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Psychic Powers
alt title(s): Psychic Power
"The Force, is where a Jedi gets his power... it's an energy-field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together."
— Obi-wan Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Hope

"You know what we call that? Mind taking, baby!! Accept no substitutes!"
— Mentok the Mind Taker, Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law

Telepathy, clairvoyance, pyrokinesis — the powers are supernatural, but the names are scientific, which is good enough for soft Sci Fi. Pointy-eared elves mumbling ancient spells on shiny spaceships would be incongruous; pointy-eared aliens reading minds on shiny spaceships doesn't raise any eyebrows.

In general, the more powerful and dramatic the psychic, the softer the Sci Fi. The extreme cases are largely confined to the horror and superhero genres (with exceptions, such as Star Wars), but the weakest powers can crop up even in mainstream shows.

In order of increasing power, the standard abilities are:

  • Aura Vision varying in power from just visable to telling you about all about a person and their life Aura Vision can encompas a wide variey of other sensing powers.

  • Clairvoyance/Clairaudience — also called TeleSense, Remote Viewing, Remote Sensing, Extra-Sensory Perception or ESP. Seeing (and sometimes hearing, or using other senses, including ones that aren't part of the standard package) far-away places, localizing specific persons one concentrates on, usually involves a trance state; the amount of control over what is seen can vary wildly, depending on the talent and training of the psychic and how the power works in your 'verse.
  • Precognition — seeing the future in prophetic visions, sometimes in allegorical pictures. Often leads to a Prophecy Twist or self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • Postcognition — seeing things that happened in the past. Often happens at crime scenes and may be considered a subset of clairvoyance.
    • In Parapsychology, this is also known as "retrocognition"
    • A more limited version of this is called Psychometry, or object reading, which "reads" the past of an object. Sometimes also includes aspects of Empathy, by picking up an imprint of strong emotions from the object left by the person who last handled said object. Can include sensing the "auras" of places, too, especially if something violent happened there recently.
    • Another fairly common variant is sensing the memories of one's ancestors or (in universes with reincarnation) past lives, similar to Genetic Memory.
  • Empathy — the talent of The Empath
  • Telepathy — mind reading, can sometimes also transmit thoughts or implant suggestions, etc. Telepathy is the psychic power most commonly attributed to aliens or "advanced" humans.
  • Telekinesis/Psychokinesis — moving physical objects by pure willpower. Can range from atoms to paperclips to cars or, in extreme cases, whole planets. Specialized expressions of it:
  • Teleportation — with or without your clothes
    • A subset is Apportation — the ability to transport objects or people from location A to B without transporting yourself. A bit like the transporter in Star Trek. Usually the psychic will either call things to him or has to touch them to send them away to someplace else. If he's really powerful, he can use Clairvoyance instead and watch both target locations from afar while physically being in location C.

The first five powers are purely internal. There's no evidence they're being used apart from the occasional Psychic Nosebleed (and of course, the stance). The remaining powers have much more obvious effects. However, all these powers have stronger versions, found generally at the softer end of sci-fi. That is, strong clairvoyance is as good as X-Ray Vision, or even a Crystal Ball. Strong telepathy allows for complete Mind Control. Strong telekinesis or apportation can become a means of saying You Will Not Evade Me, and so on. The ultimate manifestation of psychic power is the ability to just make your thoughts into reality. As generally portrayed, all of these powers display No Conservation Of Energy.

Stories can have both Psychic Powers and Functional Magic, but they'll usually be treated as fundamentally different.

Compare Ki Attacks and Functional Magic for other genre's "special powers." See also Mind Over Manners.

