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Hope you don't mind if I pick your brain for a moment, human...

"We need no language. We can project our thoughts long distances."

Space travelers and extraterrestrials are often telepathic. This has the advantage that they can "think" to others in a way that the recipients' minds will translate into their own language, an elegant version of Translator Microbes for communicating with people from different planets. Also by some absurd Applied Phlebotinum it is assumed that telepathic communication is instantaneous anywhere in the universe, allowing instant communication across the light-years.

In many far-future science fiction stories, movies and games, it is assumed that human evolution will eventually result in the development of Psychic Powers for the entire human race. As most of those same stories involve space travel, this could be interpreted as humanity becoming the telepathic spacemen.

Compare Space Elves (the Enlightened Mystic Race variety) and/or Proud Scholar Race. See also Sufficiently Advanced Alien.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • The Nameks from Dragon Ball Z are stated to have this role. As are the Yardrats, according to Goku, and presumably whatever race King Kai comes from. It seems to be one of the setting's common superpowers that comes with (or at least becomes possible with) attaining a certain threshold of ki control and power level; Goku also demonstrates it at least once, although it shows up inconsistently. King Kai has an apparently unlimited ability to open telepathic communication with anyone in the universe, from outside the universe, and direct physical contact with him (normally in the form of a hand on his shoulder) allows anyone else to piggy-back on that ability even if they have no telepathy of their own.
  • In God Mars, telepathy is the most common psychic power seen among the aliens. They're able to communicate over large distances and even speak to the dead under certain circumstances.
  • Gundam:
    • The Mobile Suit Gundam Universal Century continuity has Newtypes who can, among other things, communicate with each other telepathically. It's initially assumed that this is the result of humans evolving to adapt to living in space, and in the UC continuity the specific mechanism is understood well enough that a) weapons exist to take advantage of this without having to rely on electromagnetic signals, and b) surgically altering otherwise normal 'Oldtypes' into Cyber Newtypes (typically with the added cost of mental instability) is an option. Newtypes were originally hypothesized as heralds of a peaceful age in which everyone would truly understand everyone else without miscommunication, but the reality is much more cynical: not only do Newtypes invariably seem to end up as living weapons, their abilities making them the most lethal soldiers of the Universal Century (hence the demand for Cyber Newtypes), but it’s made clear that two Newtypes can understand each other perfectly and still be mortal enemies.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 also uses this trope with the Innovators, a group of Artificial Humans who were created to lead mankind to the stars. They don't seem to be very good at this, considering so far all they've used their powers for are killing. Then we have the appearance of the "true" Innovators, evolved humans rather than engineered clones. Their telepathy is more powerful, and with the presence of large amounts of GN Particles, can telepathically connect everyone within the field. One of them (Setsuna) even uses these powers to communicate and broker a treaty with a group of Starfish Aliens called the ELS. The epilogue implies that the entire human race is slowly transforming into Innovators.
    • Gundam X deconstructs this. The Colonies follow a 'Newtypism' ideology, essentially this trope as a political movement. It quickly becomes clear that the Colonies do not actually have any Newtypes among them, and in the series perhaps 5 emerge (if you don't count the Frost brothers), all from Earth. At the end, D.O.M.E. makes it clear that the "Newtypes" that appeared were basically mutants, and their abilities merely individual talents that happened to be similar to each other.
  • In Heroic Age, some species are capable of telepathy, most notably the Silver Tribe, who use it extensively as a means of communication, and even politics.
  • The Human Alien mages of Lyrical Nanoha, who possess Magitek that allow casual travel between planets and can telepathically communicate with each other as a basic ability.
  • In Vandread, Hibiki encounters a group of humans in an asteroid belt who have the ability to communicate telepathically. They can't speak normally, because Earth stole their voices.

    Comic Books 
  • The DCU:
    • Green Lantern R'amey Holl develops a form of telepathy after her metamorphosis.
    • Legion of Super-Heroes: Saturn Girl and her people from Titan, the moon of Saturn, are telepathic. In one storyline where the UP's regular Subspace Ansible system was no longer functioning, "Titanet" became the main interplanetary communication system.
