...what's dis ting do 'gain?
"Hi, Tick, I'm your mind! Sorry we don't talk much, but I'm easily distracted by shiny objects."
— The Tick's Mind, The Tick
Hello, Tropers. Welcome to the page of multiple interruptions for picking up stuff off the — Ooh, a page telling us to describe this trope here!
In media, the symptoms of attention deficit disorders tend to be exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Sufferers seem to be on a constant caffeine high. They are unable to maintain focus on anything for more than a few minutes before getting distracted by a shiny object, hence the trope title.
In reality, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) consists of a whole set of symptoms, some detrimental and some beneficial. For example, some people with ADHD might be very social and loves talking to different people, gets excited about discovering new things, and sometimes loses track of what's happening around them; and others might be reclusive and shy and unable to perform well in a controlled setting, but really opens up with a close friend or when talking about something that interests them (for more information on ADHD in real life, see our useful notes page).
There are a few simple reasons for this trope. First is a rampant misunderstanding about what ADHD actually is (in which case you should go do some research
), resulting in the oversimplification and exaggeration.note Second, it's much funnier to have a character who just fidgets and spaces out occasionally without having to worry about the realism of adding other dimensions to their personality.
If this type of character has Animal Motifs, they're often associated with dogs, squirrels, kittens, or ferrets.
See also Derailed Train of Thought, Hollywood Psych, Hollywood Autism, The Schizophrenia Conspiracy, and "L" Is for "Dyslexia". Similar types include the Absent-Minded Professor, Forgetful Jones, and the Cloudcuckoolander (who may or may not have a disorder). This exaggeration is frequently seen in Genki Girls and Keets. Can often overlap with Easily Impressed where people are amazed easily rather than distracted. These symptoms are well within the very wide range of symptoms that you might see in any character with an unspecified diagnosis. Attention Deficit Creator Disorder may be what you get when an artistically inclined individual has a case of this in Real Life. It may also overlap with Intrusive Thoughts.
Closely related is What Does This Button Do?, which you can expect to hear often from such individuals. Hilarity may or may not ensue. Liable to Forget to Eat, right up until the point that a Delicious Distrac- HEY! Are those chocolate chip cookies?! Mmmm.... They're likely to be Unbelievably Impatient due to constantly rushing things.
Not to Be Confused with— oh, wow! Look at all the examples!
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Card Games
- The Izzet guild from Magic: The Gathering's Ravnica block combine this, Absent-Minded Professor and Cloudcuckoolander. One flavour article is even titled "A Close Look at the Izze-hey, look at that!" Also Squee, the goblin deck hand.
- This card from the World of Warcraft trading card game.
Comedy
- Bill Burr on his podcast takes an adult ADD Test at his wife's insistence, and despite his claims he didn't have it, couldn't even make it through the first question without being distracted.
Comic Books
- Deadpool: Wade Wilson (Deadpool) has complete ADD, along with a very unique form of insanity.
- Green Lantern: Larfleeze, a.k.a. Agent Orange. His greed makes him distracted to almost anything, making his scenes hilarious. In fact, he says that shiny things are his weakness.
- Impulse: Bart Allen, the aptly codenamed Impulse. Until he got kneecapped, read an entire library in under 2 hours, and took up the Kid Flash mantle. So, apparently, the (temporary) cure for ADHD is kneecapping. It came back when he came Back from the Dead in Comic Book Legion Of Three Worlds.
- Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Johnny seems to have ADD trouble. On a positive note, it makes it hard for him to commit suicide because he tends to lose focus on it halfway through. It got downplayed as the series got Cerebus Syndrome, though.
- In Loki (2019) #1, it's not long before Loki leaves Jotunheim out of boredom to go gambling in a supervillain casino.
- Legion of Super-Heroes (1973): In issue #2, two teams of Legionnaires go back a million years to investigate an alleged Krypton-Earth war. Saturn Girl's team quickly forgets their mission in favor of helping a bunch of Kryptonian scientists emigrate from their planet, and Brainiac 5's team quickly forgets their mission in favor of helping a group of alien refugees build a new city -Atlantis- on Earth. When both teams clash, Superboy volunteers to spy on the Atlanteans, but after sneaking into the city he quickly forgets his mission because he has met a beautiful girl.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Bean the Dynamite, occasionally. In his first appearance, Fiona distracts him by throwing some shiny keys away. Later, Sally does almost exactly the same thing with one of his own bombs.
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin is most often distracted by his own fantasies and daydreams rather than anything external.
- While not a commentary on ADHD, there was a strip from The Far Side showing a group of warriors storming a castle, running across the moat bridge while one guy points to the water and exclaims "Ooh, goldfish, everyone, goldfish!" Gary Larson stated that he's fond of that one because "that's me on the bridge."
- A Frazz comic◊ calls this "A.D.H.L.A.S." or "Attention-Defi-Hey-Look-A-Squirrel".
- Garfield: In the April 24, 2013 strip, the titular character wasgrateful for short attention spans when a dog that was chasing him suddenly decided to chase the mailman instead. The dog then decided to chase a squirrel instead of the mailman.
- In a series of early Peanuts strips, Lucy is shown to be a golf prodigy. Charlie Brown notes: "You're going to make a great golfer [...] if only you didn't lose interest so fast..." as she sits down in the sand to make a sand castle.
Eastern European Animation
- The premise of the Brave Bunnies episode "A Difficult Task" is based around the Brave Bunnies helping a new friend, Barry, overcome this character flaw. He keeps getting distracted by watching insects when he should be picking berries for his mother.
- Masha and the Bear: The hyperactive Masha can easily be distracted by things that surround her.
Films — Animation
- Aladdin has the Genie, a character reflecting Robin Williams' stream of consciousness, which goes from Jack Nicholson to vintage cars, true love and speaking animals in less than a minute. Cloud Cuckoo Lander on crack, if you will.
- Cars 2: At the World Grand Prix kickoff party, Mater scatters off and Lightning tries to watch him, but gets called away by two of the other racers to talk with them.
- The Emperor's New Groove: When Yzma tries to make up an excuse for running the kingdom behind his back, Kuzco is more focused on studying her face. And a piece of food stuck in her teeth.
