Follow TV Tropes

Following

Mind over Matter

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jean_shows_off_her_power.png
Jean doesn't have to lift a finger to lift Hank.

"...yeah, I can break necks with my mind."

Does it matter, to any of us?

Telekinesis/Psychokinesis: the ability to move stuff and/or people just by thinking. Although it fundamentally only requires a thought to work, hand gestures can also help, especially if they make the user look focused. How does the glass lift up but not everything else nearby? Because the glass is what the hero wanted to lift up.

As superpowers go, it's one of the most useful and straightforward, and in its more refined form, it allows the user to manipulate any object in a wide number of ways, not only the more intuitive lifting and moving around. Nevertheless, it is very rarely used up to its full potential, as almost every fight would become trivial if it ended with a telekinetic Neck Snap. This is usually justified by stating or implying the user is not dexterous and/or precise enough to give his foe anything more than a good rough push or pull, although sheer psychic strength is often enough to crush or squash an enemy in a less subtle way.

Being a Psychic Power, we don't have to worry so much about violating the laws of physics. That said, its major limitation seems to be precisely its scalability: it is almost always harder to lift a heavy object than a light one, and a person with this superpower will often be seen to be visibly straining to accomplish it, as if their telekinesis took the form of a long but entirely physical "invisible arm" with all the normal physical limitations that normally implies. Pushing this ability past its limit often leads to a Psychic Nosebleed or even passing out, and it is even possible to die due to the effort.

This power is the most recognizable form of Psychic Powers, only matched by Telepathy in popular consciousness. As such, they are often more associated with each other than the rest of skills on the list: many telekinetic characters are also telepaths and vice versa, and even whenever they are not, odds are that any strictly telepathic but sufficiently spirited mental duel will have visible, physical effects on the users' surroundings or bodies. Sometimes Flight will be added to the mix as well, as theoretically nothing impedes a telekinesis user from lifting their own body.

For whatever reason, telekinesis seems to be more common for characters outside the usual superhero tradition, as classic The Cape-style superheroes rarely have this as a power. One possible explanation is that if the character is already a Flying Brick, giving them telekinetic powers can run the risk of turning them into an Invincible Hero by giving them too many advantages. In a superhero series featuring an ensemble cast, telekinesis is usually reserved for characters who specialize in it or who are weak in the physical field. Some non-corporeal characters, such as ghosts, can interact with normal matter only via telekinesis. Creatures without fingered hands, or without limbs at all, often will have such powers, allowing them to comfortably interact with the world.

It's also very light in terms of Special Effects demand (no need for expensive fire effects or CG energy projectiles, just use some strings or an air-cannon to blast stuff around), making it popular with Live Action shows. It's also very simple to pull off in 3D animation and video games, where it can save artists from having to animate characters actually picking up or otherwise manipulating things with their hands. See Coconut Superpowers.

Single Substance Manipulation is a Sub-Trope for when this can only be done for one type of object, with sand, glass, and paper being sub-sub-tropes.

If the character has a native set of powers that's not Telekinesis that can be used to move an object such as enclosing it in a forcefield and moving the forcefield, that would be a case of Swiss-Army Superpower.

Note that the term "mind over matter" originally had nothing to do with telekinesis, it was coined in reference to what Tropers would call Heroic Willpower (or maybe Charles Atlas Superpower); the mind forcing the body beyond its normal limits. No relation to the Young the Giant album or Title Track.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • For an extreme end of power, see Tetsuo Shima in the manga and anime AKIRA. In the manga in particular Tetsuo carves a hole through the moon with his telekinesis.
  • Femto of Berserk has this as just one of his many abilities upon his ascension as one of the God Hand during the Eclipse, used most prominently in the third movie to hurl Guts in full berserker mode away from him as he's having his way with Casca before allowing his minions to hold him down and make him watch.
  • Accelerator in A Certain Magical Index can manipulate the vectors of almost anything imaginable. This can effect the direction of objects with mass, but also phenomena like ultraviolet radiation or electrochemical signals in a brain's neurons.
  • Tomobiki Rinji from Choujin Sensen gains telekinesis as a result of participating in the [Superhuman Game].
  • Aion of Chrono Crusade anime has this as just one of his many abilities upon his ascension as one of the Sinners during the World, used most prominently to hurl Chrono in devil mode away from him as he's having his way with Azmaria before allowing his minions to hold him down and make him watch.
  • Miya Alice from Dangaioh has Psychic Powers that allow her to release enormous waves of telekinetic energy.
  • Maou in The Devil is a Part-Timer! can use telekinesis among other abilities (with him being the dark lord and all). He used it to stop a bridge from collapsing on Chiho and Emi.
  • Dragon Ball:
  • Kareri of Earthchild possesses telekinesis, and uses it to perform secret missions for the government. Her son inherits her power.
  • The vectors of Diclonii in Elfen Lied is effectively a very limited form of telekinesis. Ironically, despite LITERALLY being invisible arms, Diclonii never seem to suffer from increased stress when moving heavier objects. There is, however, a strain based on range, which Lucy finds out the hard way when she spreads said arms worldwide.
  • It was revealed that Il Palazzo can do this at the end of the Excel♡Saga anime, along with various other psychic powers.
  • Fairy Tail: Erza Scarlet's first manifestation of magic involved lifting all the scattered weapons and tools on the battleground of her Slave Liberation and hurling them at the slavers. In the present, she usually uses this in combination with her Heaven's Wheel Armor to launch a Storm of Blades that she can control in-flight. As shown in 100 Years Quest, she can also telekinetically control her armors themselves, allowing her to move her at-the-time paralyzed body by controlling the armor covering her with her magic.
  • From the New World (aka Shin Sekai Yori) lives and breathes this trope.
  • Asagami Fujino in the third The Garden of Sinners book/movie can do a very specific form; she can bend things. It doesn't sound like much until you add in the fact that she can do this to anything she thinks is remotely bendable — in particular, human limbs. At the end of her story as she is cornered by Shiki, she gets a Desperation Attack upgrade in the form of boosted power and clairvoyance, which removes her one weakness — having to actually see the thing in order to bend it. Asagami to suspension bridge: BEND!!!!!!.
    • According to the novel, and somewhat implied in the anime, she actually has two powers. She can rotate things clockwise... and can rotate them counterclockwise. The bending happens when she does both at once. Also, she completely averts the "harder to move heavier objects" aspect. If she can imagine a fulcrum, she can rotate it.
  • Telekinesis shows up a number of times on Ghost Hunt. Such as a case where a teenage girl unknowingly uses telekinesis to imitate/mimic a haunting to convince her classmates that she can see ghosts, or a case that involves a girl who claimed to be able to bend spoons, and of course there's Naru whose telekinesis is so powerful he risks getting a heart attack any time he uses it.
  • One episode of Haruhi-chan had this as one of Nagato's powers.
  • The Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure combine this and other Psychic Powers with the Fighting Spirit trope. Since only Stand users can see other people's Stands, normal people perceive Stand activity as psychic phenomenon, as demonstrated by Jotaro Kujo when he seemingly willed a bullet aimed at his head to stop in mid-air (when his stand, Star Platinum, really grabbed the bullet before it could kill him), then caused the bars of his prison cell to bend so he could step out (that would be Star Platinum grabbing the bars and pulling them apart).
  • Kuttsukiboshi: Kiiko Kawakami is able to use telekinesis, which she gained as the result of an accident.
  • Several of the Domain Control abilities belonging to the Knights of the Ring in The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer are just forms of applied telekinesis.
  • My Hero Academia: Izuki's mom, Inko Midoriya, has telekinesis as her Quirk, but it's only strong enough to move small objects.
  • Aoi Miyoshi from Night Raid 1931 can use telekinesis to deflect incoming attacks or push away unwanted enemies or objects. However, there is a certain time limit attached to his powers.
  • One Piece:
    • Shiki from One Piece Film: Strong World has the Float Float Fruit, which allows him make objects float. What crosses him into this trope from Gravity Master is that he’s able shape the objects he’s touched with his mind, creating lions made out of earth to crush Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Chopper, and Usopp. When Luffy defeats him, the things that were kept floating with his mind fall into the sea.
    • Trafalgar Law introduced in the manga and anime has his "Tact" technique, which allows him to levitate stuff inside his space-warping Room.
  • Pokémon:
    • In Pokémon: The Series, Psychic-type Pokémon usually have this power. Some humans do as well.
    • Mewtwo is shown to be able to cause a storm with his mind's power in Pokémon: The First Movie.
    • Pokémon Adventures: Yellow's powers are limited to controlling a Pokeball tied to the end of her fishing line, but it has proved to be incredibly useful in many situations.
  • In Psyren, Telekenesis is the most basic psychic ability of the "Burst" category. Marie and Grana are specialized in this, using it with great precision and power (especially Grana).
  • Queen Millennia: La-Metal has mastered control over gravity, but only Larela can lift herself and others at will.
  • Aries Mu from Saint Seiya has this in spades, combined with telepathy, Psychic Powers and pink hair. He can lift up houses, and his apprentice, Kiki, likes to hurl great big rocks at people with his mind.
  • School Rumble's Tenma Tsukamoto can bend spoons with her mind, though it is not given nearly as much emphasis as her younger sister's, Yakumo's, powers of Telepathy. Notable in that unlike many other people with Psychic Powers, who tend to have higher-than-usual intelligence as a sort of Required Secondary Power, Tenma is a complete ditz.
  • Ran does this to Amu in one scene in Episode 6 of Shugo Chara!. Amu is not amused.
  • In Taboo-Tattoo, the Spell Crest of Arya's clone sister Bukka grants her powerful telekinesis. Bukka has used these abilities continuously since she lost her arms in an accident and has become incredibly skilled with them, being able to manipulate objects from great distances and grant herself the ability to fly.
  • Ryoko in Tenchi Muyo! has some minor telekinetic powers, but she almost never uses them, and never for anything serious. Mainly for animating the "tail" on one of her favorite outfits.
  • In Tiger & Bunny, the Sternbild mayor's baby son, Sam, has this as his NEXT power. Young as he is, at the moment he only causes things to break or fly into the air when he cries. Even so, it was enough to spoil the plans of a trio of kidnappers who thought they were kidnapping a pair of harmless, non-superpowered, children.
  • In Trigun, Legato often demonstrates that in a world where one has to generally pull a trigger to kill someone, the ability to break bones and control people with thoughts is rather potent.
  • The Goddess Vulcan in The World God Only Knows may be blind, partially deaf and immobile but their telekinetic powers more than enough makes up for it.

