Follow TV Tropes

Following

Handicapped Badass

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/handicap.png
She doesn't need legs to kick his ass.
Fox marched forward. It really was hard to tell that he was blind. Coco watched him carefully, and even when he stumbled on a rock or a root, he quickly adjusted to maintain his balance without missing a beat; you had to be looking to even notice the misstep. Coco envied Fox's complete awareness of his body and how it moved in his environment.

How can you make a Badass character even more badass? Easy; make him lose an eye, or have her get paralyzed from the waist down, or give them some disease from which there is no cure. Finally, do not use the Reset Button to remove it. "What?!" you say, "My character must stay injured/handicapped?" Simply, yes.

In Real Life, we know how hard it is to accomplish death-defying feats in perfect health and condition, so anybody that does it with a disability instantly earns our respect. Imagine how much more awesome that shoot-out is going to be when the audience finds out The Hero is blind. Imagine the buzz your character will get when they win the judo competition with just one good leg.

It is important that your character's conquest of their physical challenge makes sense; not properly explaining their ability to continue to function, let alone on the badass level, will result in audience confusion, or worse, your character becoming a Sympathetic Sue.

For the sake of the story, a restrained dose of Applied Phlebotinum is allowed to explain or aid the character's ability to overcome the handicap. This technological or otherwise nonstandard aid cannot completely cure or nullify the effects of the injury, though — that would kill the point of the character triumphing over the handicap. Thus, The Six Million Dollar Man wouldn't count. On the other hand, if the helping device has drawbacks that constantly remind the character of their issue, that's cool. For example, in Star Wars, Darth Vader's life support suit enables him to kick ass despite his extensive and debilitating injuries, but it's clunky and outdated by the standards of The 'Verse. Vader can't survive without it, and he still has to endure the constant pain of his old injuries (along with the incessant Vader Breath from that noisy respirator).

Some writers will go for extra points by showing how an injury unlocked the character's true potential by causing them to discover some heretofore unrealized skill or ability or learning a new one. A Training Montage might be in order to show how the character learned to overcome the handicap. If a person has powers because they are disabled, then that's a Disability Superpower. The Deaf Composer may go through a similar process regarding their chosen craft.

Mental challenges, such as autism spectrum disorder and PTSD, count as well. Old age doesn't (although it often overlaps with this trope), as that's already covered by tropes like Never Mess with Granny and Old Master.

This trope is commonly seen among fictional pirates. These attributes seem to be cases of Follow the Leader: the Seadog Peg Leg originated with Long John Silver of Treasure Island,note  the Hook Hand with Captain Hook of Peter Pan, and the Eyepatch of Power …well, that might have come from Real Life Arab pirate Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah, but it might also come from something that has nothing to do with disabilities. Some people have speculated that sailors wore eyepatches to keep one eye in the dark, so when they went into the darkness below deck, they'd have one eye accustomed to the darkness, and they'd just switch the patch to the other eye.

Specific Sub-Tropes include Blind Weaponmaster, Blind Seer, and Deaf Composer. The Blind Black Guy usually fits this trope (and is usually based at least partially on Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder). In the case of a villainous Handicapped Badass, like the aforementioned Vader, Silver, and Hook, this trope will also overlap with Evil Cripple.

This trope is often seen in Real Life among people who don't accept the Dream-Crushing Handicap as the final word. Of course, not everyone wants to follow this trope and be "inspirational". Instead, they'd rather go about their lives, maybe with (God forbid) a few accommodations. On the bright side, at least it isn't vomit-inducing pity. Compare Pregnant Badass. On the more intelligent side, compare Genius Cripple, and if both of these tropes overlap with each other, you'll get Genius Bruiser. Contrast this trope to Disabled Means Helpless.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 

