...all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit. For the first time It realized that perhaps Its ability to change Its shapes might work against It was well as for It. There had never been pain before, there had never been fear before, and for a moment, It had thought It might die...
— It
A shapeshifter or magical being takes on a new physical form, and they're reveling in the powers this form grants them. Except... what's this? Turns out this new form has an established weakness, and the rules of that universe mean that they now share that weakness. Particularly aggravating if it's a Weaksauce Weakness.
Compare Assimilation Backfire for instances of assimilation or copying coming with a drawback.
In cases of Forced Transformations or Involuntary Shapeshifting, it can result in The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body.
Compare Tricking the Shapeshifter and Second Law of Gender-Bending.
Examples
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Film — Animation
- Aladdin (1992, Disney): Jafar, for all his arrogance and declarations of grandeur, deeply rankles at the idea of always having someone more powerful than him — in this case, the Genie who gave him his power in the first place. So once he has Aladdin on the ropes in his gigantic cobra form, Aladdin heckles him into making his third wish to become an all-powerful genie himself. As soon as the Genie reluctantly grants his wish, an elated Jafar literally explodes through the roof of the Sultan's palace, bombastically declaring that the universe is now his to command and control... only for Aladdin to dampen his spirits by telling him that now that he's a genie, all his phenomenal cosmic power comes at the price of being a prisoner, forced to serve whoever holds his lamp. Jafar can only helplessly shout a few NOOOO'S as he's pulled inside his lamp, desperately grabbing Iago and taking the parrot with him. By the sequel, Jafar has discovered even more downsides to being a genie: he can't travel far from his lamp, he can't kill people directly anymore, and destroying his lamp whilst he's still enslaved to it will kill him.
- Beauty and the Beast (1991): After ten years trapped in his feral body, Beast has started losing his humanity: he walks on all fours, barely wears clothes, and is viciously territorial. Living together with Belle — and his own effort to improve — help him regain most of his humanity. According to Word of God, if she hadn't shown up in time, he would have gone completely and permanently feral.
- Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation: Dark Heart frequently takes the form of a human boy. This appears to grant him all the weaknesses that come with being human, like falling unconscious and nearly drowning when he stumbles and hits his head on an oar while boating on the camp lake.
- Help! I'm a Fish: The antidote created by Mac Krill may turn humans turned into fishes back into humans again, but has the reversal effect on fishes, giving them intelligence and the ability to talk. However, when Fly tricks Joe into drinking more antidote, the fish mutates, turning into a heinous mockery of a human being. And humans can't breath in the water...
- Sleeping Beauty (1959): Maleficent turns into a giant dragon, which apparently made her very vulnerable to stabbing from an enchanted sword.
- Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs: Whenever Snow White puts the red shoes on, she transforms into a thin, conventionaly beautiful woman. With that, however, she loses all the great strength she has with her real, overweight body. She decides to keep them because nobody would help her finding her father with her real appearance (though she's not actually ugly), but has to take the shoes off whenever she needs to use force.
- The Sword in the Stone: The whole point of a Wizards Duel. Each wizard or witch chooses a form to transform into, and their opponent tries to choose a form to exploit the other's weaknesses. e.g., Merlin becomes a rabbit for speed, Mad Madame Mim becomes a fox, a known predator of rabbits. Mim breaks her own rules about transforming into fantastical creatures through Loophole Abuse, becoming a large, fire-breathing dragon. Merlin counters by becoming a germ, meaning, ironically, that catching him was exactly the last thing she wanted.
Literature
- Animorphs: Morphing into animals comes with some degree of the animals' instincts. These broadly work out to be Required Secondary Powers since the instincts make it possible to move and act in a different body without having to laboriously learn how in each one, but it does sometimes get in the way too.
- When they transform into ants, they're nearly overwhelmed by the colony's Hive Mind, losing their sense of who they are and what they're doing. Afterward, they resolve not to try ant morphs again.
- Many prey animals are fearful of any potential threat, many predators want to chase down and devour any potential food, and in either case the Animorphs have to keep tight control.
- The first time the team morphs wolves, Rachel pointedly asks if Jake (the only one who morphed a male) drank too much soda before leaving. He sheepishly answers that the wolf's instincts are pushing him to pee against every tree they pass.
- When morphing cattle to infiltrate a Yeerk-run meatpacking plant, Ax and Tobias acquire steers (castrated male bovines). But since Shapeshifting Heals Wounds, the team ends up with two large, very territorial, very aggressive bulls staring each other down and about to charge each other.
- Played for laughs whenever the team morphs seagulls, as they spend the entire trip excitedly pointing out trash and half-eaten food below. Tobias (who's trapped in the form of a red-tailed hawk) complains that he's losing street cred with his fellow raptors by hanging out with scavengers.
- In Megamorphs 3, most of the group acquires a T. rex. After running into a triceratops, they notice one of them is ripping the triceratops apart, do a quick headcount... and realize it's Cassie of all people who's lost herself in the morph (presumably out of stress at being stuck millions of years in the past with no way back, and with two of her friends missing). After she snaps out of it, she still feels remorse for a while.
