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Sly: The modifications you've made to that wheelchair are incredibly powerful.
Bentley: Yes, the upgrades should serve me well in the field. Blasters, mines, all the standard fare.
The Adventures of Sly Cooper

In Real Life, being a wheelchair user can range from inconvenient to extremely limiting. (Not the chair part—if you need a chair, using one is very freeing—but the lack of arrangements to accommodate it.) However, in fiction, this need not be the case! Thanks to Trope Co. you can be the proud owner of one state-of-the-art super chair! Features include

A Sub-Trope of Disability Superpower and Cool Chair together.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Animation 
  • Mechamato: In episode 11, MechaBot mechanizes with Mara's wheelchair for her section of the relay race, turning it into a motorized rocket-propelled chair that allows her to zip around the track like a race car.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Runover in Black Joke is a mob bigwig who was paralyzed in an assassination attempt. He modified his chair to go after the perpetrator. He got his nickname from how he killed the guy — by using his new chair to flatten his would-be killer's Ferrari.
  • In A Certain Magical Index, Byouri Kihara rides a wheelchair that is armed to the teeth with weapons and can transform into a spider-like mecha.
  • In Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, Miaya Gekkougahara has a high-tech wheelchair, complete with a Monomi personal assistant and some nifty weapons to boot. She is slightly inconvenienced by her NG Code being "cannot turn right", though. Not that it would have mattered anyways. She's a robotic clone of the real Gekkougahara Monaca made after murdering her, which explains the heavy weaponry she and her wheelchair possesses.
  • Frieza's iconic antigravity hover chair from Dragon Ball Z. Unlike most examples of this trope, Frieza doesn't use it because he is disabled, but to show how powerful and arrogant he is. In Father of Goku this is better exemplified, as Bardock tries to kill him and save Planet Vegeta, but Frieza only raises his finger while on the hover chair and blows the planet up without moving from it.
  • In the Izaya Orihara spinoff from Durarara!!, after his final fight with Shizuo, Izaya is rendered unable to use his legs, thus he uses a wheelchair. However, he buys a top-of-the-line custom model from a foreign company worth three million yen. It is made with carbon-fibre and includes a "run away" feature, allowing Izaya to propel himself at a high speed (for good reason).
  • The Agency head from Ga-Rei -Zero- tools around in a wheelchair for most of the series and seems smart but not very threatening. Turns out it has miniguns, blades, and sacred wheels that engrave protective runes on the street. And that she's very proficient with the use of all three.
  • Gundam:
    • The franchise has several machines that combine this with Humongous Mecha, consisting of a humanoid torso on top of a tank or hovertank base. The best-known is the Guntank from the original series, but examples exist in several universes, including Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (the Tragos) and Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (the Union Realdo Hovertank).
    • In Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, after Mikazuki severely damages his nervous system in the latter part of the second season, he's utterly unable to walk (and use one of his arms) without being connected to his Gundam, making it a pretty literal example of this trope.
  • Riehlvelt in Hunter × Hunter can apply rocket thrusts to his wheelchair, which is also equipped with electric whips. He is apparently in the top 1% of the world population in combat capability.
  • The mermaid queen in Monster Musume uses a throne with tankthreads to get around on land.
  • The wheelchair in the last episode of Samurai Champloo is revealed to be a cool chair because it contains a hidden gun in one arm, a stick of dynamite in the other, and more dynamite stashed under the seat, all in place to lay a last-resort final blow on a weakened Mugen. It still isn't enough to kill him.
  • Towards the end of Symphogear G, Professor Nastassja's wheelchair transforms into a sweet mechsuit.

    Comedy 
  • From George Carlin's "Asshole, Jackoff, Scumbag" sketch, the Wilson Speedmerchant 5000, which is "The only wheelchair with a rollbar!" It is apparently suitable for transporting a person from their home all the way to Dover, Delaware.