    Comic Books 

The DCU

  • Aquaman was missing a hand for most of his Post-Crisis career. He used a variety of prosthetics over the years, including a magical hand made of water that he got from the Lady of the Lake, but the most iconic one was a harpoon-shaped hook that he could fire off as a grappling line.
  • Barbara Gordon — the second Batgirl — gets shot through the spine and paralyzed. Although she'd already retired as Batgirl she becomes an Information Broker under the name Oracle and becomes the greatest source of info in The DCU. While she mostly does non-action work as befitting her position, she has proved to be a capable fighter even in a wheelchair. She also beat the shit out of Spy Smasher from her wheelchair when the latter threatens to take over her operation.
  • Barbara's successor, Cassandra Cain has some serious mental disabilities. Aside from her difficulty speaking, she is also dyslexic and often comes across as having a mental disorder due to her lack of social skills. This does not stop her from being most likely the greatest hand-to-hand fighter on the planet, at one point punching a zombified assassin in half (note that the assassin had died only minutes before at most, meaning that he was as durable as a living person).
  • Batman:
    • Bruce Wayne when he was wheelchair-ridden in Knightfall. It's explored further in the Novelization.
    • The Armless Master, a master martial artist with no arms. His seven able-bodied students were each capable of giving Batman himself a serious fight. It was later retconned that he also trained Catwoman. Tim Drake/Robin at one point trains with his counterpart, the Legless Master. He manages to give Lady Shiva, acknowledged as one of the best, if not the best martial artist in the DCU, a decent fight before she kills him.
  • Blue Beetle: Ted Kord/Blue Beetle II develops heart arrhythmia, but he is still a badass Science Hero and genius inventor.
  • Doom Patrol: The Chief. Whether blasting his way into bad guys' homes with his chair-mounted rocket-launchers, calmly knee-capping opponents to put them on equal terms with himself, or using his knowledge and sheer grit to — even blown out of his chair — take on and kill the Beard Hunter (a Punisher parody), AND deliver a Bond One-Liner afterwards...and, on top of all of that, proving ultimately to have fully recovered from his paralysis some time ago, to have deliberately engineered accidents and disasters that created/destroyed other team members, and ready to re-shape the world using a combination of Chaos Theory and nanotechnology, thus becoming the Morrison run's ultimate Big Bad. What a guy!
  • Robin (1993): Tim Drake's first major villain was King Snake, a kung-fu master who was completely blind; King Snake resented the loss of his sight, but was so used to fighting blind that he was actually less capable a combatant when his vision was briefly restored.
  • Shazam!: Captain Marvel Jr. wouldn't ordinarily qualify as he isn't disabled when in superhero form, but his alter ego Freddy Freeman has to use a crutch to walk (for real; it's not just a disguise like Clark Kent's glasses). Since Freddy not infrequently puts himself in dangerous situations before transforming and has occasionally saved the day when Junior accidentally transforms back into Freddy at the worst possible moment, Freddy probably counts.
  • Tim Drake: Robin: Sparrow (Darcy Thomas) is hard of hearing and has to wear hearing aids and fights crime alongside Robin/Red Robin as a costumed detective.
  • The Flash: Hartley Rathaway, aka Pied Piper, was born deaf and has to wear high-tech hearing implants. This doesn't stop him from being so badass that he was able to destroy Apokolips with the power of Queen.
  • Superman and Supergirl have often fought while blinded (as in the Krypton No More storyline) or otherwise crippled. And they still managed to kick butts.
  • In Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Green Arrow turns up missing an arm. He says it hurts when the weather turns cold. Later in the story he hangs upside down from a fire escape to shoot Superman with a kryptonite arrow, pulling the string with his teeth.
  • Security guard Aaron Cash in Arkham Asylum: Living Hell gets his hand eaten by Killer Croc before the story even begins. He understandably angsts about this for while until he finds a better reason to angst. Doesn't stop him from saving the rest of Arkham's staff from demons. He also rips off a piece of demonized Killer Croc's hide and makes a wallet out of it.
  • Captain Storm. One eye, a wooden leg and the toughest naval officer in World War II. He had 18 issues of his own title and then served as commander of The Losers.
  • In Before Watchmen: Minutemen, Mothman is a brilliant inventor and a brave hero despite being in constant, unbearable pain from a few too many bad landings. Sadly, his worsening alcoholism and mental illness ended his career when he was still in his prime.
    Hollis Mason: The common story is that Byron was the weak one. The one who cracked up. I see it differently. Byron Lewis was brave like ten men. And then he cracked up.
  • The Oracle Code: Babs loses the use of her legs early on, but not her hacking and lock picking abilities or tenacity and as Ben notes her therapy means that she's physically stronger than ever before too. She manages to take down a pair of corrupt doctors who have been experimenting on patients the public won't notice missing.
  • The Horsewoman of Demon Knights is a paraplegic woman who is a deadly horse archer.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Volume 1: Streicher (Red Panzer) had a cataract in one eye and wore an eyepatch over it. This didn't stop him from being able to take on two Wonder Women at once.
    • Volume 2 & Volume 5: Mayfly (aka Moon Robinson) is a hemophiliac, and did Fight Clubbing specifically as a way to not let her condition rule her life.
    • For a time, Wonder Woman lost her sight due to a battle with Medusa. She wasn't any less capable during that period.
Marvel Universe
  • Armless Tiger Man. He's armless, BUT HE'S A TIGER MAN.
  • Captain America: John F. Walker aka USAgent after the villain Nuke severed his left limbs. The lack of advanced prostheses (he does not want to end up as a cyborg like Nuke) does not stop him from beating some escaped prisoners back into their cells.
  • Cloak and Dagger: Dagger was rendered blind for a while; she adapted quickly, and it didn't hurt her career as a heroine much.
  • Conan the Barbarian: Captain Bor'Aq Sharaq in Savage Sword of Conan is one such case where becoming handicapped only made him more dangerous: at first he was just a pirate who had his sword hand chopped off in a duel with Conan and later lost his right eye in prison. Then he managed to escape and had a smith create a metallic arm for him with detachable blades that he could use to pursue his hated foe. He is one of the most recurring villains of that comic since his persistence and hatred for the barbarian allow him to live through stuff that any other person would have perished from—such as being thrown into a demonic dimension and managing to claw his way out!
  • Daredevil:
  • Deadpool: After he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Wade Wilson was given Wolverine's Healing Factor to save his life. Now he's a giant, self-repairing humanoid tumor. And one of the most insane and badass characters in the Marvel Universe.
    • It's also worth noting that on top of his cancer, he's also severely mentally ill, showing signs of schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, psychosis, and dissociative identity disorder. Yet none of this stops him from being an effective mercenary and an extremely dangerous fighter who can go toe-to-toe with heavy hitters like Wolverine, The Punisher, Gambit, Black Panther, and Taskmaster.
  • Hawkeye:
    • Hawkeye handicapped himself by putting a sonic arrow in his mouth to counter an attack. He used hearing aids after that. Eventually, another writer cured him of his deafness altogether, but it deserves the mention for the time he was deaf. He's also since been deafened again, and is still no less badass.
    • Plus, there are a couple of alternate universes where Clint is blind, but hasn't lost an inch of his edge; mainly, Marvel Comics 2 and Old Man Logan.
  • Iron Fist: Every Cobra Warrior of Peng Lai in Immortal Iron Fist is handicapped in one way or another, and freaking insanely hardcore. While the only one we've ever directly seen is the gargantuanly obese and unerringly awesome Fat Cobra, we hear of such luminaries as the ancient Old Cobra, One-Armed Cobra, and Blind Cobra.
  • Iron Man:
    • Tony Stark. The chest injury he suffers leads to the creation of the arc reactor. Also, in the comics, Stark becomes paralyzed and has to rely on an armor suit powered by his thoughts alone.
    • The first issue of Christopher Cantwell's run has Tony participating in a drag race with a deaf street racer named Halcyon who easily bests him.
  • Marvel Zombies: Despite its horrific imagery, the series has its interpretation of Black Panther: after being held captive and drugged by Zombie Giant-Man as a food source, when Zombie Wasp finds out she and her husband argue, while Black Panther, without half of his right arm and left leg, takes advantage of this and escapes. Then, while confronted by some of Magneto's comrades, he SINGLEHANDEDLY kicks their asses.
  • New Warriors: Silhouette's legs are crippled, but that's never prevented her from beating ass. She even had her boyfriend Night Thrasher build a bunch of weapons into her braces.
  • Spider-Man:
    • The current user of the Venom symbiote, Flash Thompson, lost his legs from the knees down during a tour of duty. The symbiote gives him a set of legs to use and, at one point, the Superior Spider Man tried to give Flash a pair of robotic prosthetics in exchange for the symbiote, but Flash quickly dumped them and went back to the symbiote.
    • On the other hand, there's Cletus Kasidy, Carnage, who lost his entire lower half at the hands of The Sentry.
  • Spider-Woman:
    • Jessica meets the exiled Skrull royalty Prince Klundirk (Dirk to his friends) in an alien hospital — despite being a fourteen-year-old cancer sufferer hooked up to multiple IVs, Dirk manages to outrun a mob of adult Skrull soldiers while pushing the heavily-pregnant Jessica in a wheelchair, just as her water breaks. (Their goal being to take him alive may have something to do with it, but he comments they're too stupid to think of a way to stop him.)
    • The Shroud lost his eyesight in a religious ritual that granted him superhuman perception. But even without the powers, he's still a formidable martial artist.
  • Doctor Strange: Doctor Strange's origin involves him sustaining nerve damage in his hands that left him permanently unable to resume his work as a surgeon. Not that that stopped him from becoming Master of the Mystic Arts.
  • X-Men:
    • Professor X's wheelchair doesn't lessen his badassery.
    • X-23 usually wouldn't be expected to qualify, since her Healing Factor allows her to fully recover from the exact sorts of injuries that would cause permanent disability in other people. If her neck or back are broken she only needs a few minutes to heal and she's back on her feet. The exception occurs in X-Force, when she carries out a positively epic Mook Horror Show on the Facility goons who recapture her with one arm after Kimura had gone to work on her with a chainsaw for "being a bad girl." Adam Harkins is practically pissing himself as Laura tears apart the base, and even Kimura (who is invulnerable to Laura's claws) has an Oh, Crap! moment when she realizes that the fire suppression system had been loaded with trigger scent...
    • Hellion got his hands blown up by Bastion, but his telekinesis powers only got stronger when he had to switch from using his hands to control it to his mind instead. He also got a shiny pair of metal prosthetic hands to he can control with his power. He also Took a Level in Jerkass, which is really impressive considering he was a tremendous ass to begin with...
    • Takeshi Matsuya/Wiz Kid was left confined to a wheelchair after an accident cost him the use of his legs. He's also arguably one of the most powerful Technopaths in the Marvel universe, with feats ranging from turning his electric wheelchair into a Transforming Vehicle to (with a power boost to speed up the process) transforming an alien Humongous Mecha into a planet-sized super-gun.
Others
  • The Condor Knight, from The 7 Lives Of The Sparrowhawk ("Les 7 Vies de L'épervier" in French). Despite losing an arm, an eye and being like, fifty-years-old, he is certainly the most dangerous swordsman in the entire world. With his handicaps, he has defeated more than 125 people in single combat and is said to have wiped out entire Indian tribes. We won't even talk about before his accidents.
  • The Boys: "Monkey" has a fetish for paraplegic female athletes (to the point of going to paralympic events with a box of popcorn that has a hole in the bottom to hide his excitement). He manages to corner one such girl at an official function and tries to coerce her into sex... and she promptly beats the shit out of him before Butcher shows up to complete his humiliation by having his dog Terror rape him.
  • In Chassis, Covergirl was horribly injured in a rocket car crash that left her unable to breathe without the assistance of a machine that she has to carry with her at all times. This does not prevent her from being an Ace Pilot, and arguably the most dangerous driver in the Aero-Run.
  • Marvin from the Franco-Belgian comic Dungeon Twilight ends up with both his arms cut off on top of being blind since the Timeskip. Thank to his species' law that a dragon gains a new power when he loses a previous one and his arms count as a power, he ends up raising an army of dead dragons that allows him to soundly defeat the Big Bad. And him being blind did not stop him from being one of the strongest fighters in the series even in his old age.
  • Hotline Miami: Wildlife introduces us to Kurt, a former soldier who had his arm cut off to stop an infection (granted, the arm was pretty much done for anyway). But after joining 50 Blessings, he manages to blow up a Russian Mafia mansion, snipe some of the survivors, and brutally stab the rest of them. All of this without any of them realizing just who was attacking them. And after all of that, he leaves a message written in their blood: "YOU NEED MORE GUARDS".
  • Master Wolf from Star Wars: Legacy. Wolf lost his right arm in a fight with Darth Nihil and didn't replace it with a prosthetic, instead just training his left arm to use a lightsaber. He later accepted a prosthetic, though not because of any lack of skill or badassery — just that a one-armed Zabrak stands out in the crowd, and when you're a Jedi going places where there are going to be plenty of Sith, better not to stand out.
  • The original run of the android Machine Man's comic included an arc where he'd lost an arm in a fight, and when he went back to retrieve it, discovered it had been stolen. So he spends the rest of the story one-armed as he goes about getting it back.
  • Monstress:
    • Maika is an incredibly skilled fighter, though her missing arm does hinder her at times. During one fight, for instance, she has to bash someone in the face with her stump, and it's only because of surprise and her own inhuman strength that the attack was enough to knock her opponent over. The lack of an arm also limits how much she can carry, so she needed to recruit Kippa as a personal carrier.
    • On the villainous side, whatever happened at Constantine in the backstory did a number on Hammer. She's always wearing a veil over her face and has been rendered mute, needing to use sign language to communicate with her fellow Inquisitrixes.
  • The Finnish humor and comic magazine Pahkasika featured a one-off character Teräsinva (Supercripple) as a parody of Superman. His civilian job is a reporter for a Braille newspaper, his heroic deeds revolve around helping the handicapped and his Kryptonite Factor is polio vaccine.
  • Deconstructed in Rough Riders. Edison is partially deaf by the time he's recruited. A debilitation he tries to hide despite how being unable to hear people who are just six feet away from him could get him and his teammates killed. Luckily for Thomas, he's often in situations where everyone's shouting at one another.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: Early Voyages:
      • Kaaj, the commander of the Klingon battlecruiser Varchas, has a withered right arm. In "The Fires of Pharos", his subordinate Kir makes a snide remark about Kaaj's disability affecting his bravery when he does not engage the Enterprise in battle. Kaaj immediately smashes Kir's face into his console using his left arm and warns him not to underestimate either him or the Federation based on appearances.
      • In the two-part story "Cloak and Dagger", Commander Tagok, the leader of the rogue group of Vulcans on Darien 224, is blind in his right eye. He possesses a large scar, indicating that it happened in combat.
    • Star Trek: Untold Voyages: In "Silent Cries", the Orion pirate Raydeen has a mechanical implant in place of his left eye, which he lost in battle.
  • Transformers:
    • The Transformers (Marvel): Josie Beller is a partial example. Partial because after she was almost completely paralyzed by an attack by Decepticon Shockwave, she built herself a suit of Stripperiffic cybernetic armor that enabled her to move and fight against the Transformers. She was still almost completely paralyzed without the suit, however, and it seems unlikely that the suit could have restored her sense of touch. How badass was she, by the way? She fought and, for all intents and purposes, defeated Unicron. Sadly, the price of this victory was what remained of her sanity.
    • The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: When we meet Grimlock, he's clearly suffered severe brain damage since his last appearance — his famous Verbal Tic is a result of aphasia, and he demonstrates significantly reduced function compared to his earlier appearances. He's still a killing machine, though.
  • In Ãœber, some of the titular super soldiers are disabled in combat, but still remain fairly dangerous:
    • Siegmund loses his right arm in combat, though its considered a very annoying inconvenience at worst.
    • Sieglinde is heavily disfigured and becomes wheel-chair bound after a fight with an equally powerful enemy. While she can no longer use her super strength in a straight up fight, she probably doesn't need it anymore as her halo effect is still available and pretty powerful, allowing her to create constructs out of mud and dirt.
  • Zato-Ino the "blind swordspig" in Usagi Yojimbo is an obvious Shout-Out to Zatoichi, the famous blind swordsman. He uses his acute sense of smell, rather than hearing to tell his surroundings.
  • Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead gets his dominant hand chopped off about midway through the series. The other survivors force him to admit that he's much more vulnerable with the handicap, but necessity forces him to get out of a number of scrapes using his off-hand, and his tenacity makes him pretty badass.

