"Also, I can kill you with my brain."
— River Tam, Firefly
The ability to alter (or remotely observe) reality, directly tied to the mind/brain of the character. This is a specific form of Magic by Any Other Name, where the magic is named for some pseudoscientific relationship with the caster's mental powers. Psychic, psion, esper, mentalist, parapsychologist: there are dozens of names for these people whose minds are able to sense and/or manipulate reality on a level that has yet to be proven to exist in Real Life.
Their powers are supernatural, but the names are (often) scientifically based, making it useful for Science Fiction stories across the spectrum. Historically, there was considered to be a real possibility for the existence of psychic powers, up to government-backed research into them, until well into the Cold War, which led to this trope becoming a popular way of having "magical" effects in otherwise grounded or science fiction stories; even after psychic powers became relegated to pseudoscience in the present day, this history led to them being "grandfathered" into modern science fiction due to habit — in that way, their use is not unlike Faster-Than-Light Travel. In general, the more powerful and dramatic the psychic, the softer the science. Creators may try to build Minovsky Physics for their psychic abilities, usually by detailing brainwaves and electroencephalogramsnote (also known as an EEG). Linking brainwave activity to the psychic abilities can reduce or eliminate use of No Conservation of Energy, which is otherwise part of the standard interpretation of psychic powers.
The presence of psychics is accepted in a broad range of Speculative Fiction situations, not just sci-fi storytelling. Any genre may borrow a few psychics without being considered "too sci-fi", including otherwise realistic Slice of Life stories, implying its presence in Real Life as well. Similarly, while the actual range of powers in "true" magic and "psychic powers" is usually not strongly distinct across different stories, so-named psychic powers have also appeared in fantasy stories in more recent years, usually as a distinct or "competing" field of magic; relationships between users of the powers of the mind and channelers of arcane Mana (or Supernatural Martial Arts or Ritual Magic or what have you) may or may not be strained.
Psychic abilities can be generalized into two categories; receptive and projective. The Parapsychological Association divides them into psi-gamma and psi-kappa. Receptive abilities are purely internal, displaying no external evidence they're being used apart from the occasional Psychic Nosebleed (and of course, the stance). The ability to see the future is receptive; the character gains knowledge with no external mechanic. Projective abilities affect the external world, requiring acting or special effects to reflect the way these abilities manipulate reality. The ability to move physical objects is projective; the character affects an external object with no tangible connection between them. Naturally there is overlap; Telepathy is receptive in that the character gains knowledge from another's mind, and usually projective by allowing the character to implant thoughts/ideas into the other character as well. Beyond this, psychic powers usually focus on mind-to-mind effects and on the projection of direct physical forces, as these are the easiest to coax into a nominally-science fiction context; more elaborate powers are rarer, but not strictly unheard of. For a full list of psychic powers, read the Analysis subpage.
Although psychic abilities are Magic by Any Other Name, they can also exist alongside other types of "magic", with some sort of division between two styles of Functional Magic. Even a work with only psychic "magic" may have more than one category of psychic abilities, which leads to Unequal Rites; characters with psychic abilities are prejudiced against each other based on their training philosophy, which powers they have access to, and/or how the powers were gained. Many psychic abilities can also be replicated by sufficiently advanced technology. Characters may be divided on if psychic abilities are scientific, or if psychic abilities are fantastical elements in an otherwise realistic setting (despite said "realistic" setting possibly containing werewolves and fairies). May overlap Living Barometer.
A Con Man who fakes it to fleece the gullible is a Phony Psychic. A Professional Killer, spy, or similar covert professional with these powers is a Psychic Operative.
See Psychic Index for everything related to psychics.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- From the 1990's: How a guy with powers like this eats a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.
Audio Plays
- Jan Tenner: After Tanja returns to Earth in the third series, it turns out that the experiment that originally led to her having to be cryogenically frozen in the first series gave her psychic abilities, namely creating psychic shields, mind reading, and telekinesis.
Comic Books
- In Astro City, this is the secret origin of The Gentleman. He is the psychic manifestation of Matilda Armstrong, a girl who wishes him into existence when there's trouble. Matilda is also able to use her powers to create additional people (like the Young Gentleman), keep herself immortal, and Break the Fourth Wall.
- Chew features characters with a variety of food-based psychic abilities. A list is available on the other wiki.
- The elven "magic" in ElfQuest. Telepathy is almost universal among them, and other powers crop up. It's implied early on that humans have the potential, too, and stories later in the timeline confirm this.
- Iron Empires by Christopher Moeller and published by Dark Horse Comics has the power known as Psychology (mental powers that works through surrounding energized particles as a medium). Psychology here has nothing to do with Sigmund Freud and whatnot, in the far future humanity had engineered individuals to develop psychic powers and made a science of it that humans' Arch-Enemy, the Vaylen, can't use or replicate. Among other powers, Psychology allows people to telepathically communicate. Perhaps the most important Psychology power is the ability to change the user's spinal fluid composition. It doesn't sound like much except that it can poison a Vaylen worm that had been implanted inside a Psychologist.
- The Judges of Judge Dredd have a Psi-Division just for people with "special talents".
- Madman has a variety of psychic powers as well.
