Pac-Man: You seem awfully fond of the Spectral Realm, Ors. I guess it looks different to ghosts.
Orson: It looks different to everyone who comes here, Pac-Man. It reacts to expectations, you see. It's really a sea of potential.
Orson: It looks different to everyone who comes here, Pac-Man. It reacts to expectations, you see. It's really a sea of potential.
Imagine there's an orange on the table. When people look at this orange, they see, well... an orange, obviously. It would be pretty weird if one person saw an orange, one saw an apple, and another saw an enormous watermelon, while all looking at the exact same object. In real life, after all, things don't spontaneously change just because a different person is experiencing them.
Fiction plays by other rules. Sometimes, there are things that do take on different qualities depending on who's involved. A painting that looks different to each person, a drink that tastes different to all drinkers, a disease with radically different symptoms for everyone, the list goes on and on. The basic idea is this thing, whatever it may manifest as, changes form depending solely on each individual person involved. Each of these people will have a different point of view, or affect the item in unique ways. Magic is usually responsible for this, especially if it reflects individual personality, thoughts, or desires.
Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder and Something for Everyone are specific sub-tropes of this, which can both result from You Cannot Grasp the True Form. Character examples belong in those two subtropes. Also see Rashomon Plot.
Compare Empathic Shapeshifter.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: In Chapter 139, Kusuri and Momiji create a batch of bread made with a drug that makes it taste like the person that warms it with their hands, which the girls feed to Rentarou one after another.
- Akame ga Kill!: Incursio is an Adaptive Armor Teigu that changes to whatever is best suited for its current owner's fighting style.
- Buso Renkin: The eponymous weapons are unique in form and function to their wielders, not the production number of the kakugane they're conjured from. When Kazuki and Captain Bravo wield a second kakugane in separate incidents, Kazuki's second buso renkin still takes the form of a spear that differs only in style, not function; likewise with Captain Bravo's armored Badass Longcoat, which is merely colored differently.
- Dog Days: The Holy Swords take on a form most suited for the wielder. For Cinque, Palladion becomes a Martial Arts Staff due to his training in Bojutsu, while the Holy Sword Mercurius takes the form of a Flying Broomstick or an Arm Cannon for Rebecca depending on her needs.
- Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Overlapping with Personality Powers, the class cards — magic cards containing the powers of Heroic Spirits — give those who install them different appearances, traits, or maybe even powers depending on which ones are most compatible.
- The Assassin card correlates to "the Old Man of the Mountain", but there were nineteen of them, so each person who uses them gets a different one. Illya gets Hassan of the Hundred Personas, Miyu gets Hassan of Serenity, and Shinji gets Hassan of Cursed Arm.
- The Saber card that correlates with King Arthur gives different versions of the same person. Illya gets Saber Lily, Miyu gets the classic Fate/stay night Artoria, and Zachary gets Fate/Prototype Arthur.
- The EMIYA Archer card is unique in that it gives its users traits that are not even its own, but are only loosely connected via association. Illya looks like classic Fate/stay night EMIYA, Chloe is a mix between EMIYA and Avenger (befitting her status as a Holy Grail), and Miyu's brother gets a mix between the standard design and Muramasa.
- When using the Archer Gilgamesh install, Miyu wears his full gold armor from Fate Zero, while Angelica wears the lower half of the armor, with a bikini top and Power Tattoos, much like he does in his Final Ascension in Fate/Grand Order (minus the bikini, obviously).
- Future Card Buddyfight: Core Deck Cases can transform into Core Gadgets, which come into a form based on the Fighter's hopes and dreams.
Comic Books
- The Beast and Snow: Belle tells Snow that she has difficulty controlling her lycanthropic powers. Snow says that's not true for all lycanthropes — it's a spectrum, where some are able to master the transformation quickly, while others take a long time to master it.
- Shadowpact: Ragman's Suit of Souls is a patchwork costume containing the souls of various evil people the previous wielders have absorbed into it. Issue #8 reveals that the suit has taken various forms depending on its wielder throughout history, including a cloak, a dagger, and a spear. In fact, Rory's World War 2 predecessor was the first time the artifact took the form of a suit.
Fan Fiction
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami's Metallia-brand of Chaotic magic seems to transform everyone affected by it differently because it's chaotic. But those with more magic capability seem to retain more intelligence and a more useful form.