    Comic Strips 
  • Dr. Plain from Dick Tracy was one of the most ruthless (and frighteningly sane) murderers Tracy ever fought, despite missing an arm.

    Fan Works 
  • Reading all the exploits of Rukth 'Kilkar, it's almost easy to forget that he's effortlessly slaughtering hundreds of Brutes with only one eye. Later, his compatriot Zerat 'Omdolo loses his left eye as well, though as Zerat is a sniper instead of a close-combat specialist like Rukth, this is a bigger deal.
  • In Transformers fanfic Are You There Primus? It's Me, Starscream, despite her blindness, the OC Hotwire is still perfectly capable of inventing devastating weapons. The writer explicitly mentions wanting to steer away from the 'Daredevil' version of badass blindness, and Hotwire is not more proficient in weapons than she would have been otherwise - but she can still land a solid hit.
  • Bad Future Crusaders:
    • Apple Bloom has a notable limp in one of her forelegs, but can still fight as good as anyone.
    • Scootaloo is half-blind and has a broken wing, but can give Apple Bloom and Silver Spoon a run for their money.
    • Dinky is also half-blind, but is also one of the most powerful unicorns alive.
    • Babs was removed from active duty in the Royal Guard after a permanent lung injury. She doesn't let it slow her down.
  • Played with for Black As Night and its sequels, where Hiccup is blinded on the second day of dragon training; the author explicitly avoids giving Hiccup the Hyper-Awareness of the likes of Daredevil, so he has trouble when directly attacked and needed Astrid to help him lay out a set of stones before he could even get to the outhouse behind his hut, but he still manages to train Toothless, with the addition of teaching Toothless how to make a series of sounds to direct Hiccup on what tail position he should use to control their direction.
  • In The Lord of the Rings AU The Captain and the King, Boromir is blinded within the first chapter. This fic and its sequel have him riding into battle, blowing up an army of Orcs, wounding and killing his various assassins...and so on.
  • Chasing Dragons: Brandon Stark might be so crippled by his time as a prisoner to the Mad King that he can barely walk unaided, but proves that he's still as fierce a ruler as any Stark before him when he needs to be.
  • Child of the Storm has quite a few of these:
    • The Winter Soldier lost his left arm a long time ago. He's still quite possibly the scariest man in the universe (though it doesn't hurt that he has an artificial replacement).
    • Lucius Malfoy walks with a stick thanks to Nick Fury, a few bullets, and a lot of napalm. He's an A-Grade Magnificent Bastard, however.
    • Nick Fury lost his eye to Lucius Malfoy - while giving him his own handicap. This does not stop him from being incredibly badass and a competent Magnificent Bastard in his own right.
    • Tony Stark. His arc reactor does not slow him down. At all.
    • The Red Son winds up losing his left arm and eye fighting Magneto. He's still a Person of Mass Destruction, though, and gets cybernetic techno-organic replacements that, if anything, only make him even more dangerous.
    • Charles Xavier is confined to a wheelchair. He's also the most powerful human psychic in the world—possibly ever—bar just a few, and far more skilled than any of them.
    • Odin, like Nick Fury, is missing an eye. Also like Nick Fury, he's a Magnificent Bastard and stone-cold badass that even other gods don't want to piss off.
    • Harry Dresden's left hand, as in canon, is currently badly burned due to a vampire's servant getting creative with napalm (his type of wizard has a Healing Factor, but it's a slow one). He's also The Dreaded for pretty much every supernatural monster in North America, and even those of his own people who don't like him treat him with wary respect.
    • While Harry is more or less fine, physically (he loses an arm at least once, and an eye, but manages to regenerate them. Mentally, he's an utter mess after the first major arc of the sequel, riddled with crippling PTSD - among other things, such as being a rape survivor - which strongly affects his Character Development. The author goes into extensive detail about the effects this has on him, and it occasionally discusses it in the A/N.
  • DC Nation has Oracle as a major player. But the Original Character Green Shield was terminally ill when she played Professor Guinea Pig on herself. While it arrested her illness and gave her enhanced durability, she's in constant pain as a result of the damage the disease already did. There's also Green Lantern Travis Grey, who is not only blind but has a specific kind of brain damage that short-circuited his fear response. He relies on his ring for a form of radar, and his inability to process fear normally makes him immune to some of the usual tricks used against Green Lanterns. On the downside, that inability also makes it hard to relate to his teammates.
  • In Demon In Fodlan, Goetia lacks the arm he lost in his fight with Ritsuka, but he remains a frighteningly powerful combatant. He effortlessly takes care of an enhanced Demonic Beast that could have torn through the Golden Deer class with barely an inconvenience and was able to take on Dimitri in hand to hand with his only arm. It's implied that he could've create a prosthetic arm for himself or outright heal his missing arm, but the reason he refuses is because he acknowledges Ritsuka's feat to able to critically wound him in their final fight, and maintaining that missing limb is his way of honoring Ritsuka's efforts.
  • In Flam Gush Gourry ends up losing a few fingers. He is STILL Head and shoulders above any- and everyone else in the story with swordplay.
  • For the Glory of Irk eventually reveals that Zim — who is just as skilled at violence and destruction as in canon — is partly deaf due to damage to his hearing organs. Everyone agrees that this explains a lot.
  • In Friendship Is Showtime, Nito lost his wing at some point in the past. This does not stop him from kicking flank as Kamen Rider Beast.
  • The Warmistress of Equestria: Justicar Echo is one of the best fighters in the Night Guard and also happens to be completely blind. She is able to fight Galas, a Deer Ranger, to a standstill despite being outclassed in weaponry and agility.
  • In the Harry Potter fanfic ''Game of Chess'', Ron Weasley has PTSD with a significant effect on plot and characterization. The fic breaks down tropes in the author's notes, including disability tropes.
  • In the Harmony's Warriors series, a side story reveals that Pinkie Pie (a spy in this universe) was left permanently deaf during a mission in Istanbull. Fortunately for her, Twilight was able to create a set of advanced hearing aids to synthesize hearing for her. And she doesn't let this disability slow her down at all.
  • Fankil, the main antagonist of The Heart Trilogy, is a demon who looks rather emaciated and walks with a limp. However, he's able to move with feline agility when he has to, and he's strong and tough enough to face off the great fire-drake Smaug. This is justified by the fact that he has a lot of magical power as the son of Morgoth himself.
  • In Search Of F, Shou was born with weak wings and even a short flight leaves him winded, thus explaining why he primarily gets around with Machine HardBoilder instead of his wings. This does not stop him from kicking flank, both on his own or as half of Double.
  • Both The Postal Dude Jr and The Other Postal Dude suffer from a strange glitch in The Infinite Loops where they can't gain additional powers from across the loops. However, this in no way makes either of them weak as they still have their subspace pockets and make up for having no powers by being armed to the teeth.
  • Kimberly T's Gargoyles fics basically turn Thailog into this, as it is revealed that he has been left with a crippled wing after his last battle with the Manhattan Clan. Admittedly, he's still the size of Goliath with the business skill and criminal intellect of pre-reformation Xanatos, so 'handicapped' might be a misleading term, but when the majority of his regular foes are capable of flight, the fact that he's permanently grounded does give them a key potential advantage in future confrontations.
  • In The Powerpuff Girls fanfic Ladder, Bubbles gets shot in an eye by Mojo Jojo. This leaves her blind in that eye. It doesn't inhibit her superpowers much and in fact, she becomes a very dangerous Serial Killer afterwards.
  • In Legacy (Sekiro/Kimetsu no Yaiba), Wolf is still a dangerous foe for most mortal opponents despite giving up the Shinobi Fang and is hundreds of years out of practice. It's also deconstructed, as his blows simply don't have the same weight without a second arm.
  • Naruto in Legend of the Blind Ninja is a very capable ninja despite his loss of sight.
  • In the RWBY Fanfic,MRRN, Mathdon has Asperger's, which subjected him to bullying, abuse, and an unjust expulsion. Luckily, thanks to the training of his mentors, Mathdon becomes a skilled and powerful warrior.
  • In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku nearly kills Katsuki Bakugou when they brawled as kids, leaving Bakugou with grievous scarring across his arms and chest as well as titanium screws in his arm. Despite this, he still manages to tear his way through the U.A. Entrance Exam, earning more Villain Points than anyone else. The proctors are surprised to see that his condition doesn't seem to slow him down and he isn't even winded by the end of it.
  • The Night Unfurls:
    • Hugh lost his voice and one of his eyes, but these handicaps do not stop him from being a fighter, a marksman, and a Kid Hero who racks up a huge body count during the war against the Black Dogs.
    • The Hunter counts as a mental variant rather than the physical variant. He occasionally relieves unwanted memories of him fighting for survival, avoids anything that would trigger said memories (e.g., idleness), and is always on guard for danger, all of which are his struggles with PTSD thanks to his Dark and Troubled Past in Yharnam. The guy has no problem hunting beasts on his lonesome with a heavy serrated cleaver and, rather than being Ax-Crazy as commonly believed, is in fact a very patient, levelheaded man.
  • In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Ash faces a girl named Kaia in the fifth round of the Indigo League. She lost her sight due to an attack by the Spearow flock in Route 1 and had to postpone her journey for about a whole year while undergoing rehab. Despite this, she managed to earn her eight badges and made it past the four preliminary rounds of the tournament, and gave Ash a run for his money during the match, thanks to training her Pokémon to act more independently to make up for her handicap.
  • In The Rise of Darth Vulcan, a group of young remedial class pegasi with serious deformities were able to destroy a rogue tornado that was about to wreck their town. It did end up biting THEM hard though, forcing them into the service of Darth Vulcan, who won't underestimate their abilities.
  • Zuko in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic Scarlet and Black. The idea is that he was blinded in the Agni Kai against his father, and now gets around using firebender-style Toph-O-Vision to the extent that no one on his ship besides Iroh even knows that he's blind.
  • In The Sea Shadow, Vivian is an even better fighter than she is in canon, in spite of missing an eye.
  • In The Secret Return of Alex Mack, supporting character Sergeant Carlson is married to Corine, a former soldier who lost a leg and has a lot of metal reinforcements in her due to a car accident. Turns out a prosthetic leg works really well to kick people, and a metal-reinforced hand lets her punch a lot harder.
  • Cassandra Cain in "Settling Accounts". Despite a spinal cord injury that leaves her paralyzed from the neck down, she manages to face down her psychotic father alone and defeat him thanks to a spring-loaded, poison-tipped dagger she had someone tape to her paralyzed arm. A subversion of Disabled Means Helpless. Her injury leaves her unable to even feed herself, but she remains anything but helpless.
  • In Superman and Man, the titular hero finds himself in the body of a person paralyzed from the neck down for one day and having to perform good deeds in spite of it.
    When he went to bed the night before, he might have moved the Earth out of orbit. Now he could not move his hand.
  • True Potential: Misora, a Kiri kunoichi who's actually blind, but learned to sense chakra to such a point that she doesn't appear to be blind.
  • Nick in Two-Step was blinded in his left eye before the start of the fic, when he saved Coach from a Witch while they were fleeing across the bridge. Though this handicap is handled quite realistically, it does nothing to impair his ability to kick ass and take names.
  • The Kung Fu Panda 2 fic The Vow has the canonical examples, but a special mention goes to the example created in the epilogue: Lord Shen is trashed by a wreck-filled stream and right after that, he walks for weeks with an injured leg. This renders him unable to ever regain his former physical prowess fully, but he copes by training himself to fight with a new style that takes into account his new physical limitations.
  • we're jerry springer, not casablanca.: Nebula has a prosthetic leg and arm, but is willing to get into fights with people who catcall her girlfriend, Mantis.
  • Ferdinand in What About Witch Queen? loses his right hand to a cannonball, which doesn't stop him from surviving in icy cold water in the middle of the storm, finding a small cave where he can hide and climbing out of the water - all before he finds something he can stop bleeding with. Later, he deals with two men attacking him with little problem.
  • Discussed in Who Watches the Watchmen, which speculates that the heightened senses of Matt Murdock (Marvel Cinematic Universe) are due to him being a Sentinel. Normally a Sentinel who lives in a city would never be 'activated', but in Matt's case, the loss of his vision triggered his Sentinel abilities to compensate for the loss of such a dominant sense, even giving him a unique ability to perceive auras that no other Sentinel possesses.
  • In Winter War, Lt. Iba has a bad knee and needs to use a cane, but he's still capable in battle and manages to kill Rubadon, although he does need to use Functional Magic to make up for decreased mobility. There's also Kensei, who helps defend Karakura from Mayuri and Szayel's invasion despite having lost his leg from the knee down; Soi Fong, who lost her right arm as in canon but then spent months learning to fight with her left; and the canonical examples of Ukitake and Kuukaku.
  • The Discworld of A.A. Pessimal introduces the new character of Miss Ethylene Glynnie as a teacher of music at the Assassins' Guild School. She is a drummer and percussionist note . She was also taken on, twenty years previously, as a student Assassin after the Guild was pressured to take a quota of handicapped students. The Guild decided her deafness ticked the necessary boxes and considered her to be an interesting experiment. They discovered she did not see it as a handicap at all, (to the terminal surprise of several professional clients) and were pleasantly surprised at how she turned out. Among other things, Evvie Glynnie re-wrote the training courses for non-verbal communication - a specialty she teaches on The Black - and as a bonus could teach drumming and percussion to an advanced level. Fellow Music teachers reflect on the quality of the raw material they have to work with and reflect that being deaf would be a positive advantage for some students. At the latest point in the timeline, she is poised to take over a Residential Housemistress position. Unwary and overconfident girls believe a deaf Housemistress means they can get away with anything. However, Miss Glynnie can sense a penny being dropped thirty feet away from the vibrations its fall leaves in the air. And she can even tell you what denomination the coin was, and whether it landed heads or tails. Raven House girls are in for a surprise.
  • In a once-popular and now-dead Sailor Moon epic, Sailor Orion was blind in her civilian life but was still pretty awesome. In fact, "handicapped" otaku senshi were all the rage in the early '00s.
  • In the Turning Red fic Turning Red: Secrets of the Panda, Catherine Moore walks with a slight limp, but she's also a member of the Lee family, meaning she can transform into a giant red panda.
  • In A Young Girl's Game of Thrones, Ser Barristan sustains a leg injury in Robert's assassination and ends up needing a cane to walk even after he recovered. While diminished somewhat as a fighter on foot, he remains a fearsome threat on horseback. This meant that he was unable to participate in the Trial of Seven as mounts were not allowed then, but he was able to lead the defense and counterattack from Stannis' forces at the Trident, even managing to kill the Blackfish.

