Tropes about how mental and physical disabilities are portrayed in fiction.
Tropes:
Categories:
- Abandon the Disabled: A disabled child's caretaker(s) abandon(s) them.
- Abled in the Adaptation: A character who has a disability in the original work does not have the disability in the adaptation.
- Albinos Are Freaks: Characters are ostracised for their albinism.
- An Arm and a Leg: A character gets their limbs cut off.
- Arm Cannon: A prosthetic arm that doubles as a gun.
- Artificial Limbs: Robotic prosthetic limbs.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: A character who has trouble paying attention and gets easily distracted by the most trivial of things.
- Autism in Media: Works of fiction about autistic people and autism spectrum disorders.
- Blind and the Beast: A blind person befriends an ugly being.
- Blind Black Guy: A black man who is blind.
- Blind Mistake: A blind person's inability to see results in them making hilarious mistakes.
- Blind Musician: A professional musician who is blind.
- Blind People Wear Sunglasses: Sunglasses used as visual shorthand for blindness.
- Blind Seer: A blind person who is able to see the future.
- Blind Weaponmaster: A blind person who can still do well in a fight.
- Blindness in Media: Works of fiction about blind or legally blind characters.
- Bullying the Disabled: A bully picks on people with disabilities.
- Bury Your Disabled: Disabled characters get killed off.
- Career-Ending Injury: An injury or illness that causes disability and forces the afflicted to give up their job/ambition.
- Colorblind Confusion: A character has problems because they're colorblind.
- Crippling Overspecialization: You're so good at something that it's the only thing you can do and are unable to do anything else competently.
- Crippling the Competition: Injuring one's opponent to cheat.
- Cute Mute: A character incapable of speech is portrayed as adorable and innocent.
- Dark Lord on Life Support: The villain is being kept alive by a life support system of sorts.
- The Darkness Before Death: A character goes blind before dying.
- Deaf Composer: Someone enjoys doing something related to a sense they don't have (e.g. a literal deaf composer, or a blind painter).
- Deafness in Media: Works of fiction about deaf and hard of hearing characters.
- Depraved Dwarf: A villain, usually a guy, with dwarfism.
- Diagnosed by the Audience: Viewers think it seems like a character might have a learning disability or neurological disorder which impacts them greatly enough to be considered a disability.
- Diagnosis of God: The creator confirms a character has a disorder (which can include physical disabilities).
- Disability Alibi: Someone is disabled, so they couldn't have committed the crime.
- Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: A disabled person uses the excuse that having a disability means they can get away with being an asshole.
- Disability Immunity: Having a disability makes you immune to something that would affect those who do not have the disability.
- Disability-Negating Superpower: A disabled person gains superpowers in exchange for losing their disability.
- Disability Superpower: A person's disability makes them more powerful than a non-disabled person.
- Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: A disabled character is played by an actor who has the disability for real.
- Disabled Deity: A divine being with some sort of disability.
- Disabled in the Adaptation: The adaptation gives a character a disability that they didn't have in the original story.
- Disabled Love Interest: The (usually temporary) love interest of a main character, who's disabled and usually a woman.
- Disabled Means Helpless: The belief that a disabled person can't survive without non-disabled people helping them.
- Disabled Snarker: A disabled character with a smart mouth that's linked to their disability somehow.
- Dismemberment Is Cheap: Characters are able to regrow lost limbs or get prostheses that work perfectly.
- Dream-Crushing Handicap: Someone wants to do something, but can't because of a disability they have.
- Dwarfism in Media: Works of fiction that feature people with dwarfism.
- Eunuchs Are Evil: People who've had their genitals removed are portrayed as evil.
- Evil Cripple: A disabled person who is a villain.
- Eyepatch of Power: Someone wears an eyepatch.
- Fictional Disability: A disability that doesn't exist in real life.
- Flipping Helpless: Someone cannot get up after being flipped on their back.
- Forgot the Disability: Someone forgets that their friend is disabled.
- The Freakshow: A circus sideshow that involves people with strange disabilities, along with regular circus performers.
- Genius Cripple: A highly intelligent person who can't walk.
- Glass Eye: A character with a glass or wooden eye.