    • Martian Manhunter and all other Martians use telepathy as their primary method of communication, though there are very few martians left. J'onn J'onzz is generally considered the most powerful telepath in the DCU. The Saturnians, who live on Saturn's moons and are descended from a Martian colonizing attempt, are also telepathic though do not rival true Martians in power.
    • Xtar's telepathy is not wholly compatible with human biology, but allows him to communicate clearly with Uplifted Animal Rex the Wonder Dog.
    • Tamaranians like Starfire possess a mild form of touch telepathy.
    • While humanoid Kryptonians like Superman are not telepathic several wild animals from Krypton are/were, most notably the Kryptonian Thought Beasts, which use their prey's fears to attempt to distract and disable them.
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Saturnians, whose Empire Wonder Woman prevents from carrying out its planned invasion of earth, have low level telepathy they use to communicate without being overheard and talk to humans without the humans realizing the language is wrong. As Di also had low level telepathy in the Golden Age their tricks do not work on her.
  • The elves from ElfQuest are eventually revealed to have originated as a variant of this, and the future for most of them is the same. The humans on the planet are also eventually revealed to be heading toward being on a par with the elves in telepathy and other "magic" powers.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy's Cosmo the dog, who became a telepathic space alien (by 'citizenship' if not birth) in a couple of issues of Nova when he was sent out on a Soviet space probe. He has a Russian accent.
  • Allen the Alien from Invincible, as well as Viltrumites and other aliens capable of unassisted space flight.
  • Shakara: The Psico Collective are one of the most powerful species in the universe due to their innately vast psychic and telekinetic powers. Their bodies are very frail, but their floating eye-shaped heads can combine into a Hive Mind.
  • Top 10's Glusko the Spaceman is a former Kosmonaut who got his telepathy during a space mission. He also has a telepathic space chimp named Tanya.

    Fan Works 
  • In Abraxas (Hrodvitnon), not only is Ghidorah an alien kaiju, but it can communicate telepathically with Monster X and the Many from afar and even form psychic links with them.
  • Alien/Species Crossover: Return to LV-426: "Esper tests" are mentioned as a routine thing, humans have a wide range of "esper scores" that determine how psychically attuned they are. The Xenomorphs also communicate telepathically, and this can "bleed over" to attuned humans. Ripley is noted to have a slightly above average esper rating and still be dealing with Alien-related trauma; Billie has a very high esper rating and is extremely screwed up from her encounter with them. Lise and hybrids like her are telepathic. When the chestburster pops out of Likowski, Lise senses it immediately, and the Xenomorph sense her in return. When Lise starts having kids, and those kids start having kids, they are all able to communicate with each other, and sometimes with ordinary humans, even those with very low esper ratings. Reaching a "critical mass" where there are enough hybrids to form a strong enough psychic signal to receive another message from the Senders kicks off the second half of the story.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: Aliens that communicate in this manner reveal their intentions to David as said.
  • The aliens in Annihilation (2018) seem to communicate telepathically, through their eyes, when in human form.
  • In Independence Day, the aliens are said to communicate with each other via "some kind of extra-sensory perception." They don't seem able to manipulate or read human minds at a distance, though one alien controls a dead scientist through physical contact in order to speak with the main characters. It also made direct contact with the President's mind. It gave the President a crippling headache, but it got the message it wanted to convey across.
  • In the MonsterVerse, King Ghidorah is stated to be an extraterrestrial monster, and it's also confirmed in Godzilla vs. Kong that his heads used telepathy to communicate with each-other. While the franchise has hinted that a couple other Titans might have psionic capabilities, Ghidorah is the first explicitly confirmed case as well as the only one who's an alien.
  • Supersonic Saucer: Meba and the Venusians are able to do this, with Meba been able to use this to communicate with the children he meets with both words and images. However, Meba's telepathy appears to have a limited range — most likely due to him been only a youngster.

    Literature 
  • In Adaptation., the Imria have a form of telepathy/empathy that allows them to sense emotions.
  • The Alex Benedict series has the alien Ashiyyur, commonly known as the Mutes. Their telepathic abilities only work within a range of a few meters, however; and they can only hear thoughts, not broadcast them. They also have considerably more difficulty reading human thoughts than they do communicating with each other.
