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"Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free."
In the world of fiction, physical impairment = scientific credibility. The world is actually an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, and when this Munchkin rolled up their character, they were Min-Maxing. Anyone in a wheelchair will possess super intelligence to compensate for his disability. This allows the character to remain a vital part of the cast without being expected to do anything physical. They are the exact opposite of Dumb Muscle, which exist on the same principle.

A form of Disability Superpower. See also Evil Cripple for when a Genius Cripple turns out to be evil.

Examples will often be a Squishy Wizard, Blind Musician, Blind Seer, or Deaf Composer. See also Ironically Disabled Artist, when physical impairment doesn't stop creative skill (as opposed to brains). Also compare Handicapped Badass for the physical counterpart of this trope, and Genius Bruiser if both tropes overlap with each other. Sickly Neurotic Geek and Geek Physiques can be similar to downplayed versions of this trope.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Code Geass: Subverted with Nunnally vi Britannia. While not a genius on the level of her brother Lelouch, blind and wheelchair-using Nunnally joins Schneizel, successfully convinces him to hand over the key to the F.L.E.I.J.A. warheads, and comes up with a plan that's eerily similar to Lelouch's, focusing all the world's hatred on a single target (in this case, Damocles). However, this is actually all part of Schneizel's latest Xanatos Gambit, which he starts off by lying to Nunnally about Pendragon and his own motives, and later on intends to abandon Damocles with her on it after setting it to self-destruct in order to thwart Lelouch, and later on build another fortress and stockpile even more FLEIJAs, this time, with no one else to stop him or claim sovereignty over Britannia. So Nunnally basically becomes an Unwitting Pawn. Though she does wise up and then becomes a decent Empress after the Grand Finale.
  • Detective School Q: Morihiko Dan is a wheelchair-using old man who is also a detective so competent that he's one of the few (if not the only) detectives with an authorized firearms license, which is notoriously difficult to obtain in Japan. One of the biggest demonstrations of his deductive skills is when he's able to solve and break down a complicated murder plan in a short time just from reading his students' case report.
  • Durarara!!: Izaya becomes this. During his fight with Shizuo, he's horribly injured and left on the verge of death. In his spin-off, it's revealed that he survived but lost the ability to use his legs. Thus, he now uses a wheelchair, albeit a moderately tricked-out one. However, Izaya is still highly intelligent and a Manipulative Bastard, plus his knife skills haven't changed.
  • Mashiro from My-HiME uses a wheelchair throughout most of the series, but is otherwise very capable both as a school principal and spiritual leader to some of the HiME. It helps that in the anime version, she's supposedly way older than her 11 years of age.
  • YuYu Hakusho: Yomi, although blind, didn't let that stop him from being the first person in the series to manipulate Kurama.

    Comic Books 
  • Alpha Flight: Double amputee Roger Bochs, who invented a robot called Box and controls it with a mental interface helmet; a later version allows him to physically merge into it, making him a Genius Bruiser.
  • Batman:
    • Barbara Gordon started out as Batgirl, being presented as reasonably sharp. Then she was shot and paralyzed by the Joker, and suddenly remembered that she had an eidetic memory and world-class hacking, strategic, and organizational skills, and she became the information broker Oracle. The reboot version of Barbara, on the other hand, eventually regained the ability to walk after three years of being paralyzed, but flashbacks show that Barbara's smarts were there well before she was shot.
    • Harold Allnut was a mute hunchback who served for years as Batman's mechanic and was a genius with gadgets and technology.
    • In Red Robin the original Anarky becomes Tim's Voice with an Internet Connection while recovering from being poisoned and temporarily paralyzed.
    • One of the cruel animal experiments performed by the villain of the Ace the Bat-Hound story "Hounded" in Batman: Urban Legends was to remove a chicken's legs while teaching her to play chess, to see if the lack of motor functions meant her neural pathways could be rerouted. She gets around in a little wheelchair she controls by pecking at a computer, and her creator has no idea just how smart she's become.
  • Doom Patrol: Niles Caulder is a paraplegic (for reasons that have never been explained) who moves around in a hovering wheelchair. His genius shows in that he was able to devise means for which the Doom Patrol can control their powers while being as presentable as possible to the public (like putting Robotman's brain into a robot body or wrapping Negative Man in lead-lined bandages). Depending on the iteration, he may also be an Evil Cripple as he triggered the accidents that gave the Doom Patrol their powers in the first place.