- Good Prosthetic, Evil Prosthetic: Heroic amputees have realistic prostheses, but villainous amputees have bulky, showy prostheses.
- The Grotesque: An ugly person who means well in spite of their hideous appearance.
- Handicapped Badass: A disabled person who is still capable of incredible feats.
- Handy Helper: A character helps a disabled person by acting as the body part that is absent or doesn't work.
- Hiding the Handicap: Someone tries to pretend they're not disabled.
- Hollywood Autism: Autistic people are all white, male, quiet or talkative, nerdy, stoic, heartless, and severely disabled.
- Hollywood Tourette's: The stereotype that people who have Tourette's Syndrome have a habit of constantly swearing for no reason.
- Hook Hand: A character has a missing hand and replaces it with a hook or similar.
- I Can't Feel My Legs!: If someone's legs go numb, they're in serious danger.
- Ignore the Disability: A disabled character is coming, and other characters are told to ignore, and/or avoid mentioning, their disability to avoid offending them.
- Informed Deformity: A character is said to be ugly in spite of not looking any worse than the other characters.
- Inspirationally Disadvantaged: A disabled person gets special treatment by everyone else.
- Ironically Disabled Artist: An artist whose disability is at odds with their method of creating art.
- Keeping the Handicap: A character voluntarily chooses to live with a disability or impediment, even if they could feasibly get rid of it.
- "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Different portrayals of dyslexia.
- Leg Cannon: Someone's prosthetic leg is, or contains, a gun.
- Little People Are Surreal: A character with dwarfism who appears in a surreal work and/or behaves in a surreal way.
- Loon with a Heart of Gold: Someone is kind and also either insane or very eccentric.
- Mad Oracle: Someone who can predict the future, but is also insane.
- Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency: Someone has an intellectual disability and is evil.
- Mental Health Recovery Arc: A mentally ill person tries to get better.
- Mermaid in a Wheelchair: Mermaids use wheelchairs on land.
- Neurodiversity Is Supernatural: Someone is autistic, schizophrenic, etc because of something supernatural.
- Obfuscating Disability: A character pretends to be disabled.
- Obsessively Organized: A character who goes nuts when things are not neat and organized.
- One Armed Warrior: A character only needs one hand to fight.
- Organ Dodge: A character survives an injury because the organ that would've been there wasn't.
- Physical Therapy Plot: A character becomes disabled after severe injuries and begins taking physical therapy to become mobile again.
- Physical Disability in Media: An index of works about or prominently featuring physically disabled people.
- Plug 'n' Play Prosthetics: Putting on a prosthetic is effortless.
- Prophet Eyes: Psychics with cataracts.
- Prosthetic Limb Reveal: A character reveals that one of their limbs is really a prosthetic.
- Reflectionless Useless Eyes: Eyes that don't reflect light, and usually mean that the person has limited sight or is even blind.
- Seadog Peg Leg: The tendency for sailors and other sea-fairing folk to have peg legs.
- Serial Prostheses: A character keeps losing limbs and getting more prosthetics.
- Sexy Flaw: Disabilities serving as romantic and/or sexual "turn-on".
- Shrunken Organ: The reason why someone behaves inappropriately is that they have an organ (usually their heart or brain) that is tiny.
- Single-Episode Handicap: A character spends an episode disabled.
- Speech-Impeded Love Interest: Somebody's love interest can't talk perfectly.
- Speech Impediment: A character has difficulty speaking properly because of a mental disorder.
- Super Wheelchair: Someone needs a wheelchair, but the wheelchair has cool stuff attached (lasers, a rocket pack, etc).
- Superpower Disability: A character's superpower gives them a disability.
- Swiss-Army Appendage: A character has several different prostheses with different uses.
- Symbolic Mutilation: A character is rendered disabled in a symbolic way.
- Temporary Blindness: The episode revolves around a character temporarily losing the ability to see.
- Throwing Off the Disability: Somebody suddenly loses their disability.
- Wheelchair Antics: Comedy that comes from a character using a wheelchair.
- Wheelchair Woobie: You're supposed to pity this character because they use a wheelchair, crutches, or similar.