Kuzco: [thinking] Whoa. Look at these wrinkles. What is holding this woman together? What the— how long has that been there?
- FernGully: The Last Rainforest: Batty Koda is a fruit bat that was experimented on by humans. The experiments included inserting an antenna and wires through his brain, which tend to disrupt his thought process.
Batty: (To Zak) First, all these trees go. Then come your highways, then come your shopping malls and parking lots and convenience stores, and then comes—!
Zak: (flicks his antenna, causing a ZAP)
Batty: Price check on prune juice, Bob? Price check on prune juice? - Finding Nemo: Dory fits the bill, though her "disorder" is rather attributed to a condition of "short term memory loss". As she can only remember a relatively short span of time clearly, it's easy for her to forget what she was originally doing and thus is likely to switch to a new topic. It runs in her family... she thinks. This is actually a disorder known as Anterograde Memory Dysfunction or AMD. This is the same mental condition shown in the Christopher Nolan movie Memento.
- In the Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Cosmic Clash animated film, Supergirl exhibits this trait when a cute kitten makes her distracted while fighting an army of robots: "Focused? Oh, they don't come much more focused than me, Cyborg. Oh, look! A kitten!"
- In Monsters vs. Aliens, both Insectosaurus and B.O.B. are like this. The former because he has the personality of a dog. The latter because he has no brain (turns out you don't need one). Both of them were distracted during the fight with a giant alien robot.
- The "What's This" sequence in The Nightmare Before Christmas: Jack even ends up running into a pole. This, naturally, leads some fans to speculate that Jack has ADD. This is most likely not the case: Jack had been doing the same thing, in the same place, in the same way for an untold number of years. This was the first time he had seen anything like this; he's not distracted by "the shiny" as much as he's trying to take it all in at once while being very (musically) enthusiastic about it.
- Hammy in Over the Hedge behaves in a hyper, caffeinated manner and exhibits Hollywood's definition of ADD. A plot point relies on giving caffeine to th— SQUIRREL!!
- All of the dogs in the Pixar film Up seem to have thi—SQUIRREL!!... ... ...s problem. And a new meme is born. Note that this may not be an accurate representation of human ADHD, but it's a much more accurate representation of dog psychology. If there's even a suspicion, a dog will do exactly what it does in the movie, minus speaking — jerk its head away and stare waiting to see its target. If it spots it, it wi— SQUIRREL! ...will typically bark or growl uncontrollably.
Films — Live-Action
- In every adaptation of 12 Angry Men, Juror #12 is the most easily distracted member of the jury. To be fair, jury duty can be excruciatingly boring.
- The 1972 live-action adaptation of 1776 had this little bit, when John Adams was addressing Senator Chase, who was enjoying his lunch? Dinner? On the matter of American independence:
Adams: America awaits on your decision, Chase. The whole world waits on your decision. [beat, points towards Chase's plate] What's that, kidney? [Chase angrily slaps Adams' finger away from his food]
- Doug Remer in BASEketball seems to suffer from this. It serves as a demonstration for one of the reasons Ted Denslow is so interested in his Coop Cooper's new sport.
Denslow: People today have attention spans that can only be measured in nanoseconds!
(Coop looks over to see Remer staring at a bird)
Coop: I hear you. - The Fast and the Furious (2001): Averted: Jesse the "brains" of Dom's crew dropped out of highschool, has a hobby that seems to calm him down "engines and cars", is a heavy pot smoker (THC, and Alcohol are commonly used to self medicate ADHD, as it "slows their brain down", and has other halmarks of ADHD if not properly controlled: Social Impairment, Financial Mismanagement, and tendency to be involved in high/risk and/or criminal activity.
- Blue's Big City Adventure: Deconstructed. Josh, like in the show, has a painfully short attention span, but unlike the show here it's not Played for Laughs. Here Josh gets lost in the city, forgets his notebook and almost loses a job opportunity with his distractions, and he himself recognizes this as a problem that stresses him to the point of causing panic attacks. As the Taxi Cab points out, Josh misses and will likely continue to miss a lot of important things (literally and figuratively) if he doesn't start paying attention to the world around him.
- The movie Charlie Bartlett has a scene involving the title character taking too much Ritalin. It was depicted as causing him to run around, singing in his underpants.
- Clerks: The stupid customers...
Video store customer: Do you have that one with that guy who was in the movie that was out last year? ...Oooo! Navy Seals!
- Used in the Dungeons & Dragons (2000) film. When Ridley and Snails are sneaking into the magic school, Snails is in a position where he's too scared to jump down a few feet, and Ridley says he'll catch him. Cue Ridley being distracted by an off-screen creature grunting and drawing his attention for just the right moment.
Ridley: Sorry. I thought I heard something.
Snails: You did. Me hittin' the ground. - In the Iron Man films, Tony Stark's eccentric nature makes him prone to zoning out of what he's supposed to be doing.
Stern: Mr. Stark? Mr. STARK!
Tony: [turns around] Hmm, yes, dear? - The main character's younger sister in the film Pecker is diagnosed with ADHD, when in reality she just consumes way, way, way too much sugar. After being prescribed Ritalin, she acts quite zombie-ish, culminating with her nearly choking on a pill after she refuses to wash it down with a soda. By the end of the film, she's off both the sugar and the meds.
- Sonic the Hedgehog has the title Sonic, whose Super-Speed causes his attention to move as fast as him, which results in it rapidly jumping from one thing to the next as they catch his attention.
- Venom: Venom shows shades of this, owing to his nature as an alien with non-human priorities.
Dapper dog-walker: Hey. Don't give up on her. Either of you.
Eddie: We won't.
Venom: Who was that guy? [notices dog] Wait, this thing looks delicious! - The White Balloon: Child protagonist Razieh can't walk for a minute without focusing on something that she has never seen or is forbidden to see. Her curiosity is what causes her to lose the 500 toman bill that she wants to buy a goldfish with.
Jokes
- The obligatory Lightbulb Joke:
Alice: How many kids with A.D.D. does it take to change a light bulb?
Bob: How ma—
Alice: Hey, wanna go ride bikes? - One comedian talked about his difficulties in school:
"They said I had A-D-H- that's a nice necklace!"
