Anthropomorphic Shift

Left: 1976 Right: 1998


"I think when you get to the point where a car is holding and firing a pistol with his tire/hand, you have to ask yourself: Why are they even cars anymore?!?"
—...of SCIENCE!

Book one of the Fluffy Woodland Critters series introduced a society of Civilized Animals, all living much like real animals do—squirrels eat acorns, bears are bigger than rabbits, and no one has the faintest clue what money is. The idea of predation may be hand waved, but other than that, all those Talking Animals are somewhat believable as, well, animals.

A few years later, you're wandering through the bookstore, and spot book 20 in the series. Except... Now everyone's wearing clothing, cranky old Mr. Rabbit runs a general-store, Mr Wolf lives right next-door to him and Miss Mouse and Mrs. Cougar both wear the same dress size. What happened?

The series went through Anthropomorphic Shift, that's what.

Anthropomorphic Shift is what happens when animal and anthropomorphic characters in a work become progressively more human-like in appearance and behavior in later installments - faces get flatter, sizes even out, the rabbit burrow gains a TV and curtains, the female turtle gets breasts... until a few books/seasons/direct to DVD sequels down the line, you might as well be looking at a human society, where people just happen to have furry ears.

Why? Because it's easier for us. Easier to write or draw, easier to deliver An Aesop, easier for the younger audience to understand and sympathize with the characters when they don't even have to think about Mr. Wolf being nearly color-blind and just how Ms. Deer baked those cookies with those hooves.

Children's series are especially prone to this.

Can also be used in reference to when individual characters, rather then an entire setting, gradually become more like humans; see also Feather Fingers and Non-Mammal Mammaries. Compare Furries Are Easier to Draw. See also Furry Confusion. Compare and contrast Art Evolution and Most Writers Are Human. When the character occasionally slips back to their animalistic behaviors, it could be an example of a Furry Reminder. When a character constantly shifts back and forth between animalistic animal and humanistic animal, its an Anthropomorphic Zig-Zag.

Examples of Anthropomorphic Shift include:

Anime and Manga

  • While this didn't happen to individual Digimon in Digimon, it did happen with the design ethos of Digimon as a whole. In the initial birth of the franchise, humanoid Digimon were still given lots of unhuman traits to make sure the audience knew that they were still monsters. For instance, Angemon being The Faceless and possessing downy fur, and he was one of the most human ones. As the franchise progressed, new humanoid Digimon became more overtly humanoid and less monstrous: compare the fluffy and The Faceless enigmatic Angemon and Angewomon to Lucemon or Tinkermon (who are both essentially human children with wings and tattoos (and claws in the case of Tinkermon)), for example.
    • Traditional anthropomorphic shift can still be seen in a handful of Digimon species. For example, comparing the scaly and reptilian Agumon from the original Virtual Pet to the round, glove-wearing Agumon from Digimon Savers. Or comparing Expy subspecies, like the more dinosauroid Greymon to the more human-proportioned Geo Greymon.
      • Even more commonly, this happens within a single Digimon line, as a Digimon digivolves to the Mega level. For example Metalgreymon to Wargreymon.

Comic Books

  • A minor example from the Swedish children's comic Bamse: As time went on character designs became more and more anthropomorphic (although they had always been very much so) as an example, quite a few of the early characters are stark naked (except for well, fur) while later characters tends to wear full human clothing.
  • An intentional example of this phenomenon is the Franco-Belgian comic Chick Bill, an animal cowboy in The Wild West. The artist, Gilbert Gascard aka "Tibet", wanted to draw his characters human, but Executive Meddling prevented him, so he started drawing them as furries and then gradually turned them human.
  • The Belgian comic Chlorophylle began with two adventuring mice, who spent several adventures before wandering into a miniature rodent society where they became Amateur Sleuth Intrepid Reporters.
    • The comic later got a TV show from it (and a pretty good one too), but it instead goes straight into Furry Confusion... As it combines mostly anthropomorphic puppets with live animals. And there's no particular difference in intelligence either.
  • In the UK's Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series, aptly titled Sonic the Comic, Sonic's allies Porker Lewis and Jonny Lightfoot start off as cute little animal critters like those busted out of Badniks in the games. They talk, but they're small, animal proportioned, without clothes and tend to go on all fours. Their shift, however, is anything but gradual: in issue #21 of the series, they are totally bipedal, human-proportioned and fully clothed (in biker jackets and jeans, to be precise). Within a few more issues, Porker's hooves became ordinary human hands.
    • Within the somewhat official but fan-made Sonic the Comic Online comic, already shifted characters gained further shifts. In Sally's cameo for the 250th issue, she had been revamped to look more like her Archie [dead link] counterpart compared to her game counterpart. Oddly though, other characters based off Sonic's animal friends from the Genesis games still look like their game versions (though Joe Sushi is wearing a jacket like Rotor).
    • Strangely inverted in the Archie comics with Drago Wolf; before, he was just as humanoid as the other prominent Mobian characters. In a later comic, though, he was redesigned to be more feral and werewolf-esque, complete with more animalistic eyes and digitigrade feet instead of plantigrade like he normally had.
    • Played straight in that issue with Lupe, who almost looked human.
      • On the other hand, every other wolf in that issue were similar to their classic design, and Drago had received cybernetic implants, so it's possible those were just cosmetic modifications.
  • In Robert Crumb's Fritz the Cat, Duke the Crow and Fritz crash a stolen car, and Duke flies Fritz onto the bridge before the car crashes into the river. In the movie, however, Duke grabs onto a railing because Ralph Bakshi disliked the idea of having anthropomorphic characters behave like animals to further the plot.