    Comic Books 
  • Batgirl: Acutely (and deliberately) averted when Barbara Gordon became Oracle, actually preferring "normality" to show that she does not want special attention. Gail Simone even explicitly forbade anything like hidden missile launchers when taking suggestions for a new chair. The fanciest thing she's had are holders for her eskrima sticks. It's been explicitly stated a few times that she doesn't even have handles on her chair, as she'd rather get where she's going by herself than be pushed. Though this depends on who's drawing it. It helps that she's still as physical and active as she can be.
    • However, it has still been played straight on occasion, such as in the 2002 TV series, which (to the dismay of actress Dina Meyer) gave Barbara a power chair rather than a manual one, and in Terry Moore's run, in which she did have a nonstandard wheelchair, modeled after the iBOT.
  • Cameron And His Dinosaurs: In the 2009 one-shot comic book, the titular Kid Hero character gains this, which during the book's climactic battle is revealed to become able to transform into a flying machine that can fire blasts.
  • Doom Patrol: Niles Caulder's chair bounces as an example.
  • Gold Digger: The "La-Z-Boy OF DOOM", designed by Brianna Diggers. Its first iteration alone was capable of anti-gravity flight and packed a crapload of More Dakka (and enough missiles for a nicely-sized Macross Missile Massacre), and it has only gotten nastier (as in "can take Alien Invasion dreadnaught-sized starships on its own" nastier) ever since.
  • Largo Winch: Lampshaded in the first Largo Winch when Nerio, a very old and even richer man stuck in a wheelchair, is talking to the man who asked to come kill him (Makes Sense In Context). The gunman tells him to turn around slowly, to which Nerio responds "What, are you afraid I keep machine guns in the armrests? You go to the movies too often."
  • Legends of the Dead Earth: In Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #5, Luthor the 60th has a wheelchair equipped with a life support system, controls to activate weapons, and a force field to protect him from attacks.
  • New Warriors: Handicapped Badass Silhouette walks with the aid of twin braces that she has outfitted with tasers and spikes.
  • PS238: Zodon has onenote . Unfortunately, when it becomes damaged, the faculty will not allow him to repair it himself (rightly fearing that he would take the opportunity to weaponize it further). Instead, it is "repaired" by another student who makes it conform to her own, much different, tastes.
  • The Tomb of Dracula: Quincy Harker (great-grandson of John and Mina Harker) had his wheelchair rigged with Wooden Stake-firing rocket-launchers.
  • What If?: Not a wheelchair, but one issue set in the far future sees the geriatric Red Skull challenge a much more limber Captain America sitting in what he aptly named his "Armchair of Death".
  • X-Men:
    • Charles Xavier's chair bounces back and forth between this and more conservative varieties Depending on the Artist and timeline: The antigravity models are generally established as gifts from his soulmate Lilandra (empress of a spacefaring alien race).note 
    • Taki Matsuya, also known as Wiz Kid, has the power of "technoforming", the ability to make metal morph into any machine he can think of. His own wheelchair is usually the closest thing at hand. It's usually a normal wheelchair, but he'll modify it to fly, shoot missiles, etc.

    Comic Strips 
  • Bloom County: Portnoy, Hodge-Podge, and Opus want to get Cutter John one of these for his birthday, but the salesman shows them ordinary wheelchairs with the fanciest option being "mauve armrests", and tells them "Gentlemen... A wheelchair is not a vehicle for personal expression!! PERIOD!" So they build him a custom one out of a recliner chair (with a TV, fire extinguisher, fridge, and photon torpedoes).

    Fanfiction 
  • In The Institute Saga, Xavier eventually replaces his ordinary wheelchair with a modified Kryptonian Hover-chair.
  • Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: After injuring her leg during the first contact battle between the Republic and the Imperium, Dr. Shina spends the remainder of the series in a hovering wheelchair that has a built-in blaster which she can activate by pressing a button.
  • In Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse, Dyna is a Robot Girl from an unnamed White Sea nation who was shot down in combat and promptly plunged down to the Grand Line, where she landed directly on an island. Between the initial combat damage and falling thousands upon thousands of feet, there wasn't much left of her outside of a (one-eyed) head and the equivalent of a spinal column. Luckily for her, she was found by a kindly Mad Scientist who built a Steampunk Spider Tank and integrated her half-blind, limbless, dying remains into it. Whilst comparatively crude and clunky, it gives her mobility, functioning arms, is loaded with weaponry, and also is implied to keep her alive.