    Film — Animated 
  • The Book of Life:
    • Despite having lost an eye, an arm, and a leg, Skeleton Jorge is not slowed down by these infirmities, nor does it diminish how awesome a swordsman he is.
    • Joaquin's eye gets damaged in the climax, resulting in him wearing an eyepatch.
  • In Disney/Pixar's Brave, Merida's father, King Fergus, loses a leg in a fight against a bear and has it replaced with a wooden peg leg. He also punched said bear in the face later.
  • Dinosaur: Bruton, Kron's lieutenant, gets a wounded leg after he was badly mauled by a pair of Carnotaurus during an ambush. It doesn't hinder his ability to kick ass as he later fought the Carnotaurus solo and took one of them with him to the afterlife.
  • Finding Nemo had a few of these, including the title character with his underdeveloped fin. There's also Dory who suffers short-term memory loss and Gill, the leader of the tank gang who, like Nemo, has a permanently injured fin. If you count Marlin's crippling fear of the ocean (not undeserved), then he qualifies as well.
  • Gobber from How to Train Your Dragon only has one leg and one arm. As a Viking, he is very badass. Toothless only has half a tail but is still badass and at the end, Hiccup becomes one when his lower left leg is destroyed during the final battle. Drago Bludvist from the sequel counts too, having lost an arm after being attacked by a dragon. Although he's badass in a very different way to the characters above.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Quasimodo. He is a hunchback, but he can do Parkour (especially in the Cathedral) and is very strong.
  • Buck from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs lost an eye to his first fight with Rudy, but if anything, that was when he started being a badass, as he became an Action Survivor Crazy Survivalist from his adventures in the dinosaur world.
  • In Kubo and the Two Strings, most of the main cast counts — Kubo has only one eye, while his mother suffers from complications due to head trauma which leaves her comatose during the day. Beetle has amnesia, and has difficulty remembering even basic things without Kubo and Monkey to keep him focused. Monkey is injured midway through the movie and is Secretly Dying, as the magic that keeps her soul in her body fades. The Moon King is completely blind until the ending, where Kubo's other eye gives him sight at the cost of his memories.
  • Kung Fu Panda
  • Giulia Marcovaldo's father from the 2021 Disney film Luca was apparently born without his right arm. However, despite this, he's still a very burly and well-built man whose badassery is portrayed by his desire to find and kill a sea monster (and he's not a Jerkass about it like Ercole), although he later turns out to be a pretty good guy.
  • Migration: Chump is missing a foot, but is also the tough-as-nails leader of her flock.
  • In Mulan, Mulan's father Fa Zhou demonstrates perfect sword form and his mind is still sharp even in his advanced age. Unfortunately, his age, bad leg, and implied heart problems make him incapable of fighting for more than about a minute, which was why Mulan chose to take his place in the army.
  • From Moana, we have Tamatoa. A demigod ripped off one of his legs. But this crab can and does humiliate said demigod later. It helps that the demigod was rusty.
  • Ballister Boldheart from Nimona has his sword arm chopped off less than ten minutes into the movie. He proceeds to build himself a fully-functioning prosthesis out of scrap while running from the law, and remains a beyond-competent fighter.
  • Madam Mouserinks in The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is wheelchair-bound, but she acts as The Man Behind the Man to her nephew, can conjure up entire armies of mice, and plans to take over the world. The fact that she has a Living Shadow at her disposal also helps.
  • Garrett from Quest for Camelot. He's blind but he "makes Daredevil look like an eight-year-old gymnast."