- Referenced in a Bill Engvall sketch about parent-teacher conferences. The teacher asks if there's a history of ADD in the family, and Bill says "Yes, we add, subtract, multiply... why are you spelling it?" His wife then says, "M-O-R-O-N. She means attention deficit disorder." And by that point, Bill is looking out the window at birds.
- As seen on an A.D.D. T-shirt:
"I don't have A.D.D., I'm just — look, a chicken!"
Literature
- Amber Brown: Amber can sometimes be easily distracted. She has to go for special classes because she has trouble concentrating to take standardized tests.
- "The Author's Ordeal": In this case, the "shiny" is the new Science Fiction plot in the author's head. It is sufficiently distracting that a traffic accident is caused when you sideswipe another car.
- The Camp Half-Blood Series: Pretty much all half-bloods are ADHD. The explanation given is that it's their natural battle reflexes and helps to keep them alive in battle (which they go through on a regular basis).
- In the Clémentine books, especially in the earlier titles, Clementine has to be reminded often to pay attention in school and has trouble sitting still. As she explains...
"Clementine, you need to pay attention!" the art teacher said one more time. And just like the other times, I was paying attention. I was paying attention to Margaret's empty seat.
- Greebo from Discworld tends to keep his cat personality even when human, which leads to a somewhat ADD-esque behaviour pattern.
- The Extraordinaries: Nick Bell is canonically has ADHD.
- Fire Engine By Mistake: A fire engine driving through the countryside is such a novelty that sheep stop nibbling, cows stop chewing, and horses stop dusting each other with their tails.
- "Fresh Guy": The werewolf Lupe has trouble focusing on one thing at a time. When he joins his friends at the Tombstone, he is there to listen and smell if the humans are finally moving upwards from their underground shelters. This time, he also has news for his ghoul pal Sammy that he encountered a female ghoul interested in meeting him. But he forgets about both because he is excited about his and his wife's new litter. It takes a bit for him to get to his task at the Tombstone and before he remembers about the female ghoul he's already on his way home.
- Genie Team G Jiken Note: Nako's issue with inattentiveness causes lots of problems for her; right in the beginning of her spinoff she was on the verge of being expelled from Shumei Seminar not only for her poor grades, but also due to her being seen as a troublemaker who disturbs other students. This is despite the fact that in terms of raw intelligence, she's the highest of the Tachibana siblings.
- I Need a Wee!: Alan keeps being distracted from his need to use the bathroom by seeing random things he wants.
- Jane Eyre: Helen Burns probably had inattentive type ADD. The list of personal flaws Helen confesses to Jane all match the diagnostic criteria: "I am... slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say... I cannot bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements." She goes on to describe how, although she does very well in classes that catch her interest, her thoughts "continually rove away" during uninteresting lessons.
- Joey Pigza, the title character from his series of books has ADHD and a central point of the series is his ongoing struggle to think before he acts and learn to calm down. By the end of the first book, he changes his medication and then a central element in the second book is his newfound ability to calm down and think.
- The Jungle Book: Nothing the Bandar-Log ever do lasts more than five minutes because they get distracted by something else. They would likely have forgotten Mowgli in the snakepit after kidnapping him.
- Katt vs. Dogg: Both Molly and Oscar are easily distracted by small animals. It's what got them lost in the woods in the first place (Molly got lost chasing a butterfly, and Oscar got lost chasing a flying squirrel).
- In The League of Peoples 'Verse, the entire Cashling species suffer from this: always bored, easily distracted, and unable to focus their attention on anything for very long.
- David suffers from this problem while trying to study at the beginning of The Magic Map. Not because he has ADHD, but because his geography book is so boring that it’s legitimately more fun to watch two ants carrying a twig.
- Elin from Of Fear and Faith is easily distracted by all kinds of things, including bugs, noises and pickles, and her narration will sometimes take notice of and ramble on about random pieces of scenery that are completely unimportant to anything other than Elin's curiosity (such as the aforementioned pickles).
- In Anne Bishop's The Others Series, the Crowgard fit this behaviour to a T. Really reinforced by the revelation that the Crowgard of the Lakeside Courtyard run a shop called Sparkle and Junk.
- In Phenomena a character says that both main characters have this. It's said to be a strength. The author has it himself, and has said that he finds it really hard to focus on writing at times.
- The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: Cubas frequently distracts himself with his thoughts or by analyzing the landscape, even in discussions. When Virgília berates him for their affair, Brás focuses more on an ant biting a fly's leg on the ground
"Virgília said a lot of harsh things to me, threatening me with separation, anyway, praising her husband. That is a worthy man, far superior to me, delicate, a paragon of courtesy and affection", she told me while I sat with my arms resting on my knees, staring at the ground where a fly was dragging an ant that was biting its foot. Poor fly! Poor ant!"
- Mr. Smith, father of P. G. Wodehouse's Psmith.
- In the somewhat farcical Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Darksaber this trope becomes a crucial "plot point", as the Hutts' titular superweapon is let down by the Taurill workers who constructed it, who as a race seem to have this trope as their Hat. They're very fast workers, but something as simple as a passing asteroid can distract the whole Hive Mind and have them all shift positions for a better view — so when they start working again, they're in the wrong places, putting the wrong parts together. The resulting superweapon is completely nonfunctional.
- The Spren Sylphrena or "Syl" in The Stormlight Archive is very curious, excitable, and easily distracted by something new. In Rhythym of War, she admits that she feels like she has two brains; A rational brain that can focus on important topics, and a childlike brain that constantly jumps to the nearest thing she notices. She regrets that her impulsiveness usually wins out.
- In The Time Machine, the Time Traveller's description of the demeanor of the Eloi matches the DSM's criteria for inattentive ADHD.
A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children, they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some other toy.
- Nathan in You Are Dead (Sign Here Please) pays very little attention to what's going on around him and tends to drift off and start thinking about cereal jingles when people try to tell him more than a few sentences at a time.
Music
- System of a Down has oft-changing time signatures and desperate, screaming lyrics in their songs to mimic the signs of Attention Deficit Disorder, according to Word of God. They also take stances against the pharmaceutical drugging of youth, with the title track off of the album Toxicity representing the poison of complacency that medication offers, in their opinion.