- Friendship is Optimal: Celestia creates a personalised shard for every player of Equestria Online that satisfies their values.
- The Morrigan: This is implied to be the case for the Datastorm. In the real world, it looks like a storm in space, but for gundam pilots who are "submerged" in it, their perception of it differs. The titular Morrigan perceives it as a starry sky, with the souls of the dead and her fellow gundams perceived like stars. Ireesha sees it as a frozen ocean, with the souls of the dead stacked tightly together like sardines, stretching infinitely into the deep. Notrette Rembran describes it as a rhizomatic network, the system used by plants to share nutrients, though she's not available for comment so it's hard to say if she actually saw it like that or if it was just a handy Simile.
- In Smells Like Home (a fanfic of The Raven Cycle), Ronan dreams a small bottle of scent
that each of his friends perceives differently. For his little brother, it smells like fresh cookies. Gansey thinks it smells like old books. Blue and Ronan both smell something that reminds them of the objects of their affection (Gansey's mint for Blue; Adam's lingering smell of gasoline for Ronan) and Adam doesn't specify what it smells like, except "of Ronan".
Films — Animation
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The map that leads to the titular wish influences how the dark forest looks. It is divided into three trials, with the nature of each trial depending on who's holding the map. It's even implied that these trials are a reflection of what the person wishes for. For example, when Perrito holds the map, the forest becomes a peaceful, colorful place, reflecting how he is content with his life and doesn't have any deep desires. One of Goldilocks' trials involves her and the bears visiting their old home, which is meant to reflect how she wants a family, even though she already has the bears. One of Puss' trials involves him meeting his previous lives, representing how he wants to use the wish to get his lives back.
Films — Live-Action
- 47 Ronin: It is stated that each of the 47 Tengu swords that the titular 47 are seeking out grants different properties that only becomes known to the chosen wielder. However, the movie doesn't explore what they might be other than being an Absurdly Sharp Blade for those who naturally show strength and courage.
- John Dies at the End: John and David go to look at a haunted house owned by a young woman. As they go into the basement and talk about the homeowner, they realize their descriptions don't match. When confronted, the girl transforms into a mass of snakes and then into a golem of frozen meat from the freezer in the basement, before being banished by a phone call from Marconi. At the end, as the framing device of David telling his story to the reporter Arnie wraps up, Arnie's anecdote about an encounter with a racist cop in his youth makes David realize something is wrong, namely that the real reporter is dead, and the man he'd been talking to has been an illusion based on the mental image David formed based on the reporter's voice over the phone, the same way the girl had assumed the appearance of an old acquaintance with one of the guys.
- Mary Poppins: The "medicine" Mary feeds the children and herself has a different flavor for each person who drinks it: lime cordial for Jane, strawberry for Michael, and rum punch for Mary.
- This House Has People in It: The Sculptor claims on his website that the symptoms of lynks disease cannot be listed, because "all the symptoms of Lynks are different (sic) for each person but some of them are disturbingly similar for everyone." This is just a hint that lynks doesn't actually exist, and is instead a catch-all disease for every potential health concern someone may have.
Literature
- Acts of the Apostles: In the second chapter, the holy spirit caused the apostles to speak with everyone hearing the speakers in their own language.
- The Camp Half-Blood Series: Nectar and ambrosia, the food of the Greek gods, tastes like whatever is most appealing to the consumer. In Percy's case, nectar tastes like Coca-Cola while ambrosia reminds him of warm chocolate chip cookies. For Annabeth, ambrosia tastes like popcorn. To Piper, it tastes like her father's black bean soup.
- Harry Potter:
- Polyjuice Potion is a variant of this, as it alters based on the character of the intended transformation; for example, Goyle and Le Strange taste like awful sludge, while Harry's is golden.
- The Love Potion Amortentia has a different scent for everyone — in particular, it smells like things that remind the smeller of someone they're attracted to.
- The Mirror of Erised shows every person their own deepest desire; this means the reflection changes for every person using it, such as Harry seeing himself with his parents, while Ron sees himself as the captain of the Quidditch team.
- Boggarts change their appearance based on the deepest fears of the person nearest them in order to feed on that fear.