    • His genius further shows in JLA: Year One where he builds devices to give the Leaguers (who have been crippled by an attack by the Doom Patrol's nemeses, the Brotherhood of Evil) temporary substitutes for their lost powers (such as an Arm Cannon for Green Lantern and an artificial voice box for Black Canary).
  • Green Lantern: The Silver Age version of villain Hector Hammond. Unusual for this trope, his handicap and intellect are not natural, but the result of exposure to a strange meteorite, which caused Hammond's brain to mutate, but also crippled his body and took away his ability to speak. He instead relies on telepathy to communicate.
  • The Movement: Discussed when one of the captured cops asks the wheelchair user Vengeance Moth if she's the one who set up the headquarters to be off the power grid with an internet connection, which she denies. This may also be a Mythology Gag to Gail Simone's earlier work on Birds of Prey, which features the wheelchair user super hacker Oracle, and a reference to the fact that people made comparisons when Vengeance Moth was first introduced.
    Vengeance Moth: I get this a lot. Because everyone in a wheelchair is automatically Stephen Hawking, right?
  • Zodon from PS238 is an underaged boy with super-genius powers. He is ambulatory only through his hover-chair and he's never seen outside of it.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Alistair Smythe, the inventor of many a Spider-Slayer, at least until he turns himself into a cyborg. Probably best remembered as the Kingpin's snarky, Super Wheelchair-driving aide-de-camp in Spider-Man: The Animated Series.
    • In his Rewritten origin story, Morbius was this before being "cured" by becoming a living vampire. He won a Nobel prize but couldn't attend the ceremony due to his frailty. He walked with a cane and lifting a full cup of tea would break the bones in his fingers.
  • Lionel Canter from The Surrogates is Stephen Hawking crossed with MacGyver. He's the original creator of the surrogates and even modified his own to use lightning in combat.
  • The Transformers (Marvel): Jossie Beller/Circuit Breaker. After being paralyzed in a Decepticon attack, she builds herself a suit of surprisingly clingy Powered Armor that allows her to fly and shoot lightning.
  • X-Men:
    • Professor Xavier is paraplegic and not just smart, but also the most powerful telepath in the world. His Marvel 1602 counterpart Carlos Javier has to be carried everywhere. Wheelchairs did exist in his time, but they were rare enough that he's probably never heard of such a thing.
    • There's a minor mutant called Whiz Kid, a boy genius with the ability to turn his wheelchair into any machine he can think of.

    Comic Strips 
  • Modesty Blaise: Professor Nicomede Katris, the Big Bad of "The Zombie", is a parplegic computer genius who believes that humanity would be better off under a one-world government run by a computer.

    Film — Animation 
  • The Breadwinner: Downplayed with Nuralla, Parvana's father. He lost a leg in the war, but before that, he was a teacher and as such is well-versed in history and literate in two languages. He, and later Parvana, uses this literacy to earn money as a scribe.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas: Dr. Finkelstein, who doubles as an Evil Cripple (or at least a Jerkish Cripple). He's a wheelchair user Mad Scientist who is the creator and father figure of the film's deuteragonist Sally.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Dr. Connors in The Amazing Spider-Man, whose right arm was amputated above the elbow, although he'd rather people didn't think of him as this trope: "I'm not a cripple, I'm a scientist, and I'm the world's foremost authority on herpetology."
  • Subverted in The Big Lebowski, when the title character spends most of the movie posing as a bad-tempered, handicapped disabled self-made millionaire ("I didn't blame anyone for the loss of my legs! Some Chinaman took them from me in Korea!"), and turns out to be a phony. That is to say, he's not a genius, as Walter learns the hard way; he genuinely is crippled.
  • The brilliant, wheelchair user Dr. Leonard Gillespie from the Dr. Kildare films. Also an example of Disabled Character, Disabled Actor, as the actor who played Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) used a wheelchair due to severe arthritis.
  • Spider from Elysium walks with a limp and has to carry around a walking stick. He is also a brilliant hacker.
  • Played with in The Fly (1986). When brilliant scientist Seth Brundle allows Veronica to see him again after a month's estrangement, his ongoing, accelerating mutation into a Half-Human Hybrid having progressed significantly in the interim, he is using two canes to slowly walk because he's hunched over and cannot maintain his balance otherwise. When she sees him again a few days later, however, he has not only adjusted to a Primal Stance but is downright jumpy and spry — due in part to discovering an ability to Wall Crawl.
  • Mad Max:
    • Master, the brains of the "Master Blaster" tag team in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, has dwarfism, in contrast with his huge but mentally impaired partner Blaster.