    Comic Books 
  • Astro City: Lampshaded by Maddie Sullivan, a mid-level telekinetic who briefly considered becoming a super-heroine with the codename "Mind Over Maddie".
  • Critter: Cassia is a telekinetic like her mother. However unlike her mother Cass cannot control her abilities effectively and often uses her TK as a stat boost rather than a psionic attack.
  • ElfQuest has Rayek, whose telekinesis was at his first appearance more of a party trick. Years of training and some other boosts let him push the limit, far enough to fly while carrying someone else, and/or repel arrows shot at him.
    There are only two others, Egg and Trof, making telekinesis one of the rarer powers.
  • In Irredeemable, this is Plutonian's real power; all applications of his powers are really him using his telekinesis unconsciously. Modeus remarked that he could alter probability, reverse entropy, and see through time, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of what he could do if he became aware of it.
  • Queen Bee: The plot of the story is that both Haley Madison and Alexa Harmon have psychokinesis, in which they often use to the other girl's detriment. It's implied that they're actually long-lost sisters.
  • The run-of-the-mill foot soldier in The Red Star is trained in telekinesis; spinning your standard-issue bayonet so fast it blocks bullets is a basic skill.
  • Rising Stars answers the Fridge Logic part by mentioning one girl who had telekinesis but only over small objects working as an assassin. Turns out a carotid artery is a small object...
  • Star Trek: Untold Voyages: In "Worlds Collide", the creatures living on a newly discovered M-Class planet gather together and use their collective mental energy to divert the asteroid that was about to strike their planet and wipe them all out. Admiral Kirk guesses that they were able to detect the approach of the asteroid due to a herd mentality.
  • Superman:
    • In the 80's, it was retconned that Superman's super-powers were telekinesis or another psychic power. Later stories ignored that retcon.
    • This became explicit with Superboy Conner, a part-Kryptonian part-human clone with "tactile telekinesis", allowing him to telekinetically manipulate anything he could touch. Then it got RetConned away again...
    • The powers of the Superman Conner Kent from the Bad Future of the Titans Tomorrow story arc are upgraded from tactile telekinesis to full-blown telekinesis in the interim, which pretty much gives him the combined power of Superman and Phoenix.
    • Superboy (New 52): Kon-El possesses telekinesis on par with/greater than the "Titans of Tomorrow" version, and also can manipulate his powers to mimic Superman (super strength by channeling TK through limbs, X-ray vision by telekinetically scanning the contents of a building/ship, which requires touching it, heat vision by intensifying his TK and channeling through his eyes, etc.)
    • Subverted in The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor. Supergirl's Lena Colby is made to believe she's gained dangerously uncontrollable telekinesis, but was actually been gaslighted by crooks intending to drive her insane.
    • Villain Manchester Black is a telekinetic. Being a Darker and Edgier take on the '90s Anti-Hero archetype, his favorite tricks include giving people strokes and telekinetically stopping their hearts.
  • Touch (2004): Brian and Jordan get telekinetic powers. Brian's takes the form of immobilizing people in bright prisms of light, while Jordan's is more slight-of-hand / flip over a car.
  • Wonder Woman:
  • The X-Men's Jean Grey is one superhero with general-purpose telekinesis (as are her various genetic descendants). Initially, the Phoenix power was simply this at its highest level — rearranging any and all matter down to the sub-molecular level.
    • Of her descendants it is the various Nate Summers' who top out the scale. Nate "Cable" Summers once had a fight with the Silver Surfer destroying his base, Providence, which was the size of an island; And wrecking much of Sydney, Australia, but telekinetically rebuilt it mere moments after they plowed through them. He was also stated by Rachel Summers as a kid to have the power to extinguish a star without any conscious effort. Cable's powers, though, are usually mostly devoted to stopping the techno-organic virus that would otherwise overtake his body, hence his reliance on BFGs for most of his history. Unencumbered, his powers at their height are easily Phoenix class.
    • Nate Grey a.k.a. X-Man, unencumbered by the techno-organic virus, is even stronger. He's theoretically capable of destroying the Moon in one shot, flattened a continent on an alternate Earth, stopped time by accident, treated the Multiverse as his personal step ladder, casually phased through walls and people, shut down an alternate Magneto's powers, frequently manipulated things on a molecular level to borderline Reality Warper degrees, and once negated gravity to send a Great Beast (something the size of a small mountain) into space. Later, he graduated to full on Reality Warper status.
    • Their big sister, Rachel Summers, is more or less as strong as they are (with Cable's constantly fluctuating powers, Nate's inconsistency, and her own connection to the Phoenix, it can be hard to tell). However, molecular manipulation is a signature trick of hers, as is time travel, across millennia and multiple alternate timelines.
    • Also among the X-Men, Psylocke can do it, though her powers are altered so much it had to be seriously, not Lampshade Hanging-ly, acknowledged on-panel. She can focus her full power into a blade that can cut through anything, and she can choose to fry the brain of a living victim without cutting them physically (even when her telepathy is explicitly down).
    • Though said to be telepathic only, Professor X has been known to affect matter on rare occasion with intense concentration, once even bringing down a Sentinel singlehandedly with a pinpoint, full-power attack. Telepath Emma Frost can't, though interestingly, a power-copying mutant once did so while using her powers.
      • Some versions of Xavier's backstory have him surviving a car wreck as a teenager by telekinetically shielding himself, but losing that portion of his powers due to a head injury.
    • Julian Keller aka Hellion is also a telekinetic mutant. For a while after M-day, he was the only telekinetic mutant left on Earth. He's not on the same level as Phoenix or X-Man, but when he has nothing holding back his power he's able to tear through Sentinels (the giant killer robots specifically designed to wipe out mutants) like they were tissue paper.
    • According to X-Men (2019), the strongest telekinetic mutant of the lot is Bennet du Paris a.k.a. Exodus, who is listed among the 14 living omega level mutants and is the only one with Telekinesis as his "omega power". This would place him above even Jean Grey (who is listed as an omega-level telepath, but not telekinetic) and all the other characters on this list, though it is possible that the deceased/MIA/not listed mutants such as Cable and X-Man might meet or surpass him (X-Man in particular almost certainly does), at least in power. In precision, though, it's hard to find a feat surpassing his reassembly of Professor X's brain by way of telekinetic Psychic Surgery.
    • On the villain's side, Apocalypse can manipulate living beings, inanimate objects, and to some extent energy.

