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Shapeshifter Baggage: Difference between revisions
"fan fic" -> "fan works", added examples
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"The description for the hammerfist's power says that he focuses hundreds of pounds of biomass into his arms to turn them into wrecking balls. Hundreds of pounds of mass from '''where?''' From [[Rule of Fun|'fuck you, I'm gonna smash a tank into pancakes with my bare hands now']], that's where!"''
|'''[[Something Awful]] poster McSpanky''' on ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]''}}
Whenever shapeshifters are depicted with the context of magic they have the ability to assume any form regardless of the mass difference between themselves and the new form. Usually no attempt is made to explain how the shapeshifter disposes of excess mass or acquires needed mass.
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Sometimes explained by increasing or decreasing the density of mass, making the shifter smaller or larger by changing the spacing of the particles/darkmatter/etc. that makes up their body. Sometimes it is done by consuming mass like food/drink/flesh/etc. then expelling it later to change size, shape, or mass.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Averted in ''[[Devilman]]''. When {{spoiler|Ryo's "father" died after being possessed by a demon, Ryo moves the corpse and discovers the weight is double what it should be.}}
* ''[[S-Cry-ed]]'' is a good example of a justification of this trope, although transformation is only seen in one character and in a subset of the typical creation power. Whenever somebody creates something, the mass they require for it is taken from surrounding objects or the environment itself. When the aforementioned character creates his robot arm he not only melts down half of his body, but a large part of the landscape and, the first time he gets it, a bird flying overhead. Yikes.
** Taken up a notch with an Alter User who created a [[Humongous Mecha]]. His first use of it, in response to a bunch of villagers backing him to the edge of a cliff, was to vaporize ''them'' as material.
* In Kenichi Sonoda's ''[[Cannon God Exaxxion]]'', the [[Robot Girl]] sidekick can shapeshift into a [[Cool Bike|hoverbike]]. She stores the excess mass needed to change in her breasts.
* Averted in the ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' manga. Envy, despite [[No Biological Sex|its]] lithe and feminine physique, is very heavy, and as a result, makes very deep footprints and can break a steel fence after a short fall. This is noticed by the main characters and clues them in on the size of [[One-Winged Angel|Envy's true form...]]
* Subverted in the lesser known manga ''[[Momoiro 1/10]]''—The titular girl is
* The first chapter of ''[[Mai-chan's Daily Life]]'' shows that Mai's [[Healing Factor]] is fueled by organic matter. In this case, a butchered chicken stuffed into her [[Body Horror|abdominal cavity]].
* The [[Pokémon]] Ditto can change into 'mons of any size, but the [[Pokémon (anime)|anime]] once subverted it with a Ditto that couldn't change size.
* After the [[Magic Pants]], this is the second most common source of [[Fridge Logic]] in ''[[Ranma ½]]'' whenever Jusenkyo transformations are concerned: Mousse, Shampoo, and Ryouga all change into smaller animals with no explanation as to where their mass goes, or where it comes from when they change back. Genma and Pantyhose Taro change into larger animals (in Taro's case, a chimera that is ''several'' stories tall.) On a lesser scale, Ranma, Herb, and Rouge also lose or gain mass drastically, even if they remain roughly human-shaped (in Rouge's case) or merely [[Gender Bender|change sex]] (for Ranma and Herb.) Might be justified in that [[Transformation Ray|Jusenkyo]] curses its victims with [[A Wizard Did It|magical transformations]].
* ''[[Saikano]]'' uses this, but doesn't attempt to handwave it or anything of the sort.
* [[Ridiculously-Human Robots|Boomers]] in the ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' series present this problem. How can a man-sized android shaped like an ordinary salaryman sprout enough mass to turn into a [[Humongous Mecha]] with [[Combat Tentacles|flailing tentacles]]?
** At least in one case it was because it was an absorbing type Boomer that used nanotechnology to fuse machinery, and eventually even scenery, to
* The Invaders in
* The Saiyan ''Oozaru'' form from ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' is never fully explained; how does one quickly transform from a human-sized alien to a full-blown giant monkey? Of course, not much else makes "scientific" sense in that series.
** However, Oolong the pig's physical strength and body mass remain constant regardless of his current shape. Simply becoming a motorbike, for instance, doesn't guarantee he's strong enough for Bulma to ride.
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*** The manga Kimimaro seems to have an accelerated healing factor which attempts to explain this, but really just invokes the "Biomass from thin air" part of this trope.