- In the Marvel and DC universes (and many other companies). Marvel has numerous mutants with telepathy, including Professor X, Jean Grey, Rachel Summers, Psylocke, and dozens of others. Some of these also have telekinesis or other related powers. Oddly enough, Marvel in particular differentiates between mutant and non-mutant psychics. Spider-Man (Peter Parker) has a minor form of this in his Spider-Sense. DC has a few alien races, including Martians and Titanians, who have native psychic powers of various kinds.
- The Flash's enemy Gorilla Grodd is a fully-sapient gorilla supervillain with Psychic Powers.
- Green Lantern: Hector Hammond, an enemy of Hal Jordan, is a man who got mutated by a radioactive meteor, giving him a huge head and a wide array of psychic abilities, such as mind reading, mind control, telekinesis, telepathy, viewing other people’s memories, creating illusions, etc.
- Even the original Superman Siegel and Shuster created for their short story "Reign of the Superman" had psychic powers instead of physical ones (specifically Mind Control.) The actual Superman could have this at times during the Silver Age (at one point using "telepathic will-control", for example) as part of his whole New Powers as the Plot Demands deal.
- In Superman Krypton No More story arc, Superman fights one-time villain Protector who has telepathy, pyrokinesis and cryokinesis. Later on, he and his cousin Supergirl meet an alien race known as Xonnians. Xonnians have no vocal cords, so they use a form of telepathy.
- In Supergirl storyline Red Daughter of Krypton Judge Sheko gains telepathy and pyrokinesis once she becomes a Red Lantern.
- Supergirl's first solo book has Linda's friend Wanda. She is a telepath and precognitive.
- A Supergirl's enemy/ally called Psi wields powers of telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, energy manipulation and more, but her telepathy/empathy comes with a serious drawback: she can't filter out other people's thoughts and emotions. Her telekinesis is powerful enough to smash the Silver Age Supergirl around.
- In one of her adventures Supergirl faces a mutant with powers of telepathy, telekinesis, levitation, teleportation and pyrokinesis.
- In The Girl with the X-Ray Mind, Lena Thorul -who is outright called an Esper- has at the very least telepathy and low-level precognition.
- In The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor, villain Mind-Bomber is a low-level telepath, can detect and empower other psychics, and is able to blow stuff up from a distance.
- Following Superboy's (Kon-El) escape from Cadmus, another Cadmus grown individual (Dubbilex), who has telepathic and weak telekinetic abilities, is sent to escort him. Kon-El himself has tactile telekinesis.
- Kon-El's powers are based on from the post-Crisis idea that Superman's own powers are partially psychic in nature - his invulnerability comes from an "aura" that he subconciously extends to maintain the integrity large objects he carries. Cadmus duplicated this aura when creating Superboy, but he has more conscious control of it.
- Martian Manhunter is also a very powerful psychic.
- In Spellbound (1988) Erica, her brother Roy, and her little sister Sally all display various amounts of psychic powers.
- Nate Grey a.k.a. X-Man and, by default, Cable (Nathan Summers) (since the two are genetically identical) has a good claim to be the most powerful psychic in comics. He's the 'ultimate telekinetic', and no slouch with telepathy, either, a cosmic level Living Weapon with immense psychic powers on par with the Dark Phoenix herself. Then he got an upgrade. He was designed to, among other things, kill Apocalypse in a straight fight and wipe out planets, and in his hey-day, he treated the Multiverse as his personal step ladder. Then he Came Back Strong, kept Apocalypse as a wall-decoration and Magneto as a puppet while simultaneously thrashing the most powerful X-Men with a single attack, before ultimately becoming his own reality. All in all, there's a reason this guy used to be the page image on the Superpower Wiki for Omnikinesis.
- Wonder Woman: The original version of the comic's Amazons possessed a number of psychic abilities such as telepathy, astral projection, the ability to transform brain energy into muscle power and control over the body's bioelectricity.
- The Metabarons have the Bene Gesserit-like Shabha-Oud witches. The coven developed their minds to gain potent psychic powers. Initially the first Metabaron's abilities revolve around being the Worlds Greatest Warrior, but with his marriage to a Shabha-Oud witch, their descendants would add psionic abilities like Psi Blast to the Metabaron power set.
- MIND MGMT is this plus spies. Notably, although there are a wide variety of powers displayed, almost none of them affect the physical world. Telepathy, DreamWalking, and Mind Control are all shown, but no Telekinesis or any form of Mind Over Matter. The sole exception is the "Physical Conditioning" course, which teaches agents to break anything with a single punch, but even this is framed as being able to perceive the weaknesses in an object, not actually affect its structure.
- The Pitiful Human Lizard: Barb is revealed to have these in issue 2. She ultimately decides to use them to fight crime under the moniker of Lady Accident.
- In Violine, Violine can read minds when staring at people. Kombo is also able to recognize this and mistakes it for an evil eye. Her father has the same powers. It also turns out that Marushka has hypnotic powers, which block the powers of Violine and her father.
- In the Scott Pilgrim universe, one can gain powerful psychic abilities (most notably telekinesis) through a strict vegan diet, as demonstrated with Todd Ingram (the third Evil Ex). Failure to adhere to this diet gets the attention of the Vegan Police, who have the ability to strip this power away.
- A full list of comics characters with Psychic Powers would probably crash this server, so let's just conclude with "lots" and leave it at that.
Fan Works
- Always Visible: It's never explicitly stated, but when Jo first sees Delia outside the window, he perceives her gaze as "the gaze of a hundred people" and compares it to spears.
