This is really the only family-friendly illustration we could choose for this page...
Leela: Alright, Alcazar, I just have one last question for you.
Alcazar: What's that?
Leela: If you can change form, why didn't you change it in the one place that counts?
Everyone: WOOOOO!
Alcazar: What's that?
Leela: If you can change form, why didn't you change it in the one place that counts?
Everyone: WOOOOO!
One of the first things our sweaty, clammy imaginations suggest to us is that a shapeshifter's sex life must be really interesting. I mean, they can turn into anything right? Ahem...
One of the cleaner subtropes involves a hero seduced by an exploitative shapeshifting minion. This can also apply to metaphorical shapeshifters, such as people with Jekyll & Hyde complexes. It usually suggests an amount of mischief, if not outright wickedness, since it may not be so much a plan to trick the hero as their own little perversion. There are a few ways for the hero to handle this situation:
- The solicited hero will refuse to be taken in by trickery. (He may get punched in the teeth by the minion but at least his conscience is clean.)
- The solicited hero comments that the shapeshifter shouldn't have to pose as others to get people to like her. At this point, the (female) shifter goes into her default — but still exotically sexy — form and they have a contented snog anyway.
- The shapeshifter convinces the hero, but totally wrecks the mood by turning into the wrong thing.
If a shapeshifter is loyally dating, or if the shapeshifter is the hero, this trope is played humorously for that character.
A significant Sub-Trope of Power Perversion Potential. See also Sense Freak, Succubi and Incubi, Shapeshifting Seducer, Shapeshifters Do It for a Change and Showing Off the New Body.
See also Shapeshifting Lover, which has a cleaner history in folklore. If the shapeshifter successfully impersonates someone's regular partner, see Bed Trick.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Gantz: Resident Butt-Monkey Inaba Kouki has a crush on the resident hottie Reika. During a routinely brutal mission, he's approached by a battle worn Reika who claims that everyone else is dead and begs Inaba to have sex with her in the middle of a mall foyer (just go with it). Turns out "Reika" was a shape shifting alien in disguise. A male alien in disguise.
- One Piece:
- Bon Clay has the power to morph into anyone whose face he's touched before. In a memorable fight between him and Sanji, Bon Clay, exploiting Sanji's chivalry, morphs into Nami, causing Sanji to have a brief dilemma about whether or not to keep fighting him.
- Okama Queen Emporio Ivankov possesses the power to manipulate hormones within people's bodies, basically changing any aspect about them he wants to. It also works on him should he desire. Unfortunately for those around him, he can be very whimsical about using his Gender Bender powers on other people and prefers his, frankly, gonky Drag Queen true body.
- Ranma ½: A mid-series arc has the eponymous Sex Shifter being bewitched into falling in love with his rival, Ryoga, by a "Fishing Rod of Love". When Ryoga is creeped out by it, Ranma turns into a girl to appease him. It doesn't work. But later on, girl-Ranma goes to considerable lengths to get Ryoga to love her back, culminating with a kiss that fuels Ryoga's drive to kill her. After she tries to kill Akane, Ryoga defeats her by accidentally undoing the spell, to his relief. But then when he tries to confess to Akane, he accidentally grabs the wrong person: Ranma, who has returned to her senses. She's Squicked out and pulverizes Ryoga.
- An incredibly disturbing example occurs in Uzumaki: one male student is turned into a giant snail. Another male student mocks him for this, then ends up the same the next day. As snails are hermaprodites, and both were seemingly rendered non-sapient, they end up mating with each other.
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- In Power Girl (2009), Power Girl is disgusted to find out that the Ultra-Humanite, who's a human brain in the body of a gorilla, and his human girlfriend Satanna still have an active sex life — and it was Satanna's idea since she's turned on by his new body.
- In one Silver Age Superman story, Krypto the Superdog accidentally flies through a cloud of Red Kryptonite Dust clouds, and is surprised when he's turned into a pretty Collie. Doesn't sound so bad, or squicky so far, right? Well, he gets turned into a pregnant Collie and gives birth to a bunch of superpuppies.
- Marvel Universe:
- Deadpool: This is, unsurprisingly, subverted by Deadpool with his shapeshifting girlfriend Copycat (whose power doesn't just let her assume appearances, but memories, personalities and even superpowers). Deadpool recognizes that shapeshifting is driving Copycat crazy, and that he should discourage her from using it... right after she goes through a list of female superheroes that he first wants her to turn into during sex.
- The Defenders: Subverted by Cloud, who initially had two forms, a small cumulus that could project rain, wind and lightning, and a blatant Ms. Fanservice wearing strategically placed scraps of nimbus that always seemed on the point of blowing away. However, once every character with testosterone had got the hots for her, she discovered that she could just as easily coalesce from cloud form into a male body — and did, to general consternation.