Film

  • Amazingly enough, Godzilla falls under this as well. During the 1960s-1970s he became less nuclear dinosaur hell-bent on destroying Japan and more kid-friendly dinosaur hero with a sense of humor. This is evident when you notice that Godzilla used pseudo-wrestling moves to defeat his enemies rather than his claws and teeth in later films.
  • Ice Age - The first movie involved animals who could talk to each-other but were otherwise not human-like at all, and they rescued a baby human. Flash-forward a few years and the same animal characters now star in a short where one of them takes a group of animal youngsters camping. The hell?
  • The Rock-Biter had this in The Neverending Story. In the first movie, he is a giant creature sitting in the mountains. In the third he is living with his family in a Sitcom-like household which even (somewhat undermining the series' message) has a TV.
  • In the first The Lion King film, one of the few times when one of the lions used a paw like a hand was Scar in the gag scene when he used a skull as a puppet. Otherwise, paws were paws, and used the way most cats use their paws. In TLK2, the paws suddenly became inexplicably dexterous hands which the cats used in a humanlike way—to pick things up and make gestures—complete with opposable thumbs.
    • Simba used his paws when it came to bugs, and in a human-like way, in the first movie.
  • Todd the Pizza Planet truck from Cars.
    • Inverted with Snot Rod (he appears on Andy's calendar) in Toy Story 3.
    • Doc Hudson actually first appeared as a non-anthropomorphic Hudson Hornet seen near the end of The Incredibles.
    • Back to Toy Story 3, this was also played straight with Finn McMissile, who first appeared as a non-anthro car on one of Andy's posters.
  • Inverted with Cyril Proudbottom, a Partially-Civilized Animal in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, but he's a Nearly-Normal Animal in Mickey's Christmas Carol.
  • The Toad in Flushed Away apparantly went through this during his Start of Darkness.
  • Baby Po in Kung Fu Panda 2 is a Nearly-Normal Animal, unlike his adult form, which is a Funny Animal.
  • Edmund from Rock-a-Doodle actually starts out as a naked, quadrupedal normal cartoon cat after being transformed by the evil Duke of Owls, but immediately turns into a half-dressed, bipedal Funny Animal cartoon cat after realizing that all of the other animals are wearing clothing and not him.