    Films — Animation 
  • Mayor Tortoise John in the 2011 film Rango has a wheelchair with mechanical grabbers, mechanized self-moving wheels (like an electric wheelchair without electricity), and a golf club.
  • Within the Spider Society in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a Spider-Girl, known as Sun-Spider, has a wheelchair that can shift into a spider-legged mode which allows her to crawl up walls.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Alien: Resurrection: The wheelchair in question also disguises a small arsenal.
  • Patch Quartermain has one of these in Johnny English Reborn. At one point Johnny is shot in the leg while being pursued and steals the wheelchair at gunpoint to continue his escape.
  • Mr. No Legs: The eponymous Handicapped Badass Mafia enforcer moves around in a wheelchair with concealed shuriken (ninja throwing stars) on the wheels and shotguns on its armrests.
  • Villainous example: In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Freddy conjures up a rusty, spike-covered killer wheelchair to attack a paraplegic youth in his dream.
  • In Once Upon a Spy, Christopher Lee's Mad Scientist has a rocket launcher concealed within his wheelchair.
  • Marty from Silver Bullet has a pretty badass wheelchair built by his uncle. Being more specific, both of the wheelchairs he uses throughout the film are motorized, but the one that bears the Title Drop is a highly-modified racing motorcycle that even gets involved in a Chase Scene.
  • The kids' grandpa in the Spy Kids films has a wheelchair that can hover. Actor Ricardo Montalbán actually was a wheelchair user by that point in his life.
  • Steel features "Sparky" Sparx, John Henry Irons's colleague from his former Army R&D days (the reason John Henry quit was because of an experiment Gone Horribly Wrong by his Evil Former Friend, now the Big Bad, which crippled her as collateral damage) and now Mission Control, who modifies her motorized wheelchair with a high-powered engine and concealed sonic cannons on the armrests, which she unleashes in the climax as a Superweapon Surprise.
  • In the German kids' film Vorstadtkrokodile, Kai adds miniature rockets to his wheelchair, giving him quite a boost when he's chased by bikers. He also adds loudspeakers controlled by his cell phone, which causes his friend Hannes to comment, "Were you on Pimp-My-Wheelchair?"
  • Wild Wild West. Dr. Loveless's wheelchair has a built-in rear-firing gun and can deploy legs that allow it to move like a four-legged animal and stamp down on opponents. It is steam-powered.
  • In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Charles Xavier's elderly self has a wheelchair that hovers.
  • In Zombrex: Dead Rising Sun, George tricks out his wheelchair with a bunch of stuff found in a maintenance room in order to take down psychopath Takahashi.