- Fantastic Four:
- Lampshaded in one of the comics. No wonder Sue Storm has been Happily Married to Reed Richards for years!
"Did I ever mention what a wonderful power that cosmic cloud gave you?"
- Another classic case is Lyja, a Skrull spy who got married to Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in the shape of the Thing's former girlfriend Alicia Masters. The marriage was annulled after the truth came out, but since Lyja actually fell in love with Johnny, she later dated him again in a different human shape as "Laura Green". When she finally wanted to admit the deception he told her already because only one person kissed him like that. Awww. Unfortunately Onslaught intervened, and the two weren't reunited. But in the MC-2 timeline, Johnny and Lyja are happily married and have a son called Torus.
- Lampshaded in one of the comics. No wonder Sue Storm has been Happily Married to Reed Richards for years!
- Runaways: An interesting non-comedy example appears with Karolina and her Gender Bender fiancé(e) Xavin. Xavin initially presents herself as male, then promptly transforms into a female when Karolina reveals that she's a lesbian. Thereafter, there's an ongoing thread in the comic about Xavin's transformations; it's never exactly clear what Xavin's "real" sex is, if he/she even has one, and the other Runaways are not entirely comfortable with this. A complication arises when Xavin, knowing that Karolina has feelings for their teammate Nico, tries to cheer her up by making a move on Karolina while in Nico's shape. Oh, and without identifying that s/he's not really Nico. Apparently that's considered completely normal for Skrulls, because Xavin has no idea why this upsets Karolina. But later, during an unrelated argument, Xavin becomes female without thinking about it—which promptly ends the argument. Karolina's so pleased, she starts talking about that instead.
- Secret Invasion (2008): Shapeshifting aliens called Skrulls kidnapped and replaced dozens of denizens of Earth — including several superheroes — in preparation for a full-scale invasion. The Skrulls lived as the people they'd replaced for, in some cases, years, meaning that, among others, Hawkeye, Reed Richards, and Medusa slept with Skrulls they thought were their repsective spouses many times. If you piece together the events of three different books, you realize that (1) Hank Pym was seduced by a college girl who slept with him, revealed herself to be a Skrull, captured him, and took his identity, (2) that Skrull, as Hank Pym, then started sleeping with the heroine Tigra, but (3) the process that allowed the Skrulls to pass undetected also caused them to take on the personality of the person they replaced, meaning that the Skrull(s) replacing the brilliant but unstable Hank Pym was actually a series of Skrulls who kept becoming too unstable and needing to be replaced by other Skrulls — all of whom had to maintain the sexual relationship with Tigra AND (4) one of whom got her pregnant.
- Spider-Man: Electro was once dating a shapeshifter (or perhaps employing a shapeshifting prostitute) who demonstrated a number of possible forms for that night's... entertainment, including Susan Storm/Richards and Spider-Man.
- X-Men: Mystique is pretty much the embodiment of this trope. She is well aware of the implications of her powers and often happily acknowledges them.
- In an issue of Wolverine, Logan and Mystique apparently sleep together. Logan knew it was Mystique the whole time by her smell, but played along because Mystique was acting WAY out of character and he figured something was seriously bothering her.
- In a comic book story titled "Bizarre Love Triangle", Mystique takes an exotic female form and attempts to seduce Gambit in order to prove to Rogue (her adopted daughter) that he can't be trusted. When this fails, she takes the form of Rogue.
- Chris Claremont has gone on record as saying he intended Mystique and Destiny, her (female) lover, to both be Nightcrawler's biological parents. Since Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time didn't even allow the acknowledgement of homosexuality in the Marvel Universe, Claremont was unable to go through with this plan. And once he moved on from writing X-Men, the later writers didn't follow through with the hints he was able to sneak in.
- In one episode of Phil Foglio's XXXenophile, a witch has to have uninterrupted sex with her husband to rescue him from elves. The queen of elves tries to drive her away by transforming him into various monsters (just illusions, really). The witch wins. As it turns out, they've been doing such transformations for years to spice up their love life.
Fan Works
- Lampshaded in the DC Nation fan-verse when the characters are taking the 5000 question "internet purity test". Beast Boy's girlfriend (an OC with similar shapeshifting abilities) asks, tongue-in-cheek, "Honey, just how DO we answer those bestiality questions?"
- A variation in The Mountain and the Wolf: Jaime is visited by a Slaaneshi cultist who took the form of Cersei. Jaime panics, not because of the squick at being seduced by his sister (waaaaaaaaaay too late for that) but because as far as he knows, Cersei is dead. He accidentally kicks the cultist away, who regains hir true form and steals his golden hand out of spite.
Films — Animation
- Constantine: City of Demons. The Queen of Angels, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Los Angeles, can possess any person in her city, and introduces herself as an attractive woman in a dive bar who drags John Constantine into the bathroom for a knee-trembler. At the end of the movie she appears in the form of an old man who Constantine does not want to be kissed by. The Queen of Angels offers to change to a more attractive form, but Constantine says that if he's going to "knock boots" with a city, he'd rather it was London.