- All Assorted Animorphs AUs: "What if they were telepathic throughout the series?" is about the Animorphs all being able to send anything from emotions to entire backstories through thought-speak like Elfangor in the first book.
- The Child of Love: Shinji and Asuka's daughter, Teri, was genetically altered before birth to develop them. She has limited telepathy, telekinesis and can travel into people's dreams.
- Child of the Storm has a number of these.
- There's Charles Xavier, Psylocke, Loki (as part of his Functional Magic), Doctor Strange, Odin and Albus Dumbledore, all with varying degrees of ability.
- The Grey family turn out to have been producing psychics for centuries, albeit fairly intermittently - and most of them were quite weak. Then came the current generation, which produced Jean Grey and Harry and Jean's stolen at birth twin, Maddie Pryor a.k.a. Rachel Grey, the strongest human-born psychics ever to live - and by his own admission, Harry's only just hanging in Jean's weight-class. Jean has to adjust to her power-levels, but had a decade of training in the basics. Harry, by contrast, absolutely doesn't and once they manifest, spends a while in mortal terror of accidentally Mind Raping everyone in his immediate vicinity (and thanks to his Power Incontinence, this fear is not entirely unjustified).
- After the first arc of Book II, however, he is terrifyingly proficient with them, capable of making the 6000 tonne Durmstrang ship fly in figure of eight loops while inside Hogwarts, with zero effort, simply to make a point, and reaching across the Atlantic in his sleep. Within months, his strength (and skill) has grown exponentially, to the point where he can go bare knuckle with Lobo with just a psychic amp. And that's just him growing into his strength - Jean is still far stronger, to the point where she and Maddie are noted to be stronger than it's theoretically possible for an otherwise pure human psychic to be, and no one quite knows how the hell that works.
- The first Asgard arc introduces a young Diana of Themyscira, who is, among other things, a reasonably powerful empath. This backfires on her somewhat when Harry has a dose of Power Incontinence, giving her a Psychic Nosebleed. As time goes on, her control gets better, as does his.
- Betsy Braddock is Harry's teacher, and like Xavier, tops out the scale at just below Omega, until Jean is born - while her strength is lesser than Xavier's as she's less experienced, the Battle of New Orleans gives her a boost, and unlike him, she's a 'full spectrum psi', not 'just' a telepath.
- It's implied that Xavier was meant to be stronger than he is, until an undisclosed incident forced him to run to Dumbledore for help...
- Additionally, the main reason that Harry's mistreatment by the Dursleys wasn't reported was thanks to the manipulations of Sinister, a formidable psychic in his own right, who wanted to keep Harry alone, vulnerable, and where he could see him. Furthermore, he stole Jean's twin sister Rachel at birth, making it appear as if she'd just died of SIDS, raising her as Maddie Pryor, his Living Weapon and hunting hound.
- Children of an Elder God: Asuka is a pyrokinetic: she's capable of generating and controlling fire and flames.
- Codex Equus: Many individuals, both mortal and divine, wield this brand of magic, with varying degrees of power.
- Emperor Golden Scepter is the Alicorn god of Psionics, so naturally he's a master at this. Some of his powers include telekinesis, teleportation, telepathy, psychic barriers, empathy, precognition and retrocognition. It's noted that he's so powerful that one of his Imperium-era Generals, Aurum Lupus, was rumored to have relied on divine empowerment in order to beat and nearly kill him at all, and it was rumored that even the mightiest of Alicorns couldn't match his potent mind. The Imperium of Ponykind also had the largest numbers of psychic ponies thanks to his influence, and he intends to do it again in the Fourth Age.
- Many of Golden Scepter's Semi-Divine sons inherited some facet of his power from him, to varying degrees.
- Prince Written Word has Telepathy and empathy. It's implied that these powers are what allowed him discern the sins of a corrupt arch-priest during his stay in a backwater Pony kingdom, as he would call him a "liar" shortly after encountering him. After he became an demi-Alicorn god and became the living embodiment of Truth, his telepathic and empathic abilities were enhanced tenfold to the point where he can invoke confessions, and see people as living corpses the more evil and insidious they are.
- Much like his father, Prince Crimson Star embodies Psionics, and is believed in-universe to be a living representation of Golden Scepter's psionic talent. His entry notes that while he does have the same far-reaching abilities as his father, such as telepathy, telekinesis, empathy, and teleportation, he's able to take his powers to new heights because of his drive to see how far he can go. As such, he became capable of astral projection, creating black holes to suck in and devour his enemies, firing beams of pure psychic energy, and summoning bolts of psychic lightning. Because of his potential and incredible skill, it is believed that he might end up equaling or surpassing Golden Scepter, who is a powerful psychic himself, once he gets "older".
- Much like Primarch Sanguinius, Prince Bright Eyes has precognitive abilities, except as the Alicorn demigod of Prophecy, his foresight is on a greater scale than those possessed by even his older brother, Crimson Star. His entry notes that he is skilled in psionic magic, bearing abilities like telepathy and psionic telekinesis, though he admits that Crimson Star is more powerful than him. His psychic powers allowed him to hear Rosy Dreams' telepathic cries for help, though he and Written Word had to be guided to Rosy's home by the spirit of Dust Bunny, Rosy's maid, in order to rescue the filly from Sweet Words.
