them behind the door along with his feet when the latter burst out of his shoes with fluffy fur covering them, then using an arm to cover up his front teeth as they rapidly expand into Goofy Buckteeth, at which point he forcefully ends the conversation and slams the door shut.
Films — Live-Action
- District 9: After being sprayed with alien fluid, Wikus begins transforming into a Prawn, and given that he only narrowly avoids being fatally harvested for DNA once his new status is discovered, he's forced to hide his mutations so nobody else notices. Most prominently, he keeps his clawed hand wrapped up in bandages, hidden in the sleeve of his jacket, and sometimes even shrouded by a blanket. Also, once the mutation spreads up his arm and he begins sprouting growths across his torso, he conceals them under as many layers of clothing he can comfortably wear.
- From Dusk Till Dawn: Sex Machine tries to do this after he gets bitten by a vampire, covering his mouth when he notices his teeth growing longer and then hiding his hands behind his back after they start turning into claws. Eventually, he turns and bites Frost, forcing the survivors to put him down.
- The Thing (1982): Following the crew's first encounter with the titular Thing, it captures its first human victim when Bennings unwittingly winds up alone in a room with it. Unfortunately for it, it's still in the middle of visibly digesting him when Windows walks in and sees it in the act, causing the latter to flee in terror and alert the others. Bennings-Thing then hastily escapes the room through the window, trying to keep its metamorphosis covered up long enough for it to fully perfect its human form and remain undetected, only to wind up surrounded by the crew while its transformation remains incomplete. As a result, while almost fully transformed, they can still see its unnaturally long fingers. When it tries to speak to them, what comes out is an unearthly roar, leading them to Kill It with Fire.
- The Witches (1990): Late in the film, the transformed Luke is able to sneak a bottle of the Grand High Witch's own Formula 86 into a pot of soup being prepared for the gathering of witches, with the Chef Witch tasting some of it almost immediately. Soon after, she finds herself involuntarily squeaking as her transformation into a mouse begins; as she sprouts the beginnings of a mouselike nose, she desperately hides her face from the other chefs and makes a run for it, barely making it to the exit in time to shrink out of her clothes away from prying eyes.
Literature
- Animorphs:
- In "The Invasion", Cassie has been trying out her horse morph and is just starting to demorph when a police car happens to stop nearby; immediately, the rest of the team hastily crowd in front of her as the police officer approaches, hiding her from sight while she finishes demorphing. As it turns out, they were right to act quickly — the cop is clearly a Controller.
- In "The Discovery," Jake and Marco morph into birds of prey in a toilet cubicle in the men's room of a Burger King, assuming they won't be disturbed there... only for the manager to order them out, suspecting them of doing drugs. With Marco halfway morphed into an osprey and about two feet tall at the most, Jake improvises wildly by putting a sweatshirt over him, pulling the hood over his head so his face can't be too clearly seen, and claiming that Marco is actually his baby brother, excusing the beak-shaped nose as a deformity and shaming the manager for asking about it. Amazingly enough, this works, and the two are able to sneak off elsewhere to finish morphing.
- Discworld: The werewolf Angua goes to great lengths to prevent people from seeing her transformation into her wolf form and vice versa. Aside from hiding her nature as a werewolf, the reveal of which would cause several problems for her, the change itself is... unpleasant to witness (though Angua compares the actual experience of it to a full body sneeze, awkward but mostly just inconvenient, in contrast to how painful it looks from the outside). One of her rules in her relationship with Carrot is that he's not allowed to see her mid-transformation.
- Shrinking Pains: In a scheme to get out of a deeply irksome slumber party, Cass has Doug use the Fountain of Youth water to pose as her little brother, so she has "babysitting" as an excuse to leave the party early. Unfortunately, after a little Power Perversion Potential, the whole thing blows up in Doug's face when a Clock Discrepancy leaves him turning back earlier than intended, and he barely has enough time to run to the nearest bathroom and hide before he fully reverts to his original age.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who: In "Inferno", Professor Stahlman makes the mistake of handling a cracking jar of the green ooze with his bare hands while moving it into containment, exposing his bare skin to it in the process. However, unlike the other victims, he doesn't transform into a Primord immediately, instead, he somehow manages to resist the change. As the Slow Transformation begins, he hastily sneaks out of sight and covers the green fur sprouting on his hands with white cotton gloves. In the parallel universe, the Doctor attempts to unmask Stahlman's alternate self as a Primord by getting him to remove his gloves... only to find that Stahlman has beaten him to the punch by bandaging his hands as well, excusing them as treatment for burns until his project is complete and he can allow the transformation to proceed all the way to its horrifying conclusion.