- Lucky Day (2025):
- The interior of the plot holes that pop up around Low Probability Events look different to everyone; they have no objective interior and no atmosphere. Layne mentions that someone said it looked like his old bedroom, while Vera sees the cafe she was in right before the original LPE happened. Vera realizes that this is the human mind attempting to contextualize pure nothingness by creating something to fill the void so it won't go mad.
- The creature that came from the plot holes that acts as the head of the Luck Department is this as well; Vera sees it as a centipede, Layne claims it looks mechanical, and Denver says it looks mammalian.
- Mary Poppins: The "medicine" Mary feeds the children and herself changes into whatever the drinker wants when they taste it (rum for her, milk for the babies, etc).
- Michael Vey: Discussed in Hunt for Jade Dragon. While at the mall, Tara shows her ability of changing her appearance by interfering with one's mind and makes herself look like Dr. Hatch. She then asks her friends what she'd been wearing while looking like Hatch and they each give different answers. She then demonstrates her powers on a few other people to various results.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The titular Wizard meets the protagonists one at a time, taking a different form for each. These were later proven to be an assortment of puppets he used to maintain his mystique.
- Worm: Per Word of God, a given Shard can grant different powers to different people, or even to the same person depending on the circumstances of their Trigger Event.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: In "The Fall of Night", Ambassador Kosh leaves his encounter suit to rescue Captain Sheridan from an exploding tram car, leading to The Reveal that the Vorlons have taken on various God Guises to the young races: Sheridan sees Kosh as an archangel, while two alien delegates are seen arguing over whose deity of light they saw. Meanwhile, Londo, who is under Shadow influence, saw nothing at all.
- In the Red Dwarf episode "The Inquisitor", the titular Inquisitor judges everyone on whether or not they've lived a full life. In order to make it a fair trial, they are judged by themselves, so the inquisitor always appears in the form of whoever is on trial. Furthermore, the Inquisitor holds everyone it tries to the standards that they have set for themselves, so how harsh or how merciful of a judge the Inquisitor is depends on who is being tried.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Arrival", a plane mysteriously lands at an airport with no one aboard. Each of the investigators sees the seat cushions inside the plane as having different colors and a different registration number on the tail. One of them realizes that this is because the plane is actually an illusion caused by hypnotic suggestion. The Karmic Twist Ending is that the whole situation, not just the plane, is a hallucination by one of the investigators, caused by his guilt over not solving another case.
- Wizards of Waverly Place: When Alex tries to make a school mural, everyone complains that it isn't what they wanted to see. Struggling to make everyone happy, she enchants the painting, so that everyone does see what they want to see in it... except for her, who ends up unhappy at sacrificing her own artistic vision for others.
Tabletop Games
- Ars Magica: The covenant of Irencilia, domus magna of House Merinita, looks like whatever you expect it to look like. It is unknown what its true form is, or even if it has one. This incidentally provides excellent protection against mundane interference: if you don't know it's there, you'll just see a nondescript patch of woodland.
- Changeling: The Lost: Changelings who join the Knights of the Knowledge of the Tongue receive a scent-based variation of this. All Knights de Cuisine smell like food, but what sort of food they smell like depends on both an observer's attitude towards the changeling and their own association of food with pleasant/indifferent/nasty. For example, if two people like the same Knight, she may smell like apple pie to one and buttercream icing to the other. Likewise, if they hate her, she may smell like boiling cabbage to one and Brussels sprouts to the other. It depends on what food they like best, hate most, or are generally indifferent to.
- Mage: The Awakening: The Supernal Realms are a higher plane of reality that are fatally overwhelming to non-Ascended beings. Visitors need to focus their minds and form a Lustrum, a subjective experience that translates the Supernal into something they can comprehend, or else its undiluted power will erase them from existence.
- Warhammer 40,000: This is part of what makes the warp so fickle and unreliable for both transport and communication — anyone who witnesses it perceives it differently. One psyker may perceive it as a shifting jungle full of formless plants and creatures, while another may perceive it as a stormy sea. Astropaths, who are charged with sending messages through the Warp, frequently run into issues with reliability, because trans-warp communication isn't so much a matter of sending an interstellar e-mail as it is sending a message comprised entirely of emotions and imagery which has to be interpreted by the astropath receiving it. Navigators, who steer imperial vessels through the Warp, have it even worse; the astronomicon is basically the only reason modern Warp travel is possible at all, as it gives the navigators an "anchor point" that they can use as a reference to avoid getting hopelessly lost in what amounts to an ever-shifting maze that doesn't obey the laws of physics.
