The Rainman - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Rain Man

The Rainman has a Disability Superpower. Karmic law dictates that every mental birth defect has a compensating benefit. Like taking flaws on a RPG character, there is always an intelligence point payback, and usually a special skill, too. Some Rain Men are friendless creepy freaks, others are lovable weirdos. Rain Men are always equipped with supernatural skills.

These skills are usually mental and often geeky. At the low end are super keen observation, memory and calculation. At the high end are telekinesis and hacking into the world's computational substrate. In the namesake film, the skills are near-instantaneous observation and counting that makes Dustin Hoffman's character a nightmare for a decent casino.

If a kidnapping situation comes up, expect these skills to be used.

In Real Life, autism is a complex brain development disorder associated with interaction/communication problems and restricted repetitious behaviour. Extreme cases can be disabling, but the negative medical view of autism is highly controversial in some quarters. Autism is seen by many autistics (including some people with Asperger syndrome, or "Aspies"), as more akin to a different viewpoint and way of life. Savant skills are rare, although repetitious behavior does tend to result in autistics acquiring some unusual skills through practice. But none of that makes good television, does it?

Oh, and savant skills aren't always associated with autism to begin with. The person "Rain Man" was based on, a savant named Kim Peek, was not autistic.

See also Science Related Memetic Disorder, for a truly exaggerated take on the subject.

Examples:

Trope Namer

Rain Man: Charlie and Raymond are brothers, long separated. Raymond suffers from extreme autism and is restricted to a home. Neurotypical Charlie is apparently a sophisticated winner, but he has been hollowed out by his dog-eat-dog life. Raymond has hidden talents: His savant ability to count cards at blackjack wins the day for both brothers. Charlie discovers Raymond as a brother. A third character in the film is the musical score and visual imagery: It conveys Raymond's world. Charlie ultimately is not equipped to handle Raymond, who is returned to his home.

Anime and Manga

Cowboy Bebop: Ed has distinctly odd behaviours and mannerisms and is fond of silly exclamations and childish rhymes. It is understood this is part and parcel of her transcendent computer hacking skills.
L from Death Note has several quirks that may place him somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but also happens to be the greatest detective in the world, provided that he doesn't have to leave his hotel room to solve the case. (In case you're wondering, he uses a number of aliases and accomplices to do his legwork.)
- Speaking of Death Note, Near also seems to have some autistic traits.
- L does so leave his hotel room. He enrolls in Tokyo U with perfect scores and play tennis and flies a helicopter and all kinds of stuff.
Haruhi Suzumiya could possibly be a case. She has very narrow interests, which she pursues without delay to the exclusions of other potential interests, like when she joins every club in the school only to quit as soon as she realizes that the clubs are all quite typical. There's a massive disconnect between her thought process and the social implications of her actions, such as her confusion regarding why one shouldn't grope a female classmate by the breasts, or why a Playboy Bunny outfit is not appropriate school attire. While she doesn't follow the typical nerdy molds like other trope examples (she doesn't like complex video games), she's still quite sensible as to how the world works (researching the physics of how long it would take light from a Tanabata message to reach a specific star).
- Psychologically she has strong elements of Borderline Personality (extremes of behavior, charisma, mood swings) and Anti-Social Personality (little empathy, aggressive, general lack of remorse). Technically, however, she is too young to be diagnosed with either and strictly speaking has an undefined Conduct Disorder. Worth noting: as the series progresses, she tends to demonstrate less cruelty and more remorse.
Yuuki from Code: Breaker is an incredibly odd Cloudcuckoolander who appears to be homeless, randomly falls asleep, and gives people silly nicknames it's not terribly surprising that his depowered form is a cat. He's also one of the most powerful of the Codes with his ability to use sound as a weapon and has used his nonsensical pronouncements ("he's a middle-aged mushroom who's slightly depressed") to spawn a multi-billion-dollar toy empire (with attendant Big Fancy House). When Toki thinks that Yuuki couldn't possibly have control over the company's finances and is just being used by his handlers, Yuuki is shown crouched on a chair in front of a bunch of screens showing the company's stock rising at the announcement of the new collectible.
The title character of Saijou No Meii has some Rainman-ish traits as well. Though he's a surgical genius with extreme spatial-awareness that allows him to perform Black Jack-esque medical feats, he's also very childish, obsessed with a Captain Ersatz of Kamen Rider & yammers on about it to anybody who'll listen & the plot of one chapter revolves around him being incapable of recognizing a fellow doctor when she's in civilian clothes.

Comic Books

They never mention the condition by name, but it's pretty obvious that Mach Turtle, a Gadgeteer Genius Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain from Astro City's Tarnished Angel arc, is supposed to be a raging aspie.
Some incarnations of The Mad Hatter also come off like this. A very subtle hint occurs in the acclaimed Batman The Animated Series episode Perchance to Dream. The Hatter has Bats trapped in a Lotus Eater Machine & completely at his mercy, but never bothers to peek under his mask. This could be due to prosopagnosia. Even if he did look, it'd be completely meaningless because he's incapable of knowing who it is just from seeing their face.