    • Corpus Colossus from Mad Max: Fury Road has osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease), which severely stunts his growth and limits his mobility, and he serves as a foil to his Dumb Muscle brother Rictus.
  • Pacific Rim has Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, who is able to use mathematics to predict that three kaiju of unprecedented power are going to come out of the portal and uses a cane to move around.
  • Dr. Ashford of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, creator of the T-Virus and confined to a wheelchair.
  • The Big Bad in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a Gadgeteer Genius who was paralyzed by a police bullet and uses an exoskeleton to move around.
  • Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: Juni chooses to have his disabled grandfather accompany him on his journey inside the video game Game Over, deducing that while he's been unable to walk for 30 years, his remaining strength has gone to his upper body and mind. Not long after arriving, his grandfather gets a Mega Legs power-up that more than fixes the "unable to walk" problem.
  • The Theory of Everything, which is about the above-pictured wheelchair-using astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his first wife.
  • Kuato in the original Total Recall (1990) is a genius deformed Siamese twin.
  • Samuel L. Jackson's character Elijah Price in the movie Unbreakable fits this rather well, in the villain sense. He manages to manipulate the entire cast of Glass into giving him exactly what he wants (bringing The Beast out of Kevin, having David fight him, recording the Ancient Conspiracy killing David, and exposing both their existence and the existence of superpowered people) while almost never leaving his wheelchair due to his condition leaving him with extremely brittle bones.
  • Wild Wild West: Dr. Arliss Loveless does not have congenital dwarfism like his TV counterpart (Miguelito Loveless). Dr Arliss is literally half a man, missing from about his hips downward, in a steampunk wheelchair. That sometimes sprouts legs. And not just two — sometimes four. He is also a Mad Scientist and a member of the Confederacy, even after the end of the Civil War.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • Charles Xavier's mutation gives him one of the most powerful minds in the world, and he is confined to a wheelchair after the events of X-Men: First Class.
    • Jason Stryker from X2: X-Men United is barely able to lift an eyebrow, but that's made up for by a very impressive mind — although his ability to think on his own has been almost lost due to a brain surgery.

    Literature 
  • Beldin in The Belgariad is a disfigured hunchback. He also has the sharpest mind in the whole series, and Belgarath readily acknowledges that Beldin is much more clever than him.
  • Dan Brown's novels Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code both have characters with disabilities who are also highly respected professors. The guy in the wheelchair is probably a reference to Stephen Hawking.
  • Lord Vetinari from the Discworld series is uncannily clever at manipulating people and creating plans that work to his advantage whatever happens. Fairly early in the series, he gets shot in the leg with a prototype gun and uses a cane to walk for the rest of the series, and after that point, he seems to get even more scary-smart than he was before.
  • Sand dan Glokta of The First Law. Crippled and disfigured, the Inquisitor is easily the most intelligent of the three main protagonists, and consistently demonstrates a higher level of cunning and insight than almost any other character.
  • Garrett's partner in the Garrett, P.I. novels might qualify, in that he's a physically-immobile genius who could out-think most people in his sleep. Unusual in that he's not just paralyzed, but dead and haunting his own corpse.
  • In the Halo prequel novel Halo: The Fall of Reach, John (the Master Chief) notes that the SPARTAN-II candidates who don't make it through the dangerous physical augmentation processes fully intact (some die, others are blinded, and a few are wheelchair users) will fulfill such a role in the UNSC as strategists and the like, as the candidates for the program were selected for their intelligence and instructed in history, science, math, and tactics in order to be both physically perfect soldiers and brilliant field strategists.
  • Harry Potter: Over the course of his career as an Auror, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody has lost a leg, an eye, note  and part of his nose, and acquired a series of nasty scars. He's still an extremely skilled wizard and strategist, albeit something of a Bunny-Ears Lawyer due to being Properly Paranoid all the time. He's also an incredible Dark Wizard hunter, and it's said that half the cells in Azkaban are filled because of him.
  • Honor Harrington:
    • While not a scientific genius, Lady Emily Alexander, senior wife and political advisor of Lord Hamish Alexander, 13th Earl of White Haven and First Lord of the Admiralty, certainly qualifies. Crippled by an aircar accident and using an advanced life support chair (and flying to boot) for the rest of her life, she's easily the most shrewd and cunning single politician in the whole Kingdom of Manticore. It might be argued, though, that it was the injury that forced her to switch from acting to writing, and that it's her extremely long and successful career as a playwright and producer that gave her the scheming skills and understanding of the human character prerequisite for a good politician.