- As part of his domain of Animals, Prince Fanged Paw has telepathic and empathic abilities that allow him to form Psychic Links with one or more animals so he can see and hear through them, as well as calm and tame even the most ferocious beasts and monsters.
- Prince Night Shade has telepathy, psionic telekinesis, empathy, and precognition thanks to being one of Golden Scepter's sons and being taught by his father in using psionic magic when he was very young. Having domains like Justice, Protection, and Karma bolstered the strength of his psychic powers even further.
- Prince Red Blade has psionic telekinesis that was taught to him by Golden Scepter, which proves incredibly useful if for some reason he can't use the magical telekinesis that is extremely common among unicorns. And as the Alicorn demigod of Temperance, he has telepathic and empathic abilities that allow him to ebb negative emotions and discourage harmful mindsets, and like Blue Suede Heartstrings, the Alicorn god of Humility, he possesses a form of precognition that shows him a person's future depending on the actions they take.
- While the full scope of her powers are currently unknown due to her very young age, Mentálne, the Bogolenya Deer goddess of Psychology, has telepathy and telekinesis, the latter which is purely mental unlike the typical kind used by Deerkind and Draconequui. She also has the impressive ability to create a psychic realm that serves as an impromptu counselor's office, in which her patients can talk things out and even vent their repressed feelings on psychic dummies created out of psychic energy.
- As the Llama goddess of Enlightenment, Satori possesses extrasensory perception, Astral Projection, and telepathy.
- Canteros, Amareros' firstborn son and the ancient god of Requited Love and Reconciliation, has these. His Love domains grant him empathy as well as precognition and retrocognition to a degree (through looking at "love ropes" that connect people), while his Reconciliation domain grants him telepathy and stronger precognition.
- High King Irminsul has strong psychic powers that are enhanced by his divine domain of Deerkind, such as telekinesis, telepathy, empathy, and precognition. However, he pales in comparison to Golden Scepter, who is not only far older than him, but also embodies Psionics and was born a "prodigy deity", making him a far more powerful psychic.
- Prince Stoltur Skjöldur, one of Pokhot's many divine and demi-divine children, has empathy and precognition, both of which he inherited from his mother.
- Being the Alicorn god of Humility, Blue Suede Heartstrings has telepathic and empathic powers that allow him to detect dangerously swelled egos and encourage humility in people. He also has precognitive abilities that allow him to predict a person's future based on their moral actions, allowing him to redeem those with unchecked pride by warning them of the consequences of their actions.
- Silver Bane, a Dhampyr and former Poenan champion, is noted to be a talented psychic with far-reaching Telepathy and telekinesis. After studying under the monks/disciples of Satori, he learned the "telepathic calming" technique, where he can telepathically calm feelings of anxiety and hostility in a person.
- Crystal Prism, the Alicorn demigod of Rebirth and Change, has telepathy (which he uses to control butterflies), precognitive empathy, and can cast light-based illusions. He also has the same telekinetic magic that he had when he was Page Wheel the unicorn colt.
- Blue Suede Heartstrings' older identical twin brother, Bossa Nova Heartstrings, has these as well. As part of his domain of Joy, he has telepathic and empathic powers that allow him to detect and spread joy. And due to being a Death god, he has clairvoyant powers in the form of sensing impending deaths and precognition in predicting how a person is going to die, which just motivates him to spread joy and comfort to the dead however he can.
- After years of being used as a Spell Blade by Silver Bane, her "master" and eventual father figure, Mercy ended up developing the same telepathic and telekinetic powers as her first wielder.
- Much like his parents, Kúzelník has psychic powers as part of his Sorcery domain, such as telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and empathy. He can do Astral Projection for certain attacks, though that leaves him vulnerable to threats designed to attack astral beings. He also has Irminsul's precognitive abilities, which he inherited from his father. By his own admission, though, he believes that his friend, Prince Crimson Star, is the better psychic among them due to embodying Psionics and being more adept with his powers. He is also dwarfed by Crimson Star's father, Golden Scepter, who also embodies Psionics but is much more ancient and powerful.
- Kúzelník's older brother, Cernunnos, has telepathic and empathic abilities like his parents, though this is because he inherited his domain of Animals from his father.
- High Queen Arvan, Irminsul's wife, has powerful psychic abilities and has almost the same techniques as him, though she lacks his foresight and is more skilled in utilizing psychic empathy and telepathy. Notably, she is capable of "emotion-bombing" by showing her enemies the suffering they have caused their victims and is quite experienced in controlling how long it would last, usually to punish them for their misdeeds. However, she still pales in comparison to Golden Scepter, who embodies Psionics and is a "prodigy deity" in addition to being much older than her.
- As the Alicorn god of Psionics, Prince Healing Song has great psychic powers like Telepathy, psionic telekinesis, and empathy, but he is dwarfed in power by the likes of Emperor Golden Scepter and Prince Crimson Star. Both Golden Scepter and Crimson Star would teach him how to hone his powers, gaining new abilities like Astral Projection and psionic lightning, but Healing Song, due to his pacifism, recognizes the dangerous aspects of his domain and has applied his powers for supportive, mundane purposes instead, such as using his astral form to teach/help more students and using telepathy for long-range communication. It is believed In-Universe that Healing Song's Psionics domain came about because his innate psychic potential went unused for years due to his unawareness of it; when he Ascended to godhood, his psychic potential manifested as the Psionics domain.
