Psychic Powers



""Also? I can kill you with my brain.""

- River Tam, Firefly

Telepathy, clairvoyance, pyrokinesis -- the powers are supernatural, but the names are scientific, which is good enough for soft Sci Fi. Pointy-eared elves mumbling ancient spells on shiny spaceships would be incongruous; pointy-eared aliens reading minds on shiny spaceships doesn't raise any eyebrows.

In general, the more powerful and dramatic the psychic, the softer the Sci Fi. The extreme cases are largely confined to the horror and superhero genres (with exceptions, such as Star Wars), but the weakest powers can crop up even in mainstream shows.

In order of increasing power, the standard abilities are:


 * Clairvoyance/Clairaudience -- also called TeleSense, Remote Viewing, Remote Sensing, Extra-Sensory Perception or ESP. Seeing (and sometimes hearing, or using other senses, including ones that aren't part of the standard package) far-away places, localizing specific persons one concentrates on, usually involves a trance state; the amount of control over what is seen can vary wildly, depending on the talent and training of the psychic and how the power works in your 'verse.
 * Variants of this include Aura Vision -- varying in power from just visible to reading someone like a book; can encompass a wide variety of other sensing powers, usually tied to Pineal Weirdness and the Third Eye. Astral Projection and BiLocation (the ability to create a double of oneself, physical or otherwise, in another place and/or time). The latter may overlap with some forms of teleportation.
 * In dream form, this is Dream Spying.
 * Precognition -- seeing the future in prophetic visions, sometimes in allegorical pictures. Often leads to a Prophecy Twist or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Dreaming of Things to Come is a common form.
 * Retrocognition/Postcognition -- seeing things that happened in the past-- not including watching security footage, natch. Often happens at crime scenes and may be considered a subset of clairvoyance.
 * A more limited version of this is called Psychometry, or object reading, which "reads" the past of an object. Sometimes also includes aspects of Empathy, by picking up an imprint of strong emotions from the object left by the person who last handled said object. Can include sensing the "auras" of places, too, especially if something violent happened there recently.
 * Certain versions of Pyschometry have combat applications in that a Psychometer who picks up a weapon may theoretically be able to absorb the skills of anyone who's ever wielded that weapon.
 * Another fairly common variant is sensing the memories of one's ancestors or (in universes with Reincarnation) past lives, similar to Genetic Memory.
 * This can manifest as Dreaming of Times Gone By.
 * Empathy -- the talent of The Empath, the ability to sense another person's emotional state. At times, even disturbances in the force and how strong the force is with someone.
 * Sometimes includes the ability to send emotions the other way.
 * Telepathy -- mind reading, can sometimes also transmit thoughts or implant suggestions, etc. Telepathy is the psychic power most commonly attributed to aliens or "advanced" humans.
 * Mindspeech is the ability to have conversations psychically. It usually requires a common language. Sometimes, though, as it is supposed to be direct thought-to-thought contact, any and all language barriers are completely overcome.
 * A Psychic Link is an intense, (usually) permanent telepathic connections between two (usually) partners. Subtropes include Twin Telepathy, Mental Fusion, Mindlink Mates, and Bond Creatures.
 * A variant is the suggestor, who can control or at least influence minds, but not read them. Often these suggestions are said to only affect the weak-minded.