    • Less obvious is Honor's own treecat partner Nimitz. Due to an injury sustained in In Enemy Hands, Nimitz is rendered telepathically mute. He can hear other treecats telepathically, and his empathic sense is fine, but he can't communicate beyond that. However, with a bit of help, he's instrumental in adapting human sign language for 'cat use.
  • Hile Troy from The Illearth War is a congenitally blind genius at military strategy who gains his sight after being transported to The Land. It's Troy's gaining of sight, which he's never had, which leads him to believe that The Land is real (in contrast to Covenant, "The Unbeliever").
  • The Inheritance Cycle has the High Priest (Priestess?) of Helgrind. They possess incredible magical skills and Psychic Powers, and very nearly out-magick four skilled magicians in a mental battle. They're also missing all four limbs and part of their tongue. They also qualify as an Evil Cripple, because let's face it, leading a Religion of Evil that practices ritual mutilation note  and Human Sacrifice kind of makes you a dick.
  • In/Spectre: Downplayed with protagonist Iwanaga Kotoko, a genius young woman who was chosen by the youkai of Japan to become their "Goddess of Wisdom" (a Token Human advisor and mediator figure); one of the requirements for the post was for her to assume the image of a one-eyed one-legged deity (i.e. her right eye and left leg were amputated). She usually hides her disability with realistic prosthetics, and is athletic enough that she can still walk and run without much difficulty (while she does carry a cane, she says it's only at her parents' insistence).
  • Dr. Heilan Rotham from the Star Wars Expanded Universe's Legacy of the Force books. In Betrayal, she uses a repulsorlift-powered wheelchair of some kind and serves the plot by providing the Jedi with specialized information that other experts were unable to give.
  • The titular character from Jeffrey Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme novels, who is a quadriplegic forensics expert.
  • The Rat in The Lost Prince, to an extent: He's a hunchback and his legs are crippled, but his mind is sharp, and at the age of thirteen he has a grasp of military tactics and strategy that impresses adults.
  • Melody Brooks from Out of My Mind is a girl who has cerebral palsy. As she says, it's not her brain that doesn't work, but her body. She has a photographic memory and is like a living encyclopedia (though her weak point is math). She is even called her school's own Stephen Hawking.
  • Ivar the Boneless from Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons. Supposedly, Ivar was a 9th century Viking warlord whose legs contained only cartilage, but no bones, and therefore he was unable to walk. However, he was the most clever and cunning of his brothers and led them to many a victory, as his stratagems usually won the day when the brute strength of his brothers failed.
  • Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor at your service. Not just crippled but reduced to a sack of melted flesh and in a state of And I Must Scream... and still a genius philosopher with phenomenal psychic powers.
  • Yarvi, one of the main characters of The Shattered Sea, has a crippled arm and hand which prevent him from taking part in the activities expected of a man/warrior. However, he makes up for his lack of physical prowess by being extremely well-read, an accomplished orator, and extremely clever/cunning.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Doran Martell uses a wheelchair due to extreme gout. And yet, he's more dangerous than many of the other great lords who are on their feet. Even Tywin speaks of him with respect.
    • Dwarf Tyrion Lannister is at least the second most intelligent person in the series.
    • Willas Tyrell has a crippled right leg from a jousting accident, and if it weren't for Obern Martell screaming for the maesters to help Willas, the heir to Highgarden would have lost his leg. So instead of being a knight, as his father wanted, Willas indulges in scholarly studies, with him even writing letters to Oberyn (to whom he bears no ill will) about horses.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan from the Vorkosigan Saga: Stunted, hunchbacked, and with brittle bones that break at the drop of a hat, but always comes out on top by being the smartest guy on the planet. Any planet. After he gets all his bones replaced by synthetics by around age 25, he's not so fragile — but then, by his early 30s, he's picked up several other potentially debilitating health problems: seizures, extensive vascular damage...
  • Waldo Farthingwaite-Jones of the Heinlein novella Waldo. He might be the inspiration for most of the later versions. He's a super-genius with myasthenia gravis that leaves him 1/10 as strong as an average human. He's invented many incredible devices and is best known for the actual devices known as Waldos and named for the invention of the book.
  • Crippled midget Fenn is the brain behind the operations of "Codhringer and Fenn", a law firm appearing in The Witcher saga. He's actually not made up for tax purposes by Codhringer, but his disability means he simply never leaves their office and lets his partner do the talking.