    Music 
  • Leslie Fish's "The Cripple's Shield Wall" (last verse is in quotes). Yes, all of them are based on actual Society for Creative Anachronism fighters.
  • The Who's "Pinball Wizard";
    "That deaf dumb and blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball."
  • In Marty Robbins' "Ballad Of Bill Thaxton" the titular character is revealed to have a handicap which actually assists him in defeating his opponent.
  • Rick Allen of Def Leppard, who kept playing the drums after losing an arm.
  • Soul legend Curtis Mayfield was left quadriplegic in 1990 when a lighting rig fell on him before a festival show. He never sang live again, but in 1997 he released another album, New World Order, in which he recorded his vocals lying on his back, often one line at a time, in order to get enough oxygen to his lungs. He died of complications of his condition in 1999.
  • Robert Wyatt was paralysed from the waist down by an alcohol-induced accident in his youth, but had a long career. He performed his cover of The Monkees' I'm a Believer on UK music show Top of the Pops in his wheelchair, using it to dance as best he could, something which was contentious at the time.
  • Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe. He suffers from a degenerative condition, ankylosing spondylitis, that wreaked havoc with his spine (causing him to lose 3 inches in height from his youth) and his hips (so much that he needed one surgically replaced in 2004).
  • Joni Mitchell's unusual guitar tunings, which she dubbed "Joni's Weird Chords," came about as the result of weakness in her fingers cause by polio making it necessary to adjust the tunings so she could play comfortably.
  • Jeff Becerra, frontman of Death Metal pioneers Possessed, was shot by a mugger and left paralyzed from the waist down shortly after the band broke up. That didn't stop him from reforming the band in 2007, though it took another twelve years for them to actually release new material. While he can no longer play bass due to being unable to operate effects pedals, he can still churn out impressive Harsh Vocals.
  • "Amos Moses" by Jerry Reed is a song about a Ragin' Cajun alligator poacher. Even though an alligator once bit off his left arm at the elbow, he can still trap the biggest and meanest alligator with just one hand.
  • Budding young guitarist Tony Iommi of The Birds And The Bees lost two of his fingertips in an accident on his last working day in a steel mill. He was convinced he'd never play again until his foreman played him a record by Django Reinhardt, who played predominantly with two fingers after the others were damaged in a fire. Inspired, he developed some fake fingertips made of a washing-up-liquid bottle, with some leather patches for cover and comfort - inevitably dampening the vibrations and deepening the sound; he also downtuned his guitar so the strings were slacker, making them easier to bend. That deepened tone on dropped tunings became the signature sound of Heavy Metal, which he duly brought to his next band, Black Sabbath.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Norse Mythology:
    • Odin has one eye — and sees everything. He traded away the other one, and the recipient can now see everything too.
    • Tyr sacrificed his dominant right hand and remained the deadliest swordsman in Norse mythology.
    • In some versions Heimdall is this as well. He made the same trade as Odin, except he gave up an ear. He's the sole watchman of Asgard, with sight second only to Odin, and unmatched hearing in his remaining ear. And at Ragnarok, he fights Loki to the death.
  • Osiris from Egyptian Mythology is dead and his penis has been eaten by a crocodile. This doesn't stop him from being one of the strongest gods, or from siring a son.
  • In Welsh versions of Arthurian Legend, Bedwyr, better known as Sir Bedivere, is one-handed but wields a spear to great effect.
  • Celtic Mythology:
    • Nuada, king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, was a major badass before and after losing his arm (which also meant losing his right as king, since no handicapped man may rule the tuatha). He later got it replaced by an arm of lifelike silver by Dian Cecht.
    • The Fomorians, some of which only had one arm, one leg, and one eye.
  • Hephaestus, god of the forge from Classical Mythology, was crippled when Zeus or Hera (Depending on the Writer) hurled him off Olympus as a child (again, the reason for this varies depending on the writer). He is also a mechanical genius, and he's created super-gadgets and Humongous Mecha. He also built two clockwork maidens out of gold and silver to help him walk, due to his handicap.
  • The Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca got his left foot bitten off by an Eldritch Abomination of a crocodile while he and Quetzalcoatl were creating the world. It didn't slow him down in the slightest.
  • Sedna, sea-goddess of the Inuit, was thrown from her father's boat and had her fingers chopped off when she tried to cling to it. Her severed digits became the seals and whales upon which traditional Arctic natives have long depended for survival, and the loss didn't stop Sedna from becoming divine ruler of the sea and all that lives there.
  • The Bible:
    • Samson, blinded and shaven of his magic hair, brings down a temple on the heads of his enemies.
    • In 2nd Samuel Chapter 5, when David and his men set their sights on conquering Jerusalem, the Jebusites resist with a boast that "even the blind and the lame will turn you back." This didn't work for the Jebusites, as David and his men succeeded in conquering the city, and as a curse, "the blind and the lame" are not allowed to enter into God's house — a curse that endured into the day of Jesus' earthly ministry and that of the early church.

    Podcasts 
  • The Adventure Zone:
    • The Adventure Zone: Balance: By the end of the campaign, Merle has lost both his arm and his left eye, but still manages to be fairly badass.
    • The Adventure Zone: Graduation: Rainer has a chronic illness that keeps her confined to a wheelchair. She's also a powerful necromancer who in the Bad Future has become the fearsome Lich Queen with an entire army of the undead.
  • Arkham P.I. Arthur Lester from Malevolent looses his eyesight at the start of the story, but still manages to accomplish feats most people couldn't. Notably, in Coda he's able to drag himself, blind and broken, through a blizzard into a cabin and start a fire without John's help. Kayne even remarks on how impressive this is.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Retired wrestler Kurt Angle legitimately won gold medals for wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympics WITH A BROKEN FREAKIN' NECK!
  • Tenille Dashwood has fought the autoimmune disease psoriasis since she was fourteen years old.
  • Hardcore Legend Mick Foley is missing his right ear after a match with Vader in 1994. He didn't retire until 2012.
  • Roman Reigns has been battling leukemia since he was twenty-two years old.
  • The Undertaker's match against Brock Lesnar in WrestleMania XXX started out simple enough, until almost six minutes in, when Lesnar slammed Taker's head against the floor outside the ring, accidentally giving him a severe head concussion that lasted throughout the match. That concussion didn't stop Taker from kicking some serious ass... until about 25 minutes in, when Lesnar had to finish him with a third F-5 to end the Streak by pinfall. And even after his loss, Taker still managed to get up while concussed and walk out of the ring toward the backstage room, where he collapsed and had to be taken to a hospital for treatment. Downplayed in early 1998, in which Taker suffered a broken ankle and had to miss a number of dates throughout the month of June. It was when King of the Ring was arriving toward the end of June that he had to wrestle Mankind in a Hell in a Cell match while his ankle was starting to heal a bit.

    Radio 
  • Parodied in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978). Scientists have discovered cures for everything and doctors are out of a job — but everyone finds this universal perfect health rather boring. Then they realise that "nothing turned, say, a slightly talented composer into a towering genius faster than the problem of approaching deafness". So the medical profession is resurrected to provide artificial injuries, diseases, and disabilities to boost people's performance — "you always overcompensate for your disabilities."

    Roleplay 
  • Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
    • Carlie's prosthetic arm hasn't stopped her dreams of becoming a pro wrestler. Quite the opposite: she now dreams of being the first handicapped wrestler to make it onto national TV.
    • Director Pandya has a prosthetic arm, which along with his unintimidating appearance leads people to underestimate him. The reality is that he's a sharpshooter who served for years in the US military.
  • From Dino Attack RPG, a number of characters continue to fight on the front lines despite their handicaps.
    • Greybeard has a Hook Hand in place of his left hand and became half-blind after his right eye was horribly scarred. Taken a step further in the alternate ending December 21, 2010, in which he was also missing his right leg.
    • After becoming paralyzed from the waist down, Rex was forced to remain in a wheelchair for the remainder of the war.
    • Hotwire lost his left leg and had to make do with a mere peg leg.
    • While Shannon Grimton might not be on the battlefield like Rex or Hotwire, her Super Wheelchair comes with lasers, rocket launchers, and More Dakka so she could easily defend herself against Mutant Dinos.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Many games have a character creation system where taking one or more hindrances on a character gives the player more points to allocate into stats, abilities, or whatever. Naturally, the greater the hindrance, the more points are given. The highest points are usually disabilities (blindness, deafness, lost limb(s), etc.).
  • Justin Xiang Allard in the BattleTech universe lost his right hand early in the first book of the Warrior trilogy. Everyone believed he would never pilot a 'Mech again, but after a prosthetic with a neural link replacing his hand, he would go on to be one of the best Mechwarriors in the Inner Sphere and the Spy Master for the Capellan Confederation (and The Mole for the Federated Suns). He would then go on to become the Spy Master for the Federated Suns until his assassination ordered by his insane sister-in-law, Chancellor Romano Liao of the Capellan Confederation.
  • The Second Edition of Blue Rose introduces a new order of heroes to the Kingdom of Aldis: The Quiet Knights. When you keep losing adventurers to the seductive song of a siren, who better to send against it than a deaf warrior? Gorgons keep petrifying your soldiers? Send blind Knights to fight them.
  • Chess: Physical disabilities don't matter as much in this game. For instance, Mikhail Tal had only three fingers on his right hand, and Boris Verlinsky (an old-time Soviet champion) was almost deaf.
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse has Expatriette, who is a remarkably skilled markswoman despite having had only one eye since she was twelve, and Blind Weaponmaster Mr. Fixer, whose aura-vision mostly makes up for being blind since birth but is occasionally vulnerable to stuff that screws with it, such as the malign presence of the Chairman during a fight.
  • The Werewolf: The Forsaken splatbook "Tribes of the Moon" talks about the legend of a Blood Talon called Boneless Harald, who was born with deformed legs. After his first change, he bulked up his arms, got a huge sword, and rode into battle on a litter. Whenever the guys carrying it got killed, he wolfed out and dragged himself around by his arms, ripping chunks out with his teeth.