    Literature 
  • Kohler's wheelchair in Angels & Demons contains all sorts of gadgets. Granted, it's not as cool a collection as many on this list, but it still counts as a Super Wheelchair in that setting.
  • Ascendance of a Bookworm: Rozemyne uses her highbeast, a magic item that is usually used as a Mechanical Horse, as a mobility aid on account of her poor health. Said magic item has flight as a built-in function and she has figured out that "the shaping spell only allows for animals" means "you can make an Animal-Vehicle Hybrid". Being much more likely to be riding her highbeast at a given time has given her more options to respond to several sudden events compared to other people.
  • One BattleTech Expanded Universe novel has an in-universe action movie in which Subhash Indrahar, the director of the Draconis Combine's Internal Security Force, is portrayed as having a Transforming Mecha for a wheelchair that allows him to have an epic kung fu battle with the film's hero. The real Subhash didn't have anything quite so crazy, but he did have a built-in Short Range Missile launcher that he used to kill a traitor to the Combine as a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • In one of the Bedlam's Bard novels by Mercedes Lackey, a secondary character is left a paraplegic by events in the book. In the epilogue, we learn that she was given an elvensteed — a shape-shifting magical being able to take the form of any transport from horse to Harley Davidson — to help her get around. It pretends to be a normal wheelchair when mundanes are around, and can pretty much do whatever she needs at any other time; no need for a handicap-accessible remodel of her home with it on the job.
  • Susannah from the The Dark Tower series lost her legs in the early '60s when wheelchairs were constructed of heavier materials and were quite clumsy. She's thrilled by the amazing lightness and agility of the '80s-era wheelchair that Eddie finds for her, considering it to be this trope.
  • Discworld:
    • In Moving Pictures, Windle Poons's wheelchair has any number of outrageous attachments and functions (although none that increase his self-sufficiency, since he doesn't want to). It serves as a chariot at one point.
    • Mad Hamish's wheelchair in Interesting Times and The Last Hero has Spiked Wheels and storage for all the Silver Horde's spare weapons. The illustrations for The Last Hero also show that to get it through the pack ice of the Hublands, the Horde fitted it with skis.
  • Doctor Who Expanded Universe: In Russell T. Davies's 2018 novelization of "Rose", the title character is shown a picture of a future incarnation of the Doctor described as a "boy or girl in a high-tech wheelchair".
  • Dream Park: In The Moon Maze Game, Asako Tabata is a veteran Gamer stricken by muscular dystrophy. She's given a special dispensation to participate in the Game using a mobile body-capsule with tracks and articulated arms; to justify its presence in a Victorian sci-fi Game scenario, it's given a Steampunk motif and a backstory involving Captain Nemo.
  • In The Four Constables (set in Ancient China), Emotionless's wheelchair can launch a barrage of deadly mini-rockets.
  • Known Space has Lucas Garner, a U.N. world government agent whose wheelchair can fly, to the annoyance of his superior, who threatens to arrest him for operating an unauthorised airborne vehicle. He obliges by hiding the controls in the armrest.
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians: When Chiron goes among mortals, he conceals his horse legs in a Hammerspace wheelchair.
  • In The Ship Who... Searched, after Tia becomes paralyzed from the chin down she's given the quadriplegic model of something called a Moto-Chair. The coolness of it is downplayed compared to most of the other examples - it moves very quickly, quietly, and precisely, there's incorporated plumbing so she doesn't have to ask for help using the bathroom, it has robotic arms that take her about half an hour to learn to use well enough to feed herself, and it's controlled with a combination of eye movements, tongue switches, and voice commands.
  • In Snow Crash, the quadriplegic Ng uses a heavily-modified airport firetruck as his "wheelchair". It works pretty well, because in the franchised future, everything has a drive-through.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: This is basically Hodor's job description for the cripple Bran Stark.
  • Tinker: One of the short stories reveals that Lain originally needed a wheelchair after the accident that left her crippled. Due to her stepfather's wealth, she got a high-tech cube that extended legs to walk around. However, its onboard computer had a tendency to crash, frustrating Lain to no end. By the present day of the series, she walks with crutches.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor's "chair" is barely a chair at all — it's an all-enclosing life support system on wheels with psycannons and psychic amplifiers built into it.
  • Played with in World War Z. A disabled man in a perfectly ordinary wheelchair nonetheless has one advantage: any crawling zombies that attack him from behind get the wheels instead of his legs. He mentions that this has saved him from infection more than once.

    Live-Action TV 
  • A villain in Black Scorpion called Slapshot has a similar suit of Powered Armor for a similar reason. Only his was provided by a Mad Scientist.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Recurring Genius Cripple villain Davros's wheelchair contains a life-support system, a suspended animation system that allowed him to feign death for centuries, assorted sneaky weapons, and in "Revelation of the Daleks" flight capacity.
    • In "The Star Beast", UNIT scientist Shirley Anne Bingham has a wheelchair that fires tranq-darts and explosives. This is apparently absolutely standard for UNIT wheelchairs.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • A minor example with Harrison Wells's wheelchair. While it's a fairly high-tech one, it doesn't appear to do anything unusual, but we later learn that it functions as a charging station for the Speed Force.
    • Clifford DeVoe, The Thinker, uses his to hover in the air to attack through tentacles and to kill people while absorbing their powers if they have them.
  • The short-lived series M.A.N.T.I.S. deals with a paraplegic inventor who develops an exoskeleton that grants him full mobility. Then at some point, he realizes that it is only a minor step from there to Powered Armor...
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Averted both in production and, consequently, In-Universe. For Melora Pazlar, they wanted to reuse a hoverchair that they had previously built for an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but unfortunately it wouldn't fit in the corridors of the space station sets. So they replaced it with a slightly zhuzhed-up version of an ordinary 20th-century motorized wheelchair, and wrote in a mention that Federation hoverchairs were incompatible with the Cardassian Artificial Gravity systems.
  • A Top Gear challenge involved modifying commercially-available off-road mobility scooters and then racing them against handicapped former U.K. military servicemen in a race to reach the top of a hill. James May chose a wheelchair and added stuff like an arm to hold an iPad (with satellite navigation) and a gravel dispenser for additional traction while going through mud. It was pretty cool for using in an urban scenario, but its utility off-road was a bit hit-and-miss. The servicemen won the race, by the way.

