Incredible Shrinking Man: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:437930904242f8f41517z 991.jpg|link=The Incredible Shrinking Man|frame|"To God there is no zero. I still exist!"]]

 

Bees and moths whirr above you like helicopters. Flowers and blades of grass loom over you. Familiar household objects are like huge, immovable obstacles. Your fellow human beings blot out the sky with their immense, towering girth. Sound like a bad case of the Mondays? Think again: you've been shrunk!

 

{{examples}}

* Happens in the ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'' TV episode where Sakura is shrunk by the Little card.

* [[Idiot Hero|Hiroshi]] from ''[[Hell Teacher Nube]]'' wakes up one day to find himself no larger than a mouse. Of course, the reality of the situation is [[Artificial Human|stranger]] [[Cloning Blues|still]].

* Happens only in the manga version of ''[[Busou Renkin]]'', when Tokiko is hit multiple times by Madoka's Bubble Cage.

* Also happens in ''[[Ghost Sweeper Mikami]]'', when the eponymous [[Action Girl]] is hit by a dart from a spirit and in few hours she's shrunk to the size of a Barbie doll. She and her assistants must find the culprit and exorcise him, lest she will keep shrinking and disappear.

* In one episode of the original ''[[Dragon Ball]]'', Bulma develops an invention that can shrink anybody. Master Roshi decides to use it to watch Bulma go to the bathroom. {{spoiler|He doesn't get to see her go, but he ''does'' get flushed down the toilet.}}

 

* DC [[Superhero]] [[The Atom]] had this as his power; some plots involved him or other characters shrinking and then having the size controls taken away/[[Phlebotinum Breakdown|break]].

** And of course, there was the appearance of the Atom at the end of ''[[Identity Crisis]]'', {{spoiler|wherein he shrinks out of existence after finding out his ex-wife killed Sue Dibny}}.

** Incorrect. While Kandorians would gain superpowers upon leaving the bottle's artificial Kryptonian environment, they wouldn't expand unless some kind of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] was used.

* In fact, many comic book characters have shrinking (or size-changing in general) as their primary superpower (i.e. Ant-Man, the Wasp...)

** One quasi-educational story from the early '60s had Donald take his nephews (through an uncannily prescient virtual-reality device) on a trip through the mundane everyday world while shrunk increasingly smaller to encounter phenomena more fantastic than any make-believe reality the nephews could think of.

* Happened to Bart in an early issue of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' comic book.

* The graphic novel ''In the Small'' features this happening to every human on Earth due to a mysterious blue flash. Shrunken, terrorized by animals and unable to use most technology, they need to rebuild everything in miniature.

 

* In ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4540557/1/bHuge_b_bSuccess_b Huge Success]'', [[Iron Man|Tony]] decided to look at Dr. Pym's pym particles without permission and ended up being 6 inches tall.

** Some form of shrinking happens in many of [http://www.fanfiction.net/u/225641/GirlX2 GirlX2's] stories, often due to "[[Lilliputians|Lilliputian]] Syndrome."

** Actually, all of the humans in the chapter have been shrunk. The four manage to find a gun that will unshrink everyone.

 

** It should be pointed out that the [[Square-Cube Law]] may have been somewhat averted in this particular movie because Scott Carey very slowly shrinks, thus giving his body a chance to adapt to his changing size.

** Both films were based on the novel by [[Richard Matheson]], who also wrote ''[[I Am Legend]]'' and scripted the two [[Kolchak the Night Stalker|Kolchak]] TV movies.

* In ''[[Dot And Keeto]]'', Dot goes to eat the root that lets her talk to animals so she can apologize to some ants her brother was tormenting, but she accidentally eats the root next to it, which makes her shrink down to the size of a bug (and able to talk to them). After trying to get the attention of her brother and mother, she goes on an adventure among the bugs until her friend Kangaroo shrinks down, too, and brings her some of the root that will make her the proper size again.

* "Fantastic Voyage" in which a submersible is shrunk to microscopic size to be injected into a comatose spy to laser away the clots that are killing him. This has been pointed out, more than once, leads to a stupid conclusion where the people abandon the ship and swim to safety, being extracted from the tear ducts before they return to normal size automatically. No mention is ever made of the sub growing to normal size and exploding the patient.

 

* Happens twice in ''[[Animorphs]]''. Once, a tiny alien race called the Helmacrons shrinks some of the Animorphs. The second time, the Helmacrons enter Marco's body, so the Animorphs have to shrink themselves in order to enter Marco's body and stop the Helmacrons from killing Marco.