Films — Live-Action
- In 17 Again (2009), the main character turns into his 17-year-old self. Problem is, he still loves his wife, who is torn between disgust at the teenage boy for hitting on her and confusion at herself for falling for him (partly because she notices sort of how he looks like her husband's younger self and partly because he knows the various things she likes). This leads to many awkward moments when people walk in on the two in very uncomfortable situations and ultimately to him kissing her and her wigging out. On the other hand, she's quite happy to have him back when he turns back into an adult. As if that wasn't bad enough, there's also the squickyness of his teenage daughter trying to hook up with him, of course not knowing that the cute new boy is her father.
- This trope is parodied in Epic Movie (2007) when a Mystique-esque character seduces the main character Peter into having sex with her, where she offers to change into whatever his desires are. He starts off asking for rather conventional things, such as a larger breast and ass size, along with a Badonkadonk... until he takes those requests back to ask her to change into increasingly hideous guises (including a monobrow, flabby arms, a fat grandma body type, along with a wart on her chin) for his enjoyment during sex. Considering that he drools at this sight, and they start to get it on after, it seems it worked.
- In Excalibur (1981), as in the standard folklore, King Arthur is the son of Igraine and Uther Pendragon. He is shapeshifted by Merlin as Igraine's husband (who, at the moment, is painfully dying on the battlefield for extra drama). Because Squick was not already hitting the eleven, Uther is in full metal plate armor, with the queen laying under him. Ouch. No time to undress?
- This is lampshaded in Fantastic Four (2005): "So is it true he extend any part of his body?"
- In Galaxy Quest, the human Fred Kwan falls in love with the Thermian Laliari. Thermians are Octopoid Aliens who use advanced holographic technology to appear human. When Fred and Laliari get intimate her control slips and the tentacles come out. Bystanders are thoroughly squicked, but Fred doesn't mind one bit.
- Legend (1985) has the fairy turning into the heroine to tempt the hero, but he refuses. It almost causes a problem (because the fairy is insulted and almost doesn't help them), and the hero's allies reprimand him for not playing along and kissing her.
- Discussed in Mallrats, in the scene where Brody asks Stan Lee about the implications of Reed and Sue Richards' relationship...
- In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, there's a scene where it's Tin Thing (Gonzo)'s turn to see the wizard. The wizard first appears as this very beautiful green-skinned woman... but when Gonzo fails to react to this, she turns into a chicken just like Camilla!
- One of the dream sequences in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors has Joey being seduced by a sexy nurse, who turns into Freddy from the neck up at a key moment.
- While on a Klingon prison planet in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Kirk ends up kissing a gorgeous alien played by supermodel Iman. Later in the film, he is notably squicked when he learns that she is a shapeshifter, and that one of her forms is a huge, thuggish, and grotesquely male alien — and this is on top of their fight scene, where she imitates Kirk. As pointed out in the dialogue:
Kirk: I can't believe I kissed you!
Not Kirk: Must've been your lifelong ambition. - In X2: X-Men United, Mystique seduces Wolverine. He's fairly surprised when she mimics Storm, a little conflicted at Jean Grey's appearance, but profoundly creeped out when he sees her shapeshift into Rogue (essentially a movie version of his traditional underage female sidekick). Turning into Brian "Original Lecter" Cox was just icing on the Do Not Want cake.
- In Zerophilia, Luke finds out he's got a rare genetic disorder that allows him to change gender at will, and while he finds himself to be surprisingly comfortable about it, he has to worry about how his girlfriend Michelle will take it if she finds out and the fact that her brother seems to be quite taken by his female form. Fortunately, it's a Two-Person Love Triangle, and Michelle had also been dealing with insecurities stemming from a past failed relationship implied to have involved her ex-boyfriend seeing her as disgusting for having a male form and cheating on her as a result.
Folklore & Mythology
- In Arthurian Legend, the warlord Uther Pendragon falls madly in lust with Igraine, who is already married to Gorlois. Uther asks Merlin for help, and the wizard transforms Uther into a copy of Gorlois. Igraine makes love to the man she thinks is her husband, and conceives Arthur Pendragon of legend. That's right, the honorable King Arthur is the product of rape by fraud.note
- Meanwhile, her husband is killed in the unjust war Uther had begun against him in the attempt to win Igraine, and he marries her a little later. After she's figured out what happened that night. Word of God states they were very happy, but it's pretty full of relationship Squick.
- The Values Dissonance enters the picture where Igraine eventually figures it out and is okay with the rape by fraud. Though it would be more accurate to say that she is relieved that the son she conceived that night is the child of her second husband. It simplifies her life considerably.