    Fan Works 

Crossover

  • Child of the Storm:
    • Harry Thorson (né Potter) has Psychic Powers that manifest intermittently (and in the sequel, are revealed to have been doing so since early childhood), until he gets tuition from Betsy 'Psylocke' Braddock. At that point, he very quickly goes from lifting salt shakers, chairs, and tables, to stopping a hail of bullets in mid-air and throwing around thousands of tons of zombified giant. Since he's the third most powerful human-born psychic of all time, this is not surprising. By the sequel, he's getting increasingly creative with them, sometimes with flagrant Loophole Abuse (he's cornered while wearing a Power Limiter suit? Cue tactile-telekinesis), and further tuition by Magneto helps refine his senses and range, allowing him to manipulate light and other forms of energy, as well as matter. And that's before the Phoenix gets involved...
    • The above is largely down to his being related to usual suspect Jean Grey, who, naturally, also has these abilities - and is exponentially stronger than he is. At one point, Harry speculates that she could drive the entire town of Bayville down into the Earth's core, and there is no indication whatsoever that he's mistaken.
    • Jean's stolen-at-birth twin, Maddie Pryor, formerly Rachel Grey, is every bit as powerful as Jean, though she prefers her telepathy. When her and Harry get in a psychic fight in the second book, the consequences are felt by everyone on Earth with even rudimentary psychic senses, crippling some and causing at least one Traumatic Superpower Awakening, even though they're in another dimension and he's trying to avoid a direct contest of power (as he's outmatched in every deparment barring balls-out crazy).
    • The Red Son, being Harry, or at least, his reprogrammed body is exceptionally powerful and terrifyingly lethal.
    • Most magic users are also capable of using this to one degree or another, though rarely with great precision.
  • Eagle's Fall: Humanity faces the asari, a species of telekinetic biotics.
  • Fallout: Equestria: Littlepip's only magic is telekinesis, which all unicorns can do, but the sheer level of her capability is staggering; during the Pit fight, she manages to levitate herself, an ally, a lance and several gallons of toxic goo, the last being stretched out to cloak them from snipers. And then she decides to pick a lock, without tools, by grabbing the tumblers from inside. And succeeds. She's extremely taxed by the feat but it would probably be flat-out impossible for any other pony short of Celestia or Luna. (Admittedly she had spent several traits on this.)
  • Psi Effect: Shepard faces off against the powerful biotic telekinetic Wrex.
  • Stardust (Arad): One key point is that Twilight's telekinetic powers would be hard for XCOM to combat if she was on the other side.
  • A Shadow of the Titans: The Rooster talisman becomes fused into Jade's body, giving her 'natural' telekinesis.
  • Total Drama Raptured: In chapter 25, Telekinesis is part of the group's current plasmids. Unlike the game, Steinmann has this power as well.

Worm

  • Acceleration: Taylor can freely modify the vector value of almost anything, much like Accelerator of A Certain Magical Index.
  • Atonement: Madison's power allows her to attach intangible "lines" between any two (nonliving) objects, and pull them together or push them apart at will. Heavy objects or capes with Super-Strength are partially immune to being pushed and pulled, however.
  • Intrepid: Rune (Cassie) has telekinesis, which she triggered to by being locked in solitary and wanting to get out, and can move non-living things she touches with her mind.
    Cassie: The walls kept getting smaller and I wanted out. I wanted the walls to stop shrinking. I wanted the walls to get out of my way. I wanted the walls to move. So they did. The walls moved because I wanted them to. They moved because I told them to, and then I got out.
  • A Tale of Transmigration: Rune is telekinetic. Oracle is considered the world's strongest and a Mirror Cape to Simurgh by virtue of catching a building she threw and then beating her with it.

Other

  • An American Superhero In Japan: Psion is strong enough to toss cars around, and also uses it to fly.
  • Beyond Tomorrow: Ren kidnaps Hanyuu via telekinesis.
  • Casey Steele: Usually shortened from "Telekinesis" to "TK". Power and finesse are usually mutually exclusive — you can either lift a lot of mass or handle small objects — and being able to do both is considered very impressive.
  • Destiny Intertwined: Levitation, one of the most common kinds of magic, allows its users to make objects float. Higher mastery of this skill allows mages to float larger objects or greater numbers of small objects, as well as the ability to make objects float permanently.
  • Empath: The Luckiest Smurf: Empath, and all Psyches, has telekinetic abilities.
  • The Fall of Lord Frieza: Most people skilled with Ki manipulation have at least a little, but Frieza trained his telekinetic powers into a deadly weapon. In his sixth form, he can casually smash gigantic icebergs together with little strain.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure Dragon: Chimei. She uses it on Hiroshi at least once in episode 9, in a Shout-Out to a scene in episode 6 of Shugo Chara! where one of Amu's Charas forces her to dance using a similar form of telekinesis.
  • Future Generations: The raven Sage is a telekinetic.
  • Hard Being Pure: Noa has a telekinetic aura around her that automatically cleans dust and other impurities. When she focuses on something, she can lift somewhere around a full backpack.
  • Harmless: Poindexter has telekinesis over everything in Casper High while he is on the grounds.
  • JUST THE BEST MARY SUE, EVER!: Fellaurora sends a statue flying across the room with her mind.
  • Natural Liberated: One of psychic Pokémon N's powers is telekinesis. Sebrina, Reshiram, and Zekrom have it as well.
  • The Night Unfurls: This is how Evetta keeps her hands clean when maiming, strangling and mangling. Unlike typical examples, it is portrayed as disturbing due to a rare Aversion of Just Hit Himnote . Moreover, this fanfic is supposed to be a standard Dark Fantasy setting, where there should be elements like swords and magic, not people who move stuff with their mind. Just the fact that even the main Eldritch Abomination is not shown to possess this power, and yet this animated porcelain doll is somehow capable of crushing someone without eye contact or lifting a finger is clearly shown as unexpected and very, very wrong.
  • The Palaververse: The First Stitch demonstrates unicorns using their magic to move stuff around, like:
    A stray tendril of her magic tossed a couple of logs onto the fire
  • Presets: Matthias's wife is a Reader who happens to be telekinetic. But the mental energy costs of a telekinetic action is the same as the physical energy to do it normally.
  • Pretty Cure Transient Cross NEWTON: Each Cure's powers is based around an area of physics; Kaneda manipulates "Motion".
  • Project Tatterdemalion: All shinigami have telekinesis. Ryuuken is forced to reveal his psychokinetic Quincy powers as a saving throw after the attempt to destroy the mass transporter nearly fails.
  • Red Lightning: Finn gets telekinesis after the Mass Super-Empowering Event.
  • Reflections Lost on a Dark Road: Raven initially has her full telekinetic powers from the series, but then has them drained so much that they become near useless.
  • The Secret Return of Alex Mack: This is Alex's most notable power. She's limited to approximately two hundred pounds of force (although that gradually improves with practice), but she can divide that force over multiple objects at once, and exert very fine control, enough to easily turn screws and safely pinch carotid arteries shut. Furthermore, since she herself weighs quite a bit less than two hundred pounds, she can fly at over 80 miles an hour, or at slower speeds with enough force left over to work or fight.
  • Starlight Series: One of the tests that Jumba has Experiment 419 perform in Alpha and Omega is to see if she has levitation powers, as that is one of the things he'd been planning on working on before his accident.
  • Swordstorm: Blackblade has a unique ability to levitate any object. He is a bat pony and not a unicorn, so he isn't using unicorn magic. Whether or not it is "considered" magic, is unknown.
  • Ultraman Moedari: Father Leo/Ultraman Lugeno spams telekinetic powers all the time. Lunaram and Finem are lesser examples.
  • With Strings Attached: Ringo. Extraordinarily powerful, inasmuch as, by using his TK in conjunction with his mindsight, he has incredibly precise control and can reach at least a hundred miles with it. It does not tire him out to use it. His upper level of strength is not known, but he can toss people around and move them very rapidly. One limitation he has is that he must constantly concentrate on an item to keep it moving, and his concentration fails after 5-7 seconds, or if he's terrified, or if he's being jounced around. Still, he can do a lot in 5-7 seconds.

