Basic Trope: A character is protected from a specific form of harm by a disability.
- Straight: Bob the Blind is immune to Alice's mind control rays because he can't see them.
- Exaggerated: Alice the Evil's entire power set relies on her victim being able to see. Bob's friends simply lock the two of them in a room until he finally walks into her and slays her.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is partially sighted, which protects him from Alice's gaze attacks, but he still needs to train hard in order to be able to fight with worse than average eyesight.
- Depression tends to protect one from mind reading as it is contagious to psychics and they can tell before reading. They can still be read but psychics strongly prefer not to.
- Mind control machines can work on the disabled but they need to be specially calibrated for the condition. Given the expense few bother.
- Bob's brain damage gives him just enough immunity to Alice's capacity to erase people's memories to know something has been erased.
- Justified: You need to see Alice to get mind controlled.
- Inverted:
- Bob's Super-Senses mean he is even more vulnerable to Alice's mind control.
- Bob's deafness means he relies on his sight more, and is more vulnerable to Alice's mind control.
- Bob is immune to magic, meaning he is "immune" to the healing spells that his allies try to cast on him.
- Alice can only mind control the developmentally disabled or brain damaged to a roughly equivalent state.
- Alex who was born without the ability to feel pain is incapable of learning to use a Black Magic Agony Beam spell as he doesn't have the experience of his own pain to inflict upon others.
- Subverted:
- Bob claims he is immune to Alice's mind control, but then succumbs to it.
- Alice reveals that looking into her victims eyes is not actually necessary, making Bob just a vulnerable.
- Bob is Too Dumb to Fool and Alice's magical mind control doesn't works on him as a result for some reason — but Alice is an expert psychologist and brainwashes him anyway by means of providing him with juicy rewards and constant positive enforcement.
- Double Subverted:
- He was faking mind control so Alice would let her guard down.
- Bob's idiocy still makes him much more maintenance-intensive than a regular (non-hypnotized) minion. Alice wonders in the long term if getting Bob as a minion was a good idea.
- Parodied: The immunities are nonsensical - it turns out having Crohn's disease makes someone immune to disintegration for no rational reason.
- Zig Zagged: Disabilities can make someone more or less susceptible. Schizophrenia grants immunity to possession but makes them more vulnerable to psychic abilities.
- Averted:
- Bob's blindness does not protect him from mind control.
- None of the characters are disabled.
- Enforced:
- We need to have Alice's pride dented as part of a Humiliation Conga. Let's have someone defeat her with a weakness.
- The practical effects wouldn't work safely on an actor with the condition - so they wrote in an immunity and had him No-Sell it and skip to defeating Alice.
- Lampshaded:
- "Who would have though a blind person would prove a threat to me! The Mistress of gaze attacks!"
- "I got you now Bob!" "Huh, what? I can't hear you! I forgot my hearing aids today!"
- Invoked:
- Bob is recruited specifically to deal with Alice.
- Bob blinds himself to avoid Alice's attacks.
- The Kingdom of Freedonia encourages disabled children to become adventurers for this reason.
- Exploited: Bob strikes the now-powerless Alice down on the spot without ever realizing this trope was in play.
- Defied: Alice enhances her power to affect blind people.
- Discussed: "Are you sure you can handle Bob? He's blind, you know." "Yes, I know he's blind. But no matter what you may hear, you don't have to see me to succumb to my mind control."
- Conversed: "I knew Bob would do it. Why didn't they just ask him to defeat Alice in the first place, instead of needlessly killing off all those sighted heroes? That would have made a lot more sense."
- Implied: Alice's gaze attack hypnotizes the other heroes, but Bob the Blind is unaffected and finishes her off.
- Deconstructed: Because he's blind, Bob has a much harder time than the other heroes.
- Having to be blind to be unaffected is effectively a Morton's Fork in Alice's favor. If they can see she mind controls them. If they cannot she just takes her time and silently lines up an aimed shot.
- Played For Laughs:
- Bob walks straight past Alice's Schmuck Bait traps, unaware that his friends are caught in them.
- Autistic Alex can see through all of Dave's masquerades.
Alex: "Dave, is that you?" - Played For Drama: Parents weepingly blind their children on purpose to spare them from Alice the Evil.
- Played For Horror:
- In order to be 100% immune to Alice's power, you can't just do a little damage to your corneas and that's it — you have to rip the entire eye out, optic nerve included. And we get to see the procedure being performed on-screen, repeatedly, and often without the preparation needed for such surgeries like clean surgical instruments, painkillers, or someone who has knowledge of what the hell they're doing.
- Alice discovers the hard way that her powers can't brainwash sociopaths.
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