Literature

  • The children's book and television series Arthur. He's an aardvark. Early books, written in the late 70's, had Arthur look very much like an aardvark, right down to the foot-long nose. As a matter of fact, his long nose was a major plot point. In current books, and on his PBS series he looks... like a teddy bear? A donkey? A guinea pig? Possibly?
    • And at this point, as far as some of the other characters, you'll just have to take Marc Brown's word for it what species they are. Notably, an old CBBC puppet mascot called Otis the Aardvark looked more like one than Arthur did.
  • Another children's book-and-TV series: Franklin. The titular turtle, in his earliest books written in the mid-80's, was much more to-scale in comparison with his friends Bear, Fox, and Otter. By the time the TV series aired, all animals were the same size and Franklin lost his more distinctly reptilian features such as his claws.
  • The first book in the Redwall series involves elements such as a horse pulling a hay cart that's obviously proportioned for humans and describes a church with mice living in it as "abandoned"; the implication being it was abandoned by its builders [humans]. This coupled with one anomalous reference to "Portugal" makes it seem as though the mice and vermin characters are simply animals living at the margins of the real world. Later books Retcon these elements away to present a world populated solely by the animal characters.
    • This is also due to Political Correctness Gone Mad, as author Brian Jacques wanted to remove any traces of religion, including changing the aforementioned St. Ninian's Church to a house with a sign that had read, "This ain't Ninian's". But how do you explain the human-sized farm?
      • Jacques never quite succeeded in explaining why Ninian's house had pews and a lectern, either. And it's hard to remove all traces of religion when the main characters live in an abbey, the leader is an abbot or abbess, and a dozen characters in any given book are called Brother or Sister.
      • Oh, and interestingly enough, St. Ninian happens to be real.
  • As stated elsewhere, Dinotopia author/illustrator James Guerney never met an animal-related trope he liked. He strongly dislikes it when animal characters act too human and has written in his blog about how he himself has has struggled to avoid this. It's worth noting that a few of the spinoff novels and the films have featured animal characters that are indeed anthropomorphic or nearly so. Canon Discontinuity? You betcha.
  • While mild compared to many examples, in the Duncton Wood books, the shift in mole behavior between the first book and its extension to a trilogy, and especially between the first and second trilogies, is quite noticeable.
  • Angelina Ballerina actually portrayed all of the mice as Civilized Animals in both the books and the first cartoon series, but they are fully anthropomorphized in the CGI cartoon series.
  • The mice in the film adaptation of The Tale Of Desperaux are more anthropomorphized than the ones in the book.
  • In the Arashi no Yoru ni books the characters look like regular animals. The manga and anime made them more anthro but they're still very natural. The 2012 cartoon based off the books gave them more human-like expressions. For comparisons sake.
  • Played for Drama in Animal Farm. By the end of the book, no one can tell the pigs from the humans.


Live Action TV

  • Arguably, Blue from Blue's Clues. She now has her own room where she can stand upright, and speak.
    • Hey, it's a magical room!
  • In Red Dwarf, the overtly catlike aspects of The Cat's personality became progressively less prominent (to the point of being vestigial) as the series progressed, essentially making him a regular character who happens to be selfish and obsessed with his appearance.

Newspaper Comics

  • Garfield still acts mostly like a cat but just look at his earliest strips (before 1982) and compare them to now. Once he learned to walk on his hind legs, all bets were off.
    • Odie has retained his inability to talk (or... "think-talk"), but otherwise does not resemble the slobbering pooch from the comic's early days. He's still The Ditz, though.
  • Snoopy from Peanuts, after Charlie Brown taught him to walk upright in 1958.
  • The title character of Pogo used to look much more like a real possum. Walt Kelly says that was a problem before Growing the Beard.
  • In the early years of the strip, the all-avian cast of Shoe was little more than talking birds, and Roz's Roost was little more than a bird feeder. The strip later evolved to make the birds more humanlike, with all of them wearing clothes and the females sporting Non-Mammal Mammaries.
  • Inverted in Calvin and Hobbes. While he still tended to walk upright, unless about to pounce Calvin, Hobbes became increasingly more cat-like as the strip progressed (Watterson himself even noted of it), and would often be seen doing typical cat things such as sleeping in front of the window, and scratching himself with his foot when left to his own devices.
  • Bill the Cat from Bloom County became considerably taller and somewhat more human-proportioned over time.
  • At least partly justified with Otto in Beetle Bailey—in between his being a regular dog who kind of looked like his master (Sergeant Snorkel), and his being a Barefoot Cartoon Animal dressed almost exactly like his master, there's one strip about an escalating "pets arms race" between Snorkel and another sergeant that culminates in Snorkel dressing Otto up as a human.

Video Games

  • The Koopa(s?) in Super Mario Bros. were originally just turtles. Ever since Super Mario Bros 3, they've slowly been humanized game by game.
    • By Super Mario Galaxy, normal Koopa Troopas are still just turtles (and even walk on all four). Other species, like Magikoopas, are anthropomorphic.
    • Yoshi and Koopa/Bowser have also stood more and more upright as time went on.
  • While Pokémon in general are still very animal-like and non-anthropomorphic they've become somewhat more anthropomorphic over the generations. In general it's more-so the mindset and how they interact with people then the way they look. Probably the biggest example of this trope is the Mystery Dungeon games. The Pokémon all look nonhuman, but they act so much like humans (what with true civilization, folk tales, and an economy with currency) that the protagonist being able to almost instantly adjust to life as another species sounds very plausible in context.
  • Although they're still nonhumanoid computers, both GLaDOS and the personality cores gained a lot of recognizable human body language between the first Portal and its sequel.
    • Which is a damn good trick for a basketball with an implanted flashlight...
  • Inverted in Solatorobo. Tail Concerto featured character designs that were more or less animal heads and tails on slightly Super-Deformed human bodies. Solatorobo tends to diversify the body types quite a bit more, with cats getting incredibly slender, borderline digitigrade legs and dogs coming in a wider verity of breeds.