* In the manga ''[[Gantz]]'', the final boss of the Osaka mission "Nurarihyon" could change shape and size from a little old man to a monster the size of a high rise building, and is capable of splitting to multiple variable life forms of himself and demonstrates different powers with every different forms he assumes. He could survive being squashed to a puddle of blood and reform to another different gigantic monster instantly. {{spoiler|He was eventually killed off by consecutive blasts that squashed him to a blood puddle (again) by the main team leader, taking the bridge along with him. }}
== Comic Books ==
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* ''[[Transformers]]'' is explained in greater depth down the page in Animation, but the comics have the same issues with Megatron transforming into a gun and Soundwave and Blaster as cassette players, all about big enough to fit in their hands in robot mode. Possibly the most egregious offender of all is Broadside, a triple-changer with alt-modes as both an aircraft and an aircraft carrier.
▲== Fan Fic ==
* Lampshaded in ''[[Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality]]'': as part of McGonagall's [[God Test|Magic Test]], she demonstrates her [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|Animagus]] abilities. Harry immediately flips the fuck out at this blatant violation of the laws of physics.
{{quote|You turned into a cat! A ''SMALL'' cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule; it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signaling!}}
* ''[[Drunkard's Walk|Drunkard's Walk II]]'' attempts to explain the size-changing boomers of ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' with [https://www.wired.com/2001/10/atoms/ quantum dots] and [https://www.slideshare.net/aroobarasheed1/programmable-matter-69089578 programmable matter].
== Film ==
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** And let's not forget that ... [[One-Winged Angel|thing]] ... that infected astronaut turned into at the end of ''Species II''. The transformation is off screen so I suppose it's technically possible that he paused in his make-out with {{spoiler|Eve}} to gobble down a few hundred pounds of burgers, but seriously, ''come on''.
* There's a good reason why, in the comics and cartoons, [[Spider-Man]] used web-shooter devices. The movies don't hold to this tradition, however, and no explanation is given as to how his body can produce and secrete so much organic matter without turning him into an extreme [[Big Eater]].
* The ''[[X-Men (film)|X-Men]]'' series of films:
** Wolverine's fast healing must take a hell of a lot of stamina/metabolism.
** Moreso with the guy from ''[[X-Men: The Last Stand]]'' who could shift body shape at will and re-grow arms (but not all his anatomy) within a fraction of a second.
** Mystique can apparently take on appearances with variable mass, as seen with her shapeshifting into a little girl on that prison truck.
** The guy who could grow bone-horns and throw them.
** Multiple Man.
** Where did Beast's fur go when he walked near Jimmy/Leech?
* ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]'': Where does all that sudden biomass come from? And where does it go?
** In the first Hulk movie (Not the one with Norton), Every time Banner is seen returning to human form, we see steam emanating from him and water dripping from every pore of his body, slicking his hair to his head and soaking the [[Magic Pants]] to him. Presumably the excess mass is created by rapid cell division (
** The Hulk's greater size, when compared to Bruce Banner, ''might'' be explained by him simply inflating himself like a pufferfish—i.e. he gets bigger, not heavier—except that when he's shown strapped to a table and deliberately induced to transform, the support strut for the table ''buckles under his extra weight''.
* The [[Star Wars]] [[Extended Universe]] features the Shi'ido, a species of shapeshifters who are nosy about the affairs of others, but keep to themselves when it's time to be sociable. Evidently, the problem of changing mass (one "encyclopedia" style book includes an excerpt from the logs of Senior Anthropologist Hoole, who describes how, studying a world of creatures about a meter tall, he saved a pair of them from a storm by transforming into a Wookie and using his greater mass in this form to hold them down) is one that they learn to overcome around age 150, but ''how'' they overcome it doesn't come up, apparently.
* ''[[Honey I Shrunk the Kids]]'' attempts to answer this question, but in fact [[Voodoo Shark|just raises further questions]] with its explanation. Reducing empty space does not reduce mass, after all. [[Nightmare Fuel|One shudders to think what it must be like to weigh 120 pounds at a quarter of an inch tall.]]
== Literature ==
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* Handwaved in ''[[The Elvenbane]]'', wherein the dragons explain that when they change from huge firebreathing beasties into humans or elves, the extra mass goes into an extraplanar space they call [[Hammerspace|the Out]]. (A similar conceit is implied in the D&D universe, even though the transformations are magical.) A dragon in human form, when viewed in the magical spectrum, can be seen as a human surrounded by a dragony "shadow".