  • The Andalites from Animorphs, as well as anyone who uses their morphing technology (which is a nice work-around for the issue of "How can your team communicate when everyone is a rat"). The first book seems to indicate that normal humans can do this too, as long as they focus and the recipient is in morph, and that one can broadcast images as well as verbal communication this way, but neither of these ever come up again — it's commonly accepted that the author just screwed up on that bit, and it was fixed in the reprint. Also Leerans (in addition to being psychic mind-readers) and Garatrons. The Yeerks themselves seem to be telepathic in a sense, but only when they're inside a host body and only for Yeerk-to-host communications. It seems to be part of their physical link to the host's brain; we find that their bodies aren't as solid as they appear and they're able to spread over and through the brain, linking their neurons to the host's neurons.
    • There are also rules for it. With Andalites it's words. The name "thought-speak" describes what it literally is; like speaking but with thoughts. Anyone in morph can do it; it makes sense because it's Andalite technology; they made it so they could still talk the way they always do. Though it took the writer(s) a while to realize it, this means that you can do it when morphed into another human; Tobias and Ax use the ability to thought-speak in human morph to their advantage late in the series. It's so similar to speech that more than once, a character hasn't realized that they didn't exactly "hear" what was spoken to them if the speaker deliberately made the sentence short and sweet. Leerans, on the other hand, transmit feelings and images as well; it's not exactly like words in your head. Leerans also have a spoken language; it consists of single syllable words. The listener will always understand the meaning perfectly, as if they were native Leeran speakers themselves. Leerans also receive thoughts and feelings from you whether you want them to or not, a passive ability that's always on; the Yeerks have few Leeran hosts because there's no hiding your intentions from one; infiltration is out of the question and the element of surprise doesn't exist. The Animorphs are very wary of the few Leeran-controllers who exist, because all you have to do is get near one and that's the end of having a Secret Identity.
    • Notably, Andalites did not always have the ability for thought-speak; when the Ellimist encounters prehistoric Andalites in The Ellimist Chronicles, they communicate using sign language (due to their lack of mouths).
    • Due to Painting the Medium, we know when someone's clearly not speaking normal words though we don't know how it works. Andalite-style thought-speak is written <between chevrons>, and Leeran speech (spoken or not) is in italics and underlined. Therefore, it's safe to assume that when the Ellimist starts talking in small uppercase letters it doesn't sound like his harmless-looking human disguise form is speaking normally. Interestingly, his opposite number, God of Evil Crayak, does speak with normal quote marks. Apparently, he doesn't feel the need to communicate in a more impressive/intimidating fashion.
  • Arrivals from the Dark has a number of aliens races possessing Psychic Powers.
    • The upper caste of the Bino Faata are telepathic and typically communicate nonverbally. They also utilize organic computers (they found one as an abandoned Daskin experiment) that possess psychic abilities as well and are used to control the large number of servant castes and to send instantaneous psychic messages to other organic computers even light years away. The long-term goal of the Faata is to breed all of them as telepaths, but they've yet to successfully isolate the telepathy gene even after millennia of selective breeding, and the birth rate of telepaths is incredibly low.
    • The Lo'ona Aeo are also psychic, but their abilities are actually fairly short-ranged. One of their large family groups forms a psychic background of sorts, which is necessary for the individuals, lest they go into a panic due to isolation. They are usually only able to engage in psychic communication with others of their kind (they're also pacifistic xenophobes, so they don't really interact with other races in general, sending their Serv biorobots to do it). They reproduce like the Asari, but it requires a mental joining of three of their four sexes.
    • The Metamorphs can communicate telepathically, even across light years, and also have limited teleportation.
    • Some humans are starting to develop psychic abilities, but this is only because they're all descended from a Half-Human Hybrid, born from a forced artificial insemination of a female human officer with Bino Faata sperm. The psychic ability can pass on to the next generation or it can skip one or several. Centuries later, the family has grown into hundreds of individuals, and some speculate that eventually the entire human race will become psychic, despite the dilution of Faata genes.
  • The chieri of Darkover, although their rather impressive range of other powers puts them on the edge of being Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. Between interbreeding and the psi-amplifying crystals on the titular planet, some humans become telepathic spacemen as well.