Film

Mercury Rising centers on an autistic child who can intuitively decipher top military ciphers, and a police officer who can convey character with a silent telegenic stare.
Treasure Planet's B.E.N.
The film The Wizard features a little Autistic boy who is fantastic at videogames.
Kazan, from Cube.
The autistic Action Girl in the Thai film Chocolate has the ability to copy any physical movement she's seen, allowing for some awesome Waif Fu.

Literature

Blackwolf, the Batman Expy from Soon I Will Be Invincible, gets his observational skills and planning powers from a form of high-functioning autism.
Pick a Dean Koontz novel, any Dean Koontz novel... nine times out of ten there will be a mentally handicapped character of some sort who has extraordinary gifts, up to and including psychic powers...
A Wizard Alone, the sixth book in the Young Wizards series, centered around an autistic character who was portrayed as locked up in his own head on account of being autistic (which is a very inaccurate portrayal of what it is like), but was taking advantage of this writers' error to lock up the Big Bad in there with him. A little off in that being autistic didn't seem to give him a lot, otherwise, and was basically treated as something awful that'd been sicced on him by the Forces of Entropy and a metaphor for people closing themselves off because of a trauma such as grief. In the end he pushes it off on ~~Satan is everywhere~~ the Lone Power and becomes a normal wizard, apart from his special ability to be two places at once, which is caused by being a conduit for holy power. Something like that.

Live Action TV

In Stephen King's Rose Red, Annie Wheaton is too autistic to really speak to anyone, but she is also telekinetic and telepathic.
- We might as well nickname this trope "Stephen King's Magic People With Mental Conditions." The autistic kid in The Regulators is a telepath. The mentally retarded "Duddits" from Dreamcatcher has a telepathic connection to his friends and is able to help fend off the alien invasion. In the movie he was "off" because he actually was an alien... or something. The mentally retarded custodians in Kingdom Hospital have a connection to "the Old Kingdom," the spectral otherworld.
  - And don't forget John Coffey, the big black guy with not a lot of learning who can heal people...
- Carrie, though never explicitly described as having any mental condition, is clearly not cognitively normal - although having a crazy religious mother certainly didn't help. And she's telekinetic.
The schizophrenic Spencer in Burn Notice sees patterns in everything, which helps him find Michael and alert him to a woman who's selling coded messages to enemy agents. Unfortunately, he also sees messages sent on beams of light from aliens and that the enemy agents are evil aliens seeking to destroy the universe, which makes him hard to work with. Spencer receives a happy ending when Barry gets him a cryptography job and he gets on some antipsychotics.
- Averted with Dougie in a later episode. He has no particular abilities, he's just a good (but 'slow') guy who's a Pet The Dog moment for his drug dealer brother and the target of a violent criminal seeking to use him. Fiona has a Mama Bear moment on his behalf.
Monk
- "It's a gift... and a curse."
Detective Goren from Law And Order Criminal Intent is awkward and stutters but has an exceptional attention to detail and problem solving skills.
- He also faced down against an Aspie who was able to arrange murders so that no one would ever notice a pattern. He was so good that Goren and Iames only caught him because someone else made a mistake.
- That, and he would unconsciously arrange things in a certain pattern, including the "random" dump sites.
Lampshaded with Joey in Friends, when Chandler comments that Joey can't add five hundred and five hundred in his head, but when you put him near a woman he becomes the Rainman.
The autistic Haywire from Prison Break not only has a perfect photographic memory, but has no need for sleep. A Television Without Pity recapper noted "I love it when being mentally disabled really means you have superpowers."
- Michael himself may qualify as a mild version. He's been diagnosed with low latent inhibition, which apparently allows him to formulate ridiculously complicated plans.
Averted by Eureka. Kevin's supernatural powers are due not to his autism but to absorbing the Akashic Field.
- However, his ability to name the day of the week for any given date is a classical view of an autistic superpower. And then they pull this:
Carter: "What is... november 3rd, 1957?"
Kevin: "Tuesday."
Carter: "Pretty sure it was a thursday."
Kevin: "Nope. Tuesday."
Carter: "Whatever. Still gonna look it up."

Which nobody ever did: November 3rd, 1957 was a Sunday. Says cal(1) on my Linux machine.

Many fans speculate that Chloe O'Brian in 24 has Asperger's, though it's never been confirmed by TPTB.
Spinelli on General Hospital is so good with computers that the Port Charles Mob...convinces him to work for them. At one point, Matt Hunter wants to test him for autism, but he refuses, telling him he is Spinelli, and no further explanation is needed.
NCIS, "See No Evil": Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) plays a blind child with brilliant pianism ability. She also has such a good ear for pitch that you could replace the sonar computer on a Los Angeles class submarine with her. She and her mother get kidnapped. The girl gets released. Guess how the mother is found...
Airwolf: A boy with Down Syndrome has the ability to accurately draw something for memory. His father, an aircraft designer, gets kidnapped by people who appear to be working for a certain non-democratic state.. He is able to draw the outside of the house, thus allowing Airwolf's image recognition system to find it.
River Tam from Firefly, though in her case she started out just fine, until her fourteenth birthday, when she was convinced to go to the Academy. From there, things got worse.
Law And Order Special Victims Unit once featured a little girl with Williams Syndrome. She made the perfect witness because 1) she literally had no concept of lying, and 2) she had really, really good hearing. (She was also completely adorable.)