- Moon Ray Vaughoof's entry notes that he's a powerful psychic who specializes in precognition, and his Ascension enhanced his prophetic dreams to the point where they're more potent than Bossa Nova's. However, training under the Three Deaths led to him manifesting other abilities like psionic telekinesis, telepathy, and empathy. His Death domain also gives him clairvoyance that allows him to sense people's impending deaths.
- A Crown of Stars: When Shinji and Asuka arrive on Avalon they find out that a lot of Avaloni folk are at the very least telepaths, empaths or mirage casters. Several divisions of the Army are formed exclusively by psychic soldiers.
- Doors to the Unknown: Valigan Talaire's powerset is this, with him specifically being a spell-to-power erudite. This allows him to functionally manifest any power or cast any spell he needs to at a given moment. Zalmok also displays these when he alters Leyla d'Cannith's memories following his impersonation of Creilath.
- In Fractured (SovereignGFC), a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands crossover and its sequel, Origins, there are the usual expected biotics (like Samantha Shepard or Jack). Then, Siren powers crop up and finally this culminates in a Force-sensitive super-Siren who is only missing mediumship/past life regression off the page list.
- Intelligence Factor: The Grimmsnarl and Hatterene chapter explains that the Ghost, Dark, and Fairy types are derived from a similar psionic field to the Psychic-type, with the latter two in particular being derived from emotions.
- KibblesTasty:
- Naturally, the Psion class is for allowing characters to have wondrous psychic powers. Mechanically, psionics are represented by a discipline that provides a utility power, a combat or support power that can be buffed using Psi Points, and a list of regular spells that can be recreated through psionics. Psionic spells can still be countered using Anti-Magic, but checks related to doing so are done with disadvantage by non-psionics.
- A good portion of the subclasses introduced in Craft and Creation are focused on allowing other classes to have access to psionic abilities, such as Mystery Cult Clerics being able to speak telepathically and cast a psionic power as a spell.
- Kyon: Big Damn Hero: The key to Koizumi's use of his powers are stated to be linking to Haruhi's mind and acknowledging the differences between his own emotions and hers. Eventually he manages to form mind links with anybody else, possibly getting to read their surface thoughts. Through his limited experimentation, he learns that most of the SOS Brigade have some kind of Psychic Block Defense with varying strengths, ranging from feeling like a strong wind, to being completely undetectable.
- Laserllama:
- Naturally, the Psion class has access to plenty of psychic abilities. Mechanically, they function similary to the Warlock, but with point-based casting and Intelligence as their spellcasting stat.
- Oath of Mysticism Paladins and Mysticism Domain Clerics gain psionic powers from awakening their inner potential. This allows their Divine Smite or Cleric cantrips to deal psychic damage, and gives them a collection of spells for recreating typical psychic effects.
- The Patreon-exclusive Path of the Wilder represents Barbarians with unrestrained psionic potential, causing random psionic effects when they enter a rage and eventually giving them telekinetic powers.
- My Hero Academia: Mechanical green: In addition to Rewind, Eri possesses the standard set of psychic abilities; telekinesis, telepathy and mind reading (not to mention technopathy). What makes her unusual is because none of it stems from her Quirk, further proven by Aizawa's Erasure being completely ineffective. She's a complete anomaly, and no one knows how she has these powers. She was apparently born with them, which only adds to the mystery. Nezu wisely decides to keep Eri and her powers secret, as a lot of villains would want her abilities for themselves.
- My Immortal: This gem from Voldemort: "I hath telekinesis."
- In context (He's telling Ebony how he'll know if she doesn't kill Harry), he's actually talking about telepathy.
- Ebony also apparently has psychic powers.
- Oh God, Not Again!: Harry claims that his scar is psychic to explain how he knows so much (in actuality, he time traveled). He doesn't say he is psychic- just his scar is. Professor Trelawney calls him a Seer by proxy.
- Red Ruin, a RWBY/F.E.A.R. crossover, has Ruby Rose be in posession of these. While she has learned to live with them, keeping her powers under control involves a lot of medication.
- Thousand Shinji: All children born after Second Impact have the potential to develop psychic powers. Shinji is a high-level telepath, telekinetic and electrokinetic. Asuka and Rei have psychic powers as well, but their powers are weaker than Shinji's.
- With Strings Attached:
- Ringo is exceptionally psychic, with mindsight that lets him see everything from atoms to the surface of the sun, telekinesis with which he can feel stuff at least 100 miles away and move it around, a latent teleport escape clause, and the ability to sense (and, unfortunately, be affected by) other things operating on the psychic plane. Luckily, as an Actual Pacifist, he's a very peaceable soul; all he wants to do is lie around all day looking at things.
- John can link "water-strings" with people and communicate telepathically with them, usually by touch. He can also tap into and share Ringo's mindsight, though he does not experience it as fully as Ringo does. He can't delve deeper into anyone's thoughts, as evidenced in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, when he tried to interrogate some ninjas and got nothing. He acknowledges that he's a pretty feeble telepath. And Ringo, after experience with real telepaths, notes that John isn't one.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supergirl crossover The Vampire of Steel, M'Nagaleh has telepathy. It tries to dominate Supergirl's mind as they battle.