    Theatre 
  • Richard (the one who would become Richard III), in Henry VI part 3. He's got a humpback, a weak arm, and one leg's shorter than the other, but he is frankly amazing in battle, and he matches Young Clifford blow for blow when they duel.
  • The old man in Cirque du Soleil's Varekai, in a moment of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, manages to fight off multiple assailants. With his crutches. In the entire fight sequence, his crippled feet never even touch the ground.
  • The eponymous hero from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen was a German knight who had lost his right hand, and had it replaced by an iron prosthetic which allowed him to fight with a sword. The play also features Franz von Sickingen, another knight and an ally of Götz (in the play, his brother-in-law) who had only one leg.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • Wheelchair-bound Acro. Badass enough to nearly get away with murder.
    • Godot, who, despite having to spend, it seems, half his life getting medical checks and being blind without his visor (even with it, he can't see the color red on a white background) still manages to retrain as a prosecutor mere weeks after getting out of a nearly-lethal coma, then form an elaborate plan to defeat a murder attempt partially carried out by the dead. Then, despite the fact that he should be too much of an emotional wreck to do so after taking a sword-slash to the face before killing his dead lover's mother and spending a night on a snowy mountain top, manages to comfort his victim's terrified young niece, then prosecute the subsequent murder case and, well... generally be Godot.
    • Sirhan Dogen, despite being a blind old geezer, is an assassin. Or at least he was before being arrested and thrown in jail for it, a feat which took the badassery of Miles Edgeworth to accomplish (and which Dogen himself claims nobody else would have been able to do). Granted, he did have some help assassinating people in the form of his loyal dog Anubis, and he also admits that he would most likely not win a fight against multiple opponents at once, even if they were unskilled.
  • Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has Snake. Although blind, his other senses are so good that you wouldn't even notice this unless he told you. He's also missing an arm. Again, you wouldn't know it to look at him as he wears a prosthetic. He even boasts that he can and will kick the ass of anybody foolish enough to think they'll be able to easily sucker punch the blind guy. In the "Safe" ending, he takes all 6 shots from a revolver and keeps on going, powered by nothing more than sheer hatred for the guy at the other end of the gun, who he just learned had killed his sister. Granted, he can no longer stand and is reduced to crawling on his belly like an actual snake, but he still survives long enough to take Ace down with him.

    Web Animation 
  • Happy Tree Friends: The Mole has been depicted as one in "Mole in the City". Likewise, Handy has managed to build 3 houses, two of such by himself.
  • Cortez from The Leet World is the best shooter in the house, despite being near-blind. Instead, he uses his acute hearing to track targets and was the only housemate able to land a hit when a HAXed-up Ahmad went into Flash Step mode.

    Web Comics 
  • Mosa Zuberi from 2Masters is missing both arms, and almost lost his two legs. He can also take it off at will.
  • Daisy from Absent-Minded Theater has one arm, no legs, and is one of the most badass characters in the comic. Her mute cousin Ted is pretty cool, too.
  • As in the original mythology, the Arthur, King of Time and Space incarnation(s) of Sir Bedevere lost a hand during the Roman War. In the Space Arc, his prosthetic enables him to jack directly into the Excalibur communications console. Largely for the sake of a pun about hand signals.
  • Peter from Bad Moon Rising is first seen hanging from a sewer pipe lobbing a Molotov cocktail at some waterlogged vampires. Peter was born without legs and forgoes the use of his wheelchair when not doing activities that require it, like playing Murderball.
  • Barbara Gordon, per tradition, in Batman: Wayne Family Adventures. She is wheelchair-bound and acts as Oracle, but that doesn't stop her from fending off an intruder with a bat.
  • Nin Wah from Commander Kitty may have a cyborg arm 90% of the time, but even without it, she can beat down dozens of goons four times her size!
  • Chrome the snow leopard from Dogfight counts as this after being declawed. Fortunately, he's still a Lightning Bruiser without them. Downplayed as well since he still has claws on his feet, which he uses when he fights seriously.
  • Zhor from Drowtales manages this despite first being in the form of a spider (It Makes Sense in Context) and then after getting his original elven body back manages to tackle Kalki whilst in a wheelchair and unable to walk in order to protect his daughter, who Kalki had just brutally crippled. And said daughter, Ariel, proves this is genetic when mere minutes after losing her arm in that confrontation not only nearly wins against Kalki despite the pain and blood loss but succeeds in stealing her arm as payback.
  • Homestuck:
    • Terezi is blind, but more than makes up for it with her skill at both manipulating other characters and beating up Imps in the Medium with her cane. She sees through taste and smell.
    • Vriska Serket is half blind and has a robotic replacement arm for a good part of the story. She was the one responsible for blinding the aforementioned Terezi, and she did so with her psychic powers in the immediate aftermath of the explosion that handicapped her, while she was still bleeding from her eye and stump.
    • Similarly, Vriska's ancestor lost an eye and an arm when she was captured by Terezi's ancestor, but she still escaped from her trial and killed the monstrous judge, even snarking that it was good that Redglare took her arm because it prevented her fight with the judge from being a boring curb-stomp.
    • Tavros, who is wheelchair-ridden, not only gets a rocket chair but can also commune with animals and underlings.
    • Lord English has a peg leg caused by him as Caliborn chewing off his leg to escape his constraints. It doesn't prevent him in any way from being the Big Bad that's such a Time Master that a Running Gag is that 'he's already here'.
    • Parodied with Terezi's alternate history counterpart, Totally Radical Large Ham Latula, who has no sense of smell. Characters alternate between being impressed by her courage in living life to the full even when it can't be smelled, and loudly proclaiming that having no sense of smell isn't anywhere near as disabling enough to qualify one for this trope.
    • Because of the kernelsprite prototyping, Jack loses his left arm when he takes the Black Queen's ring. It doesn't stop him from being a scarily effective Omnicidal Maniac. Also applies to PM, after she takes the White Queen's ring.
    • Sollux gets blinded partway into the story. He doesn't mind so much though since that injury also left him unable to hear the voices of the soon-to-be-dead, which he finds to be a huge relief. Besides which, he knows Terezi gets by just fine with her blindness and hopes to learn from her how to sense the world the way she does.
  • I Don't Want This Kind of Hero: Raptor may be wheelchair bound, but she's still very skilled with blades and has a history as a child soldier.
  • In the second to last book of Kill Six Billion Demons, Allison loses an eye, an arm and a leg. After that, and after removing her prostheses, is when she goes to be trained by the supreme Master Swordswoman to learn to kill an Omnicidal Maniac Big Bad with Complete Immortality.
  • Victor Vasko in Lackadaisy lost an eye in a labor dispute and was kneecapped by his ex-partner, leaving him with one knee that barely bends. Victor is still about 250 pounds of Slavic badass and took out a squad of well-armed gunmen before taking a load of Double-Ought buckshot in the side. He survived.
  • Last Res0rt has Daisy Archanis with a robotic leg. There's plenty of nifty stuff to do with it... assuming she can keep her balance.
  • In The Order of the Stick, Durkon's mother is missing one arm in a flashback scene. She can still pull off hanging onto someone about to fall off a cliff. Then there's Redcloak, who only became more dangerous and focused after the paladin O-Chul gouged out his eye. In the goblin's own words: "what I have lost in depth perception, I have gained in perspective."
  • Rebirth: Noah, the main character, has bad heart problems, to the point he has a monitor around his neck, but he does boast impressive Blood Magic.
  • In Redd, the heroine beats up monsters despite being born without any arms. She uses nanotechnology to psychically move robotic hands.
  • Marilyn from Spinnerette, who can barely even speak, much less move, without her Mecha-Maid power armor.
  • The Story of a Gardevoir That Became a Trainer: Night's Scizor is blind, but he's no less badass for it thanks to Echolocation.
    A futile attempt... / 'Tis naught to blind the sightless / Your effort in vain
  • The three main characters of Sweet Dreams are all disabled. Tabitha has a prosthetic arm and can only see through one eye, Charlie is a wheelchair user, and Lorelei has both hearing aids and a service dog. Valkyrach also sees a battle with a huge Nightmare monster through despite her arm and ribs being battered too badly to hold her axe anymore.
  • Sweet Home (2017): Dusik Hahn might have lost part of his leg and is in a wheelchair, but his skill in weapon crafting is top notch.
  • Every member of the Wyre Cats in We Are The Wyrecats has a disability of some kind. It's a major part of what brings them together in the first place. Their XAG suits also make them powerful enough to incite the government to sabotage and shut them down.