Myths & Religion
- According to one Japanese creation myth, mankind has this trope to thank for mortality. The legend goes that, when the creator god got around to making humans, he asked the chief god in the heavens what he should make them out of. The chief god originally instructed him to make humankind out of wood; however, he later changed his mind, and sent an otter to the creator god instructing him to make humans out of stone instead. Along the way, the otter got distracted by a pool of fish, and as a result he ended up delivering the message after mankind had already been created. According to the myth, mankind would have been nearly indestructible had it been made from stone like the chief god intended.
- The reason that the Dog came in as one of the later animals in the Chinese Zodiac is because of this trope. It got distracted by all kinds of things and spent way too long playing in the water, so that it could be considered a miracle that it made it to the list of 12 at all.
Podcasts
- How Did We Get Here?: The podcast is based upon this idea, as the hosts constantly get off topic and don't stay on any given topic for much time. Jacob has stated that he has ADHD and joked that this podcast was based on it.
- In Xena: Warrior Business, upon reaching an episode the hosts don't like, they tend to go on long, rambling tangents about anything under the sun to put it off as long as possible.
Pro Wrestling
- A frequent aspect of wrestling matches is the "distraction", where it often leads to cheating... or, in the broadest sense affects the outcome of the match. A typical example is someone coming to the ring to taunt his foe, the foe going over to argue with them, and the foe's opponent for the match (which may only be starting right at that moment) sneaking up from behind and rolling him up for the pin. Another example is the manager, valet or other second distracting the Easily Distracted Referee long enough for a rule-breaking wrestler to use a foreign object to hit his opponent, knock him unconscious and get a win. During tag-team matches, one of the partners of the face team will try to get the referee to notice illegal double-teaming of his partner by the heel team, but the referee is preoccupied with trying to escort him — the non-legal face wrestler — out of the ring.
- George Steele: Bobby "the Brain" Heenan once exploited Steele's crush for Miss Elizabeth by bringing out a poster of the beautiful valet of Randy Savage to "the Animal's" match against "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff and showing it to him at critical points in the match. Orndorff was able to get an easy win over the lovestruck Steele.
- Miss Elizabeth: Played the part perfectly during the Hulk Hogan-Randy Savage vs. Ted DiBiase-André the Giant match at the 1988 Summer Slam, when — just as it seemed the hellish Mega Bucks team had victory wrapped up — she took off her skirt to reveal a bikini bottom. DiBiase was stunned and couldn't concentrate, and heel-leaning referee Jesse Ventura was also distracted (Andre, portrayed by the announcers as also being distracted, was actually yelling at Ventura to pay attention to the match). All this distraction allowed Hogan and Savage to regain their bearings and rally to a victory.
- "Sick" Nick Mondo admitted he used to have this problem, linking his inability to pay attention to his discovery of the fact there are professional wrestling schools.
- Maria Kanellis once lost a match because she was too busy posing for pictures being taken by the troops in Iraq to notice her tag team partner Candice Michelle needed a break against Trish Stratus and was trying to tag out.
- Leva Bates once lost a triple threat match to Su Yung because she was too busy doing an impression for the fans of the woman she just appropriated her new bandana from to notice La Rosa Negra was being pinned by Yung.
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street:
- Many viewers feel that they may have introduced Elmo to set up a commentary on ADD or ADHD. It never happened, but he sure is easily... ooh, shiny! Or, if you want a simpler explanation... He's supposed to be THREE YEARS OLD.
- Another Muppet character, Forgetful Jones, is a living embodiment of this trope. Or he may just have Alzheimer's....
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The Kender race in the Dragonlance setting embodies this trope. They even have a racial ability to "Detect Shiny".
- The distract spell (3.5th Edition, Spell Compendium) can give this condition to several foes, making them fascinated by everything around them for a short moment. It inflicts serious penalties on skills such as Concentration, Spot, Listen and Search, and makes them unable to act as much as normal since they can get distracted even mid-combat.
- The Batwinged Bimbo From Hell class in Macho Women with Guns (both being what they sound like, by the way) has access to the skill "distort reality"; by shifting their attention completely to something like their nail polish, a run in their stockings, or a shiny object, they can avert any attack by not paying any attention to it at all. If the skill roll succeeds, the attack instead targets another player.
- Goblins of Pathfinder have this problem, to the point where nothing can hold their attention for more than a few seconds. This ADOS even shows up in the middle of combat, when a goblin may waste a turn to do something completely stupid.
- Warhammer:
- There is a running joke among players that creatures with the Stupidity rule (which means there is a chance the unit will do nothing other than wander forward a few inches for a turn) suffer from this, in particular Dark Elf Cold Ones (dinosaur horse thingies) thinking "kill kill kill kill, ooooh shiny".
- This is actually accurate in the case of Sigvald the Magnificent, who at random times during the battle will actually become so distracted by how awesome and shiny his armour is that he will stop fighting and demand that his henchmen polish it and tell him how wonderful he is.
- Corax in Werewolf: The Apocalypse have this as one of their racial flaws. Their other flaw being an allergy to gold, this doesn't usually work out too well for them.
Theatre
- In Hadestown, during "Road to Hell," Orpheus is distracted from cleaning tables by a red dishrag and uses it as musical inspiration. He misses his cue from Hermes and only notices the audience when his name's called again.
- The Marriage of Figaro (Cherubino) and The Magic Flute (Papageno), both composed by Mozart. Those who were close to the composer marveled at how familiar the characters seemed.
Video Games
- Mothilda from The Amazing Crackpots Club! is a moth turned both giant and intelligent by a magic tonic. She has the personality of a particularly energetic young kid and a tendency to get distracted by everything, specially bright things.
- The magpies from Beyond the Edge of Owlsgard really, really like shiny things. Showing one of the magpie guards a pearl will cause him to drop whatever he's doing and fly over to Finn, allowing him to get the announcer's horn.
- Taokaka from BlazBlue has a three-second or three-step (depending on which comes first) attention span/memory combo.
- Borderlands 2 has one example with Tiny Tina, as you get ready to destroy a train with some missiles:
Tiny Tina: Awwrite counting down. Ten! Nine!
