Merfolk? Sadly, fictional. Merfolk tailfin amputations? Sad, and fictional. Ocean pollution? Sadly, real.
Barrierbot: Did your hump just say something?
Fry: Uh... I-I've got talking hump syndrome.
Barrierbot: Ah, T.H.S.
Fry: Uh... I-I've got talking hump syndrome.
Barrierbot: Ah, T.H.S.
This trope covers characters who have some sort of disability that doesn't exist in the real world. This can include, but is by no means limited to:
- Some sort of illness triggered by or connected to magic or technology that doesn't exist in the real world (much in the same way that electronic devices with flashing lights can trigger epilepsy or sensory overload in people who would likely never have had to worry about such things before they existed). For example, an allergy to Green Rocks, Phlebotinum Pills, or Super Serum.
- Injuries and deformities that are aggravated or caused by magic or technology, preventing the magic or technology of the setting from healing them (e.g. a character who was mauled by a creature whose wounds cannot be healed with magic, or a character who lost a leg to an illness which prevents her from having a new one cloned).
- Difficulty learning to use magic or technology in the setting (when it's explicitly because of some sort of disability, rather than the character just being uninterested or never being given the option of doing so), being treated something like dyslexia and other learning disorders.
- Disabilities in non-humans, especially as it pertains to Bizarre Alien Biology. (e.g. a member of a flying species with a wing injury, or a member of a telepathic species who can't read minds).
- Any fantastical condition which inhibits the character (e.g. not having a shadow; infestations of fictional germs or parasites).
This can still include conditions that end up being a Disability Superpower or Disability Immunity, as long as the condition itself is still debilitating.
This trope can be used as a way to write disabled characters in settings where most real-life disabilities would be rendered uncommon as a result of magic or advanced technology, or to explore the social consequences of said magic and technology existing (although this can lead to a Space Whale Aesop; "Don't invent faster computers or people will lose the ability to eat plant matter!"). Cyberpunk and other social science fiction settings love using both variations, since including characters who can't benefit from the technology is a fascinating way of analysing its effect on society.
Super-Trope to Un-Sorcerer (whose disability is the lack of a setting's ubiquitous super powers), Science-Related Memetic Disorder (where being a Mad Scientist is treated as a disorder), Abnormal Allergy (an allergy that is not possible in real life), Superpower Disability (where the drawbacks of a superpower are so severe they qualify as a disability), and Fantastic Ableism (when this trope leads to discrimination from All of the Other Reindeer) — examples of which belong on their respective pages. Compare Kryptonite Factor, Power Incontinence, Disability Gag, and Magically Inflicted Disability, which can be combined with this trope, and Neurodiversity Is Supernatural, where mental disorders are given fictional supernatural origins.
Compare Fictional Disease for when a work has diseases that don't exist in Real Life. Just so we're clear about the difference between this trope and that trope, a disease refers to any sickness or illness, and is usually characterised by specific symptoms while a disability refers to any physical or mental condition that causes severe, long-lasting limitations on a person. One can cause the other, but they are not the same.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Children of the Whales: Liontari is immune to the influence of the Nous, the entity that absorbs people's emotions in his native society that has come to consider emotions evil and barbaric. This has resulted in him having no guidance on how to control them and being an outcast.
- Delicious in Dungeon: The Captain of the Canaries, Mithrun, is extremely absent-minded due to having all his desires eaten by a demon after being trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine. This includes any desire to take care of his bodily needs: he won't eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom unless repeatedly prompted, and will push himself until he collapses from exhaustion because he doesn't want to rest. In fact, he can't sleep normally and has to be coaxed via relaxation techniques such as a spell, medication, or a massage. On top of that, he has no sense of direction. The only reason he isn't simply comatose is his sole remaining desire to destroy all demons for what they did to him. The ending implies his condition was exacerbated by Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: believing himself incapable of desires, he never realized some of his actions can only be the result of them, and after encouragement from his friend Kabru he can feel them slowly returning.
- Dragon Ball Super has Goku afflicted with "Delayed Onset Ki Disorder" after overtaxing himself by combining the Super Saiyan Blue form with the Kaioken. Symptoms include a general inability to effectively use energy, leading to Goku being unable to control himself while flying, or teleporting to the wrong location when attempting to use Instant Transmission. It also appeared to negatively effect Goku's otherwise insatiable appetite. His condition recovered after a few days, but King Kai warns him that continuing to misuse his energy like when using the Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken technique could cause the condition to resurface, or even become permanent. Thankfully, Goku hones the technique in question so as to eliminate that risk.
- Fire Force: Tephrosis is a condition that occurs when a pyrokinetic overuses their powers. It causes their skin to turn to ash. Lieutenant Konro of Company 7 is one of the people suffering from it.
- Haibane Renmei: Reki was born with dark grey wings instead of the normal pale ash gray due to being stuck in a Circle of Sin. This left her ostracized by others. She hides this deformity by dyeing her wings. Like just about everything in Haibane Renmei, the details of this condition are unclear, but dark wings seem to be connected to mental trauma, can be present at birth or acquired later (as happens to Rakka during her Heroic BSoD), and prevent the dark-winged haibane from reaching the Day of Flight. Luckily, they can be reverted to pale by overcoming whatever mental block caused them.
- Little Witch Academia (2017): Atsuko "Akko" Kagari is already heavily coded as having ADHD, but it later turns out that this is not the only disability she suffers that prevents her from learning magic at the same rate as her peers. As a child, her magic was drained by Croix's dream fuel spirit, which stunted her magical potential. While this can be overcome through hard training and practice, as seen with Diana who was stunted in the same way but recovered, Akko has never had the support or means to practice magic until she attended Luna Nova, meaning that she had no way to deal with her disability or even learn that she had one.
- My Hero Academia: 20 percent of the human population is born Quirkless, meaning that they don't possess any kind of superpowers. For people like protagonist Izuku Midoriya, this can be humiliating and the source of scorn and bullying, especially since he wants to become a superhero more than anything. Luckily for him, his sheer heroic spirit and willingness to throw himself into danger for the sake of others inspires his idol All Might to pass down his unique Quirk to him.
- Naruto: Rock Lee is congenitally incapable of ninjutsu or genjutsu (i.e. magic), leaving him with just taijutsu (martial arts). This forces him into a When All You Have Is a Hammer… approach to being a ninja and means he has to work much harder just to be a competitive second-string fighter in a world of aristocratic bloodlines with inherited superpowers and bound monsters used by ninjas as batteries.
- Pokémon the Series: Learning to speak like a human somehow made Meowth unable to learn any new attacks and completely killed off any real potential he had as a battling Pokémon. He can't even use his species' Signature Move Pay Day, which would have been useful for the ever-broke Team Rocket because the move creates money out of nothing.
- She Becomes a Tree: Kisaki has Woodman Syndrome, which causes her to be able to sprout tree limbs out of her body. These limbs are strong and flexible, enabling her to retrieve a classmate's shoes from a tall tree, and to work several times as fast as a normal person as an adult Office Lady, but they're difficult to control, resulting in people ostracizing Kisaki.
- Witch Hat Atelier: Tartah has a fictional form of colorblindness called silverwash, meaning he sees the world in the same silvery monochrome. This has pretty much shot his chances of becoming a witch, as the Geometric Magic of the setting requires visual acuity. Likewise, it hampers his job of assisting at his father's magic supply shop, as he's unable to distinguish between the various colored powders and other materials. He gets around this by memorizing where each item is, which means he's helpless if someone jumbles them up.
- World's End Harem: Cellular sclerosis (the literal translation of the kana is "cytosclerosis", which means the same thing) is a degenerative disorder with no stated cause that afflicts all five surviving males in the world. Either the disease, the cure that was developed while they were Human Popsicles, or a combination of the two, gave them Disability Immunity to the Male-Killer Virus.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who: The renegade Time Lord introduced in "The Eleven" suffers from a condition called "regenerative dissonance", meaning that after regeneration, their past selves continue to exist inside their mind. None of them get along at all, and it stated that other Time Lords with the condition have been Driven to Suicide; after the Eleven, the most long-lived sufferer of this disorder killed themselves in their eighth body. The most well known incarnation is the titular Eleven, but we also meet (in person), the Two, the Eight, the Nine, the Twelve, and the Union (the thirteenth and seemingly final incarnation).