Examples

Anime and Manga
  • A number of the characters in Mobile Suit Gundam are a form of psychic called "Newtype", which gives them abilities ranging from limited telepathy to the ability to infuse their Humongous Mecha with the souls of the dead for a final attack.
    • And yet Word Of God from Tomino clearly states they are not Espers.
  • Most of the witch powers in Witch Hunter Robin are standard Psychic Powers, and are sometimes referred to in this fashion. One character uses psychometry, while Robin herself is a pyrokinetic. Telekinesis, projective empathy and psychic healing were all demonstrated by various witches.
  • The Rynax in Kurau Phantom Memory can sense each other's presence. In the Distant Finale, the human Kurau can even still perceive the return of her lost Rynax as Christmas' pair.
  • Read Or Die has an interesting variant: Paper Masters have the ability to telekinetically control paper.
  • While magecraft is something you can learn with the right requirements, psychic powers in Nasuverse are abnormalities that generally only last one generation. That being said, they have Empathy, Telepathic Suggestion, and Teleportation (well, close). One character has the double-whammy of Clairvoyance coupled with Telekinesis.
  • The Diclonius in Elfen Lied can telekinetically lift objects, as well as rip people apart with a thought.
    • Alma from the game {{F.E.A.R.}} can do the same thing, albeit on a MUCH greater scale.
  • Psychic powers are a normal part of the future in Zettai Karen Children, but the only ones who have it at a high enough level to be destructive/heroic are the titular heroes — three ten-years-old girls. Kaoru has telekinesis, Aoi has teleportation and Shiho has psychometry.
    • There's also the Big Bad, who's so powerful that no antipsychic countermeasures are effective against him. He's also not limited to one type of ability.
  • On Pokemon, one of the 17 elemental types is Psychic.
    • Ironically, many of the most impressive psychic displays from the anime were displayed by Psyduck, who, despite his name, is in no way a Psychic Pokemon, just pure Water. Of course, Psyduck's abilities would make him nigh unstoppable if it weren't for the fact that he's so poorly trained he can't even swim.
  • In Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure, psychic abilities are present in the form of Stands — (usually) humanoid ethereal bodies whose powers range from the typical (clairvoyance, pyrokinesis) to the rare (time manipulation, age alteration, preventing truth-telling) to the utterly... well... bizarre (summoning rods — as in the urban legend skyfish, creating deadly viruses, trapping people and objects in paper).
  • The titular Geass abilities in Code Geass are basically an assortment of all kinds of Psychic Powers: suggestion, mind reading, pseudo-"time stopping", memory manipulation, precognition (Nunnaly in an alternate manga)... take your pick. It apparently depends on each individual who is granted a Geass how exactly it'd work in their case.
  • Cyborg 009, in which Cyborg 001 is a baby with psychic powers and Cyborg 005 is an empath. Also, a Quirky Miniboss Squad is composed ofonly espers.
  • The espers in Suzumiya Haruhi supposedly have psychic powers, although it's really more like in a Magical Girl-way. As a matter of fact, Kyon asks Koizumi to lift a cup of coffee with telekinesis to which Koizumi replies "My powers aren't like that". What they can do is enter the Phantom Zone, fly around in cool energy bubbles and shoot fireballs.
  • Kotone Himekawa from the To Heart anime sports both prophetic and telekinetic powers, thus causing the general student body to shun her for them.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima has mind-reader Nodoka and a recent villain named Homura with pyrokinesis and possibly a type of psychokinesis (she's been seen moving objects apperently with her mind).
  • Several characters in Yu Yu Hakusho. Kazuma Kuwabara has had postcognitive dreams, can perceive ghosts, and off-handedly mentions that the reason he's so popular in high school now is because he predicted an earthquake. His sister, Shizuru, is much more powerfully clairvoyant and can actually see ghosts. Hiei's also granted minor clairvoyance by his Jagan, and he's Pyrokinetic. The dub also refers to Genkai and the various residents of Mushiyori City affected by the Makai Tunnel as psychics.
  • In School Rumble, the Tsukamoto sisters are psychics. Older sister Tenma is telekinetic and can bend spoons, younger sister Yakumo is an empath who can read the minds of any guys interested in her. Tenma's powers aren't used a lot, but Yakumo's empathy is vital in her Character Development since she's Blessed With Suck. Also, they can both see spirits.
  • The Five Star Stories has "Divers", who are descended from genetically altered Super Soldiers from an ancient civilization. "Para Divers" have telepathy, clairvoyance & precognition, "Force Divers" have telekinesis & a precious few even have both. There are also "Bayias", people who possess both Diver powers & physically enhanced "Headdliner" abilities. The fact that psychic powers are just a futristic-sounding kind of Functional Magic is fully acknowleged in the series, however & these people are often reffered to simply as sorcerors.