    Films — Animation 
  • La Muerte from The Book of Life, is able to pull Xibalba closer without actually touching him. And at one point, managed to retrieve the rest of Luis's body with only a snap of her fingers.
  • Fire and Ice (1983): This is how Nekron's magic works. In the opening of the film, he uses this on an entire glacier to destroy Larn's village, allowing him to achieve military conquest without even leaving his throne room. Moving something that big clearly takes a lot of effort, given his concern about moving the glacier all the way to Fire Keep. Controlling the movements of people on the other hand is a trifling matter as Teegra's brother learns the hard way when Nekron forces him to impale himself on his own sword. It is however less than effective against Darkwolf, who is strong enough to fight through it (possibly because he's a god incarnate).
  • The Incredibles:
    • Jack-Jack can use telekinesis to levitate himself and move far-away objects.
    • Krushauer's power is to crush things with his mind.
  • In The Secret of NIMH, Nicodemus' Amulet of Concentrated Awesome gives Mrs. Brisby the power to levitate the cinder block that serves as her house.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In American Hero, a slacker and partygoer is discovered to have telekinetic abilities. He mainly uses them for fun until he dies for several minutes. He then decides to change his life and trains to fight criminals. His abilities go from lifting his handicapped friend's wheelchair a foot off the ground to hurling cars and stopping shotgun rounds in mid-air.
  • In Bruce Almighty, this is one of the things Bruce uses his powers for, such as to test his powers (by moving salt and pepper pots), and to shut his apartment door.
  • The film adaptations of Stephen King's Carrie, described in more detail below under Literature. The sequel The Rage: Carrie 2 also has Carrie's half-sister Rachel developing the same powers.
  • Children of the Corn
  • The three main characters in Chronicle gain telekinetic powers. Similar to Irredeemable, as they practice with their powers, they learn to fly by lifting themselves, and to pull of a decent simulation of Nigh-Invulnerability by creating a "barrier" around themselves.
  • The Strangers in Dark City (1998) possess Telekinesis, as does the hero Murdoch. However, individual Strangers seem limited to levitation and opening apparently nonexistent doors; only by combining their powers and interfacing with special machinery can they perform more impressive feats. Only Murdoch and the Stranger Leader Mr. Book have more developed "throw objects and people around with your mind" abilities — though by the end of the film, Murdoch's powerful enough to warp The City's layout at will.
  • Niamh in Dark Touch displays psychokinetic powers. Initially, they're not under her control, and the effect is more like an angry poltergeist throwing things around and coincidentally killing the people hurting her. Later, she gains control and decides who to kill.
  • In Dreamscape, limited telekinetic abilities are displayed by the protagonist, Alex, though his primary abilities seem to be telepathic in nature.
  • Fast Color: This is the main ability of Bo, Ruth and Lila, along with other women in their family. Bo and Lila both demonstrate an ability to mentally "unmake" objects then put them back together. Ruth can't control hers at all to begin with. At one point, Bo reduces the guns of some government agents to dust.
  • The terrible direct-to-video horror movie 5ive Girls gives the eponymous girls bizarre "powers", one of them being telekinesis.
  • In Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy Krueger can easily move objects with his mind in the dream world. He even plays an ad-hoc game of pinball with Jason's body.
  • Ghost (1990) is an example of the "mind over matter only" convention. Sam is taught how to manipulate physical objects as a ghost, which later proves helpful for him to possess Oda (with her consent) and defeat his murderer.
  • The first Jaka Sembung features an evil Black Magic Sorceror, Ki Hitam, who can move objects with his mind and restrain or throw enemies mentally without touching them. One of the Dutch comissars asks him to prove his power, so Ki Hitam lifts the comissar with his mind and spins him around clockwise, to his horror.
  • In Looper, telekinesis, or "TK", has been discovered by 2044, with 10% of humanity born with the potential for it. However, most people can't do much more than clumsily levitate quarters, with varying degrees of focus and effort required. Sarah can easily levitate a metal cigarette lighter and casually spin it around in smooth circles. Cid can levitate all the furniture in a room, apply enough force to flip a moving vehicle, send out a shockwave that knocks over everything within a hundred yards, and make people explode. And that's before he learns to focus his abilities...
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Loki demonstrates telekinetic abilities in Thor: The Dark World when he trashes the interior of his cell in a fit of anguish and rage after being told his mother is dead.
    • Wanda Maximoff is first seen in the midcredits stinger to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, moving and pulling apart several wooden blocks. In the movies she appears in, she tears apart Ultron's vibranium shell and densifies Vision enough to make him crash several stories down a building. She also has the power to project red telekinetic energy as blasts to destroy Ultron sentries, destroy the Mind Stone while holding back Thanos who has the other five Infinity Stones, and break an alternate Thanos's sword made of Uru then suspend him in mid-air while tearing chunks of his armor off of him. Her son Billy from WandaVision inherits this power as seen when he telekinetically stops a bullet fired upon him by Tyler Hayward.
    • Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame: Ebony Maw, one of the Black Order members, has some impressive telekinetic powers at his disposal. Amongst other things, he uses them to disassemble objects, deflect projectiles, cut cars in half, pin people to walls while restraining them with bricks, turn sidewalks into looping tendrils of concrete, fly by levitating a chunk of ground beneath his feet, and slowly drive large needles into people’s skin.
  • Matilda features her with telekinetic powers. Unlike the book, where she lost her powers at the end, she kept them, but only used them for trivial purposes.
  • In The Matrix, Neo can fly and stop bullets with his mind. You'd think he'd be able to do more stuff (like disarming enemies), but apart from one scene where he pulls some weapons from across the room, stopping bullets seems to be it.
  • In the wuxia film The Mighty One, Hsiang Kuei the Water Knight can move objects with his mind thanks to his chi, such as lifting three enemies in the air and smashing them together, throwing two benches simply by waving his hands without touching them, and probably the most powerful moment of all, during the fight in a temple mid-movie, moving a two-ton bronze urn to pin an enemy into a wall by sheer willpower.
  • In Modern Problems, the main character gets these powers. Lots of Power Perversion Potential ensues.
  • One of the powers displayed by Imhotep in The Mummy Trilogy was this. In the first film, he brings down Rick's airplane with a sandstorm that has his face on it. In the second film, he repeats the trick, but with water and a dirigible. In one scene in the second film, he also levitates two of his own Mooks and violently smashes them against each other for nearly killing Rick's son.
  • In Psychokinesis, the protagonist Shin Seok-heon gains telekinetic powers thanks to a Magic Meteor.
  • The super power/action film Push has several characters with this ability, who make creative use of it during gunfights and fistfights.
    • Interestingly, the name of the film has nothing to do with telekinesis (telekinetics are called Movers in the film). Pushing is actually a More than Mind Control ability.
    • The two main Movers in the film, Nick and Victor, are a fairly even match, although Victor is initially stronger as Nick hasn't had much practice with his abilities. During the climactic battle, Victor is able to hold off dozens of Mooks spraying him with gunfire by putting up telekinetic shields, typically using one hand to hold the shield and another to throw the shooters through the windows/walls. Victor and Nick are also seen augmenting their punches and kicks with telekinesis.
  • Star Wars: For all its spiritual bent, the vast majority of what we see the Force do is just lift, shove, choke, or crush things. But then it is called the Force.
  • Meba the Venusian from Supersonic Saucer had a minor version of this power as he used it to dial 999 from a phone box to call the police — although due to being a youngster, his power wasn't very strong (with him having to physically lift the phone off its holster).
  • Thelma: Thelma is capable of moving objects, vanishing them, Psychic Teleportation, levitating and starting fires with her mind. At first she can't control it, but can by the end of the film.
  • In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, the title character can use a staff of some kind to make rubble float in the air. He also uses this to destroy the tanks trying to shoot him.
  • X-Men Film Series
  • The Polish-French film The Young Magician has a boy named Peter discover that he has telekinesis. He is ostracized by his peers for being "weird" but befriends an aspiring cellist. Then the military loses a canister with a highly-volatile substance (think nitroglycerin) that threatens to destroy the entire city, and Peter's abilities are the only thing that can contain it. He has trouble focusing them, but his friend ends up talking him through it and inspiring him to focus enough to seal the leaking canister (with each drop causing a sizable explosion) and save the town. In the epilogue, he attends his friend's first public cello performance, then causes all the flowers in the room to fly to the stage.

    Gamebooks 
  • This is a power in the Lone Wolf gamebooks. Early on it's not the most important of Kai powers, as it is mostly used to open locks, disarm traps or cause small distractions, although there're opportunities for it to be useful in at least every book. It gets more and more awesome as the books go on with Nexus, the upgrade of Mind Over Matter: by Book 9, you can move objects with your mind, wade through toxic fumes and intense heat with little difficulty, and put out fires with your mind. It is never used offensively, however, Lone Wolf having plenty better options for that.