Comic Books
- Batman: Due to a lab accident, supervillain Mr. Freeze is unable to survive in an environment at room temperature and has to always wear his Powered Armor that keeps his body at subzero.
- Marvel Universe: There are some Skrulls born without the ability to shapeshift like the rest of their species.
- Teen Titans: Due to a childhood illness, Starfire's sister Blackfire is the only member of her species who can't absorb ultraviolet radiation. This leaves her unable to fly.
- Transformers (2019) treats being an Action Master (a transformer unable to transform into vehicle mode) as a disability, particularly in Wreckers: Treads and Circuits which is set on vehicle-centric Velocitron.
Fan Works
- "Adam & Eve & Steve👁 Image
" reveals that most wizards (Harry Potter) only need glasses if they are old or suffer from vision problems that explicitly can't be fixed by magic, with the Potter family apparently having a hereditary trait that leaves them one of the rare cases where magic cannot correct their eye problems. - Destiny Intertwined: Jordhin's failed self-corruption permanently damaged their connection to the elements and left them unable to access any kind of elemental or magical ability, in addition to deforming his wings so that he can no longer fly.
- Eleutherophobia: Ex-hosts frequently have a disorder called Post-Infestation Affective Blunting Syndrome. Due to not being able to use their own bodies for so long, their brains lose the ability to perform automatic actions. They rarely make facial expressions, have uncoordinated movements and slurred speech, and take a while to respond to outside stimuli.
- Essence: Bulbasaur was born with embryonic trauma due to its parents' murder prior to it hatching. Embryonic trauma is a condition that happens when something traumatic occurs during a Pokémon's development. As a defense mechanism, the Pokémon's mind represses memories that they produced while still in their egg. A Pokémon is born "stateless", not knowing any moves or life skills.
- An Everlasting Vow: Amity has an imbalanced bile sack, leaving her with an excess of magic that she can't fully vent the way other witches do. If she allows it to build up too much, it'll leave her Delicate and Sickly and eventually kill her. However, she has immense magical potential while she lives. She takes an elixir daily to stave off the effects, but its potency is slowly lessening, leaving Amity Living on Borrowed Time.
- The First Tuesday of November👁 Image
, a Persona 4 fic, has a temporary example. Goddesses in that setting exist to fulfill the wishes of humanity, so when those wishes are very powerful and mutually exclusive — such as during a very divisive presidential election — their empathic sense goes haywire and gives them a terrible cold, followed by brief unconsciousness. Fortunately, humanity has calmed down enough by the following day that Marie feels healthy again. - Legacy of the Cursed Lands:
- Some Wengals and Batwings are born with wings too small to fly.
- Shifters can heal their injuries when they switch forms. After Zetto lost the ability to shapeshift, he can't regenerate his lost arm.
- Let Us Be Your Poison: Weiss suffers from a very rare genetic condition called "animanecrosis", better known as "Soul Lapse". She doesn't have a connection to her Soul and thus can't use her Aura or her Semblance.
- The Morrigan: Spontaneous Permetic Growth is a condition where the local Applied Phlebotinum starts growing on and in the body, causing chronic pain and paralysis. Prospera Mercury has it in both her legs, and is preventing the worst of it with treatments and regular stretches. Nika Nanaura-Fardin has a uniquely benign version in her left arm which doesn't cause her any pain, but permet crystals still have to be filed down regularily for her to be able to move it (a process that is pleasant and often done by her wife, Sabina).
- My Huntsman Academia has Broken Souls, people who are born with such weak souls that they can never manifest an Aura. In addition to precluding them from the increased strength, durability, and healing that an Aura can provide, they will never develop a Semblance of their own. Broken Souls also tend to have their growth stunted, leaving them shorter and more feeble than their peers unless they have the good fortune of having strong genetics. Izuku is one prior to the events of the story, but he receives an Aura and Semblance of his own when Toshinori passes One For All to him.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Dinky's Destiny: Dinky Hooves is a unicorn foal who can't use magic well due to her clockwise horn.
- In Kilala 97's next generation setting, Alto Trot is a pegasus who was born without wings and was thought to have been born an earth pony until he climbed onto a cloud his mother was using to water her plants. Although his magic is still pegasus rather than earth pony magic, allowing him to walk on and shape clouds like any other pegasus, he's unable to leave the ground unless he's carried up or able to climb onto a low-hanging cloud.
- Oversaturated World: In Launch Error👁 Image
, it's shown that human Scootaloo can't fly, even when she gets the magical wings that let other Pegasus Aspects fly. - Rainbow Factory: Scootaloo, Orion, and Aurora all fail their final flight test and get sent into the Pegasus Device, which kills them to make rainbows, just like all other weak fliers that fail the final test, like Fluttershy and Derpy.
- Scootaloo & the Cabinet of Seers: Scootaloo worries so much about her possibly being never able to fly that she wants Twilight to consult the greatest Seers of their world about it.
- Spellbound Fireflies: Scootaloo can't fly like other pegasi 'cause she was never taught how until Rainbow Dash teaches her.
- Triptych Continuum:
- In Scootalift, Snowflake diagnoses Scootaloo as being a slow or late developer, so she will take longer than other pegasi to be able to fly.
- The series also has falling into the mark, a mental disorder in which a pony essentially becomes addicted to their cutie mark magic. Nearly all ponies go through a touch of it after manifest, becoming just a little too interested in their new talent and magic. Far too many ponies exist in its outer stages, never really developing an interest in anything outside the scope of their talent. But then you have the true fallen, ponies who have allowed their mark to consume them to such a degree that they are completely non-functional outside the scope of their talent.
- Numerous stories feature Rainbow Dash suffering permanent damage to one or both of her wings and having to adapt to life without flight (sometimes going into Hurt/Comfort Fic territory).
- On Fimfiction.net, the Scootaloo group has an entire folder👁 Image
set up for stories about Scootaloo discovering that she will never fly, and having to cope with that. There is also a folder for stories which involve her gaining the ability to fly👁 Image
. Most of those stick with the original idea that she was just having trouble learning to fly (as Lauren Faust once claimed during her time as showrunner), but some of them present her as disabled and have her fly with the aid of prosthetic wings or other assistive technology.
- The Price of Silk: Unlike the vast majority of bugs, Kabbu almost never has his antennae on show, preferring to keep them folded away (which some real-life species of beetles are actually able to do for defensive reasons) in order to dampen their oversensitivity. It's considered an incredibly serious sign when they are forced out against his will. When they are forced to stay out due to the Post Pheromonal Fever, Kabbu finds it borderline painful. Kabbu's embarrassed by this, feeling as if he's like a newly-hatched grub, though Isau suspects it's a trauma response caused by subconsciously always feeling endangered.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing:
- Instead of demons which turn people to stone, DRUUN (Deposit-Rich Un-Uniform Neomineralization) is a horrible disease that causes mineral stones to form throughout the body due to it no longer being able to break down calcium. It's sexually transmitted and currently incurable.
- Equestria is a Fictional Country in which the population is prone to a disability that makes it very hard to conceive and carry boy babies to term, meaning women outnumber men. Twilight is chosen as the future ruler partly because she might be able to have a healthy son.
- Bloodwrath is a diagnosable mental condition related to Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Symptoms include hysterical strength, high adrenaline, a sharp increase in blood pressure and bursts of extreme anger.
Films — Animated
- Barbie Fairytopia: The protagonist, Elina, is the only fairy in her meadow without wings, which she is teased constantly about. By the end of the movie, she is given wings by the Enchantress, the ruler of the fairies.