Comic Books

Films
  • The Force in Star Wars includes many of these, most notably telekinesis, empathy, precognition, and mind control.
    • These include telepathy, as when Vader is able to talk to Luke telepathically, or when Luke is able to call for help to Leiah on Bespin.
    • Don't forget electrokinesis (i.e. "Force Lightning").
      • The Star Wars Extended Universe (EU) takes these powers, and runs with them beyond ridiculous— up to and including the "Force Storm," which creates a wormhole that can destroy entire fleets of ships.
  • The psychics in Scanners not only control thoughts, they can alter your biological functions (heartrate, etc.) and really powerful ones can make Your Head A Splode. Spawned a series of films of increasingly lower quality.
  • In the movie version of Hellboy, Abe Sapien can determine the past and nature of people of people and objects, usually by touching them.
  • In one of the Friday The Thirteenth movies, Jason gets resurrected accidentally by a telekinetic girl. Naturally, they have a climactic showdown.
  • Carrie.
  • Firestarter (see below)
    • Jeepers, just say "Stephen King, 'nuff said." Virtually every Stephen King novel or film, is simply about someone with absurd psychic powers (those ones which aren't about black magic or the occult).
  • In Starship Troopers, the telepath Carl plays a small but pivotal role.
    • He shows up again in a much larger role in the vaugely related TV series and as noted in that section his powers are stronger and more varied.
  • In Serenity, River Tam's psychic powers are finally confirmed.
  • In The Black Hole, Yvette Mimieux's character had a telepathic link to a robot.
  • Beneath The Planet Of The Apes had telepathic Mutants living under the ruins of New York.
  • The telepath Kuato and various other mutants in Total Recall.
  • The lame superhero film Zoom has a hot red-headed telekinetic teen (hmm, where did they get that idea?) and the Invisible Man also develops "mindsight".
  • Samara Morgan and her Japanese counterpart Sadako Yamamura, from the The Ring films wield all these abilities, and then some, to tremendous effect. However, in contrast to the novel version (see below) their powers are more sedate.
  • Push. The premise that people are born with different powers, and each are given a shorthand term for whatever power they are born with:
    • Pushers are able to use Mind Control. Really, it's More Than Mind Control, since it works by implanting and overwriting memories.
    • Wipers are able to erase certain parts of a person's memory.
    • Movers are telekinetic.
    • Shifters are Masters Of Illusion, allowing them to morph any object of their choice, though it seems the object does have to be of the same relative size of the object it's being shifted to, and it's temporary.
    • Bleeders Make Me Wanna Shout.
    • Stitchers have Healing Hands, albeit very painful, and capable of working in reverse.
    • Sniffers can see where any object has every been and who's used it. They get their name as their ability works literally by sniffing the object, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
    • Watchers predict the future.
    • Shadows can cancel out Sniffers. Extremely powerful ones can cancel out Watchers.
  • The Secretof NIMH has some psychic powers going on. Nicodemus is clearly shown to have at least low-level telekinetic abilities, and at the end of the movie Mrs. Brisby's Gemstone Necklace activates, and she's able to move a cinder block hundreds of times her weight several feet.

Gamebooks
  • Lone Wolf and the other Kai are essentially Psychic warrior monks, not unlike the Jedi. The various Kai skills are nearly all Psychic Powers, ranging from clairvoyance/danger sense, resistance to poison and hostile environment, psychic defense/attacks, animal empathy, and telekinesis.