* ''The Incredible Adventures of Karik and Valya'' has two kids drinking some liquid and shrinking to insect size, then being whisked into nature by a dragonfly. Needless to say, the whole thing is ''very dangerous''.

* ''The Shrinking Man'' by Richard Matheson, on which the movie ''The Incredible Shrinking Man'' was based (almost all modern editions of the novel even add the "''Incredible''" part to the book's title, as the movie is more famous).

 

* Happens in ''[[Power Rangers Zeo]]'' ("A Small Problem") and ''[[Power Rangers Turbo]]'' ("Honey I Shrunk The Rangers").

* ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV series)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'' has one of her "magic diseases" where her guilt causes her to shrink.

* In the ''[[Wild Wild West]]'' episode "the Night of the Raven", Dr. Loveless shrinks James West and a Native American princess.

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* One memorable scenario from the early days of ''Dungeon'' magazine involved the player characters being shrunk down to the size of gaming miniatures by a malfunctioning magical orb. Unusual in that, aside from the usual small animals posing a deadly threat, many previous groups of travelers had already fallen prey to this effect, forming themselves into [[Wacky Wayside Tribe]]s that feud over the resources of a small garden.

 

* This is the basis for several attractions at [[Disney Theme Parks]]. A few include ''It's a Bug's Land'', a play area based on ''[[A Bug's Life|A Bugs Life]]'', another play area based on ''[[Honey, I Shrunk the Kids]]'' and ''Honey I Shrunk the Audience'', and the long gone ''Adventure Through Inner Space''.

 

* This happened in ''[[Snowboard Kids 2]]''. The main characters were shrunk down, turning Wendy's house into a snowboard track.

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]: [[The Minish Cap]]'' uses this as a gameplay mechanic.

* One section in ''[[Duke Nukem Forever]]'' features Duke shrunken to miniature size by an enemy's [[Shrink Ray]]. He then proceeds to kick ass against similarly-sized aliens.

* Happens a few times in World of Warcraft (although only slight effects), with [http://www.wowhead.com/quest=14388 this quest] being an exception: you're shrunk to the size of a ''rat''.

 

== [[Web Animation]] ==

* In ''[[Banana-nana-Ninja!]]'', Seppuku is eaten by an opponent and his size continually shrinks as he [[Fantastic Voyage Plot|makes his way through her body]], finally escaping and returning to his full size when she sneezes.

 

* In ''U.F.O.'', Queen Pamela's hostages are shrunk down to the size of small rodents and put in a gerbil cage.

* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' has this as a joke fetish in universe.

* ''[[Dream Tales]]'' has a whole series of comics featuring shrinking men and women.

 

* Some size warpers in the [[Whateley Universe]] can do this. Sizemax can either be a 30-foot giant or a couple inches high.

* The [[SCP Foundation]] deconstructs this with the resizing device [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1056 SCP-1056]. Shrinking or resizing people with it usually results in their brains and internal organs undergoing re-arrangement or ceasing to work correctly. (In particular, if you're shrunk, your brain becomes smaller and thus you become dumber.)

 

* Happened in one episode of ''[[Jackie Chan Adventures]]''. A miscast "disappearing" spell shrunk both Jackie and bad guy Hak Foo.

* Happened on ''[[Superfriends]]'' as well.

* Spoofed in the ''[[Fanboy and Chum Chum]]'' episode "The Incredible Shrinking Fanboy", where Fanboy only ''thinks'' he's shrinking, after the flower where he marks his growth grows overnight. [[Yandere|Yo]] uses this to her advantage, giving him a helmet with magnifying lenses to help with the illusion while she takes Chum-Chum to her room to [[And Call Him George|play with]].

* ''[[Nightmare Ned]]'' did this where Ned was being tormented by a pair of [[Enfant Terrible]]s.

* The ''[[Alvin and The Chipmunks]]'' movie "Funny We Shrunk the Adults" is one where Dave and Miss Miller are shrunken by Simon's "matter compacting" ray. At the same time, the Chipmunks and some neighbor kids who they are trying to impress are wrecking the house with their rowdy playing and bringing in things like a circus, including the animals. In fact, it was the rowdy playing that made the shrink ray turn on and zap Dave in the first place.

* On an episode of ''[[Tiny Toon Adventures]]'', the cast shrinks down to rescue one of Furrball's fleas from a vicious bedbug, but not without [[Lampshade Hanging]].

[[Category:Shapeshifting]]

[[Category:Turn-On Tropes]]