- Doom Patrol (2019): In "Pilot", Rita Farr gets into a conversation with a waitress who just happens to know of the White-Dwarf Starlet's films. Though the waitress doesn't recognize her, she and Rita get along well enough... up until the waitress indicates that Rita's reputation was permanently stained by rumours of alcoholism and starring in porn. Rita is so upset that she loses control of her powers again and begins to melt; she just barely manages to turn away from the waitress before she can notice her face sagging and oozing out of shape. Unfortunately, the melting doesn't stop there...
- Farscape: In "DNA Mad Scientist," Aeryn approaches Namtar and requests a genetic map to a Sebacean colony, only to be unwillingly injected with a serum that begins slowly converting her into a Pilot. Once the physical signs start to show, she's careful to hide the growths and distorted skin beneath her clothes rather than alert the rest of the crew - most of whom are busy fighting over the cartographic crystal Namtar gave them anyway. Even after she reveals her condition to Crichton and Pilot, she's forced to hide the worsening symptoms in public with a hooded cloak.
- In From the Cold: In "Little Bird," Jenny is able to shapeshift into one of the Caleros' contacts, allowing her to take his place at their latest conference. Unfortunately, Jenny's powers are still a little bit unstable after decades of disuse, and she finds herself reverting during the meeting. She's forced to excuse herself and hurry off to the bathroom, getting there just in time to change back before anyone notices.
- Lucifer: In ''Save Lucifer", Lucifer's body is slowly transforming into his full devil form, starting with his hands. As the transformation progresses, he covers his new red skin in various ways, first with gloves and then a scarf, until his devil face is revealed and refuses to go away. He is able to conceal this with a mask during a masquerade party at Lux, organised by Chloe.
- Happens in Woof!, in which a boy randomly transforms into a dog. He gets little warning besides brief itching before he changes, and often has to shove his hands into his pockets or similar to hide the fact he's growing fur.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy XIV: Near the end of the Shadowbringers main story, the Warrior of Light undergoes a transformation after absorbing the Light of all the Lightwardens, becoming Lightwarden for all of Norvrandt. Ryne is able to stabilize the Warrior with her powers so they keep their form, but she notes that this is a temporary measure at best and they have to find some way to remove the Light from themselves before the transformation becomes permanent or worse. Even then, the other characters note that the Warrior looks paler and more haggard than usual.
- Genshin Impact: In the distant past of Natlan, Och-Kan was a Draconic Humanoid, rumored to be the son of the dragon sage Kukulkan; however, he despised the dragons due to his dark past with them and believed that Natlan should be ruled by humankind. He later ascended as the ruler of Ochkanatlan and began oppressing the Saurians (who are evolved from the dragons), while he hid his face with a mask because his face slowly became more dragon-like.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: This is enforced by the game. If Link tries to transform from Hylian to wolf or vice versa in front of any friendly NPC besides the handful who already know about his shapeshifting ability, Midna will prevent him from doing so, requiring him to change somewhere out of sight.
- Look Outside:
- Downplayed. To hide the fact he's been transformed into a semi-mechanical spider-like creature, Lyle has covered himself with a window drape as an impromptu cloak. It can't hide the fact he has transformed, but he'll avoid showing anyone anything more than his face. If you actually peek at his true form, he'll be so mortified he'll immediately run away and hide for the rest of the game.
- Downplayed with Jeanne. She's started growing faces all over her body after looking outside, and has tried to hide this by putting on a big trench coat. This does nothing to hide that she's mutating and is more a coping mechanism to try and ignore the horrible thing that's happening to her for as long as possible. Unfortunately, the mutations eventually progress to the point that it becomes impossible to hide under clothing, which becomes an issue when the other faces are ravenously hungry for human flesh.