  • The Diadem Saga: The Vryhh are wandering Human Aliens with a laundry list of superhuman abilities: improved memory, Super-Strength and reflexes, instinctive understanding of machinery, omniglotism, telepathy, and any number of other powers. Protagonist Aleytys is a Vryhh woman's Child by Rape after she was too badly injured in a starship crash to protect herself from being sold as a Sex Slave, and inherited her mother's abilities and has several of her own.
  • Dreamcatcher has telepathic aliens coming to Earth. Thing is, their telepathy is contagious. It appears at the end that the aliens themselves may not even be sapient in their own right, instead telepathically taking on the traits of sapience expected of them by the humans.
  • The Dune series is filled with these since the Spice grants psychic abilities. The ones who most fulfill this trope are the Steersmen and Navigators of the Spacing Guild, who use their abilities to see the future and to guide the ships.
  • In Ender's Game, the Buggers have Hive Minds.
  • First Contact has an interesting take: it describes the eponymous event between humans and equally advanced aliens. The aliens communicate by sending and receiving microwaves, leading the human captain to declare that they're telepathic. One of his officers then points out that because the aliens do not have organs to sense sound waves, from their point of view, humans are Telepathic Spacemen.
  • The Insect race in The History of the Galaxy communicates with one another (and anyone else) using natural telepathic abilities. They are also able to use those abilities to stun opponents with a mental strike and probe them for information. Certain humans, while lacking full-blown telepathy, can form empathic bonds with others; however, this requires special circumstances. Also, since every human is from birth implanted with a small chip that is used to remotely control household appliances and the like, certain individuals who have been implanted with multiple chips are able to read other's thoughts with the use of the chips.
  • The Kzin from Known Space have a rare subspecies of telepath who facilitate contact with alien races (mainly calls for them to surrender, since the Kzin are Proud Warrior Race Guys). The telepaths, thought enormously useful, are not allowed to breed and are generally despised because they require an addictive drug to activate their powers, which contributes to them being rather poor examples of the race by Kzinti warrior standards.
  • The Lensman series uses this heavily, making this Older Than Television, and nearly as old as the entire concept of interstellar travel. Most of the really powerful intelligent species in the galaxy are telepaths — some of them make humans look distinctly puny by comparison. However, sufficiently competent members (usually the result of a long breeding program) of any species may wear a Lens, a device which allows them to communicate telepathically. Oh, and understand any language, and crack codes effortlessly, and... well, let's just say it gets more out of hand from there. The Lens serves as the ultimate Translator Microbes and Mind Probe.
  • In The Lost Regiment, some of the nine-foot-tall giants native to the planet Valennia are able to leave their bodies and project their consciousness across miles to observe distant lands. A very useful ability to spy on the enemy. Based on the Big Bad of one book, the ability may be latent in every member of that race.
  • The Martian Chronicles: In "Mars is Heaven!", the telepathic Martians create a Lotus-Eater Machine to trap the crew of a human spaceship until they're all asleep, so the Martians can murder them easily.
  • Actually inverted in the My Teacher Is an Alien series, in which humans are apparently the only sapient species that are innately telepathic. However, the strain of suffering the thoughts and feelings of a multitude drove humankind to mentally isolate themselves, and the resulting lack of empathy causes them to do terrible things to one another, making humans also the only species to commit atrocities.
  • The colloids in The Parasite War are this way.
  • In The Planeteers, Penton and Blake encounter several species of telepathic aliens. Also, at the beginning of the series, the Martians teach Penton their telepathic techniques so that he becomes a telepathic spaceman, and he uses the skill to instantly learn languages on other planets.
  • The Sector General series has two species of empaths, long-range emotion detectors of varying sensitivity. Others are telepathic. This is presented as an entirely biological process, the concept having apparently been more plausible back in the day, and several storylines revolve around telepathic capabilities that have been damaged, stuck on, or which come with side effects. Humans possess a vestigial, atrophied capacity for telepathy and can sometimes be contacted. The feeling is compared to having one's brain worked with a wire brush.
  • The Stainless Steel Rat: Communication is handled by professional "Psimen" who send telepathic telegrams (telepathegrams) across the universe to other psimen on your own planet who then phone your message in to your boss for you. For a fee, obviously.