- Arthur, by the way, commits incest with his sister Morgause (not Morgan Le Fay, by the way; the roles only become merged in more contemporary stories). The story varies, in some versions it's an accident and in some it's rape. By either Morgause or ARTHUR himself. The result is Mordred, and as such other things like the ruin of Camelot, civil war, and Arthur's death. So, going by the myths, rape is fine as long as you're not related.
- This is one of The Oldest Ones in the Book of Asian folklore. Fox spirits were often given the power to turn into humans and seduce men. Originally, they were often used in stories where a man finds out the one night stand was actually a fox, the horror of that reveal sufficient for An Aesop. However, the additional power of succubus had to be added when the squick factor of accidentally sleeping with an animal, apparently, wasn't enough to get the point across!
- Not to mention the Japanese kitsune myths, where the squick works just as well backwards — a useless drunken lout shares his liquor with a cute baby fox, gets it thoroughly inebriated and lets it snuggle up to him like a cat. And wakes up in bed with a drunken, naked teenage boy. Naturally, family members are not amused.
- Korean foxes don't have this moral ambiguity, though. They're all bad. Man-eating and horrible about it.
- Peoples living north and east of Japan — Ainu, Koryaks, Inuits — believed that all animals of any age are shapeshifters, who can take off their "coats" and become human or almost human (e.g. hiding a fox tail in a ponytail). They have many variations of "fox wife" story, some identical to the Japanese story about Ono of Mino, some different. In one Inuit version the human husband catches up to his runaway fox wife when they stop for a night in the home of some married couple. They decide to swap wives, and it goes mostly fine. But in the morning the hosts become a female hare and a piece of shit. The fox runs away in disgust and has to be chased again.
- The Púca of Celtic Mythology naturally took the form of a demonic black horse but could shapeshift into a human to impregnate people with malformed babies.
- Classical Mythology:
- There's a Greek myth which says that the gods turned the prophet Tiresias into a woman for seven years. This came in handy later when he could answer Zeus and Hera's debate about whether men or women have more fun. Some versions claim during Tiresias' time as a woman she then spent several years as a famous prostitute. For the record, the answer was something like, "Women, ten times over!", which pissed Hera off enough to strike him blind on the spot. Zeus couldn't reverse the curse of another god, but he could give Tiresias the ability to see the future as compensation. In other versions, it was Zeus who cursed him for proving him wrong and Hera who blessed him.
- Shapeshifting seems to have been Zeus' standard means of seducing mortals. Hercules' mother, for instance, thought she was sleeping with her husband. That's an example of his most tame sort of shapeshifting seduction. Swans, bulls, golden rains (well, okay, the shower of gold was a metaphor; the woman's father had locked her away to keep her pure, but gold gets you past any locked door — but still)...
- A Native American Mythology example is the Trickster God Coyote. One story details how he took a fancy to the wife of a village hunter, so one day when the husband was out hunting, he met up with him and turned 'him' into a coyote while Coyote himself took on the husband's form and headed back to the village to sleep with 'his' wife. The young woman didn't even know what had happened until the next day an old (wise?)woman told her that she smelt of Coyote. How the old woman knew what Coyote smelt like, however...
- Loki from Norse Mythology was pretty much the master of this trope, being an eternal trickster with incredibly low sexual restraint (for the Norse gods, at least; he'd be a prude in plenty of other pantheons). Loki was also the father of many strange monsters, including the Fenrir wolf, who is destined to devour Odin, and the Jormungandr dragon, so huge he circles the world with his tail clenched in his teeth, and destined to kill Thor with his poisonous breath. The most disturbing of his children might be Hel, the goddess who rules the dead — in at least one version of the legend, she was Loki's daughter by the same giantess and witch on whom he fathered Fenrir and Jormungandr. After she was burned at the stake, Loki found her still-living heart in the ashes, which he promptly swallowed. He then ran away into the woods for nine months and gave birth to an adorable baby girl, who was alive on one half of her body and an eternally decaying undead corpse on the other half.
- In many accounts of Succubi and Incubi, an incubus cannot produce sperm to impregnate women in their sleep, so he gets it from other human men while in the form of a succubus. This explains when a child looks nothing like their father but resembles the neighbor's kids. Damn those rapist demons!
Literature
- In the Anita Blake novels, therianthrope-on-human porn movies are all the rage, especially if both start out human and the were-horndog transforms in coitus. In fact, one novel has Anita investigating a snuff version of one such movie. That particular scenario gets inverted in The Shattered World, where Beorn the werebear so fears to lose control of his bestial side that he's never permitted himself to climax with a woman. When he hooks up with Mirrim the werewolf, he hallucinates that both of them are starting to transform and abruptly breaks away from their tryst-in-progress.
- In one Darkover novel, a Terran man falls in love with one of the chieri, the hermaphroditic, elf-like natives of Darkover, in her female phase. In the middle of their lovemaking, she transforms into her male form. After the initial shock he decides he doesn't care. He loves this, er, person whichever gender they happen to be at the moment.