- Finding Nemo: Nemo has a small, malformed fin caused by his egg being damaged before he hatched. It doesn't keep him from swimming completely, but Marlin is very overprotective of him because of it and because he's the only survivor of his clutch.
- Happy Feet: Mumble's egg was dropped before he hatched. This somehow resulted in him not being able to sing like all the other penguins, so he tap dances instead.
- How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Toothless lost part of his tail fin after being shot out of the sky by Hiccup. He can't fly on his own anymore, so Hiccup invents a fake fin that he can manipulate so they can fly together. In the 3rd film, Hiccup makes another that Toothless can use on his own, so he no longer needs Hiccup to fly.
- My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): Tempest Shadow has a broken horn as a result of an accident as a filly. While it doesn't negate her ability to use magic entirely, she is unable to use even basic skills such as telekinesis and can only release her magic as an uncontrolled, destructive torrent of energy.note Her subsequent appearances in the IDW comic have her using telekinesis, but with a very different aura than a unicorn with an intact horn.
- Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur: Shaggy is diagnosed with acute-threat-avoidance-hypertrophy disorder, which is characterized by extreme overreaction to frightening stimuli, is said to be so rare that it only affects less than one in ten million, and is somehow diagnosable from an X-ray.
- Toy Story 2: Wheezy has a broken squeaker, and it’s portrayed as though it’s a toy form of asthma, with him constantly... well, wheezing. At the end of the film, he gets a new squeaker put in him and sounds fine, with him even being able to sing like a lounge singer.
- Wreck-It Ralph: Due to Turbo haphazardly overwriting her code to remove her from the game, Vanellope "glitches" frequently, causing her to spasm and change places uncontrollably, making her the subject of bullying and systemic discrimination. To hammer in the metaphor, she refers to it as "pixlexia," a pun on "dyslexia" (though it's not much like dyslexia at all, more closely resembling muscle spasms). Later in the film, she finds a way to control her glitching and use it to her advantage.
Films — Live-Action
- Maleficent gets hit with this once she gets her wings cut off, as she not only loses her ability to fly and needs Diaval to be her watcher, but she also needs a cane to walk as absence of the wings has thrown off her center of gravity. Interestingly it is only a temporary example; once Aurora frees Maleficent's wings from the cage where they had been kept by Aurora's father as a "trophy" of his victory over Maleficent, the wings reattach to Maleficent and she can use them without any problems.
- In Skins (2017), a movie about deformed people, one of the plots revolves around a woman named Samantha who has an anus for a mouth and a mouth for an anus. While the rest of the characters have real-life disabilities, hers stands out as being the only fantastical one.
- In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Doctor McCoy gives Admiral Kirk reading glasses for his birthday, explicitly noting that in most cases he would recommend a drug known as retinax to correct vision problems in a man of Kirk's age but Kirk is allergic to that specific drug.
Literature
- Animorphs:
- In Animorphs: The Reaction, Rachel acquires the DNA of a Nile crocodile, which flows through her bloodstream along with the DNA of every other animal she's acquired. Except that she felt an unusual nausea in the process this time, and afterwards whenever she felt strong emotion she started to morph uncontrollably. For a girl as passionate as Rachel, and as committed, that made a serious problem since she didn't tell her friends and subsequently blew one of their scouting missions. Ax called this condition an allergy. It passed with her "burping" the offending DNA... in the form of a massive crocodile erupting from her back in the bathroom of a crowded TV studio.
- In The Other, an Andalite named Mertil suffers from a condition that makes him unable to use the morphing technology, meaning that when his tail was severed in a crash he couldn't regrow it. Mertil's partner Gafinilan suffers from the painful Soola's Disease, which can only be gotten rid of by acquiring and morphing another Andalite permanently (also making him unable to use morphing technology) and otherwise damages his sight and will kill him before much longer. Ax is only a little leery of Gafinilan on finding out about his disease but is profoundly disgusted by and dismissive of Mertil, calling him a vecol. From the way he talks about it, this applies to the inability to gain the morphing power but Mertil's injury makes it much worse and altogether a stand-in for AIDS.
- In The Proposal, Marco's emotional issues revolving around his dad deciding to marry his math teacher causes him to morph into freakish animal hybrids, such as a salmon with gorilla arms or a skunk/spider hybrid, similar to Rachel's uncontrolled morphing. Similarly, he gets better by the end.
- During Animorphs: The Discovery, Marco was in the process of morphing osprey with a human Jake standing by when some people walked in. Marco (toddler-sized and still wearing a hoodie that now seemed outrageously large on him, and having a proportionately-sized beak and thought-speak) fed Jake his lines, and they managed to leave without issues.
Jake put his arm around me protectively. "Don’t listen to them, Tommy," he said, with a sob in his voice. "Your face is just fine! It's just fine, I tell you! The doctors say someday you may be normal again."
"Hey, I didn't mean anything by..." the kid said.
"What is it?" the manager asked in a concerned tone. "I mean, his disease."
Jake went blank.
"Umm..."
<Beakanoma> I whispered to Jake in thought-speak.
"Beakanoma," Jake said.
<A growth in the shape of a beak> I explained.
"It's a, uh, a growth in the shape of a beak," Jake said.
<It's especially tragic and all because it only afflicts really smart cute people> I said.
"Oh, shut up," Jake muttered under his breath.
- Beware of Chicken: Liu Bowu was born with deformed meridians, making him unable to cultivate qi. While meridian damage can sometimes be repaired, experts in the field have examined Bowu and confirmed that his case is intractable.
- The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump: Exposure to the magic equivalent of toxic waste can cause infants to be born without a soul and apparently simply stop existing after death—no afterlife, no nothing. The condition is called "apsychia", and is considered a birth defect; the protagonist meets a medical researcher who is working on an experimental procedure in which tiny pieces of many souls are fused into, essentially, a synthetic soul which can then be implanted in the apsychic child. Whether this will actually work is still unclear.
- Codex Alera: Tavi, the main character, is the only human who can't use magic in a world where it's used for everything from travel to turning lights on and off. He is treated like a freak, but it means he grows up into a Guile Hero capable of thinking around intractable problems instead of trying to batter them down with his powers like everyone else does. The cause is eventually revealed: an unexpected consequence of his mother using her own magic to prolong her pregnancy and stunt his growth in the womb, for fear that he'd be recognized by the conspiracy that murdered his father, the crown prince.
- Cradle Series: In Sacred Valley, people labeled "unsouled" are born with a weak soul that prevents them from doing the magic that even some plants and animals can do. They are banned from marriage lest they pass on their affliction, and are considered beneath contempt. As it turns out, no one in Sacred Valley has any idea what they're talking about; according to Suriel, it's nothing but a minor madra deficiency that can easily be made up with a little bit of specialized training or reasonably expensive medicine. Yerin had never even heard of the "disability" until she came to Sacred Valley.
Yerin: You just started two steps behind, that's the spine of it. Nothing worth crying about. Some of them polished families can take a squalling baby from Foundation to Jade in two and a half pills.
- Discworld:
- A yennork is a werewolf with permanent Shapeshifter Mode Lock as either a wolf or a human. This doesn't mean they are a wolf or a human, just a werewolf without the "switch".
- Strange diseases or disorders are a known hazard of high-magic areas. The Science of Discworld describes one unfortunate who came down with a bad case of Planets.
- In keeping with the Discworld philosophy that everything has an opposite, the squib "Medical Notes" reveals that Discworld physicians have diagnosed Attention Surplus Disorder, Foribundi's Syndrome (the opposite of Hollywood Tourette's, where you're incapable of swearing even when it's expected of you) and Anoia (the persistent feeling that you're out to get everyone).
- Doctor Who Expanded Universe: The Missy Chronicles features a Time Lady with Abridgement Syndrome, which is a complete inability to regenerate.
- The Elric Saga: Elric was born with a wasting disease that requires a daily regimen of medicinal herbs and potions to ameliorate. After acquiring the soul-devouring Evil Weapon Stormbringer, this becomes less of an issue since it feeds him the life energy of anyone he kills, but being a relatively moral person he objects to murdering random people, and at least one book begins with him on the verge of death because he's run out of medicine.