    Podcasts 
  • Rainer in The Adventure Zone mostly gets around in a floating chair that includes underglow lights and multiple compartments, one of which houses her pet animated squirrel skeleton.
  • In Welcome to Night Vale, Cecil's niece Janice builds herself a stealth wheelchair. She uses it to successfully infiltrate the Registry of Middle School Crushes.

    Tabletop Games 
  • William Albacastle/Willy Pete, authorial character of the White Wolf Mage: The Ascension supplement Iteration X and a major character in the novel Judgement Day by Bruce Baugh, has a damn cool chair. His motorized wheelchair houses treads, robotic arms, and Hades knows what else.
  • TSR's game Top Secret, Dragon magazine #56 module "Mad Merc". The title character is an Evil Cripple who uses a wheelchair with a built-in jetpack, which allows him (and up to 100 lb. extra) to fly up to 500 yards. It can travel at up to 30 m.p.h. for up to 1 minute and is capable of hovering.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has Space Marine Dreadnoughts, Walking Tanks crewed by grievously wounded but Not Quite Dead veteran Space Marines. Depending on the Writer and exactly how severe a mauling the Marine took, it can cross over into We Can Rebuild Him.
  • A supplement for Cyberpunk RED called Cyberchairs: New Options in Mobility features a pair of these. The first is a cheap and practical chair capable of both high speed and all terrain travel, while the second is a four-legged spider chair capable of taking arm, leg or general limb mods in each leg.