- While trapped in the Arctic, four of the team morph wolves and the other two, who don't have wolves or other cold-weather animals in their repertoire, morph fleas and ride on them. After finding a dead seal, Marco asks if Tobias and Ax want to demorph in order to eat, only for them to awkwardly admit they already ate.
- When Cassie morphs a Yeerk and goes into the Yeerk pool, she catches herself feeling that she's home (Yeerks need to return to their pool every three days or they starve) and mentally slaps herself to stay focused on her mission.
- In the Apprentice Adept (a crossover science fiction/fantasy series by Piers Anthony), transformation spells work this way. Stile shows a character the spell to turn into a bee and then has to recite the reversal spell in "bee buzz" to turn back into a human.
- The Belgariad: Sorcerers who can shapeshift generally use a variety of forms depending on the circumstances, precisely to avoid this problem. Polgara, for example, favors the form of a snowy owl, but owls are not especially fast and they can't handle high winds, so when she needs to travel fast or in bad weather, she switches to another bird like a falcon or a hawk.
- Beware of Chicken: Even though Tigu the cat and Ri Zu the rat already had mutual respect as fellow disciples, their relationship becomes much easier after Tigu gains a human form, shedding her instincts to eat Ri Zu; they quickly shift from tense and guarded cooperation to inseparable friends. When Tigu later briefly changes back, she has to quash those instincts again, and notices herself feeling more proud and less bashful.
- Deltora Quest: Ols are shape-shifting creatures that come in three grades; the highest the grade, the more convincing and long-lasting the disguise is. Grade 3 Ols can perfectly replicate anyone and maintain that form indefinitely, but this comes at the cost of gaining that form's weaknesses. For example, a Grade 3 Ol who transformed into a human can be killed by bashing his head in, or throwing it off a building; by contrast, Grade 1 and 2 Ols can only be killed by piercing their hearts or using rare forms of magic, no matter what form they're using.
- Goosebumps: Near the end of the book, Attack of the Mutant, Skipper tricks the Masked Mutant by making him turn into Hollywood Acid. The Masked Mutant splashed into the carpet, making a big hole in it. The Masked Mutant can transform into anything solid and change back, but when he changes into a liquid he can't change back.
- Harry Potter: It's mentioned that, under normal circumstances, a witch or wizard who turns into an animal would have the animal's mind and forget how to turn back. An Animagus, of course, averts this and keeps their human mind... which is part of why it's such a difficult bit of magic to learn.
- Hogfather: After Teatime's attempt at killing the Hogfather is thwarted by Susan, the Auditors — who had been untouchable by Death — transform into dogs to kill the deity directly. However, this comes with one fatal mistake, as they are now living beings and therefore within Death's jurisdiction, resulting in him taking the Auditors out in one fell swoop.
- It: The eponymous monster takes on the form of whatever a child is most afraid of. This usually grants It things like claws and fangs. But It also learns that if the children associate a weakness with that form, It also picks those up as well, such as silver hurting It if It should decide to be a werewolf, or Eddie's belief that his inhaler contains battery acid blinding It when It becomes The Crawling Eye.note
- Xanth: Dolph, the son of Dor and Irene, is a Magician who can transform into any other living creature. However, he also has the limitations that come with whatever creature he chooses. If he becomes a dog, his eyesight is poor. When he was an adolescent, when he transformed he would also be an adolescent version of whatever creature he chose. This put him at a distinct disadvantage if he was fighting an adult version of that creature. Also, if he transformed into a creature like a fire-breathing, flying dragon he wouldn't be as good at fighting as the real thing, since in his new form he lacked experience in flying, using his flame offensively, etc.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: In Fifth Edition, the Polymorph spell transforms a creature into an animal, including their mental statistics. They can't do anything that involves speaking, using items or casting magic if their new form can't.
Theater
- In Beetlejuice: The Musical, Beetlejuice's attempt to become human by marrying Lydia actually works... only for Lydia to immediately stab him now that he's mortal.
Video Games
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!: At the end of the game, Graham has to defeat the evil wizard Mordack in a Wizards Duel, where in Mordack repeatedly shapeshifts, forcing Graham to counter his spells. These forms come with different weaknesses. For instance, when he turns into a dragon, Graham becomes a rabbit, and he's too slow to catch him. When he becomes a snake, Graham becomes a mongoose, an animal well known for hunting snakes. Finally, Mordack becomes a ring of fire... and gets extinguished with rain.
- In League of Legends, the Voidborn are the sapient "Void" between realms made manifest in the physical realm of Runeterra. On its own, the Void is infinite nothingness and could develop the raw power to consume everything, but entering Runeterra requires them to play ball with its "rules", and that means abiding by foreign concepts like space, time, and heat, which are just as confusing and frightening for them as they themselves are to humans. Newly-spawned Voidborn come out as dangerous, but malformed and vulnerable entities, and the more time they spend in Runeterra consuming things, the more they start to resemble and behave like a "normal" monster, for better and for worse.