  • Henrietta Marvell in Judith Merril's "That Only a Mother" is a Brainy Baby who's speaking in sentences and even singing before she's a year old. But because of her parents' exposure to radiation, she has no arms or legs.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 7 Days (1998): Dr. John Ballard designed the time machine that is the impetus of the show, and is paraplegic due to a diving accident in his youth (he was showing off in a rock quarry to impress some girls).
  • The Avengers (1960s):
    • During the Linda Thorson years, the Avengers' boss, called "Mother", is a stocky man in a wheelchair (who can get around briskly in his office via a series of ceiling-mounted hand grips).
    • Dr. Armstrong from "The Cybernauts" is another wheelchair-using genius, though this is a villainous one, planning to put humanity under the rule of an artificial intelligence since he thinks they make better decisions than humans.
  • Bones: During the last season and a half, Jack Hodgins is rendered paraplegic from an explosion but remains a vital member of the lab, even becoming its temporary head in the end. He's also been very smart all along.
  • CSI-verse:
    • CSI: Doc Robbins, the medical examiner, is (and is played by) a double amputee.
    • CSI: NY has wheelchair-using forensics expert Dr. Leonard Giles in Season 1.
  • Dark Angel: Logan's spine is damaged in the very first episode, leaving him paraplegic. He is still invaluable as a hacker and general computer whizz.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The recurring villain Davros is usually injured/old enough that he can only control a single arm; his own wheelchair-like life support apparatus and cybernetic eye are implicitly the inspiration for the "travel machines" used by his infamous creations, the Daleks. Julian Bleach, one of the actors to portray him, called the character "a cross between Stephen Hawking and Hitler."
    • The Cybus Industries Cybermen were created by John Lumic, also an Evil Cripple. He's a wheelchair user and has a wealth of life-support instruments hooked up.
    • The Face of Boe is a virtually all-knowing entity that has been around for billions of years... and just happens to be a gigantic, withered head in a life-support tank. His probable identity — Jack Harkness after eons of Age Without Youth — is quite a shock.
    • "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" features a brilliant but crippled scientist named Dortmund.
    • Doctor Judson, the wheelchair-using computer scientist in "The Curse of Fenric". Who gets very grumpy about his medical assistant treating him as helpless:
      Nurse Crane: A little respect for the wheelchair please, Commander. He's an invalid.
      Doctor Judson: I'm not an invalid, I'm a cripple. I'm also a genius, so shut up, the pair of you!
  • Dollhouse: Bennett's left arm is permanently disabled. Unlike many examples, she was actually quite a genius before the arm was damaged.
  • ER: Dr Kerry Weaver uses a cane and is revealed to have an IQ of 145. She is also an exceptionally capable emergency physician, and doesn't let her disability slow her down in the slightest.
  • Exo-Man: The failed-series-pilot features a scientist who permanently lost the use of his legs, and so built a super-powered robotic exoskeleton for himself to make up for it.
  • The Flash (2014): Dr. Harrison Wells, the genius scientist who designed the particle accelerator, wound up injured and confined to a wheelchair after it exploded. However, not only is he not whom he claims to be, he is actually faking being paralyzed. He's undeniably a genius, though.
  • Fringe:
    • Nina Sharp is quite a brainiac and has an artificial arm. In Season 5, she also needs a wheelchair.
    • "Brown Betty": In this episode, when Walter tells a fairy tale to a child, his counterpart is in a wheelchair and has a heart condition (which is part of the plot).
  • House: Dr. House is a crippled genius (needing a cane to walk around), but that injury more often hurts his genius rather than enables or is neutral to it. On the other hand, to the extent this trope extends to the emotionally crippled...