Literature
  • Stephen King's The Dead Zone: clairvoyance and precognition.
  • The book and subsequent movie Firestarter (1984) features a couple who as students took part in what was secretly an MK-ULTRA-style government experiment and were subjected to drugs that gave them psychic powers (or activated latent powers): telepathic hypnosis (father) and minor telekinesis (mother). Years later, their daughter turns out to have strong pyrokinetic powers, along with minor clairvoyance and enough telekinesis to jimmy a pay phone. Features a lot of PsychicNosebleeds from the father whenever he tries to "push" suggestions into the minds of others.
    • Again: "Stephen King, 'nuff said" (above).
  • Julian May's Galactic Milieu/Pliocene Exile series had a detailed scientific classification of these, and high end powers including intergalactic teleportation.
  • The Dune universe has the sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit, who through a genetic breeding program and the Spice drug have developed strong psychic powers, most notably pre- and post-cognition, bio-PK and telepathy. The end products of that program, Paul and Leto II, have precognition powerful enough to forsee the destiny of all humanity. The Navigators also use drug-induced psychic powers to make Faster Than Light Travel practical.
  • Coils (1980) by Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen features a whole team of psychics selected by a Corrupt Corporate Executive because of their mental powers. These include a female telepath, a bio-PK (a former faith-healer who can heal or kill anyone with his mind... except himself, and who dies from a heart attack, a female telekinetic, and the protagonist, a machine empath who can control machines and even "dive" into the global computer network.
  • The Psi-Man series by Peter David is about a powerful psychic sought by the Government as a human weapon.
  • The Rowan and Pegasus series by Anne McCaffrey revolved around the Talents, the world's first real, proven psychics who quickly become the cornerstone of the world's economy, and later the foundation of a galactic civilization. Their powers run the gamut of those listed here, and are inheritable.
    • They're present as well, on a lower level, in the Dragonriders Of Pern books — at least as far as humans go. Lessa is never explicitly called telepathic, but her ability to "lean" on people and influence their behavior is a known quantity.
  • Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, and the Tom Cruise film loosely based on it, concern the problems of precognition.
  • Appears several times in Larry Niven's Known Space universe. The Kzin have a telepathic subspecies, the Grogs have powerful telepathy and Mind Control (which, being immobile, they use to draw prey into their mouths), and several psychic humans have shown up, particularly Gil the ARM, who has a telekinetic third limb. Teela Brown was orginally implied to have "psychic luck", but this is deconstructed and left ambiguous in later stories. Matt Keller had Plateau Eyes which could either make you really not notice him, or completely fascinate you.
  • Many of the Wild Cards characters have Psychic Powers — in fact the case has been made in the books that nearly all of the super-powers displayed are actually psychic in origin or were caused by people having unconsciously bio-kinetically reshaped their bodies during their transformation. The Takisians are also ruled by a caste of telepaths.
  • Mindspeech: The Animorphs equivalent is "thought-speak"; every Andalite uses it, seeing as they have no mouths, as do the Animorphs.
  • The Wheel Of Time:
    • Wolfbrothers can communicate mentally with wolves.
    • A few of the Aes Sedai also have prophetic seizures (they are otherwise treated more as witches). There are also "Dark Prophecies", but these are not discussed in much detail.
  • In the Sector General universe, all species with psi abilities receive the classification of V regardless of physical type.
  • John Carter Of Mars and his fellow Barsoomians used telepathy to control their riding thoats.
  • Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination revolve around telepathy and psychic teleportation, respectively.
  • Fred Saberhagen's Berserker universe has the Carmpans, with the Framing Story being narrated by the Third Historian who has the power to sense events throughout time and space. Then there are the Carmpan Prophets of Probability who can predict more immediate events.
  • Piers Anthony's Mute is about a society of Mutants who occasionally (and very rarely) develop useful psychic powers; interestingly, it's not limited to humans. There are animal psis as well. It's eventually revealed that the computer that runs the galaxy-wide society intentionally allows a method of starship travel that causes increased mutation, despite the health risks and birth defects, because psychic navigators are necessary to allow Faster Than Light Travel, and psi mutations don't breed true.
  • The Damned Series by Alan Dean Foster has the Amplitur, with some mind control abilities, humans and Lepar, who can resist them, in the case of humans with extremely bad results on the Amplitur, and as of the second book, The False Mirror there is a group of humans known as the Core that has the Amplitur mind control ability.
  • Flinx from the Humanx Commonwealth series by Alan Dean Foster has empathic telepathy, as well as an instinctive psychic defense mechanism that shows up occasionally, and usually wreaks havoc when it does. Flinx is not the only person in the series with these capabilities; there is also Mahnami, a telepathic and telekinetic girl with a similar background to Flinx, an entire alien race of subterranean empaths, and a race of nearly omnipotent bear-like alien telepaths. Also, one of the series' Precursor races, the Tar-Aiym, are were all powerful telepaths.
  • Isaac Asimov's Foundation series has the Mule, who can manipulate minds, a radically altered human-offshoot species with a form of telekinesis, plus Gaia, the planetwide telepathic gestalt of another human subspecies.
  • Sadako Yamamura from the The Ring novels is an astonishingly powerful psychic who, at one point or another, exhibits all these powers. Not only can she manifest psychography (called "nensha" in the context) with such force as to create the Cursed Video, she can manipulate viruses and even human beings to alter their genetic structure — if she doesn't content herself with creating tumors or stopping hearts. By the third book, Loop, her power is so great she's breaking through to the real world and spreading her curse there. Her mother, on the other hand, merely manifested precognition, and clairvoyance.
  • The Heralds of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds Of Valdemar novels all have at least one, and usually several, Gifts that fall into these categories. The most common include Mindspeech, which sometimes includes mind reading as well as mental conversations, Fetching (telekinesis and apportation), including the subcategory Firestarting (pyrokinesis), FarSight (clairvoyance), and ForeSight (precognition). Considered separate, but related, is the Mage-Gift, the ability to work the series' Functional Magic.
  • At the Super Hero School Whateley Academy there are so many teenagers with psychic abilities of one kind or another that there is an entire Psychic Arts Department full of teachers who also have psychic abilities. In addition to pretty much every case mentioned above, there are also Package Deal Psychics who have multiple powers (which typically can only be used one at a time): most have ESP, Psionics, and some form of PK ability. Some can even use the PDP talent to simulate the Superman bit (the Flying Brick), levitating themselves for flight, using the PK to give themselves a super-strong field about their body, yada yada yada. Living near the academy is a sweet little old lady... who may be the most powerful precog on the planet.

