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alt title(s): Psychic Power
Her tail is giving her a vision. "You know what we call that? Mind taking, baby!! Accept no substitutes!"
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 visible to reading someone like a book; can encompass a wide variety 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, the ability to sense another person's emotional state. At times, even disturbances in the force.
- 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.
- Mindspeech is the ability to have conversations psychically. It usually requires a common language. Sometimes, though, as it is supposed to be direct thought-to-thought contact, any and all language barriers are completely overcome.
- A Psychic Link is an intense, (usually) permanent telepathic connections between two (usually) partners. Subtropes include Twin Telepathy, Mental Fusion, Mindlink Mates, and Bond Creatures.
- A variant is the suggestor, who can control or at least influence minds, but not read them. Often these suggestions are said to only affect the weak-minded.
- Some telepaths have the ability to enter the dreams of people or to implant pictures into the mind of sleepers, but can do this only when people are asleep.
- Telepathy can often be stopped by Psychic Static.
- 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:
- Pyrokinesis — setting things on fire. In slightly harder sci-fi, this will explicitly reference making the molecules in an object more energetic until it bursts into flames (essentially, that's the way a microwave oven works). Sometimes the fire itself can be controlled, changing size or even becoming a particular shape.
- Similarly, Cryokinesis — freezing things. Slowing molecular motion until the object stops exuding heat, or just until it freezes solid. Often combined with condensing water from the air to form ice in thick coatings or free-standing shapes.
- Electrokinesis/Astrakinesis - the ability to create electrical discharges and lightning bolts, and/or to control the flow of electrons inside machines. Sometimes encompasses the control of magnetic fields, too, if the author had a passing grade in high school science. (Note that the word "electrokinesis
 " actually has a real-world scientific meaning that has nothing to do with Psychic Powers, but most writers/fanboys who use the term don't seem to know that.)
- Bio-PK (bio psychokinesis) — the ability to influence living tissue on the cellular or molecular level. Used for psychic healing, regeneration, or as a darker power the ability to kill living creatures with your mind (traditionally by stopping their heart, but can also cause a massive stroke, simply shut the brain down, prevent the lungs from working...).
- Basically, Fanboys love to stick -kinesis as a suffix on anything and describe it as a psychic power. Thus you get bastardized terms like Chlorokinensis (controlling plants), Chronokinesis (controlling time), Umbrakinesis (controlling shadows), Hydrokinesis (controlling water,) Terrakinesis (controlling stone and soil), Curvacionubiliterriclothokinesis (The ability to whip the towel off a co-ed in a locker room without being physically present) etc., etc., Ad Infinitum.
- 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 and Brain Critical Mass. Ninety Percent Of Your Brain is sometimes brought in as an explanation for them.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- 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.
- A number of 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.
- Read Or Die has an interesting variant: Paper Masters have the ability to telekinetically control paper.
- 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.
- 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.
- Check out the climax to the manga and then say that.
- 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).
- Oh, and apparently anyone and everything can have Psychic Powers. A sword and plankton have formed their own stands.
- 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 of only 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 futuristic-sounding kind of Functional Magic is fully acknowledged in the series, however & these people are often referred to simply as sorcerers.
- As the name may imply, this is the main tool of the characters of Psyren. They divide it into three types. The first, Burst, allows the user to create solid objects or manipulate objects with PSI (telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokinesis). Rise allows the user to manipulate and enhance their body (sense enhancement, super strength). Trance is manipulation of the mind or other people's PSI (telepathy, mind control, illusion, negation). Some abilities (Cure, Visions) involve mixing any of the three.
- A few people from Pokemon Special. Lance and Yellow both can read Pokemon's minds and Yellow has the added bonus of limited telekinetic powers. Sabrina can 'see' even if her physical eyes are blinded and can track things and people by putting her energy into her Alakazam's spoons. Morty has the ability to see with his mind pretty much whatever he's looking for.
- Dynamis users in Gilgamesh are essentially psychics with a different name.
- This is apparently Aki Izayoi's Blessed With Suck in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's.
Comic Books
Film
- Beneath The Planet Of The Apes had telepathic Mutants living under the ruins of New York.
- In The Black Hole, Yvette Mimieux's character had a telepathic link to a robot.
- The Force in Star Wars includes many of these, most notably telekinesis, empathy, precognition, and mind control. It also includes telepathy (as when Vader is able to talk to Luke telepathically, or when Luke is able to call for help to Leia 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.
- Stephen King. Almost all of his novels and films are about someone with absurd Psychic Powers, except those 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 vaguely 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.