- Subverted in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Ron claims that Fleur is way more beautiful than Tonks, never realising that a shapeshifter can be the most beautiful girl in the world, whatever your taste is. Fleur is one quarter Veela, basically a creature with super-pheromones as a superpower, which Tonks presumably cannot replicate. Besides, Tonks isn't interested in being gawked at by random males, her beloved loves her like she is, so why would she be interested in whether Ron considers her pretty?
- The Hyperion Cantos has one of the most disturbing examples. While having sex, Kassad's girlfriend turns into the Shrike, a seven-foot-tall monster made of thorns. His penis barely gets out in time.
- InCryptid: Sam (a therianthrope) falls in love with Antimony precisely because she sees both his human and simian forms as equally attractive, while previous lovers had only wanted his human form, considering having sex with him in his natural state close to bestiality. It's likely they find some use for his Prehensile Tail and Handy Feet during sex too, but that's left to the reader's imagination.
- In Alan Dean Foster's sci-fi story "Life Form", a race of aliens are taught by a human stranded on their planet to transform into humanoid forms (and wage war, which was a foreign concept to them). The shapeshifted beings end up being attractive by human standards because a human taught them their new form. Years later, a human exploration party arrives. One human guy (a bit of a perv) commands one of the aliens to transform while he's getting it on with her. She's initially hesitant, then very reluctantly obliges... and ends up driving him insane, because her original alien form looks kind of like a huge lobster/bug that directly triggers subconscious human fears.
- Mangoverse: In A Harvest of Ripe Figs Shulamit points out crimes which a shapeshifter could commit include raping women while impersonating a trusted loved one, after the potions dealer she's speaking to objects that it's no big deal. She asks if the dealer would like that happening to her daughters. The woman hadn't thought of that and reacts with horror.
- Patternist: A main character in Wild Seed is a woman who can shapeshift. She mentions that she can turn into a man and impregnate women. Since the book ends in the mid-1800s, none of the characters understand why all the children she fathers are female. She also turns into a dolphin and mates with other dolphins at one point.
- Polymorph, an early novel by Scott Westerfeld, centers around a person (originally female) who has an extra organelle that allows him/her to shapeshift, and his/her sexual encounters. S/he's pretty much forgotten his/her original form and lives off of disability checks (shapeshifting can create convincing-looking disabilities and fake identities). A lot of the squick comes with the antagonist, and how the love interest gets treated in the epilogue...
- Prose Edda: As part of a plot, Loki shapeshifts into a mare and gets a stallion to run after him — several months later, Loki gives birth to an eight-legged horse called Sleipnir, which becomes Odin's mount.
- One of the Red Dwarf novels has Lister being captured by aliens. He is given a pleasure G.E.L.F in order to seduce him for information. It can implant a chips into peoples brains in order to know just what that persons tastes are and shapeshifts accordingly.
- Taking Flight: Unusually, the shapeshifter is the one being squicked. Kelder is enchanted to love and desire Irith the Flier, who is a shapeshifter with seven different shapes. It turns out that no matter the Irith's shape, the man still lusts after her, even when she assumes the shape of a horse. (By the way, one of the seven shapes is a housecat, so yeah, a cat is fine too.) Irith is seriously squicked by that.
- In The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, the shapeshifter Dee is still a virgin because she turns into the guy's mother at the crucial moment.
- Whateley Universe: Jimmy T can change his shape into pretty much anything and anyone. By the end of Halloween, he has a boyfriend/girlfriend who changes regularly from one sex to the other. Which means...
- Wild Cards:
- In Busted Flush, Lohengrin is not pleased to learn that his lover Lilith was actually the shapeshifter Double Helix, who self-identifies as male.
- In another story, the shapeshifter Mr. Nobody impersonates the villainous St. John Latham. While in this state, he seduces a female supervillain and gives himself "the usual Penthouse Letters version" when it comes to "personal equipment".
Live-Action TV
- The Boys (2019): Vought International blackmails a senator by having Doppelganger seduce him in the guise of a beautiful woman who ties the senator to a bed and blindfolds him, then shapeshifts into a flabby middle-aged man who selfies them having sex.
- In Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has finally healed emotionally enough from Tara's death to kiss her new prospective girlfriend, Kennedy. Much to the astonishment of her lesbian partner, Willow promptly turns into a man. Much to Willow's astonishment, it happens to be the man she skinned alive last season. Hilarity and drama ensue.
- In Charmed (1998), a recently-turned-evil-again Cole Turner goes to a demonic strip club where he asks a shapeshifter to impersonate his estranged ex-wife Phoebe. The shapeshifter later tried to kill and replace the real Phoebe, worsening the estrangement. At the end of the same episode, he visits the strip club again and asks another shapeshifter to impersonate Phoebe, but this time he kills her.