    Video Games 
  • Kenny Kawaguchi from Backyard Sports plays sports in a wheelchair. Though his legs don't work, he can somehow kick a football or soccer ball very far.
  • Kranke in The Caligula Effect 2 has one, but it doesn't become apparent until she throws off her disability in her boss fight. It has its own health bar and can move around on its own to run over your party members.
  • Ozgar uses a hovering wheelchair in The Crystal Key.
  • Yes, you can build one of these in Dead Rising 2. Doing so requires an assault rifle, a wheelchair, and a car battery. Chuck (and later, Frank) can ride in the self-propelled chair and gun down hordes of zombies with the trio of guns strapped to its frame. It is arguably one of the best Combo Weapons, when you actually have the means to build one — it kills zombies at range with a single shot, carries 250 bullets, and occasionally uses a speech synthesizer to taunt everyone you come across.
  • In de Blob, Prof has a hoverchair with a number of technological attachments. In the sequel, the Big Bad steals it and uses it for the rest of the game. In the last level, he discovers that it has a cannon as well.
  • Yagrum Bagarn from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has a variant. The Corprus Disease has left him bloated and unable to use his legs, so he gets around on a steam-powered set of mechanical spider legs.
  • In the Halo series, the Prophets, though possessed of enough strength to occasionally stand up and walk around, have all become too physically weak to perform all of their required locomotion on their own thanks to generations upon generations of utter sloth, and thus depend upon their Gravity Thrones (large hoverchairs, sometimes with built-in energy shielding, defensive weapons, and/or short-range teleportation devices for good measure) — or the more compact Gravity Belts, for the less ostentatious — to get around. Thus, what were once Cool Chairs have developed into this trope instead.
  • The old man character in Happy Wheels has a jet engine strapped to his wheelchair.
  • After Monty from Kindergarten gets beaten half to death by the Ax-Crazy janitor in the first game, he ends up confined to a wheelchair in Kindergarten 2. A wheelchair equipped with a laser cannon bigger than he is. Given what a Gadgeteer Genius he is, it's very possible that he installed it himself.
  • Lyril is bound to a rail-mounted one in Sierra's Lighthouse: The Dark Being'. She has a keypad at her fingertips to control it, but since it served as life support after an accident that took her legs when she was four years old, the device itself is now so old that she can barely even speak properly.
  • Flipper Burns in The Longest Journey has a hoverchair; a Fetch Quest in the game involves getting a new antigravity module for it.
  • The Psilon in Master of Orion are humanoids with oversized brains whose bodies have atrophied due to generations of reliance on technology. They are generally depicted using hoverchairs in art, and some of the fluff mentions that their spaceships and tanks are effectively just extensions to these.
  • In No One Lives Forever 2, Volkov's wheelchair (in which Cate personally put him in the first game) is equipped with rocket launchers and jet engines.
  • Professor Ching from the obscure arcade brawler The Outfoxies rides a wheelchair equipped with jet boosters and a mechanical arm for no reason other than that it's super, at least in the Japanese version.
  • In the "Superheroes II" mod for Quake II, Cripple with a Big Gun is a class with 40 HP and no strafing ability but unlimited chaingun ammo and the capacity to make an invulnerable ramming shield on a cooldown.
  • In Rise of the Triad, Sebastian Krist's wheelchair fires rockets and mines.
  • Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell: The Arm Chairmageddon, a wheelbound La-Z-Boy recliner with Gatling guns on it. It's also the representation of Sloth, meaning that it wants you to sit in it permanently.
  • Bentley's wheelchair in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves and onward is equipped with various gadgets such as jet boosters for double-jumping, a fishing pole for pickpocketing, and the ability to do a spin attack that actually makes him better at fighting than previously.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • In Genocide Man, the wheelchair-bound Genocide Agent Lola Lamb has her chair tricked out with a high-power, target-seeking machine gun in order to kill her fellow Genocide Man, Kevin Kid, when he gets too Drunk with Power to be useful.
  • Heroes Unite: HUB from Heroes Alliance has a hover-wheelchair. When you're a technopathic millionaire, why not?
  • In Homestuck, Vriska helps Tavros make a rocket to replace his wheelchair.
  • Iona in Leif & Thorn has a chair that hovers, but, notably, doesn't fly.
  • Something*Positive:
    • After sitting in Dahlia's wheelchair through one shopping day and being treated like a human vegetable, Monette proposes a chair-mounted gun turret as the next upgrade.
    • Another strip has Dahlia taking Davan Christmas shopping... and fully taking advantage of the fact that she's mounted her motorized electrical chair with a cow catcher.

    Web Original 
  • Dan The Accuser Mason's wheelchair turns into a Powered Armor which he uses to fight crime. Bonus points for the fact that he got it from a highly implied Deal with the Devil.
  • Juryrig and Kludge are both wheelchair-bound at Superhero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. They both have their chairs souped up. Both fly and have weaponry. Juryrig has a personal forcefield generator in hers. During Team Tactics Class, Juryrig's team have a bad habit of breaking formation to protect her because they think of her as more vulnerable. They mean well, but she dislikes it. Phase thinks that Juryrig should build a set of Powered Armor that works like her chair so that people will stop seeing only her disability. Wheelchair or not, she still has superpowers.