 * Some telepaths have the ability to enter the dreams of people, to implant pictures into the mind of sleepers, or merely talk, but can do this only when people are asleep.
 * Then there are those who are able to harvest the target's dreams, and use them for their own purposes.
 * Similarly, another breed of telepath is the Master of Illusion.
 * Telepathy can often be stopped by Psychic Static and Psychic Block Defense.
 * Telepaths are often shown to be able to detect the presence of others; sensing their thoughts or merely the presence of a mind in a sort of Psychic Radar.
 * Telekinesis/Psychokinesis -- moving physical objects by pure willpower. Can range from atoms to paperclips to cars or, in extreme cases, whole planets. Specialized expressions of it:
 * Pyrokinesis -- setting things on fire. In slightly harder sci-fi, this will explicitly reference making the molecules in an object more agitated until it bursts into flames (essentially, that's the way a microwave oven works). Sometimes the fire itself can be controlled, changing size or even becoming a particular shape.
 * Similarly, Cryokinesis -- freezing things. Slowing molecular motion until the object stops exuding heat, or just until it freezes solid. Often combined with condensing water from the air to form ice in thick coatings or free-standing shapes.
 * Fulgurkinesis/Astrakinesis - the ability to create electrical discharges and lightning bolts, and/or to control the flow of electrons inside machines. Sometimes encompasses the control of magnetic fields, too, if the author had a passing grade in high school science. (Note that the word "electrokinesis" actually has a real-world scientific meaning that has nothing to do with Psychic Powers, but most writers/fanboys who use the term don't seem to know that.)
 * A variant of this is Machine Empathy or Technopathy -- the ability to mentally link to and control computer systems.
 * Biopsychokinesis, or Bio-PK -- the ability to influence living tissue on the cellular or molecular level. Used for psychic healing, regeneration, Psychic Surgery or as a darker power the ability to kill people with your brain, traditionally by stopping their heart, but can also cause a massive stroke, simply shut the brain down, prevent the lungs from working...
 * Basically, Fanboys love to stick -kinesis as a suffix on anything and describe it as a psychic power. Thus you get bastardized terms like Chlorokinensis (controlling plants), Chronokinesis (controlling time), Umbrakinesis (controlling shadows), Hydrokinesis (controlling water), Terrakinesis (controlling stone and soil), Curvacionubiliterriclothokinesis (The ability to whip the towel off a co-ed in a locker room without being physically present) etc., etc., Ad Infinitum.
 * Which is especially funny given that -kinesis is "movement" or "motion", and has nothing to do with psychic powers. The word pyrokinesis originated with Stephen King not knowing which of tele- and -kinesis meant "remote" in "telekinesis" (lit. "remote movement") and picking the wrong one...
 * Teleportation -- with or without your clothes
 * A subset is Apportation -- the ability to transport objects or people from location A to B without transporting yourself. A bit like the transporter in Star Trek. Usually the psychic will either call things to him or has to touch them to send them away to someplace else. If he's really powerful, he can use Clairvoyance instead and move objects from/to both target locations from afar while physically being in location C.
 * Mediumship -- the ability to see, communicate with or channel spirits, sometimes with the side effect that they'll follow the medium around in attempts to resolve their Unfinished Business.