Live Action TV
  • Star Trek: The Betazoid race is entirely telepathic; Counselor Troi, a half-Betazoid, is an empath, implying that "empathy" is a "lesser" telepathy.
    • The Vulcans also have limited telepathy— the "mind meld".
      • In "The Omega Glory," Spock uses telepathic suggestion on an unknown woman, to cause her to send a distress signal and save the crew.
    • "The Vulcan Neckpinch" is not a secret martial-arts hold or "nerve pinch," but a form of telepathy that simply renders the person unconscious. Leonard Nimoy invented it on the set of "Court Martial" as an alternative for when the script called for Spock to knock someone out using a weapon, and Nimoy suggested a more "Vulcan" method by using their ability to spread telepathic energy through their fingers.
    • Kes's species on Star Trek Voyager also had some telepathy, as did Species 8472. Kes later developed powerful telekinesis.
    • At least one Vorta on Deep Space Nine was telekinetic. The other Vorta never demonstrated any such ability.
    • On "The Next Generation," a genetically-altered species of children were also telekinetic— even at the molecular level, to the point that their immune-systems would eradicate harmful germs at a distance.
      • In ''Plato's Stepchildren," the crew not only encounters super-powerfully telekinetic race of enemy aliens, but Kirk learns how to become even more powerful thanthey are, and so defeats them using telekinesis. He also states that the Federation can acquire such powers any time "in a matter of hours."
    • In "The Cage/The Menagerie," a race called "Talosians" were able to read minds and project illusions that were indistinguishable from if they were real.
  • Doctor Who: The TARDIS hooks up through the Doctor to telepathically translate for him and his companions; also, the "psychic paper" used in the new series.
    • The Master, at least in the original series, possessed powerful telepathy, able to "completely control a human mind".
      • The Doctor has telepathic powers as well. They're just not as powerful and rarely shown.
    • He's got enough power, remember he can read/wipe someone's mind by just touching their head. He's just too nice to use his power as much as some others
  • Babylon Five: Telepathy, telekinesis, and in the case of the Centauri, a form of precognition.
    • Babylone Fivehad quite a few powers including projective telepathy, suggestion and complete memory-erasure.
  • Firefly: River Tam demonstrates uncontrolled telepathy and empathy. It's theorized by some that her combat prowess may be partly attributable to low-level precognition — seeing seconds into the future to determine an enemy's next move. She also has other abilities, such as an ability to discern health problems and locate dead bodies, find her way through strange environments with no guidance, and locate electronic devices or discern problems with machinery.
    • Interestingly, the bonus feature on the Serenity DVD title "The R.Tam Sessions" implies that River already had some form of latent psychic ability before the Academy started working on her.
  • Heroes has several characters with Psychic Powers, among them a mind-reader, a precognitive painter, and a man who can delete memories and "damper" other characters' powers by creating a psychic static. In fact, it's implied all the characters' powers are technically Psychic Powers, as the "seat of power" is universally in the brain.
  • Medium: precognition, postcognition, psychometry, communicating with ghosts, empathy/telepathy, and the ability to be possessed by ghosts. The show is inspired by the real life Allison Dubois, who claims to be a medium.
  • The Tomorrow People had these courtesy of being the next stage of evolution.
  • The Dead Zone, based on the Stephen King story (see below) is entirely based on the premise of Psychic Powers.
  • Daphne on Frasier claims to be "a little bit psychic" in the pilot. This is phased out after a few seasons.
    • For a psychic, she ranks about with Counselor Trois, in that both think they're "psychic" by simply knowing the obvious— meanwhile, neither one can sense when a man in their everyday life is deeply in love with her (Niles and Lt. Barclay)— this would be like claiming to have a strong sense of smell, but walking past dead skunks and sensing nothing.
  • "Radar" from the TV series M*A*S*H gets his nickname from either some form of clairvoyance ("able to tell things before they happen"), although the original movie-character simply had super-acute hearing.
  • Bridge from Power Rangers SPD had many of these abilities (enough to constantly be a Deus Ex Machina) in a highly technological society during the year 2025. The reason he and his five teammates have "genetic powers" in the first place is explained as a laboratory accident all their parents were involved in, making the kids technical Mutants. One of his teammates, Sam, gets both teleportation and apportation as a power as well. The other four get abilities far less supernatural in design.
    • Trip from Power Rangers Time Force (and, like Bridge, a Green Ranger, but from much further in the future) is from a race of aliens called Xybrians. All Xybrians are empathetic and telepathic to the point where lying is completely impossible on their planet, and thus completely alien to Trip. He's also shown some precognitive abilities.
  • Examples from Lost:
    • Desmond, who can see the future after the implosion of the hatch, and later can travel in time by jumping into his past self, though involuntarily.
    • Walt, whose powers were never quite explained, but there were several hints-most notably the time he was trying to get everyone to look at a picture of a bird in an book. When no one looked... a bird of that species promptly hit the window and died.