  • In Star Maker, telepathy turns out to be one of the key ways to communicate across the stars.
  • Time for the Stars is all about a spaceship that exploits the idea that telepathy is instantaneous, allowing the ship to communicate over interstellar distances with its home planet.
  • Tower and the Hive has psychics as not only the means of communication between colonized star systems, but also the means of transportation (via psychokinetic teleport) that makes such colonies possible to begin with. From the point of view of the Mrdini, who have no psychics of their own, humans are the telepathic spacemen.
  • Handled relatively realistically in the Vorkosigan Saga novel Ethan of Athos: telepathy results from a random mutation and is refined through successive generations of genetic engineering. The telepaths are limited in range, their ability to read minds is blocked by even thin pieces of metal and confused when there are many minds or sources of electronic noise in the area, and they can read some minds far better than others.
  • The Warlock of Gramarye novels have this in reverse; the Lost Colony of Gramarye is presently a medieval-level society, but eventually they will go into space (there's an entire Time Travel war going on over it), at which point their telepaths will revolutionize interstellar communication.
  • The Martians in The War of the Worlds (1898) are theorised to be this by the narrator after he observes them working together without any visible means of communication, though it is never definitively proven one way or the other.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Babylon 5 has telepaths in nearly every alien species, as well as humans. Turns out Vorlons Did It. They're so touchy.
    • Many Centauri have prophetic dreams, Londo sees his death at G'kar's hands to save him from a Puppeteer Parasite many times, as well as Shadow vessels over Centauri Prime. Though Centauri telepaths seem to be as uncommon as human ones.
    • The Vorlons seem to be Energy Beings with immense telepathic and telekinetic abilities of their own.
  • Cally, one of the protagonists of Blake's 7, is a Human Alien revolutionary who can do this. She can send her thoughts to humans (i.e. they can hear her unspoken voice), though not read their thoughts. (She's from a clone race.)
  • In Doctor Who, the Doctor can do what seems to all intents and purposes a Vulcan mindmeld and other telepathic feats (such as memory-wiping) also by touching the subject's temples... sometimes. It's annoying. In emergencies, they can also give people an instant infodump by means of a Glasgow kiss (banging foreheads). For obvious reasons, they'd rather avoid doing that at all.
  • In Lois & Clark, Superman finds out that he is a member of a Telepathic Spacemen species when he encounters a group of survivors from Krypton. The only reason he never knew he was telepathic was that he had no-one to "talk" to before.
  • Mork & Mindy: "Mork calling Orson, Mork Calling Orson." "One moment, Mork, I'm taking a call on another brain cell." Even Mindy can do this, by holding Mork's nose and putting her finger in his ear.
  • Power Rangers has had a few psychic Human Aliens and Rubber-Forehead Aliens as rangers, such as Andros, Trip, and Zayto.
  • Ta'Ra, the alien protagonist of Something is Out There, is telepathic; unfortunately, she's also a hot chick, so she's constantly annoyed over how these Earth people want to "do that with her body" (her species has a somewhat different way of making love). However, it does come in handy when she teams up with a human cop.
  • In Stargate SG-1, the Ancients gained this as one of their powers when nearing the Ascension threshold. A number of humans (not all of them from Earth) have also gained telepathic powers by various means. Nirrti used an Ancient DNA manipulator to experiment on humans of one planet, some of whom became telepathic. Khalek, genetically engineered by Anubis, is also able to read minds, as well as Mind over Matter abilities. In an episode of Stargate Atlantis, McKay can also read minds when nearing the threshold and is even able to impart knowledge on someone else.
  • Star Trek regularly uses telepathic species.
    • Vulcans are touch-telepaths (or at least, most of them are; Spock's half-brother Sybok is an example of a Vulcan who doesn't require physical contact); they usually can't communicate over distances, but Spock has used a mind-meld to communicate with aliens on occasion and can perform subtle mind-influence at close range. And then there's the katra business, using a mind-meld to cheat death.
    • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • In early episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Empath Deanna Troi has the ability to communicate telepathically with Riker. This was dropped later on, though. Betazoids can telepathically communicate with each other; Lwaxana prefers this, but Deanna considers it rude to do when among species that can't pick up on it. Unlike Vulcans, Betazoid telepathy works at very long range. Even Half-Human Hybrid Deanna can sense people on a planet's surface while she is on the Enterprise in orbit.
    • Discussed in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Little Green Men", in which Quark, Rom, and Nog accidentally end up at Roswell. The scientist examining them is surprised that an advanced alien race is not like this. In fact, Ferengi are stated by telepaths to be impervious to scans due to their strange brain structure.
    • In Star Trek: Enterprise, Trip and T'Pol find their "intimate relationship" has unexpected consequences when they find themselves sharing the same daydream, despite being on completely different starships.
  • The Tomorrow People (1973): The Galactic Federation, a space collective of telepathic species, sends communications to the human Tomorrow People via telepathy. Due to the distances involved, the messages are usually received by a telepathic computer instead of directly, except in desperate cases.
  • Orsian twin pairs from Tracker (2001).

    Tabletop Games 
  • The V'sori in the Savage Worlds setting Necessary Evil are highly telepathic. They communicate telepathically, can detect any other nearby telepath, which include the Atlanteans and Half-Breeds, both of which are playable races. While V'sori blood may be a cause for a player's telekinesis, most V'sori are actually not telekinetic.
  • The Zhodani are an empire ruled by telepaths in Traveller, though they are a race of Transplanted Humans rather than aliens.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Astropaths are the Imperium's only method of communicating over stellar distances. Unfortunately, since the transmission medium is essentially a cross between Hyperspace and Hell, they tend to live unhappy (and short) existences. The Astronomican beacon they use to navigate is Powered by a Forsaken Child, it burns through the lives of ten thousand psykers every month. Psykers have to undergo a process called soul-binding which causes them hours of agony at the hands of their Physical God, invariably destroys their sight, and often other sense, and sends large numbers of candidates insane; all in order to be able to pass messages safely without getting dragged into the Warp when they send messages. Or, for that matter, that if you're found by the psyker-hunting Black Ships, you have around a 90% chance of being 'selected' to undergo this honour. GrimDark indeed...
    • All Eldar are psykers by nature, but the Dark variety are wary of psykers for fear of attracting the attention of Slaanesh and hence their psyker potential has atrophied over the millennia. The Craftworld Eldar do not share this compunction, although most of them have their psyker potential blocked at birth and slowly regain it by following the Path of the Seer, for the same reasons mentioned above. Many of the most powerful psykers in the whole galaxy are Eldar: during the 13th Black Crusade, the noted Cadian general Ursakar Creed took a contingent of the above mentioned sanctioned psykers to a meeting with the High Farseer of Ulthwe, Eldrad Ulthran, only for each and every one of them to be incapacitated by Eldrad's mere presence.

    Video Games 
  • The Re'Lu from DEADLOCK are telepathic aliens, whose access privilege to your brain includes both read and write, incidentally.
  • The Furons in Destroy All Humans!, who can do Mind Probe, Mind Control, and Mind over Matter.
  • The Vell-Os in Escape Velocity: Nova are telepathic post-humans who fly in shells of solid telepathic energy. There are also the Polaris, who are less powerful telepaths with technologies at least a century in advance of the rest of humanity, and use both of those things to back up their isolationism. Then there are the masters of the Heron-style of martial arts, who also appear to develop a sort of telepathy. It is left uncertain just how much this trope will apply to the rest of humanity, not because humanity won't develop species-wide psychic powers (that is made clear) but because it might not happen until the point just before they all Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, leaving the 'spacemen' thing far behind them.
  • The Nihilanth from Half-Life communicates with Gordon Freeman by telepathy, and does so the minute you teleport to Xen.
  • The Empyreans from Iron Marines are humanoid aliens with Psychic Powers and are allied with the Iron Marines. They use their psionic powers to great use, be it forming Psi Blades and using Teleport Spam to shred enemies, stunning enemies and projecting Deflector Shields onto allies, or quickly travelling as a ball of energy and channeling psychic beams that increase in intensity.