Video Games
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The main gimmick of the Allies' Multigunner units, the IFV and Turret, whose weapons change depending on the kind of infantry loaded inside (they normally shoot missiles) to an improved version of the loaded unit's attack (the Cryotrooper gaining an extremely efficient Anti-Air attack or the Engineer repairing nearby vehicles). Because capturing enemy buildings is a major part of the game, enemy attacks are accounted for (such as Soviet Desolators or Imperial Archer Maidens), although there are some equivalencies (like the Spy and Shinobi both gaining a sniper attack or Attack Dogs and War Bears getting a boosted version of their sonic attacks).
- Control (2019): The Service Weapon doesn't seem to change its appearance for everyone, but it's hypothesized that it does change with the times, going from sword to gun as the standard weapon changed over centuries.
- Deltarune: One of the item vendors in Cyber City sells "own-flavored tea". It comes in flavours depending on who is in your party when you buy it, and the exact flavour of the teas and the amount it heals varies depending on who drinks it. Generally, the closer they are to the person the tea is flavored after, the more it heals and the better it tastes, but if the person drinks with own "own-flavored tea" it tastes like water and only heals a tiny amount. For example, Susie is healed a large amount when she drinks Kris Tea because she considers Kris a close friend at this point, and it tastes like apple juice due to Kris' apple-scented shampoo and coming to associate the flavour with them, but when Ralsei drinks Kris Tea, it tastes like blueberry because Kris appears blue in the Dark World.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: The party members have to fight off demons during the events of the "Here Lies the Abyss" quest — but to each character, the demons take on a different appearance. This is because the demons change their shape to look like each character's greatest fear. To the player character, they look like spiders but some companions will offer party banter indicating what they see.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy X-2: Each Dressphere generates a different costume depending on whether Yuna, Riku, or Paine is using it.
- Final Fantasy XIV: The Twelve bestow an information device "best suited" to each of the heroes as part of their deal following the Euphrosyne alliance raid. This leads to an incredulous reaction from the Warrior of Light when said device takes the form of an Allagan tomestone like many they've scoured the land for to hand to Rowena.
- Golden Sun: Every character's model uses a different appearance for the weapon they're using, regardless of what the weapon's icon looks like. For example, the same mace will be a rod with a small metal ball when equipped on Mia, a long shaft with orthogonal flanges when given to Isaac, and the classic giant iron ball with spikes when given to Garet. Similarly, a double-headed axe on Isaac becomes a huge single-bladed chopper on Garet, while a staff becomes a wooden stick for Ivan and a crystal-topped staff for Mia.
- Hexen: Both the first and second games have an explosive usable item that works differently for each class.
- The Flechette in the first game is used as a hand grenade by the Fighter, a gas grenade by the Cleric, and as a Time Bomb by the Mage.
- The second game has the Glyph of the Ancients. For the Crusader, it's a Time Bomb. For the Paladin, it's a hand grenade. For the Assassin, it's a trip mine. For the Necromancer, it's a proximity mine. For the Demoness, it's a gas grenade.
- Mega Man ZX: The exact power of Biometal Model W varies depending on its users: Prometheus can command fire and generate a scythe to attack with, Pandora can attack with ice and lightning, Serpent has assorted physical and darkness-like attacks, and Master Albert — Model W's creator — is able to replicate the power of other Biometals. The only thing that remains consistent is its base properties of feeding on negative emotions to become stronger.
- Pac-Man World 3: Orson waxes nostalgic over his time in the Spectral Realm, which looks more like a purple variant of Mordor to Pac-Man. Pac-Man muses that the Spectral Realm must look different to ghosts, and Orson says it's more than that: the Spectral Realm reacts to expectations, so everyone who sees it sees something different.
- Pokémon: The attack "Hidden Power" differs in strength and type for every Pokémon that uses it. Not every kind of Pokémon; every individual. It does this by using a given Pokémon's determined-at-encounter IVs (innate base stats used for calculating stat growth) as an unchanging seed for the randomization. Almost every species can learn it, and the species does not affect the possible outcomes, so it's often used so that a Pokémon will have a move of a type that they can't ordinarily learn in order to catch enemies familiar with a species's possible move pool off guard.