* Averted in [[Dean Koontz]]'s novel ''Phantoms''. The [[Big Bad]] monster can change its shape and detach pieces of itself, but it must obey conservation of mass. Its creations often appear outsized when it tries to imitate something too small or too be big, and it's only able to imitate a much smaller creature by splitting itself apart.
* In the ''[[Fafhrd and The
* Averted in the ''[[Wild Cards]]'' series, where Kid Dinosaur can change shape into any kind of dinosaur, but explicitly does not change mass. This results in such things as a 3 foot tall T-Rex.
** Played straight with another character
** Skewed with Rahda "Elephant Girl" O'Reilly, who is a Irish-Hindu were-elephant. Her excuse is that she absorbs energy from the environment and converts it into mass; this can black out a city if used in the right location. Likewise, when she changes back the excess mass converts into a flash of light. Of course, the amount of energy needed to convert into a couple of tons of elephant flesh is incredibly titanic; and the energy release from changing back should wipe out a continent. So it's neither averted nor played straight.
** And the two times Captain Trips transformed into the 70-foot-tall "Monster", he absorbed matter from all around himself to provide the mass needed.
* The ''Timeweb'' trilogy by Brian Herbert takes the more obvious approach: shapeshifters grow larger by absorbing rocks and dirt into their own mass. Growing smaller is somewhat like shedding snakeskin, and can be a bit disgusting if a massive change is needed.
** Bit of a family tradition, this. In Frank Herbert's novel, "Man of Two Worlds", a shapeshifting alien is captured by humans and is confined to a cell with only a small drain being the way out. He laments the fact that he can't simply destroy his own mass so that he can become small enough to fit through the drain. Too late does he realize that he could have just turned into a snake and slithered down the drain, without having to bypass the law of conservation of mass/energy.
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* Averted in ''[[Sector General]]'', where Dr. Danalta does not, in fact, lose or gain any mass when it changes shapes...so when it turns into something that looks like a teddy bear, it is still a very heavy teddy bear.
* Worried about and obsessed over in the [[Whateley Universe]]: ordinary Shifters can't violate Conservation of Mass, but the highest-level Shifters (who may not be using the same underlying principles) ''can''. The researchers are still trying to figure out where the extra mass goes or comes from, but it seems to be inter-dimensional. As for clothes, the best Shifters shift their own, and have to learn how to do it right so people aren't pointing out that their 'dress' has pores and hairs showing.
* Featured regularly in Jim Butcher's ''[[The Dresden Files]]''. Conservation of mass isn't a problem at all for magical shapeshifting thanks to ectoplasm. When a creature shapeshifts, or when something from the Nevernever (faerieland) comes to the real world, the matter (in the case of a shapeshifter, the extra mass layered over their real body; in case of a faerie, their whole physical body in the real world) is formed out of ectoplasm from another dimension, animated and given substance by magic. When that magic is withdrawn, the ectoplasm turns into an equal mass of a inert, clear, viscous goop which is an inconvenient mess but quickly evaporates. Arguably justified, in that there's an explanation of and consistent rules for where extra mass comes from that make as much sense as anything else in the series: leftover ectoplasm has been used to identify a crime scene as magical in nature, and I'm sure that characters have slipped and fallen on the stuff at some point or other.
** This doesn't seem to explain how shapeshifting into something smaller works, though. Where does the extra mass go? The Nevernever? If so, how is it protected from some nasty spider-goblin thing that probably wants to eat it?
*** According to the official RPG, that's exactly what happens. The [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|margin notes from Harry and friends]] specifically mention this as a good adventure hook.
* Explicitly averted in the ''[[Kitty Norville]]'' novels. The easiest way to distinguish a werewolf in lupine form from its mundane counterpart is the fact that they are normally ''at least'' half again as large as the 36 kg (80 lbs) norm.
* Steven Erikson's ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'' has this feature for both Soletaken and D'ivers (single- and multiform shapeshifters, respectively). Depending on which one of these beings you encounter, you might be up against a grown man who can become a hawk and fly away... Or something that can become one or more dragons. At least the undead shapeshifter can't become living...
* Katherine Kerr's ''[[Deverry]]'' series, despite being magic based, required Dweomer workers who change shape to retain their mass. Making them quite large birds.
* Kelley Armstrong's werewolves in her ''[[Women of the Otherworld]]'' series retain the same mass in either form, and have to eat lots to account for their higher metabolism.