- The Green Bone Saga: Being a stone-eye who has no reaction to jade is considered to be this in the country of Kekon and many Kekonese consider the Abukei people's near-universal immunity similarly. On the one hand; they can handle quantities of jade that would kill anyone else. On the other hand; they cannot use any of the superhuman powers jade confers.
- Harry Potter:
- Squibs are regarded as having severe deficiencies. Since they can't use magic, they have little or no place in wizarding society.
- Lycanthropy is treated like a cross between a disability and (because it's transmitted by those who already have it) an STD. Lupin regularly takes medication to alleviate the worst effects of his condition and required extensive accommodations during his school years. When his wife becomes pregnant, he worries "What If the Baby Is Like Me?" Lampshaded in the movie by Sirius Black, whose family has a history of mental illness (not helped by aristocratic inbreeding) and who turns out to have become Bored with Insanity during his time in prison:
Remus: Well, well, Sirius. Looking rather ragged, aren't we? Finally the flesh reflects the madness within.
Sirius: Well, you'd know all about the madness within. Wouldn't you, Remus?
- Hoshi and the Red City Circuit has K-Syndrome, a condition similar but not identical to autism caused by defects in the K-Region of the genome. Its symptoms are a verbal-sequential IQ at least three standard deviations below visual-associative IQ, sensory processing issues, and motor difficulties. People with K-Syndrome work as Operators, using navi to program the city's quantum computers, which only they can do thanks to their unique neurology, but because of their difficulties functioning, most are institutionalized and enslaved.
- Hurog: Ward suffered brain damage after being beaten by his father, and although the effects aren't nearly as severe as he pretends (mostly manifesting as slowed speech functions), the damage also blocked his connection to his magical abilities. He regains this connection midway through the first book.
- The Laundry Files: Krantzberg syndrome is the result of attempting to do magic using one's brain (instead of something like a smartphone or desktop computer). It's caused by Eldritch Abominations literally eating away at the brains of such people, producing symptoms similar to dementia or Alzheimer's.
- Mushoku Tensei: Travelling mage Roxy is revealed via Flash Back to be a rare "deaf-mute" member of a tribe of telepaths, who can hear the language of her people only as a meaningless pop in her mind. Roxy's parents went out of their way to prevent her from realising that she was disabled for as long as possible, which included teaching themselves spoken language and keeping Roxy away from other children.
- Neuromancer: Case starts out as a once-talented computer hacker who was rendered unable to access virtual cyberspace networks after his central nervous system was damaged with a mycotoxin as punishment for stealing from his employers. An offer to fix this damage is what sets the rest of the story's plot in motion.
- The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter: As an earthling from the modern world, Seiichirou Kondou has no internal magic resistance. Which makes the magic rich world of Romany where he was accidentally summoned to dangerous for him to live in. His lack of magical resistance leaves Seiichirou prone to dangerous overdoses even from magic-rich foods, healing spells and any recreational or pharmaceutical drugs. This means that Seiichirou has to stick to a special diet of low-magic food, can only get his injuries magically healed by the man with whom he has an Intimate Healing arrangement because skin-to-skin contact with a native to the land is the only thing that can balance out the toxic effect magic has on him, and approaching the miasma that warranted Yua being summoned is even more dangerous for him than it is for everyone else. Even being near heavily enchanted or holy objects can poison him by proximity.
- Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons: Even though Ragnar's new wife Kraka (a.k.a. Aslaug) prophetically warns that a child conceived within the first three nights after the wedding will "have no bones", Ragnar insists on consummating the marriage without delay. Accordingly, Kraka's first son Ivar is born "boneless", "as if there were gristle where his bones should be". Ivar is unable to walk and has to be carried everywhere; nevertheless, he is "so large that no one was his equal" and "the handsomest of all men", and he has great strength in his upper body which makes him an excellent archer. Ivar's condition (which, despite the statement that Ivar has no bones whatsoever, does not seem to affect his upper body at all) does not seem to match any real-life disability.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Alvin Godfrey was born with an abnormally large amount of mana but lacked the natural talent to control it properly, and tended to blow himself up with his own fire magic. He had to learn how to do it the hard way by practicing with Clifton Morgan. In Side of Fire, Professor Gilchrist thinks the cause may have been a childhood tutor who overreacted to the power of Godfrey's first spell and crippled him in a botched attempt to put a Power Limiter on him.
- The Shadow: Parodied with the Princess. She is at a health resort because of her disease of "being too sharp-sighted, which made everyone very uneasy".
- Shellpeople in The Ship Who... start off as disabled children and are turned into Wetware CPUs who then become the "brains" of Sapient Ships, cities, or Space Stations. Especially in the earliest stories, this limits their ability to interact with the world and other people. Shellpeople are conditioned to not care much about what they can't do and to highly value what they can, but they can still be frustrated by being a Voice with an Internet Connection or even a Helpless Observer Protagonist when things are happening to their softshell (normal human) friends on a planet or ship that isn't them. The Ship Who Searched and The Ship Who Won give Tia and Carialle "servos", robots with arms that they can physically manipulate things with. For Tia this isn't enough; she was older than most when she became a shellperson and remembers what it's like to be a softperson, including the possibility of love and romance. She solves this by commissioning an extremely humanlike Remote Body. Other shellpeople consider this idea with distaste and resent when softpeople think they should want remotes of their own.
- Sword Art Online includes a condition called "FullDive Non-Conformity", where someone is unable to play thought-controlled Cyberspace games properly due to unusual brain structure. In most cases, this results in dulled sensory feedback or unusually high lag, but in the case of Eiji (from the movie Ordinal Scale), it had the unusual effect of misinterpreting any fear in his mind as a command, causing his avatar to become paralysed in even mildly tense situations. This is used to explain how someone with as much real-life fighting skill as Eiji never made a name for himself in the SAO death game. The Animated Adaptation of the books' War of the Underworld arc includes a Filler episode where Eiji returns and somehow manages to overcome his brain structure through Heroic Willpower in a (failed) stand against The Dragon of the arc. Notably, FDNC is portrayed as the low end of a scale rather than an either-or condition — characters like Kirito and Yuuki are noted to be exceptional fighters because of their unusually high compatibility with the technology, and in the Distant Sequel Accel World the underground game "Brain Burst" requires a well above-normal FullDive conformity rating to even install.
- A Tale of...: Maleficent is a fairy who was born with no wings. This, along with her unusual appearance, causes other fairies to wonder if she's even a fairy at all.
- Tatu and Patu: Tatu has a condition only known in Oddsville that causes his eyeballs to sweat, and has to wear glasses with ventilation to prevent it.
- Travelers (BlueCoffeeJava): It turns out that a human mind that's greatly exceeded its normal lifespan through Body Surf eventually dies of its own form of old age, manifesting as the inability to perceive the passage of time ("temporal aphasia"), which appears from the outside as increasingly long periods of catatonia. 0115's wife originally died of it, and he knew he would succumb to it within a few years; unfortunately, the stress of the Director resetting his mind causes it to show up ahead of schedule.
- Vorkosigan Saga: Vorzohn's Dystrophy, a hereditary degenerative disorder on the planet Barrayar (which presumably developed on that planet in the centuries since it was settled), plays a significant role in Komarr. Barrayar is a world where "mutants" of any kind are hated and feared. The character Tien Vorsoisson's failures in dealing with his own condition (and that of his son, Nikki) wind up driving events that change the life of the series protagonist, Miles Vorkosigan, in a very important way, since Miles later winds up marrying Tien's widow Ekatarin and becoming stepfather to Nikki Vorsoisson, after Tien dies (albeit not directly of Vorzohn's Dystrophy, but Tien's desperation to treat his condition in total secrecy drives his actions which lead to his death).
- Wear Your Soul Round Your Neck: Thyssa has exposed nerve cables, which cause her chronic pain, and tumour limbs, which make movement difficult. These issues are part of what motivates her to become human.