    Music 
  • Billy, a character in former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters's Concept Album Radio K.A.O.S., is a Welsh boy in a wheelchair speaking via a speech computer, who hears radio waves in his head. He learns to use a cordless phone stolen by his big brother, an unemployed miner, to broadcast his voice around the world. His brother is mistakenly arrested for allegedly kicking a stone from a bridge to a car during a miner's strike, killing the driver; the stone fell from a different bridge than one he and Billy were standing on. Upset by the loss of his family environment after he is sent to live with his uncle in L.A., the corporate greed that left his brother unemployed, his brother's false incarceration, and the state of the world in general, Billy befriends a renegade, freeform DJ (played by Jim Ladd), then hacks his way through the cordless phone into Defense Department computers. Billy programs the computers to simulate a nuclear attack, then make it impossible for missile silos to deter the "attack". The DJ (and the world) believe it has only four minutes left until the end of the world. The world is Scared Straight into becoming a nicer, happier, and more peaceful and compassionate as a result.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Classical Mythology: Hephaestus, the ancient Greek god of the forge (counterpart to the Roman Vulcan), has a crippled foot — according to one version of the story, he was severely injured as a child when he tried to intervene in a quarrel between his parents, Zeus and Hera, and was hurled off Mt. Olympus. Nevertheless, he's the local Ultimate Blacksmith, able to invent robots and the ancient version of Humongous Mecha.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Exalted: Autochthon, one of the few non-antagonistic Primordials in the setting, is characterized by an illness which causes his internal components to turn upon themselves, and has actually performed self-surgery on one of his own souls, essentially lobotomizing himself. He's also among the most advanced craftsmen in the setting (their version of Hephaestus or Vulcan, who in past editions was creating ray guns and teleporters while everyone else was working with swords and bows... albeit magical ones).
  • Warhammer:
    • Although a fairly mild example, High Loremaster Teclis qualifies. Teclis suffers from considerable physical infirmity — highly unusual among the normally disease-free High Elves — such that he is only kept alive thanks to magical potions and the powers of his formidable magical items. Were it not for these measures he would probably have died in childhood, and even with them, he is still more feeble than any other elf in the game. Teclis is, however, the most powerful wizard in this age of the world, and possessed of a brilliant, obsessively analytical mind.
    • Venerable Lord Kroak has perhaps the most crippling of all disabilities — he's dead. Not undead, just the ordinary not-moving-about kind. And although it has robbed him of most of his vast magical ability, he's still a very powerful wizard, even in this state.
    • To a lesser degree, even the living Slann come under this trope, as they are all but immobile thanks to their bloated, lethargic physiques and the terrible psychic strain that living in such a chaotic and disordered world has wrought on their minds. However, they're far more intelligent than the other Lizardmen, serving as priests, wizards, and leaders.
    • The Daemon Kairos Fateweaver is also a formidably powerful sorcerer, but shriveled and feeble thanks to his experience being thrown into the Well of Eternity. He's also blind to the present (although one of his two heads can see the past and the other the future), which means that he is virtually incapable of fighting in close combat.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Gideon Ravenor, a very intelligent and highly psychic Inquisitor whose body was completely crippled thanks to an aircraft crashing into it during an attack on a religious parade. He operates from within a sealed life support chair and occasionally possesses his followers to make use of their physical abilities.
    • The Emperor of Man is the most powerful psychic in the universe and "rules" his empire in a catatonic state from a massive life support system.

    Video Games 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: Despite her appearance through the paipai drone's hologram, Ayane is shown to be a wheelchair user, but she's also one of the most skilled hackers and a technological genius in general. The "Mysterious Console" DLC later shows Ayane has been outfitted with leg enhancers, allowing her to walk again.
  • Professor von Kriplespac from Conker's Bad Fur Day is a Mad Scientist whose legs are nothing but stumps, requiring him to use a hover-chair to get around.
  • Hugh Darrow from Deus Ex: Human Revolution pioneered the human augmentation project, but a genetic condition leaves him unable to augment himself, and thus he walks with a cane and braces. May overlap with Evil Cripple.
  • Fallout: New Vegas's Mr. House is a 200-years-old person with a physical constitution to match — he can't even exist, not to mention move, outside his capsule, as the diseases would kill him in less than a year, and he has to do everything through his interface and you, if you decide to join him. He's also an absolutely brilliant mind and the reason New Vegas is still standing — it is stated that Luck in this game actually stands for capacity to compute statistics and probabilities, and his is maxed.
  • Grand Theft Auto V has Lester, who has to use either a wheelchair or a cane to move around due to a degenerative muscular disease, but does most of the planning behind the protagonists' heists. The one time he doesn't plan a heist, Trevor almost ends up selling a nuclear superweapon to the Chinese, which would have put the group on the government's hit list for the rest of their lives. That misadventure serves to show exactly why he's so crucial to the heists' success.
  • Guild Wars 2: Taimi suffers from a bone disease that makes it hard for her to walk. She starts out using a personal golem for any trip longer than "across the room", but during End of Dragons she gets a set of jade-tech braces that gives her more mobility.
  • Jasper Gunz of The House of the Dead: OVERKILL, a quadriplegic PhD, is a deliberately over-the-top example of this trope.