    Literature 
  • The Alterien series features a different kind of telekinesis. The Alteriens' telekinesis is based on the amount of energy one is able to project with the amount of intensity and force necessary to initiate movement. What they can move and at what duration is completely dependent upon the level of energy they have inside their bodies at the time.
  • In Adam R. Brown's Astral Dawn, the high spirits have psychokinesis. Their power is actually the projection of their energy directed by their thoughts.
  • In the Aunt Dimity series, Dimity will sometimes initiate a conversation by making her journal fly off the shelf in the study. She will also occasionally place Reginald so as to draw Lori's attention to something.
  • The title character of Stephen King's Carrie. It's a Puberty Superpower that she had as a child, but which she only really develops control over in her teenage years. She winds up using her powers to pull off a supernatural version of the Columbine massacre, killing almost everyone at her senior prom after a Deadly Prank pushes her over the edge and then burning down most of her town.
  • In John C. Wright's Chronicles of Chaos, one technique of power.
  • In Dorothy Gilman's The Clairvoyant Countess, Madame Karitska, teaching two psychics, has them turn pages in a book.
  • "Clockpunk and the Vitalizer" has a curious version in The Vitalizer, whose telekinetic powers only work on inanimate objects (hence his name: he "vitalizes" them).
  • In an unusual inversion of Puberty Superpower, everyone on the world of Timothy Zahn's A Coming Of Age has telekinesis until they hit puberty.
  • In Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, this is one of the expressions of "laran", which is possessed by the highly-evolved alien Chieri, some humans and their Half-Human Hybrid descendents. Very few humans can manifest this kind of power without the aid of natural or artificial "matrix crystals" (aka. "starstones"). However, a group of "laran"-gifted humans working with a powerful enough (usually artificial) matrix can level entire cities.
  • Discworld:
    • At one point, Rincewind the Wizzard needs to open a lock and uses Mind Over Matter to do so. However, it appears that it is affected by the laws of physics, as he has to be careful not to push too hard or his brain might start coming out of his ears.
    • The same series gives us an odd variant in the case of a witch named Miss Level. She was born with two bodies managed simultaneously by the same mind. One is killed during the events of A Hat Full of Sky; the other survives with a sort of full-body phantom limb syndrome. Given some coaching by Granny Weatherwax and the nature of belief on the Disc, she finds that she can use this sensation as a second body, essentially becoming this trope. This makes her "juggling twins" act rather impressive.
  • In The Dresden Files, Wizards and other magic users can achieve this. Harry Dresden, a young and still mostly inexperienced Wizard by the start of the serie, first utilizes wind magic to push or pull things as needed. As he gains experience, he learns to use kinetic energy, among other things, to control his environment with more finesse.
    • In another instance, his mentor Ebenezer McCoy appears to do this outright to choke a vampire who pissed him off.
    • Even further into the series, a slightly different iteration is used by divine beings and those worshiped as such. Rather than using magic to use telekinesis, they can use sheer might of will to subdue or kill other beings.
  • Dungeon Engineer: As a "Dungeon Core", Ike has control over the area around him, and this is one of the ways to express it.
  • One of the main powers of sufficiently strong telepaths in the Firebird Trilogy. The best of the best can even use telekinesis on themselves to control their own rate of fall.
  • Firestarter's main character could also do this, though it wasn't nearly as strong as her main power. Her mother also had some minor drug-induced telekinesis.
  • The titular protagonist of The Girl with the Silver Eyes, Katie, is telekinetic. The book involves her search for other children like herself.
  • Caine has this in Gone. He can lift and move incredibly heavy objects, "carry" something 80 feet, throw it farther. The same standards apply to people — he can use his power on them, as well. He can break an object or even a building with his mind (he made a church crumble in Book 1). Presumably he could do the same thing to a person, but he seems to prefer throwing them to their deaths instead, or just letting the other super-powered Coates kids deal with them. He can use it to propell himself through the air, although that is not revealed until Book 3. All any of it requires is subtle hand motions. He is one of the 3 most powerful mutants in the series.
  • Heralds of Valdemar: Telekinesis is a relatively rare Psychic Power, referred to as the Fetching Gift. Some Fetchers are also capable of teleporting objects vast distances, useful for conveying wartime missives to and from the front. The series has yet to feature a Fetching protagonist, so its precise abilities and limits have not been explored.
  • Trash in the novel Hidden Talents and its sequel True Talents, is telekinetic, but unaware of it. Because he doesn't know he has them, he can't control his powers, and they manifest by things flinging themselves across any room he happens to be in, causing him endless trouble when teachers and students at his school believe he's vandalizing classrooms and deliberately disrupting classes by throwing things. He ends up ostracized and alone at an alternative middle school, where no one wants to talk to him for fear of getting hit in the face. Once he accepts that he has powers, he does learn much better control.
  • Larry Niven's Gil Hamilton has a telekinetic arm, which manifested due to "phantom limb syndrome" after his real right arm was amputated. The imaginary arm is physically weak, but can touch anything that seems within arm's reach, even if it's really much further away. This includes reaching through solid barriers, manipulating objects in a live TV image, or sifting the dust in a live hologram of the lunar surface.
    • Also, the weakness of the lifting power doesn't make it useless. Gil performs a "floating cigarette trick" to pick up women at a bar, and later there's some tastefully implied Power Perversion Potential. In a less fun context, when Gil was captured and bound, he used the arm to reach into his captor's chest and stop his heart.
  • The Last Horizon: Telekinesis is a basic spell, though it's generally not as useful as more specialized spells. Unless you're Varic, who can casually do things on the fly that most people can't do with an hour's prep.
  • The Sorceresses of Rossak in the Legends of Dune prequels are able to do this. However, they mainly use their powers to suicide-bomb cymeks. The most powerful of them, Norma Cenva was actually able to rebuild her body after destroying it with a psychic blast, turning from dwarfish and unattractive into a stunning white-haired beauty. By the end of the Butlerian Jihad, many of the Sorceresses have sacrificed themselves to kill cymeks, while many more died from the mutated Synthetic Plague. By Sisterhood of Dune, only a dozen or so Sorceresses remain. The majority of the Sisterhood is made up of a new breed of women with different powers, who are the original Bene Gesserit. By the end of that novel, The Emperor has the rest executed for their part in a plot to render him sterile.
  • Largely averted in the Lensman universe — for all the Lensmen's other psionic talents and all the other cranking up to eleven this universe does, this is one capability they specifically do NOT have. On the other hand, the Arisians — their ultimate benefactors — have it in spades, and it's implied that the eventual goal of the Galactic Patrol (long after the canon events are complete) will be to develop independence of the need for physical weapons.
  • The Silicoids in Sergey Lukyanenko's Line of Delirium emit and manipulate focused EM fields, which they use for locomotion (being columns of solid rock), intraspecies communication, and object manipulation. Their early spaceships were propelled by the combined efforts of the crew. They got the idea of adding external drives from other races.
  • In Roald Dahl's Matilda, Matilda learns how to move small objects with her mind. But she can only lift small things and for only a short period of time. It's revealed that she loses the power at the end of the book, because she's been moved to tougher classes and doesn't have any brain space left over.
  • In Neogicia, there are five levels of Bio-Augmentation. Telekinesis is rare and usually shows up at the highest levels if it shows up at all, with emergence at the third level being considered preccocious. One of the elements that make the protagonist special is that she developed the talent at the lowest level.
  • In Ravenor, Patience Kys is a psyker who specializes in telekinesis. She wields a collection of handle-less knives, or “kineblades”, that she manipulates with her mind, and she can also use her powers in subtler ways like picking locks without a pick or “feeling” the contours of a room to locate secret doors. Ravenor himself can use telekinesis, most memorably to pin a man against a wall and squash him flat with sheer telekinetic force.
  • In Renegades, two prodigies, Ace Anarchy and Bandit, can use telekinesis, the latter by stealing it from the former, up to and including levitation. Ace in particular is said to be especially powerful, being able to uproot entire skyscrapers in his prime.
  • Anne Rice tends to use Psychic Powers as opposed to Functional Magic in her novels. In both The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches human psychics, spirits and vampires exhibit varying degrees of telekinetic powers. In the case of the vampires, it is the actual force that animates them, and accounts for their Super-Strength, Super-Reflexes and Super-Speed.
  • So very many times in Roswell High. It appears to be the basis of most of the aliens' powers. It's all about manipulating molecules — moving them, shifting them. Of course, it doesn't show itself like telekinesis all the time, but there are examples — like when they shove the molecules of a non-working car forward so that it moves.
  • Subverted in The Saga of Darren Shan. The main character's vampire mentor, Mr Crepsley, likes to use Super-Speed to snatch objects out of peoples' hands so quickly they don't notice him doing it, and snaps his fingers to draw their attention while doing so. Darren assumes he's using telekinesis for the first couple of books, and only finds out the truth when Crepsley catches him trying to make something fly by snapping his fingers.
  • Denny from Sanctuary is telekinetic. He mostly moves light objects like pens, until the battle with the ghost eater, when he draws on the mental equivalent of hysterical strength to rip a door off its hinges and slam it into the ghost eater, then drop a wardrobe on him, immobilizing him.
  • In Poul Anderson's Sargasso Of Lost Starships, the aliens. Fighting them includes flying spears.
  • Many Adepts in Jean Lorrah's Savage Empire are telekinetic.
  • In The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, Amy develops a telekinetic ability that lets her cause objects to float (or to become heavier than usual) and eventually to move them about at will. She also has a Flight ability that basically amounts to making herself float and then moving herself around telekinetically. In the sequel, The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School, Amy encounters another telekinetic whose preferred manifestation is to planes of force which she can move around to bludgeon or crush, or arrange into invisible stairways and walkways that give her Not Quite Flight.
  • Shade's Children: Drum's Change Talent. Interestingly, he was a muscular child fed steroids to grow even more huge and now much stronger physically than the average telekinetic.
  • In Shadow of the Conqueror, Lightbringers with the miracle of movement gain full telekinetic powers, which maxes out at about ten times the combined strength of their body. As with most of the light-based magic in he setting, the weakness of this ability is that it can't be used in darkness. Curiously, the Shade can use their lightblaring magic to move objects at a distance as well, though they're reliant on darkness rather than weakened by it.
  • In Shaman Blues, ghosts who have amassed enough emotional energy can influence the physical world in this fashion.
  • In Spoonbenders, Maureen Telemachus was a psychokinetic and would move objects during their demonstrations, an ability her son Frankie had inherited from her.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • Corran Horn, in the X-Wing Series and beyond, is the grandson of a Jedi and inherited various Force skills... but he can't use telekinesis nearly as easily as most Jedi, needing to absorb other energy first.
    • During Galaxy of Fear it is revealed that Tash Arranda is Force-Sensitive, but she has no idea how to use the Force and so it usually serves as Significance Sense. In Clones she starts developing her telekinetic skills, though even minor efforts tire her.
    • Ben mostly uses his telekinesis in very subtle ways throughout Star Wars: Kenobi, though keeping a dewback from landing on Annileen when he thinks no one is looking does make A'Yark suspicious. Later, when his cover is blown among the Tuskens, he throws two of them into sand dunes to keep from having to harm them permanently.
  • In Super Powereds, there are two telepaths/telekinetics (those two seem to go together) in the current HCP class. Mary is the more powerful (in fact, some think she's the most powerful telekinetic in the world). Alex is weaker, but he hates it when people call him a telepath or a telekinetic. As far as he's concerned, he's a Jedi, using the Force to sense emotions and move objects. Others just think he's a weirdo. Strangely, he may be more right than people think. Normal telekinetics are unable to affect things made of Pure Energy, but Alex can (especially when he gets pissed off at people calling him a telekinetic). Also, when the resident power-copier attempts to use his power the same way he just used Mary's, it doesn't work until Alex gets him to think of it as calling to the Force. Mary's mentor is Professor Esme Stone, an elderly woman who used to go by Emerald Hydra in her Hero days. She exhibits incredible control over hundreds of objects simultaneously, showing that Mary may have the potential to become great, but she still has much to learn. After Alice discovers her Gravity Master powers, she start to most frequently exhibit them in a way not dissimilar to this trope.
  • In the novella A Taste of Honey, Lucretia develops telekinetic powers at the age of eight due to her divine descent. Usually she uses it to make arrows fly where she wants them to, but she also lifts the heavy new gate of the Menagerie to assist the workers in raising it.
  • Anne McCaffrey's Talents series has telekinetics so powerful they can fold space for Psychic-type Mass Teleportation over light-years, thus making them the invaluable cornerstone of an interstellar civilization. They require outside energy sources to power their higher-grade uses of this ability, but that requirement gets de-emphasized with each book in the series and each generation of Talents to the point where it's practically a Magic Feather.
  • Tempest (2011): By the beginning of Tempest Revealed, Tempest has developed telekinesis. She uses it first to hold things in place and later to actually move things.
  • Robert Doru is the only spirit user to demonstrate this ability in the Vampire Academy series. He is a powerful telekinetic vampire.
  • Jasmine from The Vazula Chronicles has this ability, although it only works on small objects at close range. When the power users secretly meet up outside Bryford, Jasmine telekinetically clears a path through the snow and turns a snowdrift into a statue of a dragon.
  • In Christopher Stasheff's Warlock of Gramarye series, all the female witches on Gramarye have telekinesis (their male counterparts have flight and Psychic Teleportation instead).
  • In Wild Cards, minor telekinesis is one of the most common powers, but most can only levitate small items such as coins and paper clips. The Great And Powerful Turtle can lift battleships. But only in the safety of his armored "shell" does he feel comfortable enough to do so.
  • Animus dragons in Wings of Fire have the ability to control objects, which at a basic level lets them do this, though they are also capable of more powerful enchantments.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 4400: Mildred discovers she now has telekinesis.
  • The 4400:
    • In "Pilot", Orson Bailey develops telekinesis, becoming one of the first of the 4400 to exhibit powers. He can't control his telekinetic powers, which manifest when he is angry and intensify the angrier that he gets.
    • Isabelle develops telekinetic powers by the time that she is six months old. In "Wake-Up Call", she uses her ability to make Reverend Josiah shoot his elder son Gabriel and later to make his younger son Owen shoot himself. In "Voices Carry", after a motel manager is rude to Lily, Isabelle opens the cash register using telekinesis and Lily steals the money, which she and Richard desperately need.