Web Comics

  • The webcomic Achewood employs the shift in the behavior, though not appearance, of the characters - when the strip started the Funny Animal characters were mostly inside the author's house, but eventually it was revealed that there was a complex shadow society complete with underground shopping centers, human suits for cats to drive cars in, and human landlords charging their stuffed animals rent. Some elements were inconsistently applied.
    • Achewood was originally about stuffed animals that can come to life. The original characters were Teodor (teddy bear), Cornelius (teddy bear), Phillipe (stuffed otter), and Lyle (stuffed tiger). All of the animals are "based on" real stuffed animals owned by the author; you can find pictures of their counterparts on the site. Later, the strip spread out to include the lives of various house cats around town. It seems to be these house cats who have developed the Achewood Underground, and the living stuffed animals are their friends but not necessarily residents of the Underground (they all still live in the author's house, and the author is even occasional character in the strip). However, most newcomers to the strip don't realize that Teodor is actually a teddy bear and not a housecat-sized bear. If you think about it too hard, the universe doesn't make any sense at all ... so, don't think about it.
  • Inverted in Digger. In the beginning, the main character had a slight bust to indicate that she was female. These were removed, and now she just looks like any other wombat to human eyes.
  • Most characters in The Beast Legion transform into beasts. Some examples can be found 1, 2, 3.


Web Original

  • The Neopets website started out as a Virtual-Pet game where those Neopets acted just like domesticated pets and human owners were involved... Fast forward and current portrayals of characters now depict most Neopets standing bipedal and fully clothed- creatures acting just like humans but with fur- and nary a mention of Owners (or requiring any) in sight... Except that unlike those humans, they all can go forever without food and drink.
    • Some human or any amorphous characters (e.g. Edna the Witch, the Island Mystic and at least two shopkeepers Mrs. Worley) mostly became Neopets, making the poor Tiki-Tack Man the Last of His Kind in Neopia.