- Conan the Adventurer has a variant when the heroes save a beautiful girl who tells Conan she wants to have his babies and then go separate ways, as is the custom for her people. He agrees... but it turns out she's actually the larval form of some kind of murderous tentacled slime monster (they killed her mom earlier), and starts transforming into the mature stage right in the middle of sex...
- The illusion-casting Candice from Heroes (2006) tries seducing Sylar by appearing as a geisha, a pair of blond twins and finally Sylar himself.
- In the last episode of Jekyll, Hyde teases Jackman's (his Jekyll-side's) wife about how he might want to come out when the two were having sex. She responds, "I might let you."
- Red Dwarf:
- In "Camille", the shapeshifting GELF lover turns out to be a one-eyed pile of green glop, grossing out most of the cast, but Kryten (an android) subverts it by admitting that he has no problem with her real form and goes on a date with her.
- In "Psirens", this is played for laughs when Lister falls for the charms of a brain-sucking Space Siren who takes the shape of his boyhood crush, the older sister of one of his mates. We then cut to Lister making out with a nine-foot tall bug.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- Honourable mention must be made of the original Green-Skinned Space Babe from the pilot, "The Cage". She was, in reality, a human, but she was able to use the aliens' telepathic abilities to change the way she appeared to Captain Pike. It essentially played out as the first type.
- The salt monster from "The Man Trap" seduces its victims by appearing as their ideal mate, and spends years alone with a man who thinks of it as his "wife"; Kirk even explicitly Lampshade Hangs this trope at one point:
Kirk: ...is this 'Crater's private heaven'? This thing can become wife, friend, lover... It's not a bad life, having everyone in the universe at your beck and call — and you win all the arguments!
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Wesley Crusher had a run-in with a changeling in "The Dauphin".
- In "Tapestry", Picard relives the days leading up to when he lost his original heart. Although everyone in his dream/memory/time-travel/thing sees him as a 19-year-old, he is still played by Patrick Stewart, so the audience sees him as a bald 40-something. Approaches this trope when he sleeps with one of his friends, who is of course an actual 19-year-old — who then turns into Q, much to Picard's chagrin.
- In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Odo has a sexual life using this, that is until he starts to MERGE with other changelings, an act which is portrayed as being far more intimate than mere coitus (and much more natural for an amorphous and sexless race). At first he seems to think of it in sexual terms; the writers have fun with this, as when a "male" changeling wants to merge with him in public. Subverted in one episode when he has sex with a woman, only to find out later that SHE isn't the one who she claimed to be (she was surgically changed into another race and given false memories).
- The first type happens to Tucker and Reed in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Two Days and Two Nights". It doesn't end well.
Trip: You think this is my fault?!
Malcolm: You were willing to follow two strange aliens into a basement.
Trip: Gorgeous aliens! Don't forget they were gorgeous.
Malcolm: They were male!
Trip: Not at first!
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- One episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno features a fake advert for something called For Men Only (a parody of men's haircare products), which is a liquid that turns men into women. There are several male-to-female morphs in it, including Jay himself using the product. Another episode has Jay in drag (a supermodel with his voice). And in the episode where Pam Anderson was the guest, Jay asks several questions about implants and then asks her... "If you could be a man, who would it be?" Pam responds "I could be you!" Jay then exclaims "That's perfect. Why?" Pam's answer is "So I could sit there, torturing you, asking about your implants."
Manhwa
- Rebirth: Deshwitat has a sparring match with an ancient, bearded Cultured Badass vampire. During the battle, said ancient vampire (in a bout of humor) playfully transforms himself into a hot young half-dressed woman to throw him off from attacking him. Deshwitat, baffled and enraged, orders him to change back. He certainly does, but only his head, leaving the rest of it the same.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Metallic dragons of a certain age can shapeshift, generally into humanoids. Considering that there are a lot of draconic creatures, and the half-dragon stats can in theory be applied to any other monster (or NPC) in the manuals, there are a lot of jokes about dragons doing everything that moves.
- Changelings in Eberron are probably masters of this trope. Even gender is merely a guideline to them, provided they stay within general humanoid appearance and don't change gender while pregnant. Jokes about the hookers in Sharn pretty much make themselves.
- Exalted: Lunar Exalted have shapeshifting powers that let them switch genders, turn into any sort of animal, or both. This power means that they are able to create Beastmen by committing bestiality as, er, either component, and they can be either mother or father, depending on their whims. Their patron deity has a form that appears as a pregnant human of either sex and it's implied that a sufficiently skilled Lunar Exalted could mimic this trick themself. Somewhat justified in canon; the Lunars were originally created not just as counsellors and stewards to the Solars, but as their mates. When you're an immortal god-king and you live in a setting where a good chunk of the population swings both ways, you're going to need some variety. The master of this was the Lunar Ma-Ha-Suchi, who made it his life's mission to seduce every other Celestial Exalted in existence. All 699 of them. He nearly made it, too, until the Usurpation happened.