The first five powers are purely internal. There's no evidence they're being used apart from the occasional Psychic Nosebleed (and of course, the stance). The remaining powers have much more obvious effects. However, all these powers have stronger versions, found generally at the softer end of sci-fi. That is, strong clairvoyance is as good as X-Ray Vision, or even a Crystal Ball. Strong telepathy allows for complete Mind Control. Strong telekinesis or apportation can become a means of saying You Will Not Evade Me, and so on. The ultimate manifestation of psychic power is the ability to just make your thoughts into reality. As generally portrayed, all of these powers display No Conservation of Energy, though there are exceptions, especially if the writer wants to stiffen up the story's science yet still include cool magic Psionics; if so, expect terms like "quantum uncertainty", "observer effect" and "particle entanglement" to be slung around with abandon.

Stories can have both Psychic Powers and Functional Magic, but they'll usually be treated as fundamentally different. This does not preclude them from being related or even the same thing; supernatural powers are still supernatural powers, no matter what they're referred to as.

Compare Ki Attacks, Enlightenment Superpowers, and Functional Magic for other genre's "special powers." See also Mind Over Manners and Brain Critical Mass. 90% of Your Brain is sometimes brought in as an explanation for them. See also Phony Psychic and Not-So-Phony Psychic.

Anime and Manga

 * The Rynax in Kurau Phantom Memory can sense each other's presence. In the Distant Finale, the human Kurau can even still perceive.
 * A number of characters in the Universal Century continuity of Gundam are a form of psychics called "Newtypes", which are supposed to be the next step in evolution. Newtypes have abilities ranging from limited telepathy, increased reflexes and (in the most extreme example) . And yet Word of God from Tomino clearly states they are not Espers.
 * Newtypes also seem to have the ability to detect one another, though this varies depending on how strong they are. A weak Newtype like Char Aznable might go all but undetected, while a strong Newtype like Kamille Bidan has no hope of sneaking up on anybody, and the frighteningly powerful Scirocco more or less broadcasts his presence to everyone in the vicinity. There are also Artificial or Cyber-Newtypes, who are created in labs, are typically quite powerful, and almost inevitably unstable.
 * Read or Die has an interesting variant: Paper Masters have the ability to telekinetically control paper. At one point implies that all psychic powers are possible, and that the only thing stopping people from achieving them is their belief that it's impossible.
 * The Contractors from Darker Than Black wield a wide variety of psychic powers. However, due to the nature of their Remunerations, there are no pure telepaths or telekinetics.
 * Most of the witch powers in Witch Hunter Robin are standard Psychic Powers, and are sometimes referred to in this fashion. One character uses psychometry, while Robin herself is a pyrokinetic. Telekinesis, projective empathy and psychic healing were all demonstrated by various witches.
 * While magecraft is something you can learn with the right requirements, psychic powers in Nasuverse are abnormalities that generally only last one generation. That being said, they have Empathy, Telepathic Suggestion, and Teleportation (well, close). One character has the double-whammy of Clairvoyance coupled with Telekinesis.
 * The Diclonius in Elfen Lied can telekinetically lift objects, as well as rip people apart with a thought.
 * Psychic powers are a normal part of the future in Zettai Karen Children, but the only ones who have it at a high enough level to be destructive/heroic are the eponymous heroes -- three ten-years-old girls. Kaoru has telekinesis, Aoi has teleportation and Shiho has psychometry.
 * 'Psychometrer Eiji'', where the hero is a Psychometrer.
 * In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, psychic abilities are present in the form of Stands -- (usually) humanoid ethereal bodies whose powers range from the typical (clairvoyance, pyrokinesis) to the rare (time manipulation, age alteration, preventing truth-telling) to the utterly... well... bizarre (summoning rods -- as in the urban legend skyfish, creating deadly viruses, trapping people and objects in paper). Oh, and apparently anyone and everything can have Psychic Powers. A sword and plankton have formed their own stands.
 * The eponymous Geass abilities in Code Geass are basically an assortment of all kinds of Psychic Powers: suggestion, mind reading, pseudo-"time stopping", memory manipulation, precognition ... take your pick. It apparently depends on each individual who is granted a Geass how exactly it'd work in their case.
 * Cyborg 009, in which Cyborg 001 is a baby with psychic powers and Cyborg 005 is an empath. Also, a Quirky Miniboss Squad is composed of only espers.
 * The espers in Haruhi Suzumiya supposedly have psychic powers, although it's really more like in a Magical Girl-way. As a matter of fact, Kyon asks Koizumi to lift a cup of coffee with telekinesis to which Koizumi replies "My powers aren't like that". What they can do is enter the Phantom Zone, fly around in cool energy bubbles and shoot fireballs. They also have a person-specific form of empathy, and are all able to feel Haruhi's mental state.
 * Kotone Himekawa from the To Heart anime sports both prophetic and telekinetic powers, thus causing the general student body to shun her for them.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima has mind-reader Nodoka and a recent villain named Homura with pyrokinesis and possibly a type of psychokinesis (she's been seen moving objects apparently with her mind).