  • The Martian Xeno Teleptaths in Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds, who actually weaponize this through both a short-range psychic attack and several flavours of Mind Rape.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land: The force responsible for bringing Kirby and friends to a new world turns out to be the Big Bad, Fecto Forgo, a psychic alien invader who wants to assimilate its "other half", Elfilin, so it can regain its true form and start killing things again.
  • The Chozo from Metroid have psychic powers, and it's implied that Samus, who was infused with Chozo DNA, has some psychic capabilities herself.
  • The Starmen from the Mother series have access to psychokinetic powers and teleportation. In an interesting twist, the secrets of PSI can be taught to other races, leading to humans developing it when the protagonist's great-grandfather was abducted by aliens but escaped with the secrets.
  • The godlike humanoid Kamir in Other Space utilized their blindingly powerful telepathy to help them search for appropriate lifeforms for their evolutionary experiments.
  • Elgyem and Beheeyem from Pokémon Black and White are Psychic-type aliens. Deoxys, Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma are also Psychic-types that came from space.
  • The mind worms in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. These tiny little white things stun you from afar, burrow through your skull and lay their eggs in your brain. They move in enormous swarms called boils. They appear (in a hard sci-fi setting) a few decades after humans land on the planet and have no other prey, causing mankind to realize that it might just be in trouble here. They can be beaten (flamethrowers work quite well, according to the fluff), but one must be mentally strong in order to overcome their psychic attacks. What good is a flamethrower if you're too stunned by fear to push the button?
  • Aliens have various psychic abilities in The Sims series. In The Sims 3, full-blooded aliens can "Scan", which leads to them discovering the target Sim's traits. In The Sims 4, aliens can also "empathise" with Sims to feel their emotions.
  • Word of God for Sonic the Hedgehog states that powers like Silver's telekinesis and Blaze's pyrokinesis are a common occurrence two-hundred years into the series' future. Although it was the non-canon Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) that promoted the concept, it might still hold true for the Sonic Rivals series (and although space travel hasn't become a common occurrence yet, humans of the series have quite advanced space technology as it is).
  • The Protoss in StarCraft fit this to a tee. The humans are also apparently in the "developing into the telepathic race" stage, and the Zerg have their own, different forms of telepathy too. In fact, the difference in psionic powers between the Protoss (offensive) and Zerg (Hive Mind control) is a plot point; both races were originally meddled with by precursors with the eventual goal of unifying, but this failed. They then went to war and the Zerg, outclassed by the Protoss, searched for a new species they can assimilate and use its psychic powers to defeat the Protoss. Enter: the humans.
  • In Stellaris, one of the end-game ascensions is the option to turn some and then all of your citizens into psychics, which make them better at researching, fighting, piloting, and give them the abilities to see the future, project the most powerful shields in the game, and teleport faster and farther than any other FTL drive in the game. A sufficiently powerful group of them can commune with an alternate plane of reality called the Shroud, where you can make deals with the incomprehensible entities that reside there.
  • The Subnautica series has the Architects, a post-singularity civilization that set into motion the events that the player characters find themselves falling into. Subnautica: Below Zero explains that each Architect is part of a Hive Mind in constant contact with one another, except this is a technological construct akin to a wireless network rather than "organic" telepathy. Which is why the Sea Emperor was unable to communicate with its Architect captors and explain why they couldn't get its eggs to hatch.
  • Sword of the Stars gives us three races: the dolphin-like Liir, the generically-engineered marsupial Zuul, and the ancient feathered serpents Morrigi.
    • The Liir communicate telepathically among themselves and also use Mind over Matter in lieu of hands (flippers aren't very useful for that). They are generally nice, but if they consider you Suul'ka (the enemy), then you are totally screwed. Oh, and they're also the best researchers in the game, so they will have the best tech before you know it. The Suul'ka are insane Liir elders, who have refused to allow the Square-Cube Law to kill them and moved to live in space. They used their powerful abilities to enslave the younger Liir and to devastate the Morrigi civilization by turning half of them against the others. They also created the Zuul as living weapons. Their abilities are strong enough to allow them to fold space at will. The other Liir use a low-level technological form of this called stutterwarp, which teleports their ships thousands of times per second, simulating Newtonian movement and even allows FTL since the ships aren't actually moving.