- There was a Legend of the Five Rings published module where, in the end, it turned out that the "something foully wrong" with a certain monastery was the fact that the head monk was having sex. The problem was, he was having sex with a bog hag in disguise and didn't know it. In that setting, a bog hag is an evil creature that flays living humans alive and can impersonate them by wearing the flayed skin, most emphatically not a shapeshifter.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate:
- In the Bhaalspawn Saga, there's a Bhaalspawn chinchilla. Sure, there's humans, elves, dragons, but a chinchilla? It's more of a surprise that the Realms apparently have chinchillas than that the god of murder of all things doesn't squick as easily as mere mortals.
- In Baldur's Gate III, if the player romances their Druid companion Halsin, they have the option to ask him to wildshape into a bear for sex, traumatizing a nearby squirrel.
- In Dragon Age: Origins, Zevran asks Morrigan if she's ever had sex in non-human form. She's squicked by the idea and finds his interest in it unhealthy.
- I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: One of the dating options is Sym, an shapeshifting alien who is working on his human form over the course of the game. One of his dating events consists of him discovering the "adult content" of the colony's archives and pointing that he has the leeway to accomodate the Player Character's tastes in that particular domain, if they have any interest in him doing so.
- In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the very female Laughing Octopus copies Solid Snake's rugged-older-guy face — just his face.
Webcomics
- But I'm a Cat Person includes background references to the use of the shapeshifting Beings in pornography that would otherwise be illegal
. Also, Kara Lynn has standing orders to earn her Master's family money as an exotic dancer and prostitute, and changes form to suit the fetishes of the highest bidder.
- This strip of Casey and Andy:
Casey: If either of us has abnormal sex, I'm sure it's you. Your girlfriend 'has many forms'.
Andy: It's not like that at all.
Satan: Oh, honey... I feel feisty. Before bed tonight, I want you to pick your favorite farm animal. You'll find out why later.
Andy: [to Casey] That's probably not good. - There are many shapeshifters in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, most notably the 'Cubi species, whose default powers start at sprouting tentacles (both Naughty and Combat varieties) and Sizeshifting. Then there's Pyroduck, who can shift between a humanoid form and a giant brown dragon form. His girlfriend, Alexi, averts it, much to his dismay.
- El Goonish Shive: Transformations and gender-bending are constants throughout and drive the majority of the plots. Once the characters start hooking up, well... Notably, a noncanonical Remix Comic was a word-for-word redo of the above-linked Casey and Andy strip.
- In Housepets!, we have King and his popularity for shipping with all the girl dogs. King is a Forced Transformation victim and a human named Joel.
- Early on in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Princess Voluptua reveals to Bob that her beautiful appearance is an illusion and that she's actually a Starfish Alien. Consequently, they have never pursued a relationship, although his girlfriend Jean still dislikes her hanging around him in all her Green-Skinned Space Babe glory.
- In The KAMics, the Ratatosk started the Squirrel Wars because he was egged on by a cute harem squirrel that turned out to be the god Loki. Although, considering that in the Norse myths Loki once took on the form of a mare to draw off a giant's horse & later got pregnant, this behavior was not out of character...
- Last Res0rt toys with this one early on, as Alice Quinn transforms into 'fellow prisoner' Daisy Archanis (minus the eyes, of course) in order to convince Jason to pick her as his lieutenant. The squick is more implied than anything else, and thanks to Jason's ambiguous morality, Daisy's more disturbed by the idea than anyone else.
- The Order of the Stick has a stable romantic relationship between Nale and Sabine, which includes a, shall we say, interesting subversion.
Nale: Must... resist... urge to assert... heterosexuality! For the sake... of the plan!
Sabine: Honey, I am a shapechanger, it's not like we never tried—
Nale: Not! Helping! - The Perry Bible Fellowship: In the comic "Eden", God takes the form of Adam and engages in sex with Eve, who does not know that she is not doing it with Adam. Adam calls out "Honey?" upon seeing what is happening.
- Something*Positive: Played around with in an early story arc. During a Dungeons & Dragons game, the resident prick, Mike, complains about newcomer PeeJee throwing off the group dynamic by also playing a female character. The DM, sick of Mike's whiny shit, retcons information about a magic item Mike had picked up in the previous game — a belt. Mike never took the time to find out what it did; his character immediately put it on and promptly turned male (and now looked like a Player Avatar). The squicktasdedness comes later, when PeeJee uses magic, in-universe and adherent to all D&D rules, to create Redneck Trees that proceed to rape Mike's character. Even worse (almost) is a re-enactment of said rape by some LARPers who get way into the role, and have costumes that would be... er, "fully functional". Mike is just barely saved, and the rescuer (PeeJee) immediately regrets the action. He gets better later. ...Much later.