 * Several characters in Yu Yu Hakusho. Kazuma Kuwabara has had postcognitive dreams, can perceive ghosts, and off-handedly mentions that the reason he's so popular in high school now is because he predicted an earthquake. His sister, Shizuru, is much more powerfully clairvoyant and can actually see ghosts. Hiei's also granted minor clairvoyance by his Jagan, and he's Pyrokinetic. The dub also refers to Genkai and the various residents of Mushiyori City affected by the Makai Tunnel as psychics.
 * In School Rumble, the Tsukamoto sisters are psychics. Older sister Tenma is telekinetic and can bend spoons, younger sister Yakumo is an empath who can read the minds of any guys interested in her. Tenma's powers aren't used a lot, but Yakumo's empathy is vital in her Character Development since she's Blessed with Suck. Also, they can both see spirits.
 * The Five Star Stories has "Divers", who are descended from genetically altered Super Soldiers from an ancient civilization. "Para Divers" have telepathy, clairvoyance & precognition, "Force Divers" have telekinesis & a precious few even have both. There are also "Bayias", people who possess both Diver powers & physically enhanced "Headdliner" abilities. The fact that psychic powers are just a futuristic-sounding kind of Functional Magic is fully acknowledged in the series, however & these people are often referred to simply as sorcerers.
 * As the name may imply, this is the main tool of the characters of Psyren. They divide it into three types. The first, Burst, allows the user to create solid objects or manipulate objects with PSI (telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokinesis). Rise allows the user to manipulate and enhance their body (sense enhancement, super strength). Trance is manipulation of the mind or other people's PSI (telepathy, mind control, illusion, negation). Some abilities (Cure, Visions) involve mixing any of the three.
 * A few people from Pokémon Special. Lance and Yellow both can read Pokémon's minds and Yellow has the added bonus of limited telekinetic powers. Sabrina can 'see' even if her physical eyes are blinded and can track things and people by putting her energy into her Alakazam's spoons. Morty has the ability to see with his mind pretty much whatever he's looking for.
 * Dynamis users in Gilgamesh are essentially psychics with a different name.
 * This is apparently Aki Izayoi's Blessed with Suck in Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds.
 * The Kasuga clan of Kimagure Orange Road (Kyousuke's mother's family) all have psychic powers of one sort or another.
 * Telekinesis and teleportation can be done by all family members.
 * Kyousuke also has shown an ability for precognition and traveling through time.
 * His sister Manami has demonstrated the ability to erase videotape with her mind.
 * Cousin Akane can appear to be someone else to others, while her little brother Kazuya has all of the powers Kyousuke has, but much stronger.
 * Katsuhiro Otomo seems to like this trope. His first manga was a rather forgettable one about cops investigating psychic crimes, next was Domu, a story of a heroic little girl with telekinesis who must save a city pitted against an equally-powered Psychopathic Manchild, finally culminating in Akira, which was about the government trying to replicate the powers they saw in Etsuko's story.
 * Lily Strosek the Fourth from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Force has a limited kind of Psychic ability. She can send psychic thoughts, sometimes to the point of sending others reeling, but unlike telepaths, she can't read minds. It's also noted to be different from the telepathic ability that mages in the setting have. As a Cute Mute, she mostly uses this to talk to others, which can lead to some problems when the being she's trying to communicate with is immune to psychics.
 * Mobile Suit Gundam 00 goes a bit easier on the Psychic Powers thing. Every Gundam Meister in Season 2 can communicate through means of Quantum Brainwaves, except for Lyle Dylandy (AKA Lockon Stratos). This actually turns out to be an advantage for Lockon in the movie, because the ELS constantly try to communicate with anyone using Quantum Brainwaves, rendering them unable to fight due to the accidental mind rape. Lockon's inability to use Quantum Brainwaves is actually what also saves Setsuna.
 * To Aru Majutsu no Index has an entire city devoted to artificially inducing esper powers. The process has a success rate of about 60% and no side effects at all, it's mentioned that magic was invented specifically to grant supernatural abilities to non-espers. One deadly side effect to the combination of esper and magic powers is that they counteract with one another, causing severe damage to the body when one person uses both abilities.
 * Rei Hino/Sailor Mars of Sailor Moon possesses psychic abilities.
 * Deadman Wonderland, a manga and short anime series, is based around Ganta Igarashi who's accused of massacring his classmates. Eventually Ganta finds out that the Red Man (Wretched Egg) gave him a red stone that makes him a "Deadman", a human with the power to manipulate their own blood for offensive/defensive purposes called "Branches of Sin".
 * The eponymous character of Helen ESP possesses a variety of psychic powers, at the start mainly telepathy and being able to sense things that are Invisible to Normals, though she later gains the ability of flight. She's not the only one with such powers, but
 * Akira includes psychic characters such as the infamous Tetsuo, as well as the titular Akira, who
 * Akira includes psychic characters such as the infamous Tetsuo, as well as the titular Akira, who