    • Numerous smaller examples, such as the psychic from Claire's flashbacks who claimed in Eko's flashback to be a fraud.
  • Oddly enough, an episode of Gilligans Island has our castaways discovering a plant whose seeds give them mind-reading powers. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Although Buck, Caleb, and Merlyn are all shown to have varying examples of such powers (the latter never hinted at in life but justified by her new position), in the very first episode of American Gothic Gail Emory is also implied to have some form of a Psychic Link with her cousin. After he has vanished from the hospital to answer his sister's summons to their old house, Gail somehow 'feels' a connection to him, even seems to indulge in a bit of Psychometry when she touches the door, and then instantly 'knows' where Caleb has gone. Even the writers, when speaking in the commentary, noted that they didn't really know how she did it, that it was only introduced as a way to get all the characters together for the climax, and the ability is never shown again.
  • Thats So Raven is about a precognitive teen who can't quite master the interpretation of her visions, so Hilarity Ensues (though not a lot of it). In one episode she also meets a group of teens with other psychic powers.
  • In the 1970's sci-fi series UFO (set in the year 1980) Extra-Sensory Perception is a mental condition being treated by mainstream psychiatrists. While most sufferers adjust to its effects, the subject of the episode "E.S.P" cannot cope with knowing everything that's going to happen before it occurs. He decides to murder two of the leaders of SHADO (blaming them for the death of his wife in a UFO incident) knowing they will be helpless as he can predict their every defensive move before they can make it. He is only stopped when he realises the aliens have been manipulating him, and so deliberately allows a third SHADO operative to shoot him.
  • Charmed: Although all powers are magical in origin, many of them closely resemble psychic powers. Phoebe has precognition and postcognition, Piper, Paige, Billie, and Chris all have telekinesis, and Kristy has telepathy, just to name a few.
  • On My Favorite Martian, Martin the Martian had telekinetic "levitating" ability as well as "telepathic" antennae.
Tabletop Games
  • The original Dungeons And Dragons game system had any number of magical spells and powers that mimicked the standard psychic powers. However, there appears to have been a demand by fans for a rules subsystem less "fantastic". Second Edition and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons incorporated a complicated set of "psionics" rules based more on science fiction instead of fantasy. Inexplicably, the chief beneficiaries of the new rules were not human psychics or aliens from other worlds or dimensions, but the traditional demons and devils described in the original rules as "fantasy" monsters. Under the rules, most of them could annihilate a human psychic before his friends, armed with mere weapons and spells, could lift a finger to help him. Later fantasy [=RPGs=] merged the powers (and naming conventions) from magic and psychic traditions and treated them as roughly equivalent uses of preternatural powers.
    • Most of the issues with old versions of psionics (besides some players feeling its flavor was too 'sci-fi' and didn't fit into most settings) were that most monsters weren't equipped to defend against psionic attacks (which had separate defenses from magic), so psionic classes could easily mop the floor with most non-psionic enemies. This was fixed when psionics were reintroduced in later editions.
    • Psionics returned in 3rd edition, and are planned to make a comeback in 4th edition as well, where its differences from normal, "arcane" magic will be empathized.
  • Science Fiction role-playing games almost always include psionic powers of some sort. There is a difficulty in these games of trying to provide adventures for characters who are neither cops nor soldiers but are not obvious parallels to mundane activities such as street crime, computer hacking, smuggling, and cryptozoology. In other words, the easiest way for both TV series and role-playing games to lend an "unearthly" aspect to adventures is to give characters, machines, or creatures psychic abilities. Anything else tends to be very complicated or too subtle for a lot of the audience.
  • Warhammer40000 features a lot of these, tied heavily into the hell-dimension full of daemons used for faster-than-light travel. Psychically sensitive humans ("psykers") can have their power amplified by various twisted procedures, and are used for long-range communication (Astropaths), steering ships through the aforementioned hell-dimension (Navigators), combat units (Sanctioned Psykers, Space Marine Librarians) or just plain sacrifices for various awful machines. The processes used generally leave them completely insane, but sanity is highly overrated when working for the Imperium anyway.
  • Cthulhu Tech has its parapsychics, who vary quite a lot in power. At the low end, they can keep their coffee hot. At the high end, they can crush a Humongous Mecha into a little tin can, set fire to entire buildings with a thought, and rebuild your personality from the ground up. For this reason, they're subject to mandatory registration with the OIS, and those with powers deemed Dangerous or Invasive have to wear public identity tags. On the plus side, both the government and corprations love their abilities, so they tend to migrate to high paying jobs.
  • The Traveller universe has an entire human-variant subspecies, the Zhodani, whose ruling class has psychic abilities. The Zhodani consider other humans dishonest and criminal, since a society of mind-readers cannot lie or steal.