- This in inverted in UC, where a shapeshifting demon tries to find something that will turn Nicodemus on. Instead, he finds something that turns him inside-out.
- Wapsi Square: Justin once dated a werewolf who liked to change in the middle of sex. Justin wasn't really into it.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Skull", Clayton shapeshifts into Principal Brown to get Gumball and Darwin to make up with him. A few seconds later, Principal Brown's lover Miss Simian bursts into the room and attempts to flirt with him not knowing it's Clayton, so he is forced to make his exit via the window.
- Batman Beyond's Inque, a woman with a sexy voice who's been turned into a living but shapely blob. Creeee-pyyy...
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold has an example with this trope's headliner image character, Metamorpho. Since he can transform into liquids and gasses, he can get inside people... don't tell us that's not perverted.
Wildcat: He got in my mouth!
- Ben 10:
- The original Ben 10 series has an episode where Ben meets a trio of crime-fighting aliens. The female Tetramand, a species of massive red-skinned four-armed aliens, is impressed with Ben's Tetramand form and begins flirting with him... until he turns human. Cue disgust. She does, however, later try to encourage him to turn back into Fourarms... which disgusts Ben (that he's 10 and the alien woman is an adult isn't directly brought up).
- One episode of Ben 10: Alien Force has Ben's Big Chill form giving birth because the species reproduce asexually. His natural form being a teenage boy, Ben is rather embarrassed, though he thankfully isn't conscious for the actual birthing.
- Ben 10: Omniverse
- Averted with another female Tetramand. Princess Looma spends most of the episode pursuing Kevin to force him to honor their engagement. After (an at this point teenage) Ben is tricked into defeating her, she immediately switches her affections to Ben. The interspecies aspects isn't much of an issue on either side; her father just considers Ben's ability to change into a Tetramand with the Omnitrix a bonus.
- In "The Frogs of War", Ben is a bit disturbed that transforming into his Inkursian form Bullfrag causes him to find the Inkursian Princess Attea attractive. Attea becomes pretty smitten with him in turn, and she'd rather have him be Bullfrag all the time, though she doesn't pass on human Ben either.
- Codename: Kids Next Door: In "Operation K.I.S.S.", an accident with a machine he's working on ages Numbuh Two into a teenager. Because he's unrecognizable, having lost his fat and having a deeper voice, Cree falls for "Hank" without realizing she's crushing on one of her biggest enemies—as well as someone much younger than her. When he reveals the truth, she's so revolted, she does multiple spit takes to clean her mouth and tongue.
Numbuh Two: [sheepishly giggles and waves] Hi!
Cree: [gasps] Somebody's turned you into that fat slob Hoagie Gilligan!
Numbuh Five: Nah, fool! Hank is Hoagie!
Cree: [sputters, increasingly horrified] Bu—but if Hank is Hoagie, th—then we—but that means that I—with—
[Overwhelmed by her disgust, she spits like mad. Sector V stands over her, all but Numbuh Two triumphant.]
Numbuh Two: [groans in disappointment] C'mon! It wasn't that bad, was it? - Family Guy:
- In one episode, Peter gains shapeshifting powers. At one point, he turns into Britney Spears and gets Justin Timberlake to kiss him, at which point he changes into Gene Shalit.
- A Cutaway Gag has him as one of the Wonder Twins — Jayna goes off to fight evil, while Peter...
Peter: Form of... Jayna's tampon. [floats inside her purse] And now we play the waiting game.
- Futurama: In "A Bicyclops Built for Two", Leela meets Alcazar, whom she believes to be the other last of her kind. Turns out he was really a shapeshifting cricket who tried to seduce five women to keep his five castles clean.
- In Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Zan is shown having morphed into Wonder Woman's bathwater.
- The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Canterlot Wedding, Part 2" has Queen Chrysalis (a shapeshifting bug pony thing), disguised as Shining Armor's fiancée Princess Cadence. She's with him on his wedding night and is "feeding off of his love". Ew.
- Teen Titans (2003) has an example of Fridge Horror shapeshifting that doesn't involve sex. Beast Boy is able to transform into any animal he can think of. It's because he's transformed into so many different animals that he's a vegan. He's been most of the animals humans eat and so refuses to eat them himself.
- In the opening of the Young Justice (2010) episode "Image", shapeshifter Miss Martian takes on the form of Black Canary to engage in a little Teacher/Student Romance roleplaying with Superboy. Canary's boyfriend Green Arrow is amused (after briefly expressing shock that Dinah would cheat on him with a juvenile student). Dinah is not. J'onn explains that among Martians (who can read each other's minds), this is regarded as a harmless game because everyone knows it's fake, but Dinah has a quiet talk with Miss Martian explaining that it's different for humans.