    • The Zuul form of telepathy is generally used for Mind Rape or other races, which is how they learn new tech (in the fluff anyway). This is also how they determine leadership, with the strongest telepath becoming Dominus. Only Zuul males possess powerful telepathy, though, as their females aren't really sentient and serve as their frontline troops. In the fluff, a Liir has managed to "infect" a Zuul with its peace-loving nature. As a result, a whole new faction of Zuul formed and eventually joined the Liir in opposing the other Zuul and their masters.
    • Morrigi telepathy is generally restricted to their males, who use "glamour" to appear as angelic beings to more primitive minds, which is why many races have myths of wise dragons coming down from the sky. During mating season, Morrigi females are also attracted to those males capable of charming them with their "glamour". On the other hand, the males are more attracted to those females who are able to resist their "glamour".
  • In Time Cruise, the inventor Eric gets instructions for Time Travel from an unnamed race of telepathic extraterrestrials.
  • Many of the species in the X-COM series are telepathic.
    • For example: the Ethereals, the ruling caste of the alien invaders (who despite their name do have physical bodies), the Sectoids, who are budget versions of the Ethereals psionics-wise, and the giant Psimorphs from X-COM: Apocalypse. The species from X-COM: Terror from the Deep essentially use telepathy, but it's called "Molecular Control" and works via implanted chips.
    • A number of psi-weapons are specifically designed to amplify telepathic projection to injure, confuse, or control creatures in the games as well. Which makes sense... up until the ship-mounted psi-blasters of X-COM: Interceptor. Huh?
    • XCOM: Enemy Unknown explains that the Ethereals are in fact obsessed with psionics, and have traveled the galaxy looking for a species that can combine "the Gift" with physical robustness, which they hope will serve as a key ally as they face "what lies ahead." By the end of the campaign, they're very excited that humanity is developing into a likely prospect... to the Ethereals' detriment.
    • XCOM 2 still has the Ethereals, now ruling a Vichy Earth from the shadows, but they have since used human DNA to improve other psionic species like the Sectoids. The War of the Chosen expansion also added ADVENT Priests and the Chosen Warlock, an Ax-Crazy zealot and the most powerful psionic in ADVENT's army next to the Elders themselves. The Ethereals' reasons for invading and staying on Earth are also expanded upon, as it is revealed that they are a Dying Race and have been searching the cosmos for a cure for their failing bodies, finally finding it in using the DNA of millions of psionically compatible humans to create new host bodies for themselves: the Avatars.

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  • Tony the alien from Area 51 in Hetalia: Axis Powers at one point seems to transfer his thoughts full of offensive language to England when America introduces them to each other. America, since he did not hear it, thinks they are getting along fine.
  • In Outsider, the Loroi are galactically (in?)famous for this; protagonist Alexander Jardin realizes that he is on a Loroi ship by observing a nonverbal communication. This also creates one of the major plot points, in that Alex appears to be completely resistant to Loroi telepathy, which means that he's regarded with anywhere from guarded suspicion to barely concealed hatred by many Loroi, as their culture generally considers verbal speech to be untrustworthy and relegates dealing with non-telepathic aliens to their Mizol caste, who specialize in diplomacy and inter-species relations. As Alex was part of a mission to establish contact with either the Loroi or their hated enemy, the Umiak, trying to be an ambassador for humanity when the species you want to establish ties with doesn't trust you because you can't communicate in the way they prefer is a major stumbling block.
  • Leono from Sluggy Freelance has this ability, though it only works among his own species and is only really displayed once.
  • Both Lizard Folk and The Greys in Trying Human, but the Greys are much, much stronger with it, also having loads of Mind over Matter. Also, the Greys have somehow lost language and communicate with other species by "reflecting their voices", which is how Pigment can speak French.
  • Most species in Vexxarr are telepathic, which makes sense since many of them are Space People who need to be able to communicate through hard vacuum.

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    Western Animation 
  • The gems in Steven Universe are a space-faring race, and a few types of them have Psychic Powers, such as the precognitive Sapphires. Steven has several empathetic powers, including dream walking, at least some of which he inherited from his mother Rose Quartz. The Diamonds each have a unique psychic power, and all seem to have a Psychic Link between each other, which is implied to be the actual reason for Steven's aforementioned power.

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