Was Once a Man/Playing With

Basic Trope: A monster who used to be human.

• Played Straight: The Evil Bob-Thing used to be Bob.
• Exaggerated: All monsters were once humans.
• Downplayed: Bob becoming Alice is treated as this.
• Justified: This is the only way new monsters can be created.
• Inverted: Bob is a human who used to be a monster.
• Subverted: The Bob-Thing was always a monster.
• Double Subverted: The Bob-Thing was lying.
• Parodied: Bob gets turned into a cute bunny rabbit. Or, a friendly monster character mentions in passing that it used to be human, but didn't much like it.
  • The monster was once named "A. Man", but had it legally changed.
  • The Bob-Thing was once a man, despite being a woman.
• Zig Zagged: Bob keeps repeatedly changing between his human form and his monster form.
• Averted: Bob stays human.
• Enforced: The writers wanted to give a psychological aspect to the horror by having it being once a man.
• Lampshaded: "That thing... it wasn't always like this."
• Invoked: Bob does everything he needs to do to become a Bob-Thing.
• Defied: Knowing that there is a very real chance that he may turn into a monster, Bob seeks to prevent it.
• Discussed: "Oh my god... now we know what happened to Bob."
• Conversed: "In stories like this, the most inhuman monsters were all once humans."
• Played for Laughs: ...
• Played for Drama: Due to the nature of this trope, almost every example will already be played as this.