Music

Tommy: that deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.

Professional Wrestling

WWE had Eugene Dinsmore, Eric Bischoff's "special" nephew, whose savant skill just happened to be Professional Wrestling. Later they introduced Jesse and his cousin Festus, the latter of which seems to be heavily autistic, but "wakes up" whenever he hears the ring bell and becomes a superb powerhouse wrestler, only to go back off to his own little world when the bell rings again at the end of the match.
- These were both played for laughs, with the best usage being when John Morrison and The Miz more or less herded "stupid" Festus into the ring with a bell, and proceeded to ring it over and over to watch him snap back and forth, with Morrison at one point leaving Festus in "battle" mode to watch him chase Miz around the ring. It must be noted the fellow who plays Festus is REALLY dedicated to the character.
  - Unfortunately for us, Festus has apparently been retired as a character; the performer is going by a different name and working as a goon for CM Punk. Punk actually referenced that Festus's behavior was due to drug addiction, and that as the straight-edge heelish dude he is, Punk turned a pretty funny gimmick wrestler into a generic mook. Way to go Punk!

Video Games

In Clive Barkers Jericho, Cpl. Simone Cole has the ability to hack into reality itself by the magic of autistic weirdness and high mathematics.
''{{Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura}} has the "Idiot Savant" background, which gives you a huge boost to intelligence and gambling, at the expense of social abilities. You also get the "stupid" dialogue, which doesn't make exact sense, but I guess writing up a complete set of extra dialogue would've been too much.

Web Animation

In Red Vs Blue, Caboose, the lovable idiot who never quite figured out that not everyone offering orange juice and a cookie has his best interests in mind, is the only character strong enough to lift the bomb Tex has prepared to blow up O'Malley's base. The other Blues describe this as Caboose's "Retard Strength," God's compensation for the fact that Caboose lacks the capacity to do basic addition.
- And let's face it, if you can actually manage to get him mad...
"I'm imagining kittens... guh... covered with spikes! [...] My name is Michael J. Caboose and I hate babies." whap whap whap thud
- Oddly enough, Retard Strength is an actual game mechanic in F.A.T.A.L.
  - The Blue Team never technically calls Caboose's superhuman physical prowess "Retard Strength". Tucker just says that he and Church see it as "God's way of compensating". However, Caboose is called a retard on many occasions (mostly by Church).

Webcomics

Last Resort's Daisy Archanis is an autistic Mad Scientist; while the only real 'power' she's demonstrated so far are some kickass deduction skills that helped her figure out Jigsaw was a vampire before anyone else AND discreetly inform Jigsaw of this by exploiting Jigsaw's new thought-reading skills in order to avoid breaking The Masquerade, bonus materials imply that her autistic facets are actually a symptom of being a Light Child and thus having the potential for supernatural powers (albeit lacking the training to use them).

Western Animation

The Sewer Urchin from The Tick. On ground level, he is generally considered ineffectual and unpopular (particularly because of his smell), but in his home territory of the sewers, he's one of The City's most effective superheroes. As an added bonus, he actually sounds and acts like Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man.

Real Life

Nikola Tesla. Actually, it's not known what Tesla's problem was. Other than Edison, that is.
Henry Cavendish (at least according to Oliver Sacks– again, not confirmed– others regard him as simply being shy).
- Of course, posthumous diagnoses like these need to be taken with many grains of salt. While there has been for some time a fad for "diagnosing" famous dead (and even living) people with high-functioning autism, and other disorders, the grounds for this are often highly dubious, and may fail to take into account the wide range of "normal" personality.
- Many geniuses are minor inversions of this trope - having a high IQ tends to make it difficult to relate to regular people, and being a genius in a specific field often makes one ignore other aspects of their life. It's not uncommon for a great researcher, artist, or inventor to be inept at pretty much everything else they do, without it being a mental disorder.
Truth In Television example: The danish company 'Specialisterne' has made a business out of hiring high-functioning 'Aspies' and taking advantage of their attention to detail and ability to instantly recognize any inconsistencies in a larger system - for software-testing purposes. Turns out that particular skillset makes it a lot easier to hunt down bugs and glitches.
Stephen Wiltshire, a diagnosed autistic who didn't even speak until the age of nine, but has incredible memory and artistic abilities. He can draw any target from memory after one look at it - including, once, a complete London cityscape after a single 15-minute helicopter ride.
Daniel Tammet, who unlike most savants "learned enough social skills to function in society" and (most intriguing for scientists) can actually describe his mental state. In the linked documentary ("The Boy With The Incredible Brain" in the UK and "Brain Man" in the US), he recites pi to 500 places and even meets the real Rainman and counts cards in Vegas He gets a triple Black Jack when he splits what would've been three 7s. Incredibly, he claims that when doing complex arithmetic all he's doing is describing the "landscapes" created by his synesthesia.
People with OCD make great scientists, doctors and engineers because of the precision required. Not bad at building and maintaining wikis, either.