  • Katawa Shoujo:
    • Rin Tezuka is an artistic child prodigy and a genius in every sense of the word (in real life, "genius" doesn't refer exclusively to people who are good with numbers) who gets accepted on a full scholarship to a prestigious Tokyo art school at the age of 18, and was born with a severe birth defect that resulted in both her arms being amputated just below the shoulder (and is heavily implied to also have an autism spectrum disorder on top of that).
    • Shizune Hakamichi is basically perfect at everything she does except for interpersonal relationships, academically excellent, a master manipulator, and can effortlessly beat a chess enthusiast at her own game while giving her a psychological analysis based on her play style. She was also born deaf.
  • Monty from Kindergarten is confined to a wheelchair in Kindergarten 2 after being beaten half to death by the Ax-Crazy janitor in the first game. His intelligence is also more emphasised in the second game since he can no longer sell things past the start of the day. He's a kindergarten-aged Gadgeteer Genius who can modify or disarm a bomb, has a laser cannon in his wheelchair that he likely built himself, knows how to synthesise the drugs that Ms. Applegate is addicted to, and can read.
  • League of Legends has Doran, the creator of three starting items: the Doran's Shield, Blade, and Ring. Born with a passion for crafting, he became an Ultimate Blacksmith at the age of 15, until he suffered an accident that made him become "soft-minded", but didn't rob him of his passion. Where once he crafted single masterpiece items, he now crafts simpler items in large quantities.
  • The Metal Gear series has Huey Emmerich, father of Hal "Otacon" Emmerich, and one of the minds behind the predecessors to the Metal Gears. He suffers from a malformed spine that leaves him in a wheelchair. Around the time of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, he has invented his own wheelchair that can navigate stairs, and by Metal Gear Solid V, he seems to have replaced them with mechanical leg braces.
  • Stephen from Shin Megami Tensei, being Stephen Hawking with the serial numbers filed off, and having created the Demon Summoning Program. Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse reveals that he's actually a subversion.
  • Bentley of the Sly Cooper games becomes this in the third game after he's crippled at the end of the second. This does not hinder him from making a wheelchair fitted with gadgets as well, as making him a better fighter than he was before.
  • Touhou Project: Although Patchouli Knowledge has no specific disabilities, she is depicted as having a very fragile constitution. "It seems that she's capable of very powerful magic of all kinds, using many elements in a single spell, but due to asthma and general poor health she's often unable to recite her spells." A popular fan observation is that she doesn't get nearly enough vitamin D.
  • Dr. Sellers of the Xenosaga trilogy, the games' resident Evil Genius and probably the only paraplegic left in the galaxy. In all fairness, he brought it on himself; he sassed an already mentally-unstable Joachim Mizrahi while the planet Miltia was figuratively going to Hell, so Mizrahi pulled out a gun and capped him once in each leg. Harsh.

    Web Animation 
  • As per the source material, The Emperor in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device is hooked up to a giant machine to "rule" his empire. Except he isn't near the brink of death and instead has been trying to communicate since the Horus Heresy, as his mind is still in control of his body despite a fragment of his soul shining in the Warp. Once he has a text-to-speech device installed, he immediately starts bitching about how terrible his empire has become and begins a plan to take control again, succeeding in playing everyone, including his "son", Fallen Primarch Magnus the Red, and the Inquisition, in a massive plan that hinges on everyone acting like themselves.
  • RWBY: Volume 7 introduces Pietro Polendina, one of the most brilliant minds in the Kingdom of Atlas. He is a paraplegic robotics engineer who gets around in a customised chair with four mechanical legs that move like a spider's. His speciality is creating robotic prosthetics, such as Yang's arm and Maria's eyes; he spends much of his spare time volunteering in the disadvantaged mining community of Mantle, who wouldn't otherwise have access to prosthetics and engineers of his quality. His crowning achievement is the P.E.N.N.Y. Project, where he created the world's first synthetic lifeform capable of generating an Aura; she is better known as Penny Polendina, his daughter. His project has been so successful at bridging the divide between man and machine that Penny is even capable of inheriting the soul and magic of a Maiden, which can only be inherited by young women.

    Web Comics 
  • In the webcomic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, the father of Dr McNinja's college friend Martin is a scientific genius who uses a wheelchair named Dr. Birding. He has some resemblance to Professor Hawking (down to the name), and can only communicate via a speaking computer (even expressing emotion through emotes). He does have an Incredible Hulk transformation mode that is utterly useless since he's still crippled even after the transformation.