[the missiles fire prematurely and blow up the train]
Tiny Tina: I got bored. - Dandy's World: All Twisteds will target the closest Toon with the lowest Stealth stat. Also, as a rule of thumb, faster Twisteds such as Toodles or Flutter, tend to have lower attention spans than slower ones, such as Shrimpo.
- In Devilish Hairdresser, the Angelic Hairdresser's Fatal Flaw is her short attention span. She will often turn away from her work to make a phone call, prepare a cup of coffee, or look at some books, giving the Devilish Hairdresser time to mess with her clients.
- Invisigal in Dispatch very bluntly admits to having ADHD after a joke from Robert when she asks him what his favorite doughnut is in the middle of a crime scene investigation. She has a tendency to talk a mile a minute and go on tangents, while also switching her attention at random when she isn't focusing.
- The basis for a joke in Dragon Age: Origins where the game designers fall victim to this trope. It unfolds as follows in the description of a Glamour Charm:
This minor magical charm captures the viewer's attention and distra... ooo, pretty...
- Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress, all too often. It isn't uncommon for a dwarf to Urist McTroper cancels post: Pick Up Equipment. Dwarves will cancel a task to pull a lever to activate a critical series or traps or other defensive mechanisms to go get a drink or take a nap. Military dwarves will, on some occasions, literally stop fighting an invading horde of monsters because they're sleepy or hungry.
- An entire invading army can be distracted by one of your pet cats, chasing after it instead of laying siege to your fortress.
- In EarthBound (1994), an otherwise indestructible Master Belch can be defeated if you use Fly Honey to distract him; he'll waste turns to guzzle that mess down, leaving himself vulnerable to attack.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Depending on your playstyle, there is a high chance your Player Character in any game in the series falls victim to this trope, due to the high amount of content in said games' open worlds. It's very easy to take on a quest, only to forget said quest because of all the optional dungeons you encounter on your way, followed by taking on other quests only for them to also be postponed because you encountered, depending on the game, a gate to Oblivion or a dragon.
- This is a trait of the Demiprinces, a form of lesser Daedra born of the union between a Daedra and a mortal. Demiprinces tend to have short attention spans and get bored very easily. Fa-Nuit-Hen, for example, can barely stay focused on questions during his interviews and outright interrupts people so he can answer them before he loses track of what they're saying.
- Subaru of Ensemble Stars! loves to play around and have fun and hates having to do boring things. And as the trope name might suggest, he absolutely loves anything shiny to a crow-like extent, hoarding coins and anything else that sparkles such as ramune bottle marbles.
- EverQuest II gives us the collection quest items, often nicknamed "shinies" by the players for two reasons. The first is that, well, they glow — they're small, glowing points on the ground with a question mark on top. The second is that you can expect many people to instantly take a leave of their senses and drop whatever it is they were doing (such as traveling, trying to avoid dangerous mobs, healing their group or trying NOT to aggro everything in sight) in order to dig them up. Even more so in groups, where there's a competitive aspect to it — first person to activate the shiny gets it, and the rare ones sell for a mint. A shiny popping up in the middle of a difficult fight can quite easily spell "wipe".
- Guild Wars 2 gives us the Skritt, who have a unique form of Hive Mind. They all have individual intelligence, but the more Skritt are around each other at a time, the smarter they get. Form up a whole Warren (underground city) and they rather effortlessly start repurposing snatched Asura and Charr tech into their own proto-industrial revolution. When there's only one or two around, though, they have the minds of the rodents they evolved from and are basically this trope made flesh.
- Shimakaze from KanColle has this as part and parcel of her fixation on speed. Especially emphasized in episode 4 of the Animated Adaptation: when she's called in for a briefing, Shimakaze bounces around excitedly asking "When do we start?!", but when the briefing actually does start, she's playing with one of her Rensouhou-channote and not listening. When the mission is set to launch, she's nowhere to be found, presumably having gotten bored and wandered off. After some hilarious failed attempts to draw her out, her teammates sit down for tea...and Shimakaze eagerly skips up, asking "What are you guys doing? Can I have one of those scones?"
- Kingdom of Loathing has an Attention Deficit Demon as a potential familiar (though as a rare one by now, since it was available for a limited time).
[Your Demon] bounces around, helping you pick stuff up. "Did you know that chili peppers aren't actually peppers? And a coconut isn't a nut, either! Hey, remember that one monster you fought? He was crazy. Do you like music?"
- Melissa from Knights in the Nightmare is often characterized as having a mild case of ADHD. Unlike many other examples, she actually displays hyperfocus — Ancardia is all she can really be bothered to concentrate on, and she's otherwise fairly easily distracted. The more commonly attributed characteristics of the disorder get Flanderized by the fandom.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: Princess Zelda. Multiple times during the festival when she's talking to Link, she'll run off mid-sentence because she got distracted by another booth or person.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Link can defeat Ganondorf by waving a fishing pole around to distract him while taking potshots at him. See it in action here. This is actually pretty common in the Zelda series — a good quarter of the final bosses will stop and stare at your fishing pole/bug net.
- Look Outside: If you've got Roaches with you during the Perfect Ritual path and Final Battle with the Exalted Four, then it turns out they completely zoned out while the ritual was in progress and the Astronomers were transformed by The Visitor's gaze, to the point that they've got no idea what's currently going on.
Roaches: "I WASN'T LISTENING!!! WHO IS THIS GUY!?"
- Mewgenics: One disorder your cats can have is ADHD. They gain +2 to Speed and +1 to Intelligence, but the downside is that the player only has 5 seconds to select the afflicted cat's actions. If the time runs out, the cat will move and act autonomously.
- The Piglins in Minecraft are prone to this, even when they're aggressive, but they soon get back to fighting you afterwards. There's even an advancement for taking advantage of this love of gold. Averted for the Piglin Brutes, they don't get distracted by gold.
- A poster of a troll in Mishap 2: An Intentional Haunting includes four speech balloons containing simple utterances. "Oooh, shiny!" is one of them.
- Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): Deviljho is perpetually hungry and crashes Unstable environments in search of more food (which, more often than not, includes everything that moves). However, if you drop a piece of meat on the ground, it'll immediately stop what it's doing and go chow down. This can be used to your advantage, as you can apply certain items to the meat beforehand to put the Deviljho to sleep, poison it or paralyze it for a short time. The variant Savage Deviljho that debuted in 3 Ultimate is even hungrier and thus more prone to aiming at dropped meat, due to its high metabolism.
- Pokémon:
- In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, your rival shows this at least once. He comes barging into your room, then after a few seconds notes you have a new laptop.
- The Poké Doll is a brightly-colored toy that will distract wild Pokémon and allow the player to run away from them. In Pokémon Platinum, you can use it to escape the plot-mandatory battle with Giratina and end its universe-destroying rampage. Yes, I did just distract Cthulhu with a dolly.
- The partner in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon has a lot of ADHD-like personality traits. They're always excited to be going on missions, love running around, and not good at paying attention in school.
- Pony Island: Satan in a nutshell — I've got to finish this current game I'm working on! It's got to have many levels, suspense, build-up, an epic final boss, and, and ooh... here's a cute mascot for a brand NEW game!
- The Curiosity Core in Portal.
"What's that? Hey, what's that? Ooh, that thing has numbers on it! Ewww, what's wrong with your legs?! Hey, you're that lady from the tests! Hi! Look at that thing! No, that other thing! Do you smell something burning?"
- The intro sequence of A Princess Tale states that this is how the main character earned her nickname, "Princess Ooh Look, a Kitty."
- In Rakuen, Alice and Dean are a couple of Leebles that live next to Winston. During the festival, Alice is trying to ask Dean how was the work that day, but he gets constantly distracted, at one point by the fact that Alice has ears. (For the record, every Leeble has huge triangular ears that are impossible to not notice).
- The Arakun race in the text-based Retro MUD game are famous for being like this. They also have a racial emote called "ashiny". Players tend to ham it up for all it's worth.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic has issues with staying still for extended periods of time.
- Also Tails, to a certain extent. He's a bit more focused and patient than Sonic is, usually, but he's VERY easily distracted by things he finds interesting. Which, since he's a Child Prodigy Gadgeteer Genius, mostly includes killer robots.
- The Novakids from Starbound are an entire race of these, as they can't focus on any task for long before getting distracted by something new and interesting, have very poor long-term memories, and don't recognize the importance of writing things down for later. They're actually stunningly intelligent on an intuitive level (a Novakid can build a working FTL drive and spaceship just by seeing one pass by and inventing what they need to get it to work), but they keep having to reinvent the wheel. For this reason, Novakid communities tend to fluctuate between stone and digital age (usually lingering on the "steel and steam" age out of affectation more than anything) as one generation makes groundbreaking discoveries and the next one forgets how they work. The beta versions of the game reflected this in the character intro blurbs; while the other races had long-term reasons for their situations, the Novakid's boiled down to "You're on a malfunctioning ship and you can't remember how you got there."
- A Liberated Borg Caitian Duty Officer in Star Trek Online has Flavor Text implying that he has a certain amount of this.
"My time in the Collective honed me. I am more focused on ... hey, that light is blinking!"
- In Sticky Business, Carlo gets distracted by his own stickers and puts them out of his sight because he has ADHD. However, he learns to turn this around by using the stickers to help him stay organized at work, with the help of his meds.
- Fairies in the Touhou Project franchise have this in general, due to being ephemeral and short-lived (but immortal) youkai. In the spin-off game Fairy Wars (which stars fan-favorite Cirno), you have a "motivation meter" in place of a life bar; when it hits 0, Cirno gets bored of the whole adventure and wanders off to find something more interesting to do.
- Trinity Universe: Kanata, main character of the Demon God King route, was confined to his family's castle for most of his life, so actually getting to see Empyria and all it had to offer naturally excites him... much to the exasperation of his handler / retainer, Tsubaki.
- World of Warcraft:
- One of the "silly" jokes a male orc can say:
"I will CRUSH and DESTROY and... ooo... shiny..."
- A Dryad named Mylune will actually get distracted by a butterfly halfway through her quest-ending text.
- This trope even applies to player characters now, as anything lootable by your character sparkles in your view.
- The gorlocs in Sholazar Basin demonstrate this literally, having an obsession with collecting shiny objects. Jaloot is an especially bad case, with the item that calls him having the added Flavor Text of "Should he be managing to pay attention at the time".
- One of the "silly" jokes a male orc can say:
Visual Novels
- Artificial Nexus: The protagonist Susan gets distracted very easily, and her Mission Control often has to remind her to get back to her main goal. In her defense, she was designed to be curious so as to improve how quickly she would learn things.
- Valerie and Zacharie of Magical Warrior Diamond Heart both have ADHD. The former can't focus on her studies and usually gets distracted by cute things or cute people, while the latter is distracted by anything shiny and cute.
- Shouichi "Capt" Kazama from Majikoi! Love Me Seriously! has all the trappings of your typical shounen hero and has both the luck and the skill to be the best at everything he tries. Despite this, his minuscule attention span mixed with his love of wandering around and trying new things prevents him from ever fully embracing this role, ensuring that he'll never steal the spotlight from any of the Action Girl love interests or the protagonist Yamato.
- In Our Life: Now & Forever, one of the potential Love Interests Qiu Lin has ADHD, but this trope is downplayed. They're capable of focusing when the situation calls for it, but they have difficulty retaining information for very long, often forgetting small details and instructions.
- Jazz, the protagonist of Songs and Flowers, displays many symptoms of ADHD, but in a more realistic manner. She loses track of what's happening and can be forgetful, but she can also get hyperfocused on certain things, loves learning new things, and can really open up around friends. It also doesn't stop her from being legitimately talented at gathering info and putting pieces together.
- The player character of Starship Promise is a brilliant engineer whose train of thought bounces around like a ball in a pinball machine: lightning-fast but very easily diverted onto irrelevant tangents ranging from beluga whales in space to how hot that person over there is, even in the midst of life-or-death situations.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus
- Caine
- In "The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor", while Zooble is venting their personal frustrations or giving him feedback on why the players don't enjoy his adventure, he's distracted by his own drawings of bees or his own concern over his purpose as an AI for entertainment.