Web Animation
- Team Neighborhood: In "Pool Fools", BLU Spy uses one of his disguise masks to transform himself into an ice cube in an attempt to cool himself off during a heat wave, but the intense heat causes him to quickly melt.
Web Comics
- Cursed Princess Club: Except for Gwendolyn, the only non-cursed one, all the other members of the club had their lives changed by their respective curses:
- Monika was once kidnapped by an evil wizard who turned her into his crow pet. Although she was rescued and, somehow, "healed", she still turns into a crow whenever she is stressed. If by one turn that gives her the ability to fly, she becomes very small and unable to interact to anyone out of the club. Also, she gained the habit of stealing brilliant and pretty objects, refusing to give them back.
- Thermidora was once a lobster princess, but a jealous sea cucumber turned her into a human to separate her from her love. Besides that, she is forced to live on dry land, wear clothes and live among people. Still, her lobster claws remained; they aren't good to handle human objects and people out of the club find them scary.
- Calpernia, the founder of the club, was accidentally cursed by her abusive fiancée into becoming a giant, mindless spider at the moon nights (which coincide to her periods). That not only caused her to be pushed away by her own parents but she also has to lock herself in a barn in the said nights, to avoid eating someone. The only thing good is that she became able to understand spiders, who are very protective of the club and the forest; on other hand, they scare the postmans away, keeping Calpernia from receiving letter from her regretting family.
- Megan Kearney's Beauty and the Beast: To be transformed into a Beast caused Argus to lose temporarily his sentience. He took many years to get his mind back but needs routine and activites to keep anchored, like reading, gardening and dining with Beauty. Still, he is occasionally forced into giving in to his feral instincts; when this happens, he runs naked on all fours and hunts in the woods.
- Narbonic: While it's done with mad science rather than magic, when Madblood turns himself into a copy of Dave, he discovers that because the device used to do so copies everything, not just DNA, he's picked up the aftereffects of all of Dave's bad habits as well, and it's apparently quite miserable to suddenly have a debilitating nicotine addiction without a) having had time to get used to it, or b) had a chance to stock up on smokes first.
Madblood: My heart - my lungs - I've never felt such agony - or such a strange and terrible hunger...
Dave: It turns you into me, in my current condition.
Madblood: GOOD LORD, WE'RE ADDICTED TO CIGARETTES!
Dave: Oh, the cigarettes come later. What you're feeling is the Mountain Dew jones.
Western Animation
- Played for laughs in a Cartoon Network short featuring The Wonder Twins, wherein Zan complains that he's always water or ice, and could be defeated by a sponge. It wouldn't even have to be an evil sponge. See it here
- Ben 10: The Omnitrix gives Ben amazing powers, but also the limitations to each alien he transforms into. Ripjaws barely can breath out of water, Heatblast can burn things accidentally, Fourarms doesn't fit in small spaces, Grey Matter can be caught easily because of his small size, etc. Downplayed in that the Omnitrix does take steps to minimize at least a few of the worst weaknesses, such as protecting Ghostfreak from sunlight damage.
- Bubble Guppies: "The New Guppy". In her debut episode, Zooli tricks the Sea Witch into transformining into a seadragon. Unfortunately for the Sea Witch, she didn't realize that despite its formidable name, the seadragon is a small fish related to a sea horse. She becomes too small to wield the magical object granting her the power to change form, and Zooli captures it before the Sea Witch can undo the change.
- Danny Phantom: Downplayed and Zig-Zagged. As a half-ghost hybrid, Danny can switch between ghost and human forms at will. While a lot of his ghostly abilities and weaknesses to anti-ghost tech can bleed over into his human form, in ghost form in particular he is susceptible to getting captured in the Fenton Thermos and, while in the Ghost Zone, getting constrained by the laws of physics there (in contrast to his human form, where he can walk through walls).
- The Owl House: The curse affects Eda physically even when she is in her original form. Her hair turned gray earlier, she gained a taste for brilliant objects and sleeps in a nest. Not to mention that the potion she must drink frequently to not transform has the collateral effect of making parts of her body detachable, but Eda finds that very useful. When Lilith shares the curse with her sister, her hair gets a gray streak, and she is horrified when her hand gets loose.
- Skeleton Warriors: Whoever is turned into a skeleton by Baron Dark can't die and is not easily hurt; in a disaster, their bodies are disassembled and assembled back. Then Talyn finds out that removing the stone heart from their spines turn them back into humans again, with all the consequent vulnerabilities.
- Teen Titans (2003): Beast Boy can transform into any animal, but he is bound by the rules of whatever form he takes. The most inconvenient and noticeable being that he can't speak in animal form. And while he can fly if he becomes a bird, he does tire from the exertion of flapping his wings.