    Web Original 
  • In Dead West, the Porcelain Doctor has a very bad limp, and when he overexerts himself, he needs not only his cane but Gervas' help to move around. This doesn't stop him from turning every skirmish into a Curb-Stomp Battle if he decides to Let's Get Dangerous!. He can even do it without his Psychic Powers! Mind you, he was an accomplished fighter before his injury, and his brother doesn't exactly believe Disabled Means Helpless, so this should be the expected outcome. Most of the people he meets make the mistake of underestimating him, simply because of the cane.
  • Fear, Loathing and Gumbo on the Campaign Trail '72: George Wallace, of all people. He turns his own paralysis into a sign that he understands the troubles of the common man, and shakes off his segregationist past. He is even able to goad Spiro Agnew into insulting his paralysis to make an impassioned plea. All of which help him become president in 1976. Unfortunately, the stress of the presidency takes a huge toll on his already fragile health, and he decides not to seek re-election. However, in the sequel he eventually recovers his health, becomes a powerful opponent of the tyranny of Donald Rumsfeld and returns to the governorship of Alabama.
  • Neighborhood Wars:
  • Whateley Universe:
    • Blind inventor Jericho. He once stopped two power armor-clad mercenary assassins. When he was without his armor.
    • Kludge is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair. It hasn't stopped her from being on a super-team at Whateley Academy. And she's a front-liner.

    Web Videos 
  • Subverted with the Invalid Commandos in Ball Grill Police. Like The Cavalry, they arrive from the woods to aid the policemen against Uncle Sam but are unable to do anything, as they are, well, invalids.
  • Critical Role has Ashton Greymoore, Bells Hells's designated hard hitter. He sustained a severe and permanent injury during a robbery gone wrong, leaving him with a massive hole in his skull that was sealed with glass to save his life. This injury has left them with several disabilities — they're likely blind in one eye, they have frequent issues with memory, and they suffer from chronic pain.
  • Epic Rap Battles of History has multiple handicapped rappers-
    • Stephen Hawking is famously completely paralyzed from Lou Gehrig's Disease.
    • Darth Vader, in a way, since that armor is actually a life-support device and includes prosthetic limbs. So it's fitting that he works with the aforementioned Hawking.
    • Dr. Seuss is mute because of the throat cancer that eventually killed him in real life. He can't rap himself, but that doesn't stop him- he just draws the Cat in the Hat and Things 1&2 to life to do it for him.
    • Dr. Oppenheimer also has throat cancer, and although he's not mute like Dr. Seuss, he can be heard coughing and heaving in his lines. He still goes up against Thanos of all people.