Western Animation

  • Woody Woodpecker started off looking very avian like (and very deranged at that) but later switched to a more streamlined, Funny Animal like design.
  • My Little Pony Tales is easily the strangest example. The original My Little Pony series took place in a fantasy universe (so the few instances of what would have Furry Confusion were justified at least a little). The "Tales" series, on the other hand, had the Ponies acting exactly like humans, living in houses and involved in such exciting adventures as going to school and so forth. The thing is, the Ponies remained unclothed, quadrupedal equines. Ask yourself how a creature with hooves is supposed to manipulate (or even invent, since there was no mention at all of humans) an electric guitar. My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic takes a step back in comparison to this, but not all the way back: fantasy setting with no humans, but largely "human" paraphernalia, hoof Feather Fingers avoided but only as far as it's not too inconvenient.
  • In his early cartoons, Droopy was a Civilized Animal who would switch between two-legged and four-legged stances, but in the later cartoons, he is a definite Funny Animal who would stay on two legs all or most of the time depending on the cartoon.
  • The Raccoons originally had the animal heroes and humans co-exist in the same world and even though the animals had furniture in their homes, they still lived in trees etc and in general tried to give an illusion of living as a part of nature. In later seasons the humans completely disappeared, the amount of animal characters increased from a small group to a large community with stores and other services like broadcasting and rail transportation systems, the animals started to live in houses, the pet dog the humans had became the owner of a local pub and it became quite clear that the whole world was inhabited by animals who had a significant amount of technology and culture in their hands (paws).
    • But the Raccoons still lived in a tree. And to add further confusion, when Ralph's brother's family moved into the forest, they lived in a tree which looked like a normal house on the inside. And had a garage.
    • Hilariously, the human's dog who become anthropomorphic and owned a pub... had a dog of his own. Of the same species.
    • Even in the first season, Cyril Sneer (a pink aardvark) still lived in a palace and was plotting to raze the forest for profits.
  • Mickey and Minnie Mouse were originally smaller and had more rodent-like features, but began a gradual shift to a more human-like appearance starting in the late 1930s.
    • Similarly, Goofy was more dog-like in his original design, and his original name was "Dippy Dawg". Though the character's species was clearly stated in the beginning, his "humanization" has resulted in much Furry Confusion over what exactly Goofy is supposed to be.
      • Goofy, for a short time, was known as "George Geef" and was completely, unambiguously human except for his head. Other characters in the comics and some other things particularly in Goofy's corner of the Disney universe (mainly Goof Troop, A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie) have been designed like this too, except so human that at a minimum, the only canine features may be the nose, muzzle, and ears: see Dogfaces.
    • This has less to do with his appearance and more to do with the fact that one of his closest friends owns a non-anthro dog.
      • Non-anthro is subjective on that too. Pluto can talk (about as clearly as Scooby Doo), has on rare occasion taken a few steps on two legs, is able to use tools, and during one recent short when he got a pair of magic gloves that gave him fingers, he even was playing video games and using the phone.
      • He was even portrayed as a Funny Animal in the black and white cartoon "Blue Rhythm."
      • Note that Pluto's Scooby-like talking was all in his first year on the screen (The Moose Hunt and Mickey Steps Out, both 1931). There's a later cartoon where he thinks in a growly voice (Mickey's Kangaroo [1935]), but that doesn't count. It clearly took a little time to determine exactly what Pluto could normally do, but once set, it was permanent.
    • Inverted: Pluto and Figaro (Canon Immigrant from Pinocchio) were already "non-anthro" to begin with, but in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, they act almost like normal animals. Before that, they were a little more likely to stand bipedally and use their paws like human hands.
    • The only time that Mickey and Minnie ever appeared as full-on rodents, right down to being smaller than their domestic surroundings, was in a cartoon that curiously came after having been anthropomorphic animals in a few other shorts (Plane Crazy, Steamboat Willie, etc.). This cartoon is When the Cat's Away (1929). For all the most obvious reasons, this interpretation was never seen again.
    • Similarly, Walt Disney's original cartoon star, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was more rabbit-like in his earlier shorts. By 1928, however, the only thing that could distinguish him as a rabbit was his ears and tail. Until Walter Lantz obtained the rights to the character and gave him a design more rabbit-like than his 1927 appearance (which is most likely one of the reasons Oswald's popularity plummeted.) Until Disney bought him in 2006 and gave him back his 1928 look.
    • Pete was originally a bear and since Steamboat Willie, is supposed to be a cat, thus why he has a rivalry with Mickey Mouse. However, you can only really tell in the first few shorts he's in, including Steamboat Willie. In more contemporary cartoons like Goof Troop, his design is such that many assumed him to be a dog or Dogface. House of Mouse actually had to take the time to remind us that Pete is, in fact, a feline through some Furry Reminder jokes.
    • Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar of the old Disney cartoon shorts and comics started out as actual four-legged non-anthropomorphic barnyard animals and alternated between anthro and non-anthro roles before becoming full-fledged Funny Animal characters alongside Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and the others.
    • Chip and Dale started out as Talking Animals in their debut, but became Partially Civilized Animals later on in the Classic Disney Shorts. They then became straight-up Civilized Animals in Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers and stayed that way ever since.
    • Inverted with Zeke The Big Bad Wolf at the end of Three Little Pigs.
  • Although subtle, by the third season of The Animals of Farthing Wood, the animals were more human in movement than at the beginning (especially the weasels).
  • Interesting example, Betty Boop was originally a poodle. Seriously. Soon after her first cartoon, her ears were remade into earrings and curly fur became flapper girl hair. So by extension, people who regard Betty sex symbol are in fact furries.
  • Brian in Family Guy follows the Rule of Funny; while usually unclothed except for his dog collar, he normally is a martini-drinking, Prius-driving (the only identifiable car in the series), bipedal urban sophisticate. When he exhibits canine behavior, it's played for laughs. He did, however, sit like a dog and generally acted more canine in the earliest episodes.
  • Scooby Doo was suffering this by the mid-80s. He was seen walking on two legs all the time (it didn't help that his four legged design was not changed) and he was becoming somewhat less of a Speech-Impaired Animal. It seems to have been reversed beginning with A Pup Named Scooby-Doo where he became more of a quadruped again.
  • Tom of Tom and Jerry undergoes this. He looked like a real cat in the first short, but over time the change was striking. He began to walk upright more and more often. Other characters underwent a similar transformation, though Jerry himself changed very little over the course of the series, having always been somewhat anthropomorphic.
    • Tom and Jerry both show an increased manual dexterity and interest in human activities over the years.
  • Heck, Bugs Bunny! Though never really acting consistently rabbit-ish (beyond the carrot addicition, that is), there's a striking difference between the way he's drawn and behaves in the black and white and in color. The Early form has a rabbit shaped head whereas the current one's is more of an anime take on a Persian cat with Buck teeth and long ears. Early Bugs had a big tukhus and would hop around on all fours from time to time. That never happened once he made the jump to color.
    • Colored Bugs has hopped around a few times, though only to fool some idiot into thinking he was an innocent bunny.
    • Daffy Duck, too. In his earliest appearances he was a regular-looking duck with some cartoony features. It wasn't until his third or fourth appearance that he began to act more human-like, and his wings gradually evolved into hands.
  • Rare non-animal example: Originally, all of the mechanical characters from Thomas the Tank Engine (such as locomotives) cannot move at all unless if there is a driver to operate them, but later depictions of said characters were actually all portrayed in a way that they can occasionally move all by themselves without the use of a driver.
  • Porky Pig seemed more anthropomorphic in later Looney Tunes appearances and in Duck Dodgers than in earlier Looney Tunes appearances. While he always had ordinary Four-Fingered Hands, in his earliest appearances, his hooves looked like pig's hooves, but in later appearances, his hooves look like slippers. In Duck Dodgers, he is even plantigrade, but he reverts back to an unguligrade (hoof-walking) stance in The Looney Tunes Show.
  • Inverted with Taz in The Looney Tunes Show: He is Bugs Bunny's pet and walks on four legs more, whereas in Looney Tunes, he isn't a pet and he usually walks on two legs.
    • Played straight more so in Taz-Mania. While Taz was originally anthropomorphic in the original shorts, he was something of a wild predator. In the TV show, he has a fully anthro family, and, while still The Unintelligible, he seems to have much more prominent uses of coherent English.
  • This sequence from the MGM short "Sheep Wrecked" demonstrates this trope in short bursts. The lamb starts out as a normal animal (not unlike the sheep that came before or since), but when the plunger the wolf fires catches it and starts dragging it away, it turns into a Funny Animal and wraps its arms around the fence. We cut to a shot of the wolf as he pulls off some of the lamb's wool, and when we cut back to the lamb, it has been anthropomorphized even further into a Petting Zoo Person. "Now there's a right purdy leg of lamb."
  • Shaun and his flock in Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave are Largely Normal Animals. In Shaun the Sheep, they're Speech Impaired Animals (or possibly Civilised Animals given that the only human in the series is also The Unintelligible). And in Timmy Time, Timmy and his mother are fully blown Funny Animals in a Funny Animal world where sheep, cats and owls go to nursery.
  • A large premise of Tale Spin, which places a few characters from The Jungle Book into a human like civilization. In the film the animals were natural wild animals with their anthro traits more limited or utilized for humor value. Granted, it varies. For example, Baloo and Louie are nearly identical to their Jungle Book forms outside being clothed. On the other hand, in Jungle Book Shere Khan was a four legged animal who only made subtle use of his "hands" similar to the Lion King examples; in Tale Spin, he stands on his hind legs and is wears a business suit. All three characters have one thing in common, though: they want to get rich (or in Khan's case, richer).