Video Games
  • The King Of Fighters! Pyrokinesis is passed down genetically through the Kusanagi and Yagami clans, with the Kusanagi having regular red and orange flames and the Yagami having "cursed" purple flames. One character, Ash Crimson, possesses green flames, but how he got them is left unexplained.
  • Street Fighter III has SNK Boss Gill and his dual pyrokinesis and cryokinesis (ice manipulation) abilities. His status as The Messiah among the Illuminati is primarily because of his ability to balance these two powers. His Seraphic Wing Limit Break also hints at a third, unidentified power.
    • Psychic powers seem to be the source of Street Fighter II's yoga master Dhalsim's abilities—levitation, teleportation, limited shapeshifting (the whole rubber limbs thing), and fire-breathing—though he comes by them through a very spiritual path of meditation and introspection.
  • Earthbound: Ness, Paula, and Prince Poo have all of these powers distributed between them, as do many minions of Giygas. Giygas himself might even have some Psychic Powers, but whether they're actually psychic or just caused by him being a semi-divine Cosmic Horror is unclear.
    • Giygas IS psychic — his whole race is, and the only reason there are psychics on Earth is because a human stole the secret of their powers long ago.
    • Psychic abilities are also present in Earthbound Zero and Mother 3.
  • The Golden Sun series has "Psynergy", which also includes all of these powers.
  • In Psychonauts, Raz learns such powers as telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and levitation.
  • The powers of Nick Scryer from Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy include telekinesis, mind control, and pyrokinesis.
  • In the various Super Robot Wars games, some of the original characters are "Psychodrivers", which is a telekinetic ability that enables them to use attacks unavailable to normal people.
  • Metal Gear Solid had Psycho Mantis. Interestingly enough, while he did have abilities like psychokinesis, precognition and telepathy (telepathy being deconstructed painfully), his favourite (or at least creepiest) use of his powers is to peer beyond the fourth wall...
    • Other entries in the Saga give us The Sorrow, able to speak with the dead, whose powers are so strong that he is even able to return from the dead in a sort of Near death experience; The Sorrow's son, Revolver Ocelot inadvertently becomes possessed by his former boss's severed arm though it turns out in MGS 4 that he was faking it the whole time; Fortune, who throughout the second game is protected by a Sufficiently Advanced Technology shield — until it turns out she doesn't need it; Ursula and Elisa who are so powerful they get a broken Metal Gear working and make a prediction about the future; and Gene, who... I'm not sure, the screen flashes purple with his face superimposed and you start taking damage. He's also near impossible to hit; he cuts bullets with a bowie knife.
  • Two examples in the Sonic The Hedgehog series: Blaze the Cat is (unsurprisingly) a pyrokinetic, while Silver the Hedgehog uses psychokinesis and levitation.
  • Star Craft has the Protoss as a race and the Terran Ghosts as individuals with psychic powers. Even the Zerg have them to the degree of being able to communicate over great distances through the hive mind and the Overlords, Cerebrates, and Overmind (and later Kerrigan). This aspect is usually more accented in the novels than in the actual game, though.
  • Second Sight starred a man with every power on the list above except teleportation.
  • In Metroid, the Chozo (and by extension, Samus Aran) are heavily implied to have some degree of Psychic Powers. In particular, Samus can usually summon her Power Suit just by thinking about it.
    • This troper has to call an objection to that last bit. Samus doesn't really just use her mind to put her armor back on because if that was true, then she wouldn't need to navigate the Space Pirate mothership and the Chozo ruins to get a new suit when her old suit was blown up with her ship near the end of Metroid Zero Mission It seems more like lazy video game "magic" when it comes to putting the armor on or off.
      • Did you miss the part where the suit was blown up?
  • The Flatheads in Zork are telepathic.
  • In X-Com video game series, several aliens have psychic powers, and by interrogation and research, humans can learn them as well.
  • There's an entire Pokemon type called Psychic. They display all these powers and sometimes more. Other Pokémon types are also capable of learning psychic moves as well.
  • Everyone who plays The Reaper's Game is called an ES Per, and are given Psychic Powers (called Psyches) by their pins. Every Player has the power to "scan" (allowing them to read minds and see Noise Symbols), and each player usually has one additional psyche pin they can use. (Shiki uses "Groove Pawn", to animate her stuffed cat, Joshua uses his Composer powers to spam Jesus Beams, and Beat uses "Respect" to... um... hit things). Neku (by virtue of being the protagonist) can use any psych pin. Remember kids, fashion is magical! (If you're dead anyway...)
  • Clive Barker's Jericho has a few psychic side-characters, most notably Hanne Lichthammer, an extremely powerful psychic/telepath, who leads a unit of soldiers trained in psychic warfare. After her death and subsequent revival thanks to the powers of the Firstborn, her powers increase to even greater levels than before. Not only is she able to telepathically control her entire army, she is also extremely fond of delving into the minds of others, exposing their deepest memories, demons, and fears, and using this information against them (she rather cruelly does this to Billie Church). As an extreme sadist, she also gains great pleasure from using her powers to break the minds of her victims, driving them completely insane and causing them to do dreadful things, such as devouring their own children or dissecting themselves.
    • Another of the game's villains, Arnold Leach, is also shown to be a telepath, although less emphasis is put on his powers.
    • The minor character of Patrick Buckland is also shown to be a psychic, although it is not made entirely clear on just how powerful he is.
  • System Shock 2 features psionic abilities as one of the possible character paths. However, the game states that naturally, psionic abilities in humans are extremely weak, only detectable in a laboratory. Therefore, psi-users must make use of a psionic amplifier in order to access some of the nifty abilities - cryo/pyrokinesis, telekinesis, psycho-stimulated regeneration, and even teleportation and matter manipulation at higher levels.
  • The Halo series has this in minor doses in the form of Flood. The hivemind organize and communicate with the Gravemind via a form of telepathy. It also communicates telepathically with Master Cheif in the third installment...for some reason. Also in the third installment, it can talk to Master Cheif indirectly, by talking through one of the pure flood forms.
  • Stormrise has this in the form of "Sai energy", which the different Sai troops can use to, among other things, create blades or whips that come out of their arms, bend light around you at will, control enemy units for a limited time, teleportation, etc.
  • Command And Conquer: Red Alert 2 used this as one of its main gimmicks. In the vanilla game, the Soviet agent Yuri uses his psychic abilities, amplified with Psychic Beacons, to mind-control large parts of the USA. In the expansion pack Yuri's Revenge, he goes rogue and uses Psychic Dominators to take over the entire world (until a bit of Set Right What Once Went Wrong takes place) and commands pyrokinetic Initiate footsoldiers and mind-controlling clones of himself and giant brains.
  • ''Imperium Nova" includes psionics as an entire sphere of operation. The nature of psionics varies from galaxy to galaxy, depending on the preference of the players, but the fact that it provides a mechanical benefit to covert operations provides a base from which to develop fluff.
  • The title character of The Legend Of Zelda is famous for precognitive dreams, at least in the Ocarina of Time era.
  • I can't believe that nobody mentioned Noctis Lucis Caelum of the upcoming Final Fantasy Versus XIII. For now the only apparent ability he has is telekinesis and teleportation.
  • Psychic powers are an integral part of the Nasuverse. The most notable examples are Mystic Eyes, the most powerful of which only happen as a genetic fluke. The Nanaya clan bred for psychic powers, removing the chance part of the equation. Nanaya Kiri had aura vision and Shiki has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception on top of an unmentioned lesser type of eyes called 'pure eyes,' which are presumably what distinguishes humans from non humans. Rider's eyes are such an absurdly rare kind that not a single person in the modern age has them and are probably as rare as Shiki's, only better documented.