Comic Books

 * In the Marvel Universe and DC universes (and many other companies). Marvel has numerous Mutants with telepathy, including Professor X, Phoenix, 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 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 Super Villain with Psychic Powers.
 * 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.
 * The Judges of Judge Dredd have a Psi-Division just for people with "special talents".
 * The elven "magic" in Elf Quest is this. 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.
 * Madman has a variety of psychic powers as well.
 * 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.

Fanfiction

 * In 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.
 * In Oh God, Not Again, Harry claims that his scar is psychic to explain how he knows so much (in actuality, he time traveled). Note that he doesn't say he is psychic- just his scar is. Professor Trelawney calls him a Seer by proxy.
 * Ringo in With Strings Attached 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. It is not known whether he can delve deeper into anyone's thoughts.

Film

 * Beneath The Planet of the Apes had telepathic Mutants living under the ruins of New York.
 * In The Black Hole, Yvette Mimieux's character had a telepathic link to a robot.
 * The Force in Star Wars includes many of these, most notably telekinesis, empathy, precognition, and mind control. It also includes telepathy (as when Vader is able to talk to Luke telepathically, or when Luke is able to call for help to Leia on Bespin).
 * The Star Wars Extended Universe (EU) takes these powers, and runs with them beyond ridiculous-- up to and including the "Force Storm," which creates a wormhole that can destroy entire fleets of ships.
 * And of course there are the Kiffar, a species of humanoids with a relatively high occurrence of psychometrics.
 * The psychics in Scanners not only control thoughts, they can alter your biological functions (heartrate, etc.) and really powerful ones can make Your Head Asplode. Spawned a series of films of increasingly lower quality.
 * In Hellboy, Abe Sapien can determine the past and nature of people of people and objects, usually by touching them.
 * In the seventh Friday the 13 th movie, Jason gets resurrected accidentally by a telekinetic girl. Naturally, they have a climactic showdown.
 * In the '90s Godzilla movies, psychic Miki Saegusa features prominently, often using her powers to detect Godzilla's whereabouts or even try to slow down his advances on Japan. Godzilla vs. Biollante featured a direct showdown between the two, in which Godzilla apparently reversed her psychic power and caused her to collapse. Later, in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, she shows off telekinetic abilities.
 * The Stephen King adaptations Carrie and Firestarter; see below under Literature.
 * In the film based on Starship Troopers, the telepath Carl plays a small but pivotal role.
 * He shows up again in a much larger role in the vaguely related TV series and as noted in that section his powers are stronger and more varied.
 * In Serenity, River Tam's psychic powers are finally confirmed.
 * The telepath Kuato and various other mutants in Total Recall.
 * The lame superhero film Zoom has a hot red-headed telekinetic teen (hmm, where did they get that idea?) and the Invisible Man also develops "mindsight".
 * Samara Morgan and her Japanese counterpart Sadako Yamamura, from The Ring films wield all these abilities, and then some, to tremendous effect. However, in contrast to the novel version (see below) their powers are more sedate.
 * Push. The premise that people are born with different powers, and each are given a shorthand term for whatever power they are born with:
 * Pushers are able to use Mind Control. Really, it's More Than Mind Control, since it works by implanting and overwriting memories and literally "pushing" thoughts into people's minds.
 * Wipers are able to erase certain parts of a person's memory.
 * Movers are telekinetic.
 * Shifters are illusionists, allowing them to morph any object of their choice, though it seems the object does have to be of the same relative size of the object it's being shifted to, and it's temporary.
 * Bleeders Make Me Wanna Shout.
 * Stitchers have Healing Hands, albeit very painful, and capable of working in reverse.
 * Sniffers can see where any object has every been and who's used it. They get their name as their ability works literally by sniffing the object, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
 * Watchers predict the future.
 * Shadows can cancel out Sniffers. Extremely powerful ones can cancel out Watchers.
 * Rubber is a film about a tire that kills people with its psychic powers.
 * The Secret of NIMH has some psychic powers going on. Nicodemus is clearly shown to have at least low-level telekinetic abilities, and at the end of the movie
 * The serial killer Ben O'Ryan in Suspect Zero has the ability of remote viewing, which he uses to see through the eyes of his future victims. These abilities seem to overlap with a bit of precognition as well.
 * The movie Next starring Nicolas Cage had him as a precognitive who can always see two minutes into the future.
 * The kid in the The Sixth Sense could see dead people.
 * In the Clint Eastwood movie Hereafter, Matt Damon plays a man who can communicate with the dead through their relatives.
 * The Fury, a 1978 Brian De Palma movie features psychics on the run from a government conspiracy.
 * In Powder, introverted and put-upon small-town albino Jeremy Reed has a healthy variety of psychic talents.
 * In Chronicle, three teenagers discover a meteorite that grants them powerful telekinesis. After some amusing pranks, things get worse since one of the teens has serious issues.
 * What Women Want revolves around a chauvenistic Jerkass gaining the ability to read the minds of women after an accident with an Electrified Bathtub.