- Wings of Fire:
- Peril is a SkyWing born with a condition called "firescales". This means that she was born with too much fire in her body. Touching her causes burning and she can kill others if they hold her for too long. She needs to eat coal every day to survive. That last one is actually a lie that her queen told her in order to make her more subservient to her.
- Peril's twin brother was born with the opposite problem. He had too little fire in his body. He was abandoned not long after he hatched.
- Starflight doesn't have the normal NightWing powers like being able to read other's minds. This is due to him being hatched in a cave instead of in the light of the moons, and it turns out this applies to most NightWings in the present..
- Subverted with Sunny. Everyone thought she was disabled or deformed — her eyes and scales are the wrong colour, she's too small, she doesn't have a stinger tail, and she just looks off — but she isn't. She's just a hybrid. Her father was a NightWing.
- Tau the SilkWing struggles to fly because one of her back wings is too small.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: In "The Quality of Mercy", Laura Rosen is revealed to be dying from Lake's Syndrome. The only distinguishing characteristic is that it induces almost unbearable pain, described by Rosen as akin to having arthritis, blurry vision, the intestines seeming like they are on fire, and veins burning with pain. When Mueller gets a dose of it via the alien device, he is instantly incapacitated by the sheer intensity of it.
- Black Books: Played for Laughs in one episode when Manny reveals to Bernard that he suffers from a condition called "Dave's Syndrome", which will cause bad things to happen if the temperature hits 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Bernard treats this as a joke and decides to deliberately make Manny overheat in order to see what will happen, but forgets about the whole thing by the end of the episode. The last shot is a trail of destruction and beaten-up bystanders leading to Manny jumping up and down on the roof of a car, waving a torch, naked except for a hot water bottle strapped to his groin and EAT ME painted on his torso, as a pair of pedestrians look at him sadly and one says to the other, "Poor bloke — Dave's Syndrome."
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: Siblings Amanda and Todd Brotzman suffer from Pararibulities, a hereditary condition that causes vivid hallucinations with real physical pain.
- Farscape: Sebaceans are extremely sensitive to heat. If they become too hot, they can even enter a state of delirium referred to as the “living death.” The Big Bad, Scorpius, has an even more extreme case of this, thanks to being a Sebacean/Scarran hybrid. He has the usual sebacean heat sensitivity while also having parts of his body constantly producing heat. As a result, he has to wear a special cooling suit with a cooling rod inserted directly into his brain in order to survive.
- Firefly: In "The Train Job", "Bowden's Malady" is a degenerative disease caused by an interaction between a colonized planet's terraformed atmosphere and the ore processors in a mining settlement. It isn't actually curable, but can be treated and controlled with the right medicine — which would be the medicine the crew of Serenity just hijacked, which was being shipped in to treat the settlers.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Melora", the eponymous character is from a planet with very low gravity. Most Elaysians never leave their homeworld for this reason. Melora adapting to "standard" gravity requires a special chair, which is treated as if it were a disability. She starts treatment that would make it possible for her to function completely normally in standard gravity but decides not to go through with it as it means she'd never be able to return to her homeworld.
Tabletop Games
- Ars Magica: In the Order of Hermes Magical Society, House Verditius stands out as preeminent Magitek engineers who are, inexplicably, unable to use magic without their Magitek foci. Any mage who wishes to join the House must submit to a ritual that inflicts the Founder's disability on them.
- BattleTech:
- Transit Disorientation Syndrome, a.k.a. jump sickness, is a condition experienced by some people as a result of undergoing a hyperspace jump. The symptoms manifest as headaches, nausea, diarrhea, and/or irritability and typically last for a few hours before fading. Undergoing a second jump while still suffering from it can lead to much stronger symptoms that can last for days or more rarely weeks. There's no cure for the condition, only treatments for the symptoms.
- There is a syndrome which goes under multiple names, commonly "neural feedback syndrome", where a pilot suffers brain or inner ear injuries from damage taken while piloting a Battlemech which prevents them from using a neurohelmet and therefore forcing them to retire from being Mechwarriors.
- A similar feedback problem affects Enhanced Imaging👁 Image
, sometimes called "EI Degeneration", because the system interfaces with a warrior's entire nervous system. Symptoms includes mental instability (such as extended fugue states, psychosis, and other psychological problems) and neurological degeneration (similar to diseases such as Parkinson's).
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Dragon #313 has an article on dragon psychoses, how the creatures' magical nature can interact with the draconic brain to create mental illnesses with supernatural effects. Some dragons become so paranoid about hiding themselves from enemies and treasure-seekers that they become "nameless," obsessed with removing every record of their existence from the world, until they forget their original identities. "Ravening" dragons succumbed to the thrill of burning off the energy of a big meal in combat, and are now trapped in a cycle of feeding and fighting. Some dragons spend so much time pondering puzzles that they become "riddled," accumulating a complex of unsolved mysteries in their minds. "Spellhoarding" dragons are so obsessed with hoarding arcane knowledge that their bodies have become something like living spellbooks, with scales covered in arcane sigils. And "wandering" dragons woke from a long rest only to find that they can no longer sleep, and now roam the world in a waking dream, searching for the objective of a quest from their subconscious. These conditions modify the dragon's abilities, so that "nameless" dragons are under a permanent nondetection effect, while "ravening" dragons can use their Breath Weapon much more often than usual, but all of the conditions can be cured, for example by placing a "spellhoarding" dragon in an Anti-Magic field or uncovering/creating a new identity for a "nameless" dragon, with the note that getting the afflicted dragon to cooperate with these efforts can be as dangerous as simply putting it down.
- The Flaw system from 3rd Edition's Unearthed Arcana and later expanded by Dragon issues. Most flaws would have equivalent in the real world, but some are unique to a fantasy setting: A few flaws will remove specific racial traits (Loss of Heritage), such as a gnome's spell-like abilities (Arcane Conundrum). Some will concern only creatures with Darkvision, either reducing it to low-light vision (Beady Eyes) or being extra affected by bright lights (Light Sensitivity). Another can make an individual allergic to metals (Metal Intolerance), probably hinting at some fey ancestry. Many flaws are restricted to spellcasters, either limiting their ability to use magic (Arcane Fatigue; Arcane Parasites; Arcane Performer; Magical Overload; Ponderous Spellcaster; Restricted Sorcery...), having them randomly emits weird effects such as bursts of bright colored light (Phantom Sparks) or strange noises (Haunted), or making one very vulnerable when casting spells (Methodological Magical Method).
- Pathfinder: Gnomes originate from fae spirits of the First World and never completely acclimated to the mundane world. If they don't maintain a certain level of whimsy and excitement in their lives, they begin to suffer "the Bleaching", a fatal degenerative condition where their bodies fade to stark white as their minds fall apart. A rare few survive the experience and are rewarded with Dissonant Serenity and agelessness.
- Warhammer: Teclis is the greatest mage the Elves have ever produced and one of the greatest mages in world history. He is also a ridiculously Squishy Wizard and very physically frail, requiring daily healing potions to be more than bedridden, and having a limp incurable by magic. By contrast, his brother Tyrion is a peerless swordmaster.
Video Games
- Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere: The Ace Pilot Rena Hirose suffers from the "Silverstone disease", meaning that her skin lacks any protection from UV sunlight radiation whatsoever. As a result, the only way she has to be outside during daytime is inside the fully-enclosed cockpit of her plane.
- Adventure: The Inside Job: Thalia James, the protagonist of Adventure: Welcome to the Genre, gets a rare disease that causes her to temporarily switch identities with the nearest living organism with a central nervous system. However, she manages to gain control of it, making it a Disability Superpower.