* In [[Sheri S. Tepper]]'s
** It is mentioned in one of the other ''True Game'' world's books, though; Peter {{spoiler|(Mavin's son)}} mentions that when he decreases his mass the excess is expelled, resulting in what looks very like a pile of minced beef. The significant [[Squick]] factor tends to stop it being made into burgers, though.
* In [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s and [[Andre Norton]]'s ''[[The Halfblood Chronicles|Elvenblood]]'' series, where shapeshifting dragons shift excess mass into the "Out", which is implied to be [[Another Dimension]]. Not all dragons are equally skilled, so only the best can assume radically smaller forms such as humans and elves.
* In the ''[[Jane Yellowrock]]'' series, by Faith Hunter, Jane is a Skinwalker, capable of copying the genetic code of animals and possibly people to assume a new form. This native american magic allows her to sloth off mass and store it 'else-where' (mainly stones and sand) and to gain mass to grow in size. Interestingly enough Jane likes to only absorb or deposits mass into stone because to her it doesn't have any individual traits aside from being empty matter.
* In ''[[Liar]]'' by Justine Larbalestier this is explicitly averted; werewolves are exactly the same mass in both forms.
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** Apparently, he can also change his molecular and atomic structure. When he shapeshifts into a wall, even sensors can't tell him apart from the real thing.
** Peter David's "The Siege", the ''first'' ''Deep Space Nine'' book if we don't count episode novelizations, had one of the characters literally taken off their feet by having their pantleg grabbed in the teeth of a 180-some-odd-lb mouse as they're (trying) to run by.
** Odo
** ''[[Star Trek]]'' has a long proud history of shapeshifters who seem to tell the First Law of Thermodynamics to take a flying leap. The shapeshifter in ''Star Trek VI'' had no trouble changing from a small girl to a large furry creature to a duplicate of Kirk, and the Allasomorphs in ''TNG'''s "[[Star Trek: The Next Generation/Recap/S2/E10 The Dauphin|The Dauphin]]" were able to double their size and reverse the process with no apparent change of mass.
*** To be fair, there was no indication that the shifter in ''Star Trek VI'' changed anything but shape, as all they did while large was look intimidating, and while small simply slipped out of chains. Their mass could have remained the same the whole time.
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** In "The Lazarus Experiment", Professor Richard Lazarus exposes himself to a de-aging device which mutates him into a giant, life-force devouring monster. However, despite the radical change in size, it's stated that he hasn't actually gained any mass and thus his body is highly unstable.
* At first ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' kept it fairly reasonable. The series first "shapeshifter" was really a [[Master of Illusion]]. In the fourth volume they introduce a genuine shapeshifter, whom [[Mega Manning|power thief]] Sylar promptly snacks on. At first, Sylar only used his shapeshifting power to shapeshift into people of roughly the same size and weight as him (and also still wore the same clothes before and after shifting). However, after a few episodes, Sylar is able to shapeshift ''his clothes'', and also turns into a kid.
* In ''[[H₂O: Just Add Water]]'', the girls apparently turn into mermaids and back by storing their other body in some kind of Shapeshifter Baggage. In one episode, Cleo is wearing thick clothing when she is knocked into a pool, then she turns into a mermaid wearing a single bra, and when she turns back into human she once again has the thick clothes on. It also works the other way: Emma wants to dye her hair red, and as this requires water, she does it in mermaid form. Then she becomes human... with blonde hair. Later she goes for a swim and once she's a mermaid she has red hair again.
* In ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', shapeshifters are shown to shed their old skins whenever they take on a new form. This only covers half the issue, though.
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[GURPS]]'' gives a nod to this. Shapeshifting normally lets you gain or lose mass however you wish but the Mass Conservation limitation stops this and goes a bit further noting that 150
* White Wolf's ''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken]]'' takes time out in a supplement to explain the deep mechanics of Uratha (werewolf) biology. Among the various points is the fact that Werewolves don't actually shift shapes... they swap shapes. Uratha meta-biology has all five of a Werewolf's forms existent at all times; one in the physical world, and four stored as spiritual energy templates in the Werewolf's aura. As a result, beings that can see Auras perceive Werewolf auras as being intensely bright and dense, with the light brightening or dimming based on the size of the physical form. That means the aura is brightest in Urhan (normal wolf) form, and dimmest in Gauru (Man Wolf Death machine).
** Although, if you're paying attention to the aura while in the presence of an eight foot tall enraged evolutionary monstrosity honed for violence... one might question your priorities.
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