  • Lululu Lopez from Platypus Comix's Electric Wonderland always has to travel in some type of wheeled object because of her mermaid tail, but she does know a lot about bombs.
  • Mecha Maid from the series Spinnerette qualifies, as she designed the nerve stimulator that gives her super-strength and enables her to move around. Without it, she needs a wheelchair and has trouble even speaking due to her ALS.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • Arcane: Viktor walks with a cane, and is clearly a very bright fellow. He built his own clockwork boat when he was just a little kid, and as young adult, Viktor helps Jayce successfully develop Hextech. The Blood from the Mouth he develops from a childhood breathing in poisonous gasses in the Undercity drives him even more to use hextech to save his life.
  • Dexter's Laboratory has a Stephen Hawking send-up called Professor Hawk, whose software factory is a technological Willy Wonka send-up itself. And in a subversion, he's not actually disabled, just too lazy to walk. Once he comes under the influence of DeeDee, he sheds his jet-bird-shell-thing and takes up interpretive dance.
  • Stephen Hawking shows up in the Dilbert cartoon, too. He mocks everyone viciously while zipping in and out of his wormholes like an amphetamine-crazed rabbit.
  • The Fairly Oddparents has a Stephen Hawking send-up who drives a rocket-powered chair and makes out Crocker the idiot.
  • Stephen Hawking appears several times on Family Guy, first as a non-speaking character in "Peter Peter Caviar Eater" being kept on hold at the Pewterschmidt estates in case someone needs help with their math homework, and later in an episode dealing with a black hole threatening to consume the Earth (in reality an April fools prank by Channel 6). This episode reveals that Hawking isn't even crippled, and the whole "crippled genius" bit is just a role he plays whenever the media needs a smart guy.
    Hawking: This schtick is getting so old, man! That chair smells, dude.
    Surfer: Hey Stephen, surf's up!
    Hawking: [grabs surfboard] Alright! Later, bitch!
  • In Futurama, Stephen Hawking is part of a group of nerds who travel in a school bus and use murder to solve many of their problems. In other episodes, Hawking's head shows up in a "way cool rocket" equipped with lasers. Oh, and he's at a huge science convention. And apparently has lasers in his eyes. Even he didn't know he was that awesome.
  • The subject of the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero episode "My Brother's Keeper". Sgt. Slaughter and Sci-Fi must rescue a handicapped (and frankly, pretty dickish) scientist named Dr. Jeremy Pinser.
  • In Justice League: Gods and Monsters, Lex Luthor is astoundingly brilliant but has a disease that, over the course of several years, leaves him confined to a chair.
  • Felix, Ron's friend in Kim Possible. He handles a cool wheelchair that allows him to fly (built for him specifically by his mother), and governments and militaries want to work with him and his almost legendary brainpower. He prefers to goof off and play video games with Ron though.
  • Carlos's younger brother from The Magic School Bus has a wheelchair with a parachute, an emergency raft, a crowbar, and various other useful things, and is a lot smarter than his brother or his brother's classmates.
  • Dr. Wang from Minoriteam, who was a Badass Normal before he was paralyzed. The only person comparable to him in intelligence is Dr. Genius, who can only move one of his fingers.
  • Ninjago: Cyrus Borg, the wheelchair-using head of Borg Industries. His inventions singlehandedly turned Ninjago City from a modern metropolis into a cyberpunk mega city. He's introduced using a spider-like mech for mobility and points out that his parents naming him "Cy Borg" sort of determined his future for him.
  • Stephen Hawking appears as a cartoon version of himself on several episodes of The Simpsons, driving a wheelchair that features a spring-loaded boxing glove and rockets. Even though it would have been really easy to get another computer to fake his voice, they got him into the studio to record his lines. According to later interviews, he loved it and planned to build a boxing glove into his next chair. He also presented a BAFTA for The Simpsons on one occasion.
  • Chip Chase from The Transformers G1 is your basic wheelchair user genius.
  • Doctor Octopus in Ultimate Spider-Man (2012). Because of an accident, he lost the use of his limbs. He uses his metal arms to work, fight and move around, as his human body is basically pulled along for the ride like a talking puppet. He's still menacing and looks rather creepy, partially because of, rather than despite, all this. Doubles as an Evil Cripple. Eventually gets upgraded into a cyborg by Hydra, and eventually restored to a healthy normal body just in time to be the surprise Big Bad of the two-part Grand Finale.
  • In Zorro: Generation Z, mute Bernardo is the maker of Diego's bat-gadgets.


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