Other

  • The GEICO Gecko. In his early appearances, he was very gecko-like in movement, gripping onto the (full-size) microphone with all four feet to talk into it, walking on all fours, and doing the eyeball-lick maneuver geckos are famous for. By now, his mannerisms are a hundred percent human, despite legs that are too short for it, and the result really isn't that cute.
    • This shift coincided with the change from complaining about the name similarity to straight shilling the company, as well as changing to a completely different accent. We can probably safely conclude that the anthro and non-anthro Geckos are actually different characters.
  • Many of the early Transformers toys were designed as piloted mecha from Japanese toylines like Diaclone. When they were imported to the US, the robots were sentient, and accompanying media and later toys redesigned them to be more humanlike. Ratchet and Ironhide are probably the most dramatic example, as a result of having originated as Mini-Mecha that lacked distinct heads.
  • This actually happened to even us.
  • Played straight, then inverted with Alvin and The Chipmunks. On their first several albums, they looked more (or in the case of the very first album, almost entirely) like real chipmunks, then when the Alvin Show first premiered, they were redesigned to look more like kids, but still retained a few rodent-like features. Then when Alvin and the Chipmunks aired in the 80's they gradually began to look more like regular kids and less like rodents. Then when the movies came out, they went back to looking like real chipmunks, although not as much as on the old albums.
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