    Western Animation 
  • Teo's wheelchair with hang glider attachment in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
    • This version of The Chief gets around in a wheelchair that can fly and shoot lasers, among other things.
    • The future Joker's combination wheelchair/dodgem car in "The Knights of Tomorrow!".
  • Guest character Marty Thomson's flying wheelchair in the Defenders of the Earth episode "One of the Guys".
  • In Doozy Bots, a re-versioning of Mobile Suit Gundam, the Token Minority would have been transformed into a Guntank.
  • Family Guy features Crippletron in the episode “No Meals on Wheels”.
  • Garrett in Extreme Ghostbusters did not get one on the show. The unreleased prototype of the toy, on the other hand, did, complete with over-the-shoulder blaster and swing-out ghost trap.
  • Gargoyles has Halcyon Renard, the aged CEO of Cyber-Biotics and father-in-law of David Xanatos, in a wheelchair that has weapons built into its arms and a retractable Pope-Mobile-style bubble to protect the rider. Justified in that this man made his fortune in the robotics industry and had no reason not to use his skills and wealth for his own benefit. Also, flashbacks reveal that he was once able to walk. Since businesspeople in this universe have no issue with sending mercenaries after each other, the weaponized chair may have started as a basic safety precaution.
  • Recurring Kim Possible character Felix Renton has a wheelchair tricked out with extendable robot arms, hover tech, video game-integrable AI, and more. One of the perks of having a genius roboticist for a mom. It's so impressive that in one episode, Drakken and Motor Ed (who happen to be cousins) steal it so they can reverse-engineer its technology to use on a vehicle, which raises a complaint from Shego since even she thinks stealing a kid's wheelchair is stooping too low.
  • The Magic School Bus has Mikey, a kid with a wheelchair as magic as the bus.
  • Police officer Carmen the arctic fox in Patrol 03 has a wheelchair loaded with concealed gadgets, including multiple robotic arms.
  • In Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, Child Prodigy Tennyson is a Genius Cripple who has no use of his legs. That hardly stops him, since he gets around in a hoverchair that is loaded to the gills with equipment which plays to his computer hacking talents.
  • Alistair Smythe uses one in the 1990s Spider-Man: The Animated Series. His father only agreed to create Spider-Slayers for the Kingpin in exchange for the funds to build it — unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to see Alistair in it. It's so cool that he keeps using it even after he becomes a bio-engineered monster with working legs. It's still his preferred way of entering and leaving a battlefield.
  • Frequently employed by various animated incarnations of Stephen Hawking.
    • He appears in The Fairly OddParents! to explain how 2 + 2 really does equal 5 before flying away in his rocket-powered wheelchair. He and Crocker were classmates in college and, when Hawking flies away, Crocker goes after him trying to convince him 2 + 2 actually equals 6.
    • In one episode of Dilbert, his chair has a wormhole generator.
    • Appears in several episodes of The Simpsons. In "They Saved Lisa's Brain", for example, Hawking saves Lisa from the power-hungry Springfield chapter of Mensa in a special wheelchair, complete with an Inspector Gadget-style retractable helicopter attachment and a spring-loaded boxing glove.
  • One that may have been: The proposed re-versioning of Sailor Moon in Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon has Sailor Mercury in a wheelchair. She would have had a wheelchair-enabled sailboard which fired lasers of some sort in the animated sequences.
  • X-Men: The Animated Series:
    • Taki Matsuya demonstrates this during the episode "No Mutant Is an Island". His mutant power is the capacity to transform any vehicle he's in, so he does so by turning his wheelchair into a miniature tank with a bulldozer blade.
    • Professor X also has his hover-chair. In this continuity, he has it long before he encounters the Shi'ar, and we never learn who made it.

    Real Life 
  • Meet Lance Greathouse, wheelchair designer and ex-creator of battling robots.
  • Complex rehab wheelchairs, built for a single permanently disabled user, are this compared to the steel-and-vinyl folding ones that hospitals have fleets of. High-tech cushions and supports built into super-lightweight manual or high-speed/high-tech power bases can make a significant difference in how well someone can function.
  • The iBOT wheelchair can balance on two wheels to raise its user up higher and it can even climb stairs.
  • The Ripchair 3.0 tracked all-terrain wheelchair fits the trope to a T.
  • The OGO is best described as the wheelchair equivalent of a Segway.
  • Stephen Hawking's wheelchair, which had a computer that spoke for him to compensate for his other disability.
  • After former WWF wrestler Darren "Droz" Drozdov became quadriplegic from a botched powerbomb in 1999, he got hooked up with a custom-made wheelchair designed and financed by Kevin Plank (founder of sportswear company Under Armor and personal friend from college). The rig is effectively Droz's own portable tank, and not only is it comfortable and convenient, when combined with Droz having since regained some control of his upper body, including his arms, it also allows him to resume his hobby of game-hunting.

 
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Video Example(s):

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Mecha-wheelchair

MechaBot combines with Mara's wheelchair for her section of the relay race, turning it into a motorized rocket-propelled chair that moves like a race car.

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Main / SuperWheelchair

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