- Casey Steele: It's the education purview of the Psi Department at Whateley Academy, a.k.a "Psychic and Extended Mental Faculties Department".
- The New Adventures of Invader Zim: The Irken Empire is revealed to have a Secret Police force known as the Consulars, who all have powerful telepathic abilities.
- For the Glory of Irk has the species known as Parasites, who all have powerful telepathic abilities. They use these both to communicate with other species (as their biology doesn't allow them to do it normally) and to feed on negative emotions.
- OSMU: Fanfiction Friction: Basil Valentine possesses all sorts of psychic powers, being able to move a multi-ton vehicle with a single motion of his finger, pin Todd against the wall, and read his mind. Whether this is due to him not being human is not explained.
- somanyrobots:
- Mindwhisper Troubadours gain telepathic powers (based on Creator/Kibblestasty's Psion class), which allows for performing Mystic Songs silently by performing directly into creature's minds, access to the Psion's Telepathic Intrusion power, and increased defenses around psychic damage.
- Grimhunt Swashbucklers also gain psionic abilities, in their case the ability to drain the minds of others in the form of the dread Mind Leech power.
- Way of the Rift Monks gain the Transposition Discipline, allowing them to teleport through the power of psionics.
- Fortressmind Wardens have their chaotic power derived from psionics, allowing them to create blades of psionic energy and psychically manipulate opponents in the range of their Primal Interdiction.
Music
- "With My Mind" by Cold. It was written for Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, after all.
Podcasts
- Naturally occurs in the Firefly game of Cool Kids Table. Kimmi has some kind of psychic ability, as demonstrated when she senses the Reavers approaching, and later feels Ace and King get killed by them.
Theatre
- In On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Daisy's demonstrated psychic powers include knowing where other people's car keys are and making flowers grow really fast.
Visual Novels
- Julia, one of the androids in Bionic Heart, has the power of precognition and has a vision of the Big Bad creating a dystopian future. She's The Dragon to him up until this point.
- Psychic powers are an integral part of the Nasuverse. The most notable examples are Mystic Eyes, the most powerful of which only happen as a genetic fluke. The Nanaya clan bred for psychic powers, removing the chance part of the equation. Nanaya Kiri had Aura Vision and Shiki has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception on top of an unmentioned lesser type of eyes called 'pure eyes', which are presumably what distinguishes humans from non humans. Rider's eyes are such an absurdly rare kind that not a single person in the modern age has them and are probably as rare as Shiki's, only better documented.
- The Parascientific Escape trilogy takes place in a world where psychics are becoming commonplace, and there are research on them. Each game stars a protagonist that wields said powers.
- The Zero Escape series has bizarre psychic powers. From Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Akane can see into different futures (although she can't choose which one will happen, leading to her trying to set up the best future manually), and can connect to them to help her in the past. From Virtue's Last Reward, Sigma and Phi can swap their consciousness with future or alternate reality versions of themselves, although this ability takes time to be mastered. Each ability, and the use of it, forms the purpose of each game's respective Nonary Game.
Webcomics
- Among the Chosen: The spacefaring civilization treats psychic abilities as if they were just another field of science.
- Angel Down: Chloe has weak psychic powers as result of being a Nephilim
- Cry 'Havoc': Karcharoth and Hati have a power known as psyching which seems to combine versions of telekinesis with electrokinesis and pyrokinesis. These powers are very limited, allowing one to only lift a few pounds at short range, but they are used creatively to great effect on the battlefield (taking out entire squads by setting off the bullets in a soldiers magazines that are still in his vest)
- The Cyantian Chronicles contains a psychic race known as Siracs that can teleport, walk through dreams, read at least surface thoughts, walk through walls, and at least one was shown controlling other people.
- Distillum: The Distillum get clairvoyance, Psychometry, may get precognition (but this is a bad, bad idea) and a little telepathy (so far, with each other).
- Dominic Deegan: The eponymous character and other powerful seers not only possess the ability to scry into the past, present, and future, but also have the ability to enter the mindscapes of others. One of the many issues that Fan Haters have with Dominic is his willingness to Mind Rape his enemies and treat his Second Sight as an Omniscient Morality License. Perhaps this is proof that using powers centered around peering into peoples' innermost thoughts and history requires, or leads to, a very gray morality.
- El Goonish Shive: Grace is telekinetic, presumably because of her Alien Heritage. It only really shows up when she's seriously pissed.
- Erfworld: Eyemancy magic in general, and one of its subschools, Thinkamancy, in particular, Maggie and Charlie being the comic's notable in-house practitioners. Thinkamancy abilities range wildly from useful and benign to dangerous and terrifying. Parson describes it as "really useful, really dangerous" magic.
- FreakAngels: The eponymous gang are all psychic, with each having a different specialty but all being capable of basic telepathy with each other. It's later revealed that they can all teleport if they get an "upgrade", which involves dying.
- Gunnerkrigg Court:
- Zimmy and Gamma communicate with each other telepathically. Anja Donlan has subtle clairvoyance or precognition (or both). The protagonist has powers too. Some characters got sort of "ether sight", mostly evident when someone see the protagonist's wound caused by a ghost.Zimmy thought such things are her hallucinations.