    • At the end of "Mommy's Bosses", Richard develops telekinesis after going off the promicin inhibitor. To his surprise, he is able to move a coffee cup just by thinking about. In "The New World", he inadvertently causes numerous objects in his 4400 Center apartment to fly across the room as he is stressed about Lily's Rapid Aging. In "The Ballad of Kevin and Tess", Richard is still having difficulty focusing his ability to the point that he fails numerous times to place scrunched up balls of paper into a garbage can. However, Heather Tobey helps him to unlock his potential and he is able to harness his ability. He practices by mentally throwing knives against the wall.
    • In "Gone, Part I", having realized that Matthew Ross has no control over her, Isabelle lifts him up into the air and almost crushes his windpipe as a warning to leave her alone in future.
    • In "Gone, Part II", Isabelle uses her ability to induce a heart attack in Richard after he objects to her relationship with Shawn. However, she is hit by a wave of remorse and stops herself before her father can suffer any permanent harm.
    • In "Graduation Day", after Matthew Ross tries to prevent her from finding the member of the Nova Group who caused Shawn to go insane, Isabelle uses her telekinesis to induce a stroke. This time, she does not stop herself and Matthew dies within seconds.
    • In "Fifty-Fifty", when it becomes apparent that there is no other way to stop her, Richard uses his telekinesis to inject Isabelle with the substance that Tom was given by the woman from the future who posed as Sarah Rutledge in "Gone, Part II". She does not die as both Tom and Richard expected but she is rendered completely powerless.
    • In "Daddy's Little Girl", Richard's telekinesis is so finely attuned that he can stop the flow of blood to Isabelle's brain for several seconds, rendering her unconscious. He later pins Tom, Diana and Kyle to the walls and ceiling of the safe house where he has taken Isabelle.
  • Amazing Stories (2020): In "Signs Of Life" Wayne is able to halt an entire military convoy by raising a hand. Sara makes the soldiers escorting Lexi lower and keep down their guns with a thought as well.
  • Bethany Chaulk from the Angel episode "Untouched" has this power.
    Angel: What do we know about telekinesis?
    Wesley: Ah. Yes. The power of moving things with one's mind. [Beat] That's... pretty much it. The power of... moving... I-I'm better with demons, really.
  • Babylon 5:
    • Talia Winters developed telekinesis when her telepathic abilities were enhanced. Other "Teeks" are generally clinically insane, and the attempt to create a more stable telekinetic... didn't end well.
    • Lyta Alexander hints that she's way more advanced than others in this regard, capable of popping blood vessels in the victims' brains. Bester expresses doubt about her TK abilities, although this is reasonable because he knows about all of Psi Corps' failed attempts in this area. Lyta does however use her powers openly in front of Garibaldi (smashing a security camera) and G'kar (shattering the wrist restraints station security had her in).
    • The Technomages use Shadow technology to mimic these abilities. The Passing of the Techno-mages novel trilogy describes them in great detail. One of these involves simulating levitation by creating an invisible flying platform under the technomage, although they frequently add holo-illusions of a Magic Carpet or a dragon. Similar to a telekinetic, this requires constant concentration, as the tech only works as long as the technomage holds the "spell" in his or her mind. Technomages train from a young age to keep multiple "spells" in their minds.
  • All of the telepaths in Believe, with varying levels of strength. Bo, the most powerful of them, even manages to redirect a lightning strike during a storm.
  • Witches and Warlocks on Bewitched use this power frequently. Indeed, objects being floated around by characters like Tabitha are a common threat to The Masquerade that Darren and Samantha have going on.
  • Cally from Blake's 7, a telepath in canon, manifested it once under conditions of EXTREME stress, and not entirely voluntarily.
  • Prue and Paige Halliwell in Charmed as well as some of their ancestors and descendants. People that are half-whitelighter, i.e. Paige, have telekinetic orbing, a combination of the orbing and telekinesis powers.
    • Billie Jenkins also has this as a power. It had also become very common power in the later seasons for most witches.
    • Macy Vaughn's power from the 2018 reboot.
  • Doctor Who:
    • As if the Weeping Angels didn't have enough powers, they also can apparently use a version of telekinesis to short out lights. While this might not sound very deadly, you have to remember that being unable to see an Angel even for a split second easily gives it enough time to kill you (and if there isn't a light source, you're going to be blind for longer than a split second). They can reach a person standing several feet away and kill them in the time it takes for someone to blink, after all...
    • The Doctor himself temporarily gains TK-like powers thanks to the Archangel Network and every single human being on Earth thinking about him with hope at the same exact moment. He not only restores his youth (having been artificially aged by the Master) but uses TK to form a bubble around him that blocks the Master's laser screwdriver. When the Master turns to fire at the Doctor's companions, the Doctor knocks the screwdriver out of the Master's hand from half a room away. He also uses it to float. Given the nature of the ability, the Doctor only has it for less than a minute.
  • In Fate: The Winx Saga, as a Mind Fairy one of Farah Dowling's powers allows her to move objects such as opening and closing doors and throwing a Burned One across the room in battle.
  • An early First Wave episode has a villain of the week with telekinesis. Surprisingly, for a show about aliens creating genetically-engineered Half-Human Hybrids and downloading their minds into them, the character is human. According to a government agent, her power first manifested when her father had a horse-drawn cart fall on him back in Ukraine. She lifted the heavy cart with barely an effort. Interestingly, she mostly uses her power to torture people to death by increasing air pressure around them. She nearly suffers a Karmic Death when Cade tricks her into entering a hyperbaric chamber and turns up and then down the pressure, while she's throwing random objects at him at high speeds with her mind. Even Mabus, the alien leader with enormous Psychic Powers, didn't have powers like that.
  • Some of the more powerful Hexenbiests in Grimm are capable of this, although they don't use it much. It's mentioned off-handedly that this is due to their intimate connection to the "primal forces". After getting her powers back, Adalind is surprised at the extent at which she's able to do this, to the point of getting a Verrat soldier to shoot himself (although she claims to have been trying to get him to drop the gun). Her infant daughter (3/4 Hexenbiest and 1/4 Royal) is able to manipulate objects remotely without any effort, besides other powers. Juliette is also able to do this after becoming a Hexenbiest (according to another Hexenbiest, a very powerful one), forcing a Manticore to stab himself with his own sting and exploding a car engine in a fit of anger. Later, Juliette/Eve uses telekinesis as her primary mode of attack, either forcing enemies' heads to explode or throwing them up in the air and then slamming them down. She even gets to have a telekinetic fight with Conrad Bonaparte, a full Zauberbiest, who proves to be too strong even for her. Meanwhile, Adalind's daughter Diana is able to kill Renard's girlfriend from half a city away by suffocating her with her own bedsheet.
  • Guardian: The Lonely and Great God: Kim Shin and Wang Yeo, being a goblin and a reaper respectively, have telekinesis which they use for their jobs. They also use them to throw things at each other when one gets on the other's nerves.
  • The very first power stolen by Sylar on Heroes. He nabs several others before and during the series, but flinging stuff at things remains his hallmark all-rounder.
    • Sylar also manages to display a version of telekinesis used as a cutting weapon.
    • Sylar actually uses his telekinesis in an unusually diverse number of ways. Practical applications include personal levitation, augmenting his physical strength (like Vader, he's fond of the one-armed throat choke), shielding his body against physical attacks, a Barehanded Blade Block, and a ranged slashing attack (which can actually miss and hit further away objects)
    • Sylar is so deeply associated with telekinesis that when he finally mimicked flight moments before killing Nathan, many viewers believed it was also just a clever use of his telekinesis.
    • Sylar also managed to hold onto telekinesis after he recovered from the shanti virus. When he recovered, he was only able to retain telekinesis and his original power of intuitive aptitude.
    • Sylar's biological father has the same core ability as his son (i.e. to sense how things work and steal powers). He also manages to "acquire" telekinesis from some pool soul. Peter Petrelli gets telekinesis from being around Sylar due to his empathic ability. When Arthur steals his powers, he gains this as well. In fact, he is much more proficient in them than Peter ever was, using telekinesis to snap Maurie's neck with a wave.
  • Sydney Novak on I Am Not Okay With This can move objects with her mind, with enough power to topple several trees in a shockwave blast. In a manner akin to Carrie White, the strength of her power is tied to her emotional state; under normal conditions, she can't do much more than break open a lock, with her greatest feats coming when she's angry or stressed-out.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...": Lestat de Lioncourt closes the gates with telekinesis to prevent the priest from escaping.
    • "The Thing Lay Still": Lestat (who's in a different room and cannot see the front door from where he's standing) shuts his eyes and concentrates to remove the doorknob so that his mistress Antoinette Brown can enter his townhouse.
  • Lab Rats: In the last episode of the first season, Chase Davenport unlocks his hidden bionic ability, molecular-kinesis, a telekinetic power that allows him to manipulate the mass around an object to make it float in the air.
  • Legion (2017): David Haller displays a more crazed and destructive variant of telekinesis similar to Carrie or Tetsuo. Although once he frees his mind from Farouk, he can use telekinesis more calmly and efficiently like Jean Grey or his father Xavier.
  • Logan's Run:
    • In "The Innocent", Lisa is telekinetic.
    • In "Crypt", Dexter Kim has the power of telekinesis.
  • Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: One of the first mermaid powers revealed that the parent series didn't have was the power of telekinesis. A close-up of Lyla using that power on a picture cube shows faintly glowing vapor until she withdraws it, implying that it's still an extension of their water-based powers.
  • Mayfair Witches: Rowan learns she is capable of telekinesis by unwittingly causing an aneurysm through rupturing her boss's artery, seeing right inside his brain as she does so. It also makes her realize she'd earlier caused a girl whom she fought with in her childhood to have a seizure this way as well. She also rescues Tessa by killing multiple witch hunters this way too.
  • Finn from Misfits gained this power during the storm. However, it requires extreme effort and concentration just to move a small object across a short distance. When panicked or angered, however, he is able to throw large and heavy objects across a room with little effort.
  • Courteney Cox's character on Misfits of Science had this as her superpower.
  • Uncle Martin on My Favorite Martian could move objects on incredibly obvious strings by pointing at them.
  • The Outer Limits (1995):
    • In "The Choice", Aggie Travers' telekinetic powers begin to develop when she is about ten. They typically manifest when she is angry or upset, most often when other children make fun of her. Her school suspends her as a result of the numerous injuries to these children which Aggie denies causing. Unsure of how to handle their troubled daughter, her parents Joe and Leslie hire a nanny named Karen Ross. What they don't realize is that Karen was sent by a secret organization of women who possess the same telepathic powers, which diminish as they grow older. Karen is able to teach Aggie to channel and control her powers.
    • In "Monster", the US government is conducting experiments with people possessing telekinetic powers, whom they employ to assassinate foreign leaders who pose a threat to the United States and its interests.
    • In "The Shroud", Marie Wells is impregnated with a clone of Jesus created using samples taken from the Shroud of Turin. After studying the clone's DNA, Dr. Gail Cowlings compares it to that of a man who displayed telekinetic powers on a small scale. She theorizes that the original Jesus was a one in ten billion genetic aberration whose powers were seen as supernatural in ancient times, which led to him being considered the Son of God. Reverend Thomas Tilford rejects the notion, proclaiming that it was and is nothing less than a miracle. While still in her womb, Marie's unborn son is able to move the toys in his nursery so that they surround his mother.
    • In "Revival", Luke possesses the power of telekinesis thanks to an advanced piece of technology disguised as a Bible. He uses it to take Sheriff O'Brien's gun and shoot him with it in an attempt to frame Ezra Burnham for murder.
  • Pandora: Tom discovers that in addition to telepathy, he has mild telekinetic abilities.
  • In Power Rangers in Space, Kerovians have telekinetic powers. Andros seems to think the skill can be learned by any human (despite clearly being an alien, Andros considers himself "human": in the Power Rangers universe, "human" seems to be a generic term for non-monstrous sentient bipeds), though his sister Karone never shows any evidence of possessing them outside of a flashback to her youth.
  • In the Red Dwarf episode "Quarantine", a holovirus gives Rimmer telekinetic powers.
  • In The Secret World of Alex Mack, the title character has this as one of her powers, and was the one used most often.
  • The Ori and nearly-ascended beings in the Stargate-verse.
    • The Goa'uld have experimented with creating Hok'tar — humans with some Ancient abilities to use as hosts. Cassandra, at one point, is able to manipulate EM fields enough to levitate a magnetic chess piece. Nirrti's experiments with an Ancient DNA sequencer result in several mutants, some of which use telekinesis (one uses it to kill her). One of the best examples is Kalek, an artificial human created by Anubis. His telekinetic abilities are very advanced, and he uses them to deflect bullets. For bonus points, he's played by Neil Jackson, who went on to play Victor, the "evil" telekinetic in Push.
  • Stargirl (2020): Brainwave is capable of stopping things like cars with just his mind.
  • There are a half-dozen examples in Star Trek.
  • Eleven on Stranger Things has this among her many supernatural abilities. Some of her more impressive feats include launching a van into the air, dragging a railroad car across the ground, exploding the brains of government agents sent to recapture her, and telekinetically slamming the bedroom door on her adoptive dad when he interrupts a makeout session with her boyfriend.
  • In the Supernatural episode "Nightmare", Max Miller, one of Azazel's special children, could lift objects with his mind. Demons and angels have this power too. In the later seasons, Sam and Dean spend a lot of time being slammed into walls because of it, especially when the guy doing the slamming is Crowley.
  • The protagonist from the failed SyFy pilot Three Inches could move objects with his mind but only, well, three inches.
  • The Thundermans has main characters Max and Phoebe. This is their most commonly used power.
  • A natural ability of Vardians in Tracker (2001). Often accompanied by a flick of the head in the direction the item was being thrown.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959):
    • In "The Prime Mover", Jimbo Cobb has possessed the power of telekinesis all of his life. When he was young, he assumed that everyone had this ability. He stopped using his ability as it frequently got him into trouble in school and gave him headaches. He is forced to reveal it when a car turns over outside of the Happy Daze Café, which he owns with his friend Ace Larson, and there is no other way to save the people inside. Ace sees the possibilities of Jimbo's power and the two of them take a trip to Las Vegas, where Jimbo uses his ability to move the dice as Ace pleases.
    • In "Black Leather Jackets", Scott, Steve and Fred have telekinetic powers.
  • In Ultraman Ginga, Tarou's use of psychokinesis (similar to Seven's) suggests that other Ultramen have the same power.
  • In Ultraseven, Dan Moroboshi used this power every now and then in human form, more often in his natural alien form. By the time the events in the first episode of Ultraman Leo left him without the ability to transform, this became the way he could weaken and even physically move kaijuu so that Leo could finish them off.