- 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
- Piers Anthony's Mute is about a society of Mutants who occasionally (but 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.
- Mindspeech: The Animorphs equivalent is "thought-speak"; every Andalite uses it, seeing as they have no mouths, as do the Animorphs.
- 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.
- Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination revolve around telepathy and psychic teleportation, respectively.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter Of Mars and his fellow Barsoomians used telepathy to control their riding thoats.
- Peter David's Psi-Man series is about a powerful psychic sought by the Government as a human weapon.
- Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, and the Tom Cruise film loosely based on it, concern the problems of precognition.
- Alan Dean Foster examples:
- The Damned Series 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 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.
- Frank Herbert's 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.
- Robert Jordan's 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.
- Alexander Key examples:
- Escape to Witch Mountain: Tony has clairvoyance and telekinesis. His sister Tia has a form of telekinesis that lets her open locks; she is also a Friend To All Living Things. They are not telepathic, however; that was an instance of Adaptation Decay in the film adaptations.
- The Forgotten Door: Little Jon is telepathic (which lets the author Hand Wave how quickly he learned English), an ability which carries over to reading the thoughts of animals. He is also telekinetic in that he can 'lighten his feet' to run and jump unusually fast.
- Some examples from Stephen King:
- The Dead Zone: clairvoyance and precognition.
- Firestarter 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 Psychic Nosebleeds from the father whenever he tries to "push" suggestions into the minds of others.
- The Heralds of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds Of Valdemar novels all have at least one Gift 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.
- Julian May's Galactic Milieu/Pliocene Exile series had a detailed scientific classification of these, and high end powers including intergalactic teleportation.
- The Rowan and Pegasus series by Anne McCaffrey revolve 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.
- 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 originally 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.
- Andre Norton stories that do not involve outright Functional Magic often involve this trope instead, particularly in science fiction settings.
- Catseye: The protagonist has mindspeech with his enhanced animal companions, without technological assistance (unlike the handlers from whom he rescues them).
- In the short story "The Gifts of Asti", the protagonist's people learned mindspeech from Lizard Folk; she acknowledges freely that her Lizard Folk companion is much more adept than she at the art.
- Forerunner Foray: The protagonist, Ziantha, was taken into the Guild as a child because her sponsor saw her playing guessing games while begging for money, and realized that she must have psychic ability to do so well. Ziantha has psychometry, which she uses in the first foray in the book to steal information from a target without physically touching his physically isolated storage devices. She later (with the help of an alien friend) uses teleportation to steal the story's Mc Guffin. She can also use mindspeech, at least with other psychics.
- Moon of Three Rings: The Moon Singers have mindspeech, which they can also use with animals. As part of their training, at some point they swap minds with an animal, which can go badly wrong.
- Storm Over Warlock and Ordeal in Otherwhere: The female Wyverns of Warlock are mistresses of illusion (a Gender Restricted Ability) and have mindspeech.
- The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars: Eet communicates through mindspeech and is a master of illusion, and teaches some of these skills to the human protagonist, who is effectively Eet's Human Sidekick once Eet enters the first book.
- 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.
- 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 with his mind, a female telekinetic, and the protagonist, a machine empath who can control machines and even "dive" into the global computer network.
- 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.
- In the Sector General universe, all species with psi abilities receive the classification of V regardless of physical type.
- 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 Sharonans of David Weber's Hells Gate series have examples of all the broad categories sprinkled through 25% of the population, which, layered on top of their 19th-century-level technology, makes them quite formidable.
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.
- 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.
- Also, she can kill you with her brain.
- 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.
- On My Favorite Martian, Martin the Martian had telekinetic "levitating" ability as well as "telepathic" antennae.
- Supernatural has generic clairvoyant psychics Pamela Barnes and Missouri Mosely as well as the Special Children, a gaggle of young adults with psychic abilities of varying usefulness. Should they choose to do so, the psychics can rapidly improve and expand the scope of their powers their powers, though since the powers are due to infection with demon blood, this often leads to them becoming evil.
- Poltergeist the Legacy has main characters Derek and Alex possess "The Sight", a mix of clairvoyance and precognition.
- On Fringe, William Bell and Walter Bishop tested a drug on young children that was supposed to give them Psychic Powers in adulthood. Several have been encountered by the team so far, including Olivia. They seem to have both telekinetic and telepathic powers, and apparently have an easier time crossing to other universes.