- A Blinker stone is described as "a lens for thought". Those with aptitude can use these psychic "training wheels" until the stones are no longer required. Powers used with the help of Antimony's stone so far include remote presence useable for clairvoyance/spirit sight or for apportation of the stone itself (the basic power) and pyrokinesis.
- Homestuck:
- Players of Space, such as Jade Harley and Kanaya Maryam, have precognitive dreams, although this is a borderline case, since this ability comes from watching the clouds on Skaia, which anyone can do, so the only special thing about it is that they're awake before the game starts.
- Some of the trolls have psychic powers of various sort. The specific natures of these powers depend on the biological caste that they're born into — lower castes tend to be the more psychically gifted, but happen to be more susceptible to psychic disturbances as well.
- Burgundy-blooded trolls, such as Aradia, possess telekinesis. Aradia can also hear the voices of the dead and summon ghosts.
- Brown-bloods, such as Tavros, can commune with and control animals.
- Yellow-bloods, such as Sollux, have more powerful telekinetic abilities and Eye Beams. They are also susceptible to Superpower Meltdowns under certain conditions, such as by consuming "mind honey". Sollux also has limited precognition (mostly in the form of hearing the voices of those about to die), which gets referred to as "vision twofold" due to having regular eyesight as well. This is implied to be a product of his in-game Aspect, Doom, rather than a natural ability.
- Cerulean-bloods, such as Vriska can Mind Control people and used to have "vision eightfold" which seemed to involve X-Ray Vision.
- Terezi is a special case: although she isn't born with psychic powers of any sort, her Sgrub title is the Seer of Mind, and she eventually develops the ability to review the memories of her alternate-timeline iterations. This ability is what allows her to see the consequences of letting Vriska leave the meteor to fight Bec Noir, and causes Vriska's assumption that Terezi wouldn't be brave enough to go through with killing her to backfire spectacularly. Or at least, that's what happens before the retcon.
- Among the Beforus Trolls, Aranea is an empath while Kurloz has Mind Control. Mituna used to be a powerful psychic, too, with powers similar to Sollux's before losing his abilities in some sort of accident prior to their introduction.
- Impure Blood: Dara can concentrate and get clairvoyance.
- Joseph & Yusra: The protagonists in the title have Psychic Link, Mind Over Matter, Barrier Warrior, Super-Toughness, and even got Healing Factor by Power of Love. Also, there are three more psychickers, Mary(weaker power than others), Yusuf, and Yael.
- Last Res0rt has the thought-reading Jigsaw Forte. Qin Xu's Save Scumming power probably counts too.
- Magick Chicks: Faith Abbot is introduced as the most powerful esper in Artemis Academy's history. Among her many abilities, she's shown she can sense and read auras, commuicate telepathically, move people and objects with her mind, and project her consciousness outside her body. But since her powers are still developing, she hasn't learned how to read minds... yet. And that's only scratching the surface, as it's been said that no one knows just how many powers she posseses!
- Marooned: You get them if chosen by a Mindstone. In case of such event, seek mentorship of an experienced Hearing One.
- Memoria These powers, they're known as psi.
- Nixvir: Erik discovers towards the end of Chapter XX that he is an insanely powerful telekinetic. How he developed this power remains unknown.
- Sarilho: Seems that a lot of people in this world manifest some sort of this, although their usage seems to be very contained.
- The Order of the Stick has shown us a Goblin Psionicist mind reading O-Chul. More extensively, Laurin is an adventuring psychic in the same party of Tarquin.
- Rusty and Co.: Zar the Psion in his cameo manifests leviatation, telepathy, and clairvoyance.
- Servants of the Imperium: One of the main characters, Lyle, is an Imperial Psyker with the powers of Electrokinesis, Illusion and PSIONIC BLAST!
- Shadownova: The people with supernatural powers are described as Espers. While this implies psychic powers, only a few of them really fit the description of a psychic.
- Think Before You Think: Brian can read minds.
- Zap! is about a renegade psychic with amnesia.
Web Originals
- Subverted in one Reddit post known as "Barbarians: The True Masters of the Mind", in which a Dungeons & Dragons barbarian kills things with his mind better than the party psion (by throwing his own brain at the enemy, missing, and scoring a critical on the psion).
- Heartwarming Orphan Shandala of Broken Saints has abilities of the empathic variety, which are later revealed to have been genetically engineered into her by her biological father, so that she may better serve the Evil Plan.
- The aptly-named Psi-Experiments from Darwin's Soldiers are capable of using a multitude of psionic powers.
- Jessica from Fat, French and Fabulous may or may not have psychic powers. In any case, she's oddly good at guessing highly specific information. "What? I was right? I was just being asinine."
- Judy from Human Kind Of. She possesses the power of telekinesis, telepathy, and of course, precognition.
- Mahu: In "Second Chance", as humanity carry on with their exploration of the galaxy, they find a particular planet (and also a particular alien building) which awakens the mind powers of some of its citizens.
- Jonas from The Platoon of Power Squadron has quite a handful. Some of the stuff we've seen so far: Mind Control, Telepathy, Telekinesis, (including control over things on a molecular level) Biopsychokinesis (ranging from stuff like curing Donald's asthma to shutting off people's brains (and turning them back on)), Pyrokinesis, uh... sobering people up (while being drunk himself, might we add), and probably lots more. Getting control over his powers can be really difficult at times, and he's been known to accidentally use his powers in his sleep.