Web Comics
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Zimmy and Gamma communicate with each other telepathically. Anja Donlan has subtle clairvoyance or precognition (or both). The protagonist has powers too.
    • Blinker stones are described as "lens[es] for thought" and psychic "training wheels". Those with aptitude can use them, and eventually train themselves so that the stones are no longer required. Powers used with the help of Antimony's stone so far include pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, and apportation of the stone itself.
  • Zap is about a renegade psychic with amnesia.
  • The Cyantian Chronicles contains a psychic race known as Siracs that can teleport, walk through dreams, read at least surface thoughts, walk through walls, and at least one was shown controlling other people.
  • Dominic Deegan: The titular character and other powerful seers not only possess the ability to scry into the past, present, and future, but also have the ability to enter the mindscapes of others. One of the many issues that Fan Haters (this Troper isn't one but sometimes agrees with them) have with Dominic is his willingness to Mind Rape his enemies and treat his Second Sight as an Omniscient Morality License. Perhaps this is proof that using powers centered around peering into peoples' innermost thoughts and history requires, or leads to, a very gray morality. Odd that people don't seem to make the same argument against Jedi mind tricks.
  • The Order Of The Stick has shown us a Goblin Psionicist mind reading O-Chul.

Western Animation

Weboriginal
  • The Salvation War: demons and angels are able to use a form of telepathy based on quantum entanglement. Humans actually learn how to use it against them.
Twin Telepathy
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