- In one episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a self-proclaimed psychic detective who keeps butting into the cops' case (and being ignored or given the bum's rush) either demonstrates or claims to possess telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and astral projection. In the end, it is revealed that he was the killer all along, and was just getting his jollies messing with the cops and the victim's family.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons And Dragons has psionics, as a Red Headed Stepchild. The original game system had any number of magical spells and powers that mimicked the stock psychic powers and even later retained spells with names like ESP and Telekinesis, so the relevant themes could be used without any separate mechanics. 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 it wasn't well integrated—so 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 in later editions.
- Original D&D (Eldritch Wizardry) got "psionic combat", mostly overcomplicated telepathic extension and a handful of class-related powers duct-taped as optional replacements of characters' basic abilities. Demons and a few monsters got them. ...Yes, the chief beneficiaries of the new rules were not human psychics or aliens From Beyond, 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.
- AD&D has a set of psionic powers (or at least supplementary talents for exceptional individuals) as a part of core rules (or at least Players' Handbook appendix). Monsters statistics got "Psionic ability" entry. ...Just so—an option, and still too complicated and not elaborated enough at the same time.
- AD&D 2nd ed. got psionics cleansed out of the core, in exchange for the much more developed and ordered system along with a dedicated class isolated... sorry, introduced in The Complete Psionic's Handbook as an option. It was good enough to have the Dark Sun setting built upon it. ...But the older settings got an abovementioned incompatibility issue at full power.
- Late AD&D (Player's Options) got the Skills & Powers psionics system, supposedly simplified. ...And it was: the old boring Big Hit Points approach instead of skill checks and tricks. In its initial published form the attacker in telepatic combat lost more than the target, so poorly it was thought out (and obviously never playtested). It was used for the new Dark Sun—as if it hasn't enough shocking swerves to get a Broken Base anyway.
- In the 3rd edition, psionics became an almost-core part. ...And essentially became one more strange sort of magic (up to sort-of-Familiars)—stumbling on all the weakest sides of D&D3 in process—so it's unclear what's point to have it at all. Also, it got a lot of weird new paraphernalia never seen before and inappropriate for most established settings. Though it apparently got along well with other Epic Epicness.
- D&D 4 will have it, presumably as a core component. But since 4th already managed to get a Broken Base on almost every other issue, the question is kind of moot anyway, whether this one will be very well or very crappy.
- Later fantasy RPGs merged the powers (and naming conventions) from magic and psychic traditions and treated them as roughly equivalent uses of preternatural powers.
- 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.
- Thats not to mention all the other really nasty things that could happen when attempting to use your psychic powers.
- And those psykers without such "treatments" can attract daemons of the Warp and wind up with even worse fates.
- 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.
- GURPS has nine flavors of psi (astral projection, ergokinesis, ESP, probability alteration, psychic healing, psychic vampirism, psychokinesis, telepathy, and teleportation), along with anti-psi for players who'd rather mess up the psychics' day. Psi is treated completely different from magic spells — in general, psis are less versatile than mages but their abilities are safer and more reliable.
Video Games
- Alma from FEAR possesses incredibly powerful natural psychic abilities, ranging from simple telekinesis and pyrokinesis to the ability to boil the flesh off human bodies, reanimate the dead as either soldiers or hostile psychic ghosts, induce hallucinations, possess and control certain minds that have attained "synchronicity" with hers, and in a few cases actually rewrite reality around her. In fact, her psychic powers are so potent that they allowed her to survive drowning for six days without life support, and her psychic ghost retains all of her psychic powers. She also appears to be able to control the Replica soldiers and read minds.
- Paxton Fettel, Alma's second son possesses the ability to control the Replica forces, and to perceive information from them. His psychic abilities also allow him to possess Foxtrot 813.
- Also, the Point Man, Michael Beckett, Harold Keegan and Foxtrot 813 all possess the ability to use Bullet Time due to their attunement with Alma and their psychic powers resulting from it. Int he non-canon Perseus Mandate expansion, the Nightcrawler Commander also has this ability. Most of the soldiers in Team Dark Signal (Beckett's squad) possess at least latent psychic powers, which is why Alma targets them.
- 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.
- However, unlike in most universes, any powers which seem to be psychic in nature originate from one of the four magical elements—except in rare cases, where they come from magical artifacts you must equip to use them.
- The entire point of Psychonauts. Raz learns such powers as telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and levitation; various campers and staff have other specialties, and even the local wildlife at Whispering Rock includes things like telekinetic bears and firestarting cougars.
- 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.
- The OG games have the Telekinesis skill, which not only allows a pilot to use certain attacks (but it's a multi-level skill, so just having Telekinesis isn't enough; you might need L8 for some attacks, and only L4 for others, for example), but also passively increases their attack/defense ratings by a small amount. Not everyone is a Psychodriver though, and plenty of the Badasses do fine without it.