- Several party members in Baldur's Gate III have the first or second types. Shadowheart's wound from Shar is essentially magically-induced chronic pain; the Netherese orb inside Gale needs periodic infusions of magical energy or he experiences rapidly deteriorating health followed by explosion; and Karlach, as a result of having her heart replaced with a piece of infernal machinery during her time enslaved in Avernus, becomes meltingly hot to the touch, particularly when her emotions are high. The former two can lose their conditions in several endings, but Karlach unfortunately will die unless she returns to Avernus (or gains an entirely new body by performing a Heroic Sacrifice to become a mind-flayer) - although fortunately if a player accompanies her back to the Hells, they eventually find hints of a forge that could be used to upgrade her heart.
- BloodNet: Hopkins-Brie Ontology Syndrome is a mental illness caused by overexposure to virtual reality, in which the sufferer becomes increasingly unable to distinguish the real world and the virtual world. Main character Ransom Stark contracted the illness while working for a MegaCorp, and was given a special cybernetic implant to filter his perceptions; this implant becomes the reason he doesn't immediately turn into a vampire when one attacks him.
- CrossCode: Due to being a prototype AI, Lea has what can essentially be described as a sci fi version of aphasia. She is able to understand words just fine, but she is unable to produce them on her own, whether through speech, writing, or even sign language. This originally left her completely mute, but Sergey is able to hardcode a small selection of useful words note “Hi”, “Lea”, “bye”, “how”, “why”, “wait”, “sorry”, “meet”, and “thanks” by the end of the main game, with “who”, “what”, and “where” added in the DLC into her speech module, which she supplements with very expressive body language and physical gestures. Later, at the end of the DLC, she is given a virtual AAC device, dubbed “the Lea-Board”, allowing her to use a full range of words.
- Cyberpunk 2077: In the new ending included in the Phantom Liberty DLC, V's life is saved by a medical procedure provided by NUSA doctors to completely remove the Relic, and the Johnny Silverhand engram, from their brain. However, on top of a two-year coma, the procedure has left them completely incapable of using any cyberware, permanently ending their career as an urban mercenary.
- Destiny 2: Asher Mir had one of his arms and his Ghost converted into Vex technology after encountering the Vex Axis Mind Brakion in the Pyramidion on Io. Being a Guardian the process hasn't been as devastating as it could be, but his Vex arm seems to be fairly useless and is constantly curled against his torso, his Ghost is nowhere to be seen and is implied to have been absorbed into the greater Vex consensus, and he's even started to bleed Vex radiolaran fluid. The loss of his Ghost also keeps him under the threat of a permanent end should he be killed, and he's well aware that his condition is killing him.
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Hugh Darrow, the inventor of cybernetics, has a rare condition that causes his body to altogether reject any cybernetics (most people's bodies reject them to some degree, but this can be controlled with medication). This means that he must walk with a cane. His bitterness over this is why he takes part in the Evil Plan to turn the public against cybernetics.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Each game in the series has fictional diseases that can debilitate the player and others, including (but not limited to) Rockjoint, an inflammation of the joints that reduces melee weapon damage; Brain Rot, which hampers Magicka; and Bone Break Fever, which hampers Stamina.
- Throughout the series, vampirism is described as a disease. Depending on the game, it goes by a different pseudo-medical term, including "Porphyric Hemophilia" in Morrowind and Oblivion, "Sanguinare Vampiris" in Skyrim, and "Noxiphilic Sanguivoria" in Online. In each case, the disease progresses to full-blown vampirism if left untreated for a few days, and has side effects that can hamper the afflicted, from increased fatigue to an aversion to sunlight.
- Morrowind and Oblivion have "Stunted Magicka", a condition that prevents people from regenerating their Magicka reserves naturally. This instead forces them to absorb it from outside sources. It can be congenital, notably for those born under the Atronach star sign, but can also be inflicted by a magical disease.
- Morrowind has the Corprus Disease, a Mystical Plague concocted by the evil Physical God Dagoth Ur channeling power from the heart of a dead god. Physical symptoms include bulbous tumor-like growths and severe skin lesions. Mental symptoms include initially mild dementia and schizophrenia-like effects which become more severe over time, eventually leaving the sufferer with an aggressive, animalistic level of intelligence. For Dagoth Ur's chosen followers, the course of the disease can be magically directed to turn them into powerful Cthulhumanoid sorcerers utterly devoted to their master.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- Most people in the setting are able to manipulate the aether in their own bodies to perform feats of magic, provided they have sufficient training. However, there are some who are born with such low reserves of aether that it's impossible for them to cast even the simplest spells. There are others who have, either from birth or from a magical accident, lost the ability to manipulate aether altogether, rendering them incapable of utilizing any technology requiring the application of aether, such as aetherytes.
- Much like how people can get motion sick in real life, some people suffer from acute aether sickness, meaning that trying to transport themselves with an aetheryte will lead to nausea, vomiting, and dizziness. Professor T'laqua Tia in Sharlayan suffers from this, requiring the aid of an adept angler to help him complete his thesis on time because he can't attune to an aetheryte without collapsing. This can also be briefly induced unto others through the use of experimental aetherytes. After taking one such aetheryte to Thavnair, the Warrior, Thancred, and Urianger all fight to keep their lunch down.
- On the Ninth Shard, survivors of the Storm Surge that ravaged their world with lightning magic run the risk of attracting levin sickness. The overexposure of such aether causes those affected by suffer from varying degrees and frequency of paralysis. The real Queen Sphene was affected by this so badly that Calyx convinced people that she was dead, allowing him to push the Endless project. She would end up waking up four hundred years later and healed thanks to modifying the cure for tempering to work on this.
- Seteth and Flayn from Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes qualify for the "fantastic condition" category. They're Children of the Goddess, people who can normally transform into draconic forms. Neither of them have their dragon forms shown on-screen though, unlike Rhea (who is shown transforming) or Indech and Macuil (who are only ever seen in their dragon forms). Seteth specifically mentions having "lost" his ability to transform, while Flayn suffered heavy injuries that caused her to sleep for several hundred years to heal. Presumably, they both suffered some kind of physical damage that keeps them from transforming. While they have few difficulties with things most normal people do, they're both permanently locked out of an ability that most of their species has.
- Honkai: Star Rail features Firefly, a young woman suffering from a condition called "Entropy Loss Syndrome" that causes time to move at an ever-slower pace for her as her very being begins to fade from existence. This is due to the modifications made to her to make her a fighter for the Glamoth Iron Cavalry against the Swarm, greatly increasing her combat potential at the cost of shortening her lifespan, and she requires the use of her armor, known to the public as the Stellaron Hunter "Sam", as a form of life support.
- Kid Icarus: Pit has the classic "flying being that cannot fly" disability for some unexplained reason. It's quite a sore spot for him. In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Palutena can grant Pit the Power of Flight to guide him places as if he were flying, but not for more than five minutes at a time, or else Pit's wings will come aflame. By contrast, his Evil Knockoff Dark Pit gained limitless flight under his own power by slaying Pandora and plundering her powers until he traveled to the Rewind Spring, where Pandora revived herself from said powers.
- Lonely Wolf Treat: Animal folk are able to shift between humanoid form and their true animal form, and those who remain permanently in their animal form are called naturalists. The in-universe book where this concept is explained clarifies that not all naturalists are so by choice, and that certain magic spells can permanently prevent animals from shifting into humanoid form. It is unknown whether Senbei's mother, the only naturalist to appear in the series, is a voluntary or involuntary naturalist.
- Mass Effect: "Ardat-Yakshi" (meaning "Demon of the Night Wind") is the name given to Asari who suffer a particular genetic mutation that messes with their sexual mind-meld so that doing the deed always kills their partner. This has the side effect of both boosting their biotic powers and getting them high, quickly addicting the Ardat-Yakshi to the act. Asari consider the existence of Ardat-Yakshi an embarrassing cultural secret, and one of the reason the Asari have Fantastic Racism against "purebloods" (Asari with two Asari parents) is because only an Asari/Asari pairing can lead to an Ardat-Yakshi. Once Ardat-Yakshi reach sexual maturity, they're given a choice between celibacy and isolation in a convent for their entire lives, or execution — a harsh choice, but one the Asari consider Necessarily Evil since killer Ardat-Yakshi are just that dangerous; they'll never stop killing because of their addiction, and their enhanced biotic powers make stopping them hellishly difficult. All of your potential teammate Samara's daughters are Ardat-Yakshi; two of them live cloistered, peaceful lives, while the eldest, Morinth, escaped and became a Serial Killer whom Samara has sworn to hunt down.