Western Animation
- An episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius has The Ditz Sheen develop vast Psychic Powers and declare A God Am I when Jimmy boosts his brain to cheat on a test — which is par for the course for Jimmy's experiments.
- In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Niko has inborn Psychic Powers which are amplified by her Series 5 implant.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Combustion Man seems to have a unique case of Psychic Powers in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Unlike other firebenders, he doesn't produce actual flames from his limbs or mouth, but rather creates what seems to be a focused beam of intense heat coming from his forehead, that causes everything in its path to be incinerated in a massive explosion. The fact that he doesn't speak at all, has a bald head, and an eye-shaped tattoo on his forehead enforces the image of a pyrokineticist. His only weakness are blows to the head which makes it hard for him to focus his heat beam, which ultimately kills him.
- The Legend of Korra reveals that these abilities were not unique to Combustion Man: P'Li of the Red Lotus has the same power, though it differs from Combustion Man's in that she can fire her explosive blasts in an arc, to curve around cover, while Combustion Man could only fire them in a straight line. It also introduced psychic bloodbending, an extremely rare ability which enabled the use of bloodbending without a full moon, and without the practitioner needing to move at all in order to use it. Users can control other people's bodies at will. It had previously been established that particularly powerful benders are capable of bending with very subtle movements (facial twitches were enough in the original series). The only person capable of such Bloodbending wore a mask, so it's entirely possible he was making motion that the observers couldn't notice.
- Batman Beyond:
- In "Golem", Willie Watt uses a mind-operated controller for a construction-focused Humongous Mecha, but when the device malfunctions, he ends up able to control it directly with his mind. When Willie reappears in "Revenant", he's lost the technopathy, but developed telekinesis and clairvoyance (though he suddenly stops using the latter once he's found out).
- "Mind Games" has the Brain Trust, a secret society of psychics that uses a fake school-for-the-gifted to recruit suitably talented children.
- In Ben 10, among the Galactic Enforcers, a trio of minor superhero characters, is Synaptak, whose main power is this.
- The Power of Heart in Captain Planet and the Planeteers is a kind of empathy, natch.
- An episode of The Fairly OddParents! involved Timmy wishing he could read minds, which leads to trouble when his Evil Teacher finds out. In the Superhero Episode where Timmy wishes the world was a comic book, AJ becomes a parody of Professor X.
- As mentioned in the page quote, Mentok, The Mind Taker from Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. He possesses every type of psychic power there is, but always refers to it as "mind taking". He gets a rival in the form of Shado, The Brain Thief, who also refers to his powers strictly as "brain thieving".
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Psychic powers by that name don't appear —common powers such as precongition and telekinesis are part of the setting's magic system and aren't categorized as distinct from other magical powers or attributed to different sources— but the trope is discussed in "Equestria Games" where Spike becomes convinced that he can create fire purely using the power of his mind after Twilight uses a magic spell to light a fire that he was failing to, and tries to develop his supposed mental powers into telepathy until Twilight explains what was actually going on.
- Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles took the movie's wimpy Psychic Powers and amplified them.
- Steven Universe:
- The title character often discovers New Superpowers, but from the second season onward almost all of them are in some way psychic, and usually require him to be unconscious. In order, he discovers empathic power (which relates to all of his powers in some way), Dream Walking, Demonic Possession, telepathy, Psychometry, and Astral Projection.
- The members of the Great Diamond Authority have a Psychic Link to each other and beside Yellow Diamond have unique psychics powers: Blue Diamond has an Emotion Bomb, White Diamond has Mind Control and clairvoyance or telepathy, and Pink Diamond likely has some or all of Steven's powers.
- Oddly, Sapphire and Garnet's Future Vision don't appear to be related to the above and are never referred to as "psychic".
- In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Where There's Smoke", Clark investigates an institution where children developing such powers are tutored; one student seems to be telekinetic, while another is precognitive, although both are clearly novices. The president of the institution is telekinetic. ("You know what they say, I'm also a client," he says.) Volcana, the student Clark was investigating, is pyrokinetic, and according to the president, had incredible potential until the government intervened.
- The original comics Brother Blood was a cult-leading sorcerer, but the one from Teen Titans (2003) has inborn psychic powers instead. He most notably uses this for mind control, but also has telekinesis, the ability to fire energy blasts, and can enhance his own strength enough to go toe-to-toe with Cyborg. And Raven has a considerable chunk of the list of psychic powers. She just rarely uses them.
- Shirley from Tiny Toon Adventures has a variety of psychic powers, including fulgurkinesis, Aura Vision, and telepathy.
- Dawn from Total Drama Revenge of the Island is best known for her Aura Vision, but she has several other psychic powers as well. She has hit or miss divination powers, correctly (if vaguely) predicting Dakota's downfall but explicitly failing to predict the chaos in the finale duel. Teleportation is strongly implied, and the first episode subtly suggests that she enough levitation ability to cross rough terrain easily if not especially quickly.
- The five heroines in W.I.T.C.H. (2004), in addition to their Elemental Powers, have psychic abilities, most of them gained in the early part of season two. Will has technopathy, Irma has suggestion/persuasion, Taranee has telepathy, Cornelia has telekinesis, and Hay Lin has limited precognition via her dreams.
- Zak Storm: Cece apparently has these, judging by how she is able to sense an Atlantean treasure being stolen by Golden Bones.