    Music 
  • The music video for David Guetta's "Titanium" features a telekinetic teenage boy (the video starts with the aftermath of his powers wrecking a school corridor), played by Ryan Lee of Super 8.
  • The music videos for M83's "Midnight City", "Reunion" and "Wait".

    Pinball 
  • The magna-save mechanism on certain pinball tables, like Black Knight, can use magnetic force to levitate the ball away from outlanes and the outhole, safely putting it back over the flippers to keep it alive.
  • In the virtual pinball adaption of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, developed by Zen Studios, E.T. himself can levitate the ball to save it from draining after using his powers to heal a withered chrysanthemum, done by spinning a flag 100 times. He can also use his levitation powers to lock a ball for a dedicated levitation mutliball mode, where the balls hang in mid-air and drop down directly into the playfield.
  • The mini-playfield in Twilight Zone, where the player uses flipperless "magna-flips" to battle The Power.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Champions has a Telekinesis power set.
  • Spanners in Continuum can develop this, among other psionic abilities, although most spanners consider it window dressing compared to their ability to travel in time and space at will.
  • Dark Heresy gives psykers a telekinesis discipline. This being Warhammer 40,000, it doesn't just allow one to move items with their mind, it allows players to catch projectiles out of mid-air ala Neo from the Matrix, form improvised armour, crush the life out of enemies, create and use a melee weapon "as little as a molecule thick" in addition to the more mundane magic missile-esque force barrage and the usual moving stuff around.
    • Rogue Trader's basic Telekinesis technique is even called Mind Over Matter.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • There's a fifth level arcane spell simply called "Telekinesis", and a bunch of more specialized versions.
    • The psionic powers, present from the first edition but more formalized in the second with The Complete Psionics Handbook, has "psychokinesis" as a whole discipline, one of the most versatile.
  • Exalted: She Who Lives In Her Name has an entire Charm tree branching off Mind-Hand Manipulation. It starts as the ability to hold people with your mind and eventually goes through the creation of whirling death zones of random debris around you to the power to crush souls.
  • One of the potential origins from Gamma World (7th Edition) is Telekinetic.
  • Telekinesis advantage in both GURPS. Also a whole line of spells, beginning with the Apportation.
  • Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution: Telekinetics and, to a lesser extent, technokinetics. The more powerful they are, the more weight and objects they can manipulate.
  • Psychic powers in Rocket Age include telekinesis, among the many other options.
  • Starblazers Adventures, based on the 1970s-80s British science fiction Comic Book. Telekinesis is a specific type of Psionic skill available to aliens and mutants. Characters must spend a Fate point each time they affect a different object. Since the game occurs in a star travel setting, the rules note that telekinesis is easier in zero gravity.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade has this in the form of the Thaumaturgy path Movement of the Mind, which allows the vampire to fly and manipulate objects at range.
  • As is appropriate for a ghost game, Wraith: The Oblivion has this in the form of Outrage, which allows a wraith to affect the physical from the afterlife. It starts with writing in dust and flipping switches, and ends with being able to rend someone's being with the raw force of the user's rage.