- Overwatch:
- Tracer was displaced in time by an experimental aircraft she was test-piloting. She must wear (or at least be nearby) a device called a chronological accelerator to avoid simply fading out of existence. While this leaves her Cursed with Awesome (since it gives her the ability to teleport around or reverse time), it leaves her with a glaring weakness (as Doomfist demonstrated in his trailer when he damaged the accelerator and left Tracer to start uncontrollably shifting through time).
- Bastion has a robotic analogue to PTSD, in that anything that reminds it of the Omnic Crisis causes it to revert to its Killer Robot programming (notably in the "The Last Bastion" short, the machine-gun-like sound of a woodpecker causes it to panic and destroy a large number of trees with its minigun). Slightly different from PTSD in humans, in that it's caused by what remains of Bastion's original programming, rather than a trauma-induced trigger.
- Sigma is a former astrophysicist who during a Freak Lab Accident was exposed to the power of a black hole. It ended up giving him gravity-based superpowers, but just as much narrative emphasis is placed on the fact it messed up his mind: he phases in and out of a vegetative mental state (during which he's aware something's wrong but doesn't know what), and even when he's lucid and composes himself fairly well, he has trouble keeping his thoughts coherent, hallucinates voices and a vague "melody", and in general appears to be only vaguely aware of his surroundings. Blizzard has deliberately refrained from identifying his state as a specific real-world condition, highlighting the supernatural aspect of his situation.
- In RuneScape, the volcano-dwelling TzHaar sometimes hatch stunted "Ga'al" when their eggs become too cool: lacking TzHaar Genetic Memories, they have no caste and cannot communicate, so the TzHaar send them to die in honorable combat to speed them to their next reincarnation. One quest reveals, to some TzHaar's horror, that the Ga'al are actually very precocious learners if anyone bothers to teach them.
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Maria Robotnik was dying from Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (NIDS), though her actual death was caused by being shot. NIDS weakens both the nervous and immune systems, and has similar side effects to AIDS, and its portrayal has evolved over the course of the series.
- In Japanese materials, NIDS is described as a "primary immunodeficiency" disorder and a "hereditary immune deficiency syndrome", which are both real diagnoses, but NIDS itself is fictional.
- Sonic × Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings and The Jet Black Hedgehog: Shadow the Hedgehog reveal that a low-gravity environment, such as being onboard the Space Colony ARK, can put this disease into "remission", slowing its progression. Even in this environment, if Maria overexerts her body with too much physical activity, she can end up fainting, and at the very worst be bedridden.
- In Shadow Generations, Maria mentions that even on the ARK, she has days where she is unable to see or even think clearly, and some family photos in Prof. Gerald's Journal show her in a wheelchair, strapped to an IV, and with a gaunt face with sunken cheekbones. Thanks to the ARK's environment putting her condition in remission, her presence becomes so commonplace that the scientists aboard believe she is faking her illness, as her symptoms aren't obvious to them, directly drawing comparisons to real-life invisible illnesses and disabilities.
- to a T is about a young teen born with the inability to bend their shoulders and elbows, their arms permanently raised so that their default standing position is a T-pose. The game is about how they navigate their life with such a unique disability, with the support of their friends and family, as well as their uncannily savvy dog. One of the upsides is they discover a talent for twirling so fast that they can take off like a helicopter.
- We Happy Few: Everyone is required to take Joy, a Fantastic Drug that elevates mood and suppresses memories of the Very Bad Thing that traumatized the entire city. Wastrels are immune to Joy's positive effects, and taking the drug only makes their mental issues worse.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed: Nikol is unable to summon a Blade, which is a standard ability in this world. It's mentioned off-hand that this is a problem some people have. This also explains why, in the base game, a young Noah thought he could get away with pretending not to be able to summon his Blade. Nikol gets around the problem with a self-built mecha backpack, while Noah was simply Afraid of Their Own Strength.
- Yandere Simulator: While Word of Saint Paul from her voice actress is that she's portrayed to have Obsessive Love Disorder, Word of God from the developer YandereDev is that whatever form of insanity the Villain Protagonist Ayano Aishi and the rest of her matrilineal bloodline could be diagnosed with is a fictional one.
Visual Novels
- Higurashi: When They Cry: It's heavily implied that Horned Humanoid Hanyuu is (or at least was) a normal human with a genetic defect. It wasn't known at the time and thus she was ostracized and thought of as a demon for her horns.
Webcomics
- Always Human: Austen has "Egan's Syndrome", an autoimmune condition that leaves her unable to use the Bio-Augmentation mods that are ubiquitous in the setting. Being ineligible for mods like memory boosters and physical augments forces her to put a lot of extra work into her studies and her health, and being thought of as Inspirationally Disadvantaged is a major pet peeve for her.
- My Impossible Soulmate is a stand-alone prequel to Rain (2010) which largely takes place in the Swords and Sorcery fantasy world of Rain Flaherty's favorite manga, Black-Wings: Kaminari. Back in Rain, we were introduced to the Skyfolk, demi-humans who can fly and live on the floating island of Toria. My Impossible Soulmate expands on that by introducing both Eiji and Nagisa, two teenage Skyfolk who are very close friends to the point that they call each other Cousin even though they aren't related by blood. Nagisa, in particular, can't fly due to her wings having been badly broken when she was a baby. She's actually fine with her disability leaving her stuck to the ground, however, because the same incident that broke her wings also gave her a crippling fear of heights. It appears Nagisa is not subjected to Fantastic Ableism over this, because the other characters all seem to understand and accept her condition. That being said, the main character, Chiaki, unfortunately made some Innocently Insensitive comments👁 Image
about it when they first met. - NEXT!!! Sound of the Future: Sometimes Vocaloid voice boxes have loose components, which can make it difficult for them to stay on pitch (which is a big deal for beings in which singing is a major selling point). The protagonist, Shine, has this problem, which is why she believes she can't be an idol.
- Romantically Apocalyptic: Snippy is one of the 1% of people who the neural network that controls sleep can't connect to. Instead of browsing the web during his sleep, he instead gets horrifying nightmares and is chronically sleep-deprived, as he can't afford to purchase more sleep with the money from his dead-end job.
- SideQuested: Weavers have a scar on their etheric body - they can gather magic from others but not use it. It seems likely that this is inflicted on them when the Loom Masters "attune" them to be able to perceive conflict magic.
- Slightly Damned:
- Buwaro's birth defect, which makes him psychologically and physiologically different from normal demons. He's naturally always in a Berzerk State. His necklace is what keeps him in check.
- Buwaro's adoptive sister Sakido is a wind demon whose wings were crippled in an angel attack that also left her an orphan, she was completely flightless until Darius gave her his Sun Pendant which repaired her wings and even made them larger.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: Outside of safe settlements, the comic's world is ridden with Plague Zombie monsters. The Plague can be transmitted from breathing too close to one of said monsters, or through even the smallest skin-breaking wound. This has resulted in people who are The Immune having generally more liberty of movement between settlements and being the only ones occupying the jobs that put one at risk of getting anywhere close to said Plague Zombie monsters. In turn, lack of immunity to the The Plague sometimes gets treated like a disability in the context of keeping the settlements safe from disease or the few occasions where non-immune people spend an extended period of time outside of them, the latter situation applying to two members of the main Ensemble Cast:
- The Dagrenning program in Iceland exists to let non-immune parents have children that are The Immune. The two perks put forward are the child not risking getting sick if another outbreak of The Plague happens and having more jobs to choose from.
- In Tuuri's flashback to her childhood settlement that wouldn't let the non-immune come and go freely, her combination of wanderlust and lack of immunity plays out like a Dream-Crushing Handicap.