- This eventually proves to be a sore point with his adventures in general; they're loaded with so much overstimulating action that they're usually traumatic instead of entertaining, and he's usually unable to come up with anything more relaxed for a change of pace due to not recognizing what humans consider to be mundane or 'normal'.
- Caine
- Button's Adventures: Button is highly impulsive and forgetful of his belongings, but can also be held captivated by his gaming for long periods of time.
- Atlus employees suffer this, at least according to Yahtzee's review of Catherine:
Atlus developer: ... Wait, I'm confused. What was I fixing again? Oh, look! A puppy!
- Captain Distraction is about a superhero who gets easily distracted.
- Chicken of Chicken and Moose has this, seemingly paired with hallucinations. He gets distracted by a "rainbow," which is actually an oil slick.
- Jafar winds up distracted by Frollo's fishing line during a climactic battle in The Frollo Show, much like Ganondorf from Twilight Princess in the Video Games subpage.
- Happy Tree Friends: Nutty has a hard time focusing on anything that's not candy or sugar-related.
- Isabelle Ruins Everything: The Mayor gets everyone to forget about the protest by pulling out a butterfly from his pocket and telling them to "go get it."
- Popocalypse: Downplayed rather realistically. In Episode 4, Limpet has a massive, room-destroying meltdown over pop music being banned... only to immediately calm down upon noticing her cryptid poster and decide to log onto the cryptid forums instead. However, the fact that she immediately gets into a pointless argument with some nobody that leaves her sobbing all over herself makes it clear that her emotions are still on the crisis.
Roleplay
- JoJo's OC Tournament: The Grand Tour: Sweet Connolly's Stand, Fox on the Run, can cause those that sight it to develop an irresistibile desire to capture it, making them completely forget about any other task they were previously undertaking in favour of chasing after it no matter how vital it may've been. Connolly at first weaponizes to pit several Stand users one against the other and to later keep them off of his back. Even after his defeat, the Stand continues to endure autonomously and is taken in by Babylon by Bus, with Buffalo Soldier later using to distract the drivers of Senator Elliott's escort trucks to have a shot at killing him.
- Crops up very frequently in Survival of the Fittest. Some portrayals of ADHD (such as Lance Barrett) are very low-key and realistic. Others, however, like with Owen Fontaine, are of the plain old bouncing off the walls variety.
Web Original
- Uncyclopedia has a self-demonstrating article on the subject.
- The Monday Morning Mooks can rarely finish a sentence, let alone a discussion
- WALL•E Forum Roleplay: Spectrum, oh so very much.
Spectrum: Hi! You're colorful!
- Whateley Universe example: Joanne Gunnarson, code name Murphy, but her problem is written fairly accurately. Has ADHD, and has just manifested as a mutant so her meds don't work right. Spends all her time walking around drinking coffee. When she gets distracted or upset, her power kicks in, which is bad. She's a Reality Warper, and reality usually warps so that she gets the short end of the stick.
- Brandon from Trinton Chronicles has this problem.
- My Opinions On Every Pokemon Ever: "Ooh, look! He's wearing a bowtie!"
- NigaHiga on YouTube claims to have ADHD and has vlog segments of what he's like when he's "Off the Pill".
- Noka: Found has the brilliant idea of smashing the furniture down and refashioning all of it into a fort-igloo hybrid. Albeit, he did almost none of the work and spent most of the time searching for his bacon-print underwear to fly as the fort's flag, he still managed to convince Abel and Solo to help him.
Found: ...Convince?
Az: Yes! Convince! How do you sell someone the angle of "Wanna destroy the furniture in this room and turn it into a fort? We can stick my underwear on top and call it the flag!" — actually that's pretty convincing in itself... - Dan Carlin's hardcore history says that the Romans describe Germanic invaders in more or less this way. Tall, strong, unbelievably brave, skillful with weapons, a monstrous horde descending on Rome! Then they get distracted by Spain for a few years.
- #6 on Cracked's If Everything Got An Adorable Mascot is Addie the ADHD tornado. "Let us help you learn to cope with... Ohh!!! Shiny!!!"
- In Worm, Kid Win is constantly leaving his projects half-done thanks to this. It's notably portrayed as a serious frustration for him, on top of his many other stresses. There's some indication that his superpower is trying to leverage this to get him to build reuseable, multi-functional modules rather than finished one-function items (his meds actually stop working after he created one project successfully), but as the only other Tinker available for mentoring is both his boss and the local city superhero team leader (and horrible socially), who creates amazing tech items and is held up as a national-level example of awesomeness/effectiveness, Kid Win is perpetually confronted with not only being near-useless by comparison, but perpetually unable to even start thinking his his mentor/idol/example, who never really has any free time anyway to walk Kid Win through possible alternatives. And the local support structures are... lacking.
- In Constable Frozen's photo edit Go Away Anna, Anna breaks down the door of Elsa's ice palace, only to be distracted by her pizza.
- Cao Cao in Farce of the Three Kingdoms, although Guo Jia and Big Xun usually manage to keep him on track.
- Nobody Here: "Dreaming" shows an animation of someone repeatedly writing the phrase "i will not dream", but if the cursor is left idle for long enough, they will get distracted and begin doodling on the page until the cursor is moved again.
- Downplayed in Theratpy. Ratticus is inattentive and easily distracted, but it's portrayed realistically. He struggles with staying still and with a lack of stimuli, and he's prone to fidgeting in uncomfortable situations.
Web Video
- American High Digital: During last period on a Friday, it only takes seconds for students to get distracted from classwork.
- Call Me Kevin is, by his own admission, very easily distracted.
Kevin: (playing Vampire Survivors) My attention span has been compared to a squirrel.
- Newer to the Let's Play scene team Drak And Shadow Lets Plays also have a serious problem with waning conversations. Their Let's Play of Shadows of the Empire particularly This episode where they go off on just about anything BUT the game they're playing. Both are well aware of this fact.
- This completely derailed Funday Night Gaming's Let's Play of Skyblock in Minecraft for most of the series.
- The Game Grumps often put their conversations on hold when something unexpected pops up in the game they're playing.