- 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.
- Ocelot wasn't faking it the whole time. Liquid did have him by the metaphorical balls in Sons of Liberty, and when Ocelot realized what was going on, he cut off the offending limb, had it replaced with a mechanized one and used a combination of incredible acting skills, nanomachines (cause they do everything in this series) and hypnotherapy to make him believe he was still posessed. At the end of the game, though, any illusions of Liquid still hanging around are long gone.
- 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.
- The Flatheads in Zork are telepathic.
- In X-Com series, several aliens have psychic powers, and by interrogation and research, humans can learn them as well. In X-Com: Apocalypse "Mutants" has a greater potential, Androids has none (but are immune to alien telepathy in turn).
- 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.
- Typically, it's Cortana going psycho contacting you, with cryptic clues as to what she's up to. Gravy more or less just taunts and threatens you, and he only does so in levels where the Flood show up.
- 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.
- For that matter, Link in Ocarina of Time could be included in this category for also having a precognitive dream at the very beginning of the game.
- 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.
- In Star Control 2 it was mentioned that some humans have minor... abilities, though never used beyond the flavour text. Syreen excel at it—their ships has a weak weapon but large telepathic amplifiers and can use them to devastating effect. We encounter an old species who used their power to dominate people on the star system scale and Power Nullifier others created to counter this.
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. Some characters got sort of "ether sight", mostly evident when someone see the protagonist's wound caused by a ghost.Zimmy thought such things are her hallucinations.
- A Blinker stone was described as "a lens for thought". Those with aptitude can use these psychic "training wheels" until the stones are no longer required. Powers used with the help of Antimony's stone so far include remote presence useable for clairvoyance/spirit sight or for apportation of the stone itself (the basic power) and pyrokinesis.
- 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 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.
- Grace in El Goonish Shive is telekinetic, presumably because of her Alien Heritage. It only really shows up when she's seriously pissed.
- Karcharoth and Hati of Cry Havoc have a power known as psyching which seems to combine versions of telekinesis with elctrokinesis and pyrokinesis. These powers are very limited, allowing one to only lift a few pounds at short range, but they are used creativly to great effect on the battlefield (taking out entire squads by setting off the bullets in a soldiers magazines that are still in his vest)
- Servants Of The Imperium One of the main characters, Lyle, is an Imperial Psyker with the powers of Electrokinesis, Illusion and PSIONIC BLAST!
- Jade Harley of Homestuck is precognitive, and knows several specific details regarding the other characters that they've never mentioned to her otherwise. The actual mechanism that gives her this ability is still pretty vague, but it seems to work when she dreams.
Web Original
- Heartwarming Orphan Shandala of Broken Saints has abilities of the empathic variety, which are later revealed to have been genetically engineered into her by her biological father, so that she may better serve the Evil Plan.
- 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.
- 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.
- Many of the villains - and some of the allies - in Sapphire are Psychics, and demonstrate all manner of powers.
- Even ninjas are Psychics, in a sense. Alec makes the connection that "ninjutsu is probably some variation on the whole psychic philosophy".
Western Animation
- The Power of Heart on Captain Planet And The Planeteers is a kind of empathy, natch.
- In Adventures Of The Galaxy Rangers, Niko has inborn Psychic Powers which are amplified by her Series 5 implant.
- The five heroines in WITCH, in addition to their Elemental Powers, have psychic abilities, most of them gained in the early part of season two. Will has technopathy, Irma has suggestion/persuasion, Taranee has telepathy, Cornelia has telekinesis, and Hay Lin has limited precognition via her dreams.
- Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles took the movie's wimpy Psychic Powers and turned them up to eleven.
- As mentioned in the page quote, Mentok, The Mind Taker from Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law. He possesses just about every type of psychic power there is, but always refers to it as "mind taking". He gets a rival in the form of Shado, The Brain Thief, who also refers to his powers strictly as "brain thieving".
- The original comics Brother Blood was a cult-leading sorcerer, but the one from the Teen Titans animated series has inborn psychic powers instead. He most notably uses this for mind control, but also has telekinesis, the ability to fire energy blasts, and can enchance his own strength enough to go toe-to-toe with Cyborg.
- An episode of The Fairly Oddparents involved Timmy wishing he could read minds, which leads to trouble when his Evil Teacher finds out. In another episode where Timmy wishes the world was a comic book, AJ becomes a parody of Professor X.
- Bart Simpson was given psychic powers during a Halloween special. It is implied that he is a Reality Warper, as he transported Homer to a football game as a human football and later made Homer into a human-sized Jack-In-The-Box.
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