- Tuuri and Reynir need to wear breathing masks when they venture too far from the tank, while the immune members of the crew can walk around without them.
- Tuuri and Reynir can't be left alone without an immune person for protection and taking that role has been outright referred to as "baby-sitting" on two separate occasions.
- Tales of the Questor: Almost all Racconans can use magic (well, Luxcraft) to some extent. Being completely unable to manipulate Lux is considered a disability, with those afflicted wearing special symbols to alert those around them to their disability, much the same way a blind person might carry a white cane.
- Unsounded: Alderode's Dammakhert warps the Plat, Jet and Copper caste's connection to the khert, greatly reducing what magic Jets and Coppers can cast and in some cases making it impossible for Coppers to be rited at all in a setting where in general all humans can become wrights so long as they are wrighted. This is treated as a disablility in the setting, and is one of many reasons those from other countries view the Dammakhert as a horrific abberation.
Web Originals
- 17776: As the oldest of the space probes that have gained sentience, Nine is limited by their battery, and can only awaken for a few weeks before needing to recharge.
- Dream SMP: Philza is a Winged Humanoid whose wings got destroyed by shrapnel after he used them as a shield to protect himself and Wilbur from the explosion of L'Manburg. He still has them, but they're so damaged that he'll never be able to fly with them again.
- First Stage Production: Zander Netherbrand lost his right wing by using it to shield a past lover from being slain by paladins.
- Inanimate Insanity: Tissues suffers from a debilitating illness known as the "Condishawn". It leaves him with horrible symptoms and he is constantly weak and tired. Unfortunately, he barely has any friends because of it.
- Stampy's Lovely World: Unlike the rest of Santa's reindeer, Polly cannot fly. One of her tweets mentions her missing out on the other reindeer's flying games because of this.
- Whateley Universe: Roulette gets occasional burnouts, which is where the body cooks itself due to overuse of its mutant powers every once in a while, and each one changes her powers.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: Baby-Doll suffers from "systemic hypoplasia"note Real medical terminology for a non-existent condition; hypoplasia is when someone is born with an organ that isn't properly developed, while "systemic" denotes that the condition affects multiple organs or the whole body., meaning that she can never grow up and resembles a little girl despite being well into adulthood. While she initially made a successful career as a "child" actress, she ended up getting shafted by her condition after her original show was cancelled because nobody would bother seeing beyond her childlike appearance.
- Futurama:
- In "A Clone of My Own", Fry gets away with pretending to be Professor Farnsworth with Cubert in disguise as his hump by claiming he has "Talking Hump Syndrome", which the guards empathize with as a known disability ("Ah, THS.").
- Due to a time paradox in which Fry is his own grandfather, he lacks a trait in the mind known as the "delta brainwave", with his brain being "a random assortment of other brainwaves". While this makes him the only sentient life form impervious to brainwashing and mind-reading, it is also implied to be the root of his mental deficiencies.
Nibbler: The fate of your world — perhaps all worlds — rests in his special mind.
Leela: Now, when you say "special"... - "Leela and the Genestalk" has Leela undergo a mutant-specific genetic disorder known as "squidification", causing her body to mutate into a mass of tentacles. She is later cured with genetic engineering.
- King of the Hill: The protagonist, Hank Hill, actually suffers from two of these.
- The most frequently referenced is him having a "narrow urethra", which renders him nearly infertile and was apparently a reason for the Army to reject him, fearing he wouldn't be able to adequately relieve himself in times of stress. In reality, no such condition exists, and the width of the male urethra has no connection to fertility.
- Another episode reveals he suffers from a condition called "Diminished Gluteal Syndrome (DGS)", which basically means he "has no ass", forcing him to sit on a prosthetic buttocks. The condition is fictional, but the symptoms are in line with real conditions, such as Deep Gluteal Syndrome, Piriforis Syndrome, and Dead Butt Syndrome. The prosthesis is entirely fictional though.
- In Milo Murphy's Law, the title character and all the men in his family suffer from a Hereditary Curse that makes them Born Unlucky and The Jinx. This is presented as if it were a sort of weird medical condition, with the whole family having Crazy-Prepared habits to deal with it.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Downplayed with Scootaloo. She's a pegasus filly who can't fly, even though her classmates can. For most of the series it was ambiguous whether Scootaloo is permanently disabled or just a late bloomer,note At one point, Lauren Faust herself stated that Scootaloo "hadn't figured it out yet". although in all episodes addressing the issue, it's been clear that she cannot at present fly and that this is fairly abnormal for a pegasus her age. "Growing Up is Hard to Do" shows her adult body with child-size wings, and a few days later one of the staff stated that this was in fact meant to indicate an actual disability. But even that included the line "fans are welcome to interpret things how they like" (given that Bulk Biceps can fly despite having even smaller wings, Scootaloo's situation is still technically open to interpretation).
- The Owl House:
- Eda's curse where she turns into a massive owl beast is treated as if it were a chronic illness in-universe. She takes potions to suppress the transformation, things like stress and sleep deprivation can make it worse, and it affects her body in other ways as well, such as corrupting her magic and allowing her to detach her limbs at will. Eda eventually comes to accept that her curse is never going to go away, and that learning to live with it is her best course of action.
- Unlike most other witches, Hunter has no innate magic, and can only cast spells using his artificial magic staff or his Palisman. It's later revealed that he's actually a magically-created clone called a Grimwalker, although it's unknown if his lack of magic is because he was cloned from a human or if all Grimwalkers lack it regardless of what they were made from.
- The Simpsons: In "Blood Feud", Mr. Burns falls ill with a medical condition called "hypohemia", which seems to be a fictional counterpart to hypovolemia (a lack of total bodily fluid) and/or anemia (a lack of red blood cells). Given that in subsequent episodes he's shown to require semi-regular blood transfusions, it's hinted to be closer to the latter.
- Steven Universe: Gems are artificially created for specific purposes in their Hive Caste System. At times, however, the circumstances of their "birth" leave them with various defects or deformities, giving them different body types and even differences in their powers, abilities, and mindsets. These types of gems are referred to as "Off-Color". Due to the gems' strict caste system, these are usually discarded, persecuted, and even exterminated.
- Amethysts are quartz gems designed to be tall, buff intimidating soldiers. Amethyst from the Crystal Gems, however, did not finish forming until long after the others (she was "overcooked", in Jasper's words), coming out just barely half the height of what an amethyst should be. Additionally, while a gem will typically be Born as an Adult both physically and mentally (even having knowledge of their Homeworld and specific purpose), Amethyst was a Blank Slate who had to learn things like an infant would.
- Because Earth's beta Kindergarten was made under lax conditions in a hurry due to an ongoing war, most of the quartzes made there likewise deviate from their intended build. Carnelian has a figure similar to Amethyst, while Skinny Jasper has the lanky build of a Pearl.
- Peridot is an Era 2 peridot created under an environment where resources in creating gems on Homeworld have dwindled. This is why Peridot lacks many of the powers associated with gems (shapeshifting, super strength, etc.) and may account for her short stature. To compensate, era 2 peridots are equipped with technological limb enhancers. Although it turns out that Peridot, at least, also has ferrokinetic powers.
- Sapphires are short aristocratic gems with the power to see ahead into the future (or at least a probable future). Padparadscha is an off-color sapphire who possesses retrocognition, blurting out events that have already happened. She lives on the run with the other Off-Colors in the long-abandoned Homeworld kindergarten.
- The Rutile twins' gemstone started developing in two different directions, giving them a torso that springs into two prongs, each with a head on it. Unlike human Conjoined Twins, this seems to make them literally Single-Minded Twins.
- In the season one finale of Teen Titans (2003), Starfire is shown to have an allergy to metallic chromium, which is convenient for the plot since the Time Stands Still bomb device Slade is constructing uses a good deal of it, so they can track down its location by Starfire sneezing... as long as the other Titans don't stand too close to her when she sneezes and makes little explosions.