- Of specific note, is whenever they get into a row over what is and isn't a Kaiju. It's happened enough times to be significant with arguments between Arin, Ross, and Holly over whether Clifford the Big Red Dog, Paul Bunyan, Dan if he was twice as big, King Kong, Big Bird, and "that giant chicken from YouTube" are or are not a Kaiju, and they actually get pretty heated complete with mic drops. They stopped for about 5 straight minutes to argue the fact during their stream of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, until Dan had enough and demanded they keep playing... and the arguing continued for another good 10 minutes or so while Arin half-assedly played.
Dan: ARIN WOULD YOU PLAY FUCKING ZELDA PLEASE?!
- Of specific note, is whenever they get into a row over what is and isn't a Kaiju. It's happened enough times to be significant with arguments between Arin, Ross, and Holly over whether Clifford the Big Red Dog, Paul Bunyan, Dan if he was twice as big, King Kong, Big Bird, and "that giant chicken from YouTube
- It's Alive! with Brad: Whenever Brad Leone gets distracted in the kitchen, which is often, the editor will throw in some bizarre cartoon (a pickle playing drums), sound effects (That Poor Cat), or Caption Humor.
- Markiplier has claimed to have been diagnosed with ADHD in at least one of his videos.
- Matthew Santoro:
- In Do You Have a Short Attention Span?, Matt says that he doesn't have a short attention span, and immediately gets distracted by a bird.
- In The A.D.D Test, Matt says that he doesn't get distracted easily, and immediately gets distracted by a bird.
- New Life SMP:
- Much of Katherine's 1st episode is spent on her being distracted by rocks and sticks on the ground, modded mechanisms, pretty flowers, and cute animals, then her chiding herself for being distracted.
- Sparrow repeatedly shows this trait, especially during his stints of being non-human:
- As a Copper Golem, he's quite easily distracted by buttons and has to restrain himself from pushing them whenever he sees one. The first time he finds out he can gain redstone dust from this, he immediately gets distracted by this ability to the point it takes Scott stopping by for a visit and physically breaking the button (after gaining 7 stacks of redstone) for him to snap out of it.
- While holding the Sculk origin, he's still repeatedly distracted by various ventures on his journeys — even with a fixed goal in mind, if he stumbles across any big, at times cursed structures, he'll explore it.
- The Nostalgia Chick:
- Similarly, the Chick gets constantly distracted by puppies, cute jewelry or her team's antics.
- Speaking of her team, Dr. Tease gets distracted by gerbils when she's trying to warn the Chick that Dark Nella is closer than she thinks.
- The Nostalgia Critic during FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue: "Is this what you humans call ADD? I feel like I can't focus on anythin– oooh, a housefly." (moves off after it) He also displays this in other reviews, especially when he wanders off during a boring film.
- PeanutButterGamer shows shades of this during the Hardcore series or other Let's Plays. In his Super Mario 64 LP on the DS, he mentions in his first video wanting to explain why he's playing on the DS and not the Virtual Console 64 version. He forgets it during that video and has to focus multiple times to recall he hasn't explained yet in the second video. In one livestream, he mentions that both viewers and friends have suggested he may have ADHD, but hasn't really bothered to get a professional opinion on it.
- Pushing Up Roses does this a lot as a running gag.
Roses: Everyone meets in the lodge to talk about it, and holy shit, cool lamp! (Beat) Anyway...
- ScrewAttack: Stuttering Craig suffered from it during his Vortex review.
Stuttering Craig: Seeing something pretty will never be more important than gameplAY- what is that over there. [pauses] That looks really– I'll be right back. Hold on. That looks really cool. [runs off] IT'S SO SHINY!
- Travis from SMPLive gets distracted very easily. It makes sense given his IRL counterpart actually does have ADHD.
- SuperMarioLogan:
- In the episode "Bowser's Cookies", Chef Pee Pee tells Toad to watch the cookies in the oven, and not to get distracted. And then:
Toad: Don't get distracted. Don't get distracted. Don't get distracted. Don't get— (GASP) KITTY!
[switch to another scene]
Toad: Kitty! I know where you're in! (chuckles) I'm-a get you! Come here! Come here, where are you? - Bowser Junior himself is also prone to this. In "Bowser Junior's Candy Bar!", he says that he would not want anything at the gas station (Chef Pee Pee went there with him to buy something), but a Gilligan Cut occurs and he gets distracted by the candy being sold there. He winds up stealing a Hershey's candy bar.
- In the episode "Bowser's Cookies", Chef Pee Pee tells Toad to watch the cookies in the oven, and not to get distracted. And then:
- YouTube personality Tobuscus is this trope personified in his "Lazy Vlog" series, which are often more of a Motor Mouth-fueled stream of consciousness than anything planned. Some recurring distractions approach the level of catchphrases, such as "Ooh, an airplane!" or "Hot hot hot!" when seeing an attractive female. He also has a Let's Play channel (called TobyGames), in which he can be counted on to constantly lose track of what he's supposed to be doing, leading to amusing (if occasionally frustrating) misadventures.
- Vsauce: Michael will often get sidetracked and start talking about something only tangentially related to the subject in the video's title. Michael justifies it in video; his goal is to discuss and teach any subjects that he can with the questions in the title only being "hooks" to get the viewer's attention.
- An average stream by Joel from Vinesauce (Vargskelethor) will go like this: Joel will play a game, go on a tangent about a topic after seeing something in a game or talking about it, spend several minutes looking up pictures and videos of it, go back to the game, and repeat. Other times, he'll spend way too much time Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer or doing something silly in a game, sometimes to the point until the game literally crashes.
- XP to Level 3, upon encountering the word serf for the first time, goes down a brief rabbit hole of learning about serfs and villeins before cutting himself off mid-sentence and announcing that his Adderall is wearing off.
- While discussing Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, Fredrik Knudson tries to teach Jabroni Mike a bit of history, while Mike gradually zooms in on a particular animal.
Fredrik: People would go abroad, especially to Africa, they'd see these amazing animals, but they wouldn't be artists. They'd come back and they would describe them. And then painters would try to paint them based on - that is a giraffe penis.Mike: I'm sorry, you were saying something? Please continue.(even longer pause)Fredrik: I don't care anymore.(Mike proceeds to type "Resident Evil 8" over the giraffe penis.)
Ooh, another trope!