- Silent Hill: The eponymous town is warped in a different way depending on each protagonist's past or neuroses. In the first and third games, the protagonist is trapped in a hellish alternate reality influenced by another character's tortured emotional state (they're technically the same person in part 3; it's complicated). The second has each major character exert their own influence on the town's appearance and the nature of the entities roaming around, and close observation shows that these alternate perceptions bleed over into each other when the characters are in close proximity. The lone exception is Laura, who can't see any of the freaky stuff anyone else experiences because she's just a little kid, and has no skeletons in her closet for the town's malevolent forces to torment her with.
- Soul Series: The titular swords Soul Edge and Soul Calibur are both Empathic Weapons that shapeshift to fit their wielder's preferred fighting style. In most games in the series, at least one other character has a different Soul Edge or Soul Calibur form as one of their unlockable weapons, with all characters having a Soul Edge form in Soulcalibur II. To distinguish them, Soul Edge forms always look like they're made of flesh and bone, and Soul Calibur forms look like they're made of blue crystals. Three forms of each are relevant to the story: Soul Edge has Cervantes's longsword and pistol sword, Nightmare's BFS, and Pyrrha Ω's short sword and shield, while Soul Calibur has Xianghua's straight sword, Siegfried's BFS, and α Patroklos's Iaitō.
Visual Novels
- Fate/stay night: The different factors of Magi participating in the Holy Grail War determine what kind of Servant from their Class to the hero they may summon from the catalyst to their personality.
Webcomics
- Awful Hospital: "Reality" is just a subjective measure of which parts of the Perception Range a person is attuned to at a given time, so this crops up a lot. Isaac can use passages and interact with beings that don't exist for the others; Willis can perceive speech that Fern can't; and so on.
- Gunnerkrigg Court: Kat perceives the Etheric world in ordinary everyday forms, compared to Annie's otherworldly experience of it. This dramatically changes how they interact with it — a character's Supernormal Bindings are a vast maze of Alien Geometries to Annie, whereas Kat sees a set of cuffs and simply picks the lock.
Annie: Oh! Incredible! I — I can't even describe what I'm seeing!
Kat: Man, why don't I ever get to see the cool stuff?
Web Originals
- SCP Foundation SCP-738 is a desk and chair combination that allows whoever sits in it to make a Deal with the Devil. To the different individuals who used the desk, who they talked to has appeared as an attractive woman, a giant serpent, a man in a red-and-gold business suit, a large pink rabbit, and a lawyer's first-year contract law professor. When drawing up the contracts for the deals, the language and format of the contract itself change depending on the native language, level of education, and level of intelligence of whoever is sitting in the chair.
- The Slender Man Mythos: This was originally the case with the titular character. The Slender Man's face looked different depending on who was looking at it, making it impossible to describe. Because cameras do not have perception, he appeared as The Blank in photographs. The latter became such a persistent trait of his design that after a while, him being literally faceless became a default trait.
Western Animation
- Gargoyles: The Weird Sisters appear as something different to everyone they meet: to Macbeth, they appear as the old witches they are in the Shakespeare play; to Demona, they appear as fellow gargoyles; to the Manhattan Clan, they appear as children. When disguising themselves as ordinary people to better blend in and observe, they appear as attractive young women.
- The Mask: Animated Series: Those who wear the titular mask all have the same power over Toon Physics. However, the base form and personality of each wearer are different. Some examples include:
- Stanley Ipkiss: Yellow zoot suit and fedora with feather.
- Peggy: narcissistic fashionista with Delusions of Beauty and a Badass attitude)
- Milo the dog: Basically a Lighter and Softer Hellhound.
- Dr. Pretorius: A giant, bald, green head with red eyes, a deep voice, and hairy, purple spider legs.
- Fish Guy: A giant, green-faced shark with shaggy, brown hair, who’s still an Evil Nerd, but with Acquired Situational Narcissism.
- Freddy (One-Shot Character from "Enquiring Masks Want To Know"): Kindhearted Simpleton monster.
- Miraculous Ladybug: The Miraculous' appearances in camouflage mode depend on their user.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The royal magic wand takes a different shape depending on the wielder, appearing as a sceptre, wand, goblet, and parasol among other things. The wand will also change based on how its wielder has changed. For example, the wand was originally very simplistic and childish early on while in Star's possession, but later became more complex and less toylike as Star matured.