    Western Animation 
  • 101 Dalmatians: The Series: Tripod, the three-legged dog. Despite missing a leg, is clearly the most athletic and determined of the puppies.
  • 101 Dalmatian Street: Delgado is a Dalmatian Pup who lacks hind legs, so does require a wheelchair to get about. He is, however, the fastest of all the Pups and shows himself capable of performing a number of stunt moves. He is also voiced by Jack Binstead, who himself is wheelchair bound!
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Toph Beifong is completely blind and the smallest member of Team Avatar. She is also the best Earthbender the world has ever known, and one of the most badass characters in the whole series. Born blind, she learned to sense her surroundings utilizing her earthbending to feel vibrations through the ground with her bare feet, essentially seeing the world through echolocation, which she can do so accutely that she can detect the movement of ants across a field and being able to tell when someone is lying by feeling their heartbeat speed up. Other earthbenders may train their bending several hours per day for many years, but Toph is constantly using her abilities, pushing her skill completely outside the commonly believed limits.
    • Nowhere near as badass as Toph, but still awesome: Minor character Teo has a flying wheelchair. His Gadgeteer Genius father may have built the thing, but only his own kickassery could have allowed him to rival Aang in stunt flying.
    • Combustion Man, whose Artificial Limbs contribute a lot to his badassery. Word of God says he was born with an overdeveloped Thought Chakra, which resulted in his unique form of Firebending. It also caused him to accidentally blow off an arm and leg while learning to control it.
  • Two of the three titular characters of Biker Mice from Mars qualify. Thanks to experimentation done on them by Dr. Karbunkle, Throttle is blind and wears special shades to see and Modo wears an eyepatch and has a robotic arm. In spite of these handicaps, both Throttle and Modo are just as good at kicking butt as Vinnie.
  • Subverted in The Boondocks, when Granddad gets tripped by a mean old blind man named Stinkmeaner. Huey seems convinced that Stinkmeaner must be one of those "blind samurai", so sensitive to movement around them that they are somehow superior fighters in battle compared to those with sight. Granddad spends a lot of time getting in shape preparing to fight him back; but it turns out he was just a blind man who had gotten lucky, and ends up getting killed by Granddad.
  • Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix has Sam Fisher, who—unlike his canon self from the Splinter Cell games—is a double amputee confined to a wheelchair. He is still a highly skilled soldier and infiltration specialist, however, and his handicaps do not stop him from sneaking into a maximum-security prison to rescue Marcus Holloway, or from killing every guard who gets in his way.
    Guard: Hey, buddy. Aren't you missing a few parts there?
    Sam Fisher: Funny. I was just about to say the same to you.
  • Castlevania (2017) has Dracula himself, especially during the climax of Season 2. It's noted that he hasn't fed in quite some time since the death of his wife Lisa, which means he's gotten significantly physically weaker and less powerful than he would be otherwise. Despite that, though, when the protagonists—all of whom have just defeated Dracula's vampire generals and haven't broken too much of a sweat doing that—take him on, they still get their asses kicked despite combining their efforts together and managing to hit him with a direct blow from the Morningstar Whip (usually an instant killer of vampires and night creatures). Even Alucard, Dracula's half-vampire son who's the only one that can match him in physical strength and speed, gets beaten through several rooms of the castle. Basically, if Dracula had still been feeding up to that point, the heroes wouldn't even have been able to approach him, much less touch him. It takes Dracula having a Heel Realization when they reach Alucard's childhood bedroom, and then backing down from attacking further, for them to even have a chance to kill him.
  • In Celebrity Deathmatch, Larry Flynt is portrayed this way, being able to fight a match with Hugh Hefner while just as wheelchair-bound as his Real Life counterpart. And he wins the match, too.
  • Classic Disney Shorts: In Three Blind Mouseketeers, the eponymous Mousketeers manage to hold their own against the villain, Captain Katt, despite being blind.
  • DC Animated Universe:
    • An episode of Batman: The Animated Series had Batman rendered blind after an explosion. He circumvents this at first by devising a helmet that would mimic a bat's sonar, but, when the Batplane crashes attempting to catch the Penguin, he accidentally snaps the wiring and is forced to capture the Penguin blind. However, it just makes him even more scarier, since he can now catch criminals blinded, but as Status Quo Is God, he's back to normal at the end of the episode.
    • Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond is about 80 years old, needs meds for his ailing heart, and has to walk with a cane. Which doesn't stop him from beating information out of one of the Jokerz with said cane. Plus his incredible mind and intellect are still as sharp as ever.
    • In a Justice League Unlimited episode where the present-day League ends up time travelling to the time period of Beyond, Old Bruce Wayne's reaction to himself as Batman interrogating a mook is an embarrassed "I can't believe I was ever that green".
    • From earlier down the DC Animated Universe timeline, Aquaman cuts off his own hand to save his son. He then has a hook welded to his wrist. That's right, Aquaman is more badass with a hand cut off in the Diniverse. That was based on the comic book Aquaman, who lost his hand in a different way, but also had a hook (that could change into various other tools) to replace it. He was really presented as more of a cyborg than "handicapped" though. (And later he had the metal hand replaced with a "living water" one that could create shapes out of solid water (and no, not ice - water that was hard as metal at above freezing temperature).
  • The Darkwing Duck episode "Duck Blind" has Darkwing lose his sight after Megavolt overloads numerous lightbulbs. After a period of failed crimefighting and later self-pity, he manages to overcome the initial loss by utilizing his other four senses, and smashes the light in Megavolt's lair bringing the fight to equal footing in darkness. Status Quo Is God is followed by an accidental shock after the fight restoring his sight.
    • In "Steerminator", DW is wheelchair-bound after a skiing accident, but he is still able to take on Taurus Bulba.
  • The Dragon Prince: Amaya, Prince Callum and Prince Ezran's Cool Aunt, is deaf. She is also one of the Katolis Army's highest-ranking generals, a ruthless fighter, and so far she's the only non-mage human to defeat Rayla in a one-on-one fight.
  • Donald Duck himself is treated as this in DuckTales (2017), where his trademark quacky voice is treated as a legitimate Speech Impediment that started as just a raspy voice in his childhood and got progressively worse as he aged. In daily life its hampered him both as an aspiring musician/vocalist and as a public speaker (per Word of God, his major in college); in adventuring, it means its a coin flip whether anyone else in the McDuck-Duck Family will be able to understand any orders he barks out or, in the case of the Season 1 Finale, his attempt to give a Rousing Speech. Donald is noticeably self-conscious about it as well, as his Anger Management Counselor pins part of his trademark temper tantrums on the fact that, quite literally, no one understands him. When a story allows him, via magic or science, to speak intelligibly (voiced by Don Cheadle no less), it becomes far more apparent that Donald is exceptionally eloquent, quick-witted, and capable; and far better reflects his status as a seasoned globetrotting adventurer.
    • Midway through Season 2, the show adds another one to its main cast in the form of Della Duck, mother of the triplets and Donald's twin sister, who had to amputate her leg and replace it with a homemade metal prosthetic after a rocket crash that left her stranded on the moon for about 10 years. Her new leg hasn't slowed her down one bit, and she remains the same spirited, headstrong adventurer that she was during her original tenure as her uncle Scrooge's companion and pilot. That she's this in the first place was a choice by the writers to include amputee representation, as Della's scant appearances in prior media still featured her with both her legs.
  • Garrett Miller from Extreme Ghostbusters. He was born a paraplegic but still manages to be the 'jock' of the group. The only times his disability really impairs him is when there's steps involved. A ramp was built into the Ecto-1.
    • Apart from steps, Garrett's only notable instance of being impaired was in the early episode "The True Face of a Monster", where he is tipped out of his wheelchair and mocked by some racist jerks he had thought were his friends. There isn't much he can do (though he clearly tries) until he can get back in. Most times when knocked out of his wheelchair, it is near enough for him to climb back into.
    • In fact in the episode "Grease", when handcuffed by the CIA, he uses his disability as leverage to get them to take the handcuffs off so he will sign a full confession, snivelling, "What am I going to do; run away?" Then he kicks their butts (metaphorically speaking). While he's snivelling, his teammates actually look at each other, as if they know what he's going to pull.
  • Joe Swanson of Family Guy is paralyzed from the waist down, but can still kick some major ass.
  • Leela from Futurama counts, as she flies an intergalactic spaceship and kicks much ass despite no depth perception.
  • Halcyon Renard from Gargoyles is an old, reclusive billionaire in a wheelchair. A fully-grown male gargoyle just broke out of a steel cage right in front of him? "I'm trembling in my chair." Said chair has a laser gun built into the armrest. He also later takes part in the battle against Oberon, who is a Physical God.
  • Hoss Delgado from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is missing both an eye and a hand. The former is a reference to Snake Plissken from Escape from New York; the latter, a reference to Ash from the Evil Dead films. In the Underfist special, it's shown he's also lost a leg. What does he replace it with? A bloomin' chainsaw!
  • Jackie Chan Adventures:
    • In "Tough Break", Jackie's leg gets broken after he trips on Jade's Gnomekop toy (this was after he survived bailing out of an imploding building in the beginning of the episode), but he manages to kick the Dark Hand enforcers' tails in the climax.
    • "The Good, The Bad, The Blind, The Deaf, And The Mute", Jackie, Jade, and Tohru becoming this to overcome becoming temporarily mute, deaf, and blind respectively. Uncle even coins the term "Handicapable" for this such form of adaptation.
  • Felix Renton from Kim Possible is The Ace in a wheelchair. His supergenius mother built it for him; it can hover and has extendable arms. He's a reoccurring ally on Team Possible and beats Ron in basketball. Both Garrett and Felix are voiced by Jason Marsden. He's not handicapped but he is awesome.
  • King of the Hill:
    • Cotton Hill: Dude has no shins but is still able to take on a group of able-bodied orderlies. A feat made even more badass by the fact that he was pushing 80. Course he's a WWII vet who killed fiddy men, so there's that too.
    • "Dia-Bill-Ic Shock": After being diagnosed with diabetes and misinterpreting his jerkass doctor's angry ranting, Bill mistakenly believes that he is about to lose the use of his legs, and obtains a wheelchair and starts using it. He is depressed at first, but learns to enjoy life again when he meets up with a wheelchair rugby player (who calls himself Thunder) and his team, who basically eat, sleep, and breathe this trope. The exercise Bill gets while playing with them lets him get his diabetes under control.
  • Season 3 of The Legend of Korra gives us Ming-Hua of the Red Lotus, who has no arms but uses water Combat Tentacles as replacements. Even within a group that's The Dreaded in-universe, she's a scary lady.
  • Armond from Mummies Alive! has only one arm but you'd never notice the way he pulls off that Egypt-su. The awesome is slightly diminished when he gets a mechanical arm to replace the missing limb when he gets his power-up armor.
  • Though the actual extent of how "handicapped" her eyes make her is unknown, Derpy Hooves in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is implied to have been an extremely talented flyer before her eyesight went south as a child. In spite of this, she's still brave and skilled enough to be the only non-Wonderbolt to attack Tirek and among the first Ponyville citizens to attack The Tantabus.
  • The Owl House:
    • Eda Clawthorne, despite suffering from a curse that requires her to devote a large chunk of her magic to keep her from turning into an Owl Beast, often refers to herself as the most powerful witch on the Boiling Isles. This is not an idle boast. In the penultimate episode of season 1 she was able to take on her elder sister Lilith (herself a powerful witch) while only minutes away from the curse overwhelming her completely, and the only reason it wasn't a complete Curb-Stomp Battle in her favor is because Lilith was using Luz as a Human Shield.
    Lilith: It's sad to see you slowing down, sister. Tell me, is it the curse?
    Eda: Maybe it is the curse. But then how pathetic are you, that you can't best me at my worst?
    • In a more realistic disability (with a fantastical accommodation), in the second season Principal Bump is revealed to have poor vision. The demon-eyed ‘hat’ he wears is in fact his Palisman Frewin, through whose eyes he sees; without him, one of his eyes is missing and the other has a long scar over it. Despite this, he’s an immensely powerful witch who leads his students to battle against the Emperor’s Coven and has great success until the Abomaton Super-Soldier is deployed.
  • PJ Masks: Season 6 introduces Ivan/Ice Cub, a polar bear themed superhero with ice powers whose legs are paralyzed both in his daytime identity and in his superhero identity. During the day he uses a wheelchair or crutches to get around, while at night he rides a snowboard or uses his arms to move. His handicap doesn't make him any less effective as a hero as the other PJ Masks, and in his daytime identity he is shown to be a skilled athlete despite his disadvantage.
  • Sure, Popeye is already plenty strong despite having a squinty eye, but wait until he eats some canned spinach!
  • In Samurai Jack, the Scotsman has only one leg, having lost the other sometime in the past. It's hardly a problem for him; he simply replaced it with a peg-leg that's also a machine-gun, making him even more of a badass. In Season 5, he's missing an eye and he's too old to stand so he's stuck in a wheelchair. It doesn't stop him from trying to attack Aku's fortress and sacrificing himself for his army of daughters.
  • South Park:
    • Timmy, who is astonishingly capable for being a mentally handicapped boy in a motorized wheelchair. He can accompany the main four cast on almost any escapade, including recreations of famous fight scenes. He can even use Photoshop, of all crazy things.
    • Ascended Extra Jimmy Valmer takes this even further, doing all kinds of crazy stunts on crutches, from fighting in car chases to being an Olympic athlete (with a little help).
    • Ned Gerblansky, Uncle Jimbo's old war buddy, is this in the earlier seasons (before fading out of the limelight). He's a manly hunter who often ends up helping to lead the town and save the day...even though he's a one-armed Vietnam vet with an electronic voice box.
  • Star Wars Rebels: Kanan is blinded in the season 2 finale, but almost immediately afterwards is able to beat Darth freaking Maul. After a brief period of Heroic BSoD and a few lessons from a Trickster Mentor, this character goes on to routinely kick the Empire's ass despite the disability.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
    • The series' version of Shredder is the first incarnation to have a physical handicap—he is covered in burn scars and is blind in his right eye. Despite this, he has impressive and potentially lethal ninjitsu moves. He handily defeats the green teens at their first meeting.
    • His right hand man, Hattori Tatsu, is a blind swordsman who is skilled enough to hold his own against seven opponents (all of whom are skilled fighters) with little hassle. But he still has one weakness: he can't see. The Turtles use Casey Jones' explosive pucks to hide where Karai is going to be so she can set up a head strike. Without his hearing he's completely powerless as he can't tell where his opponents will strike next, rendering his skills completely useless.
  • On Total Drama World Tour, being a temporary wheelchair user did not stop Sierra from wheeling herself into the ocean and beating up a shark to rescue her more-than-a-friend Cody.
  • Transformers: Prime Bumblebee lost his voicebox after being captured by the Decepticons and refusing to divulge information to Megatron. He is still able to communicate with the other Autobots, but cannot speak clearly to humans other than Raf.
    • Breakdown loses his eye after being captured and dissected by MECH, this does not visibly affect his performance on the battlefield.
    • Ultra Magnus loses his right hand while battling Predaking. It is replaced with a claw-like appendage due to lack of appropriate materials. He's back on active duty a short time later.
  • The Venture Bros.: Billy Quizboy and Phantom Limb are subversions. Billy Quizboy loses a hand and an eye, then get dragged into badassness unwillingly. Phantom Limb, villainous example, was born with misformed limbs, but doesn't get seriously badass until an experiment to give him normal sized limbs goes awry and he ends up with invisible, and deadly, arms and legs.
  • Xiaolin Showdown:
    • At the beginning of Season 3, Master Fung is in a wheelchair and can't talk, but he still manages to deal with Chase Young alone for a while.
    • The blind man that guards the Treasure of the Blind Swordsman, despite his disability, wins in a showdown against both Jack and Wuya with little effort. He easily dodges their attacks. He explains that he can see with his mind, not his eyes.
  • In Young Justice (2010), the original Roy Harper has his arm amputated by the Light. Guess how many arms you need to operate a bazooka?
    "Gotta love modern weapons tech. Easier for a one-armed man to fire a missile launcher than pull on his pants."

Alternative Title(s): Disabled Badass

Top

Ultra Magnus

Having only one hand doesn't stop Ultra Magnus from being an effective warrior.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (2 votes)

Example of:

Main / HandicappedBadass

Media sources:

Report