- Jasper is wearing a hooded bathrobe and face mask to hide the effects of looking upon the Visitor through a telescope. He insists that his mutations are "superficial" at worst, but if you attack him, he'll shed his bathrobe to reveal he was heavily downplaying the true extent of his degeneration, and he's become little more than a mass of tentacles, teeth, and eyes.
- Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh: In the ending, if Clone Curtis chooses to remain on Earth instead of returning to Dimension X, things initially appear to be going perfectly well, with Jocilyn curling up with Curtis at the restaurant and giving him a rundown of how wonderful their lives will be now that Warner and the Hecatomb are defeated. However, Curtis appears to be hiding his hand under the table throughout this scene, and a moment later, it's revealed why: his hand is warping into a distorted mass of flesh and back again, indicating that the aliens of Dimension X weren't exaggerating when they said that Clone Curtis "does not belong on your side".
Web Animation
- Terri Starstrike: Terrina runs away to Earth so that her fellow Jotuzons won't discover that she has the ability to shapeshift into a human when she's anxious, due to the implication that Jotuzons look down on humans on their home planet. Fortunately, she finds use for her shapeshifting power to deceive a crew of police officers on her trail.
Webcomics
- Housepets!: After being forcibly turned back into his old human form by Pete, King has to hide under his covers all day until he can get Fox to show up and help- Partly to avoid awkward questions, and partly because the human he used to be has a reputation for having helped kidnap animals in town years prior, including Fox himself.
Web Original
- Creepypasta: In "I guard an abandoned house. The owners are reborn every year", people who find themselves being converted into residents of Koel House immediately go into hiding for fear of someone noticing their transformation, especially if the first symptoms involve something nasty like losing hair or coughing up teeth. One particularly unlucky ghost hunter spent a whole week on the run in an RV while he looked for a cure, repressing the transformation through sheer willpower, just so nobody would notice the moments when he lost control and started regressing into the youngest of the Koel grandkids.
- SCP Foundation: Played With in SCP-9205; having used the rejuvenating artefact to fit in with the secret society of Immortality Seekers currently renting SCP-9205, Agent Shadfly soon begins to mutate, starting with patches of grey skin. As such, he goes looking for somewhere to hide before any of the society members wake up and notice, managing to sneak into a maintenance passage just in time. However, Shadfly isn't doing this just to hide the advancing transformation, but to avoid the society's panicky attempts to undo it: he needs his mutation to progress all the way to the end, just so has the edge he needs to steal SCP-9205 from the society and its allies. As such, he has to stay hidden in the maintenance passage for the next twenty-four hours, only taking bathroom breaks when he's sure the rest of the society is elsewhere, and even gagging himself during the final transformation so nobody will hear him screaming as he metamorphoses into an instance of SCP-9205-A.
Western Animation
- Johnny Bravo: In "Witch-Ay Woman", a witch curses Johnny to teach him a lesson about his flirty behavior. After being turned into a woman the next morning, Johnny (now Jenny) sneaks out of the house, trying to mimic her old masculine voice, to avoid being seen by her mother.
- Ninjago: In "Once Bitten, Twice Shy", Jay accidentally pricks his hand with a Fangpyre fang and its venom enters his bloodstream, slowly transforming him into a Fangpyre as well. Jay worries about it affecting his date with Nya, so he tries to cover it up with gloves and a scarf. As he develops fangs, a snakelike tongue, and more green skin, he hides in the bathroom. After he starts growing a tail, it becomes obvious to him that he can't hide it anymore and he should just tell Nya the truth, and he goes off to rescue her from the Seprentine.
- The Real Ghostbusters: In "Poultrygeist", Egon turns into a werechicken. His friends follow a recipe to make him an antidote, but it's missing an ingredient called "chickenbane", so his head turns back to normal, but not his body. As such, when he gives a lecture, he has to wear a trench coat to cover his chicken body.
- Teen Titans (2003): In "Transformation", Starfire undergoes the "transformation" (the Tamaranean equivalent to human puberty), initiated by a large zit growing out of her head. Worried that the zit will freak out her friends, she hides it with a hat. The changes become increasingly bizarre and unpredictable from there, until Starfire has to completely cover herself in baggy clothes to hide her multiple mutations from her friends.