    Theater 

    Toys 

    Web Animation 
  • Love of the S*n: The Operators can create telekinetic field-bubble things that Michael uses multiple times to grab Charger Block.
  • RWBY: Glynda Goodwitch possesses this powerset. Her semblance is Telekinesis, and she primarily uses it for repair and construction work. She is shown repairing a massive hole in volume 2 in a matter of seconds.
  • The Strong Bad Email "super powers" reveals that the blue ornament on his mask grants Strong Bad telekinetic abilities... that extend only to opening beer bottles. He confesses it's not much, but apparently it's "a big hit with the ladies", and he soon figures out how to apply his powers to popping off Homestar's hat.

    Webcomics 
  • Average Joe: Joe has this as one of his many powers, which seems to be limited by his ability to concentrate at the time.
  • Bits Fair: Irya and Ida's dad both exhibit telekinetic powers, which are called "mindlymoving" in the setting.
  • Daniel: Daniel is a vampire who can move objects without touching them. He also uses his ability to float for added dramatic effect.
  • DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: Psychokinesis, one of the A-ranker abilities, lets the user use nearby objects as projectiles.
  • El Goonish Shive:
    • Grace can do this, with efficiency depending on her current form, up to exploding stuff when she's really upset, but she isn't all that good at controls and used it only in critical situations. On the other hand, in some forms she can and do use it for flying.
    • Elliot's Kamehame Hadoken appears to be a short-range nondirectional telekinetic impact. Swallowing him whole is a bad idea.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: As Antimony's powers develop, she gains the ability to affect the physical world while projecting her mind through the ether. Her mother and Jack, while infected with an etheric parasite, were able to fly through this.
  • Homestuck:
    • Quite a few of the Trolls have some form of Psychic Powers, but Sollux and Aradia are the only ones with telekinesis. Both of them prefer to use their abilities to fight rather than allocating a specific weapon to their Strife Specibus.
    • Witch of Space powers involve shrinking and expanding objects, as well as being able to accelerate them to high velocities. God-Tiered Witch of Space powers let you do this to planets.
  • Hooves of Death: A natural ability of Unicorns, which is part of the reason for their incredible combat potential against the hordes of the undead. They're shown using it to pull the pins of grenades, lower fussy children down from trees during a rescue, or to throw Hellhounds over the horizon.
  • Sarilho: Telekinesis is apparently the most common Talent in the Meditan Empire.
  • The Greenhouse: The demon 'Red' is insubstantial and Invisible to Normals, but can use telekinesis. Doing so requires precious power, though, and so she's limited to relatively subtle manipulations: causing objects to fall is her most common tactic, but she also moves a manhole cover out of the way, and later prepares to hurl a shard of glass horizontally before being interrupted. Luckily for her host Mica (the target of almost all of these attacks), her aim is crap, though whether because she's trying to only injure or because it's genuinely hard to hit an aware and moving target this way is not clear.

    Web Original 
  • The Academy of Superheroes has several. Breaker is notable in that she was a very weak teke who used her powers to emulate wuxia-style martial arts i.e. high leaps, slow falls etc.
  • Chakona Space features Bluepaw skunktaurs who are usually very powerful telekinetics. A team of Bluepaw skunktaurs can combine their abilities to do industrial level lifting.
  • Dreamscape: Telekinesis is probably Melissa's most frequently-used power, the same goes for her (former) master, Melinda.
    • Keedran can either do so using Eye Beams (in her monster form), or just good ol' telekinesis. (in her true form)
  • DSBT InsaniT: Portica has telekinesis.
  • The Omega Universe has several telekinetics (Tempest, for example). Magic users can use telekinetic "rotes" i.e. spells that briefly emulate telekinesis.
  • Yoda in Revenge of Staszek is too cool to just put papers in drawers with his hands.
  • SCP Foundation
    • SCP-2014 ("Zsar Magoth"). SCP-2014 has the power of telekinesis with a range of up to 24 meters. He has used it to help a skater pull off impressive maneuvers and to manipulate a pen for the purpose of writing.
    • SCP-2757 ("Dr. Wondertainment's Projector Fantastico™"). When the SCP-2757 projector is used with the film SCP-2757-1e The Valiant Crusaders, one of the powers gained by the experimental subjects is telekinesis.
  • The inspiration for this ironic "Teach the Controversy" t-shirt
  • In the Whateley Universe, there are enough kids with Psychic Powers at Whateley Academy that there is an entire department offering classes in this. The teachers in the department are also psychic, so a lot of the characters have Mind over Matter abilities. Some of them do the Superman thing using said abilities, while others have the Jean Grey package, although no one in this universe has those levels of power. Slightly subverted, in that there is lots of discussion about how it works, and what the power limitations are, and so on.
  • The retelling/sequel of the text-based game What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf? features a little girl displaying telekinetic power.
  • In Worm, several variations of this power are represented:

    Real Life 
  • Magnets can pull, push, and even levitate other objects with a magnetic field without the two objects touching each other via an invisible magnetic field that transmits their energy.
  • A gadget known as the Myo Armband is able to control electronic devices from a distance without touching them based on gestures within the user’s arm.
  • Some technology, including toys, can move and push objects via brain signals transmitted into it via a headband worn around the user of the device’s head.
  • VR technology is advanced enough to allow an individual’s brainwaves to move virtual objects without the items being touched in some simulations.

Alternative Title(s): Telekinesis, Psychokinesis

Top

Yuriko Omega

Vengeful survivor-graduate of a secret paramilitary telekinetic research program.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (3 votes)

Example of:

Main / HeroUnit

Media sources:

Report