Gamebooks

 * Lone Wolf and the other Kai are essentially Psychic warrior monks, not unlike the Jedi. The various Kai skills are nearly all Psychic Powers, ranging from clairvoyance/danger sense, resistance to poison and hostile environment, psychic defense/attacks, animal empathy, and telekinesis.

Literature

 * Chasing Yesterday: J.D. discovers not far into the first book that she has telekinesis, and spends a good portion of the series trying to figure out exactly how to control it.
 * Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series is a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid wherein human colonists stranded on an alien world revert to a feudal culture and develop psionic powers into a form of Functional Magic and Magic From Technology. Some characters surround these abilities with various mystical trappings, while more pragmatic ones treat them scientifically, hence terms like "sorceress" and "matrix mechanic" co-existing in the society's lexicon.
 * In Trudi Canavan's The Age of Five series, the Gods' Chosen have the ability to read anyone's mind - including that of the other Chosen. Several situations with major Squick potential show up, but the deeper implications are entirely ignored.
 * Piers Anthony's Mute is about a society of Mutants who occasionally (but very rarely) develop useful psychic powers; interestingly, it's not limited to humans. There are animal psis as well. It's eventually revealed that.
 * Mindspeech: The Animorphs equivalent is "thought-speak"; every Andalite uses it, seeing as they have no mouths, as do the Animorphs.
 * Isaac Asimov's Foundation series has the Mule, who can manipulate minds, a radically altered human-offshoot species with a form of telekinesis, plus.
 * Perry Rhodan feature a Mutant Corps, An elite troop only composed of Espers. From the classic telekinesist, mind-reader to the more exotic exploder (can ignite nuclear reaction in carbon atoms) and Energy-rider (can use energy beam to travel from place to place)
 * Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination revolve around telepathy and psychic teleportation, respectively.
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars and his fellow Barsoomians used telepathy to control their riding thoats.
 * Peter David's Psi-Man series is about a powerful psychic sought by the Government as a human weapon.
 * Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, and the Tom Cruise film loosely based on it, concern the problems of precognition.
 * Alan Dean Foster examples:
 * The Damned Series has the Amplitur, with some mind control abilities, humans and Lepar, who can resist them, in the case of humans with extremely bad results on the Amplitur, and as of the second book, The False Mirror there is a group of humans known as the Core that has the Amplitur mind control ability.
 * Flinx from the Humanx Commonwealth series has empathic telepathy, as well as an instinctive psychic defense mechanism that shows up occasionally, and usually wreaks havoc when it does. Flinx is not the only person in the series with these capabilities; there is also Mahnami, a telepathic and telekinetic girl with a similar background to Flinx, an entire alien race of subterranean empaths, and a race of nearly omnipotent bear-like alien telepaths. Also, one of the series' Precursor races, the Tar-Aiym, were all powerful telepaths.
 * Frank Herbert's Dune universe has the sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit, who through a genetic breeding program and the Spice drug have developed strong psychic powers, most notably pre- and post-cognition, bio-PK and telepathy. The end products of that program, Paul and Leto II, have precognition powerful enough to foresee the destiny of all humanity. The Navigators also use drug-induced psychic powers to make Faster-Than-Light Travel practical.
 * Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time:
 * Wolfbrothers can communicate mentally with wolves.
 * A few of the Aes Sedai also have prophetic seizures (they are otherwise treated more as witches). There are also "Dark Prophecies", but these are not discussed in much detail.
 * Alexander Key examples:
 * Escape to Witch Mountain: Tony has clairvoyance and telekinesis. His sister Tia has a form of telekinesis that lets her open locks; she is also a Friend to All Living Things. They are not telepathic, however as in the film adaptations.
 * The Forgotten Door: Little Jon is telepathic (which lets the author Hand Wave how quickly he learned English), an ability which carries over to reading the thoughts of animals. He is also telekinetic in that he can 'lighten his feet' to run and jump unusually fast.
 * Many of Stephen King's novels (and the film adaptations) concern someone with Psychic Powers; the origin may be scientific or magical/occult depending on the novel.
 * The Dead Zone: clairvoyance and precognition.
 * The Shining gives Danny Torrance and Dick Halloran pretty much the whole package: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and postcognition.
 * Firestarter features a couple who, as students, took part in what was secretly an MK-ULTRA-style government experiment and were subjected to drugs that gave them psychic powers (or activated latent powers): telepathic hypnosis (father) and minor telekinesis (mother). Years later, their daughter turns out to have strong pyrokinetic powers, along with minor clairvoyance and enough telekinesis to jimmy a pay phone. The film version features a lot of Psychic Nosebleeds from the father whenever he tries to "push" suggestions into the minds of others.
 * Carrie gives its title character both telekinesis and a sort of "broadcast telepathy"; during her rampage, everyone in town has Carrie's thoughts beamed into their head, and she mind rapes Sue near the end. Powers are passed down genetically through the mother, and manifest around puberty; it's also strongly implied that they are a lot stronger when she's distressed or angry. The film version removes her telepathy and focuses on her telekinesis.
 * The Heralds of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar novels all have at least one Gift that fall into these categories. The most common include Mindspeech, which sometimes includes mind reading as well as mental conversations, Fetching (telekinesis and apportation), including the rather rare subcategory Firestarting (pyrokinesis), FarSight (clairvoyance), and ForeSight (precognition). Empathy is another possible, but rare, Gift -- powerful, projective empathy being particularly rare. Considered separate, but related, is the Mage-Gift, the ability to work the series' Functional Magic.
 * Julian May's Galactic Milieu/Pliocene Exile series had a detailed scientific classification of these, and high end powers including intergalactic teleportation.
 * The Rowan and Pegasus series by Anne McCaffrey revolve around the Talents, the world's first real, proven psychics who quickly become the cornerstone of the world's economy, and later the foundation of a galactic civilization. Their powers run the gamut of those listed here, and are inheritable.
 * They're present as well, on a lower level, in the Dragonriders of Pern books -- at least as far as humans go. Lessa is never explicitly called telepathic, but her ability to "lean" on people and influence their behavior is a known quantity. The dragons themselves are telepathic, able to teleport, and, revealed in later books, telekinetic.
 * Appears several times in Larry Niven's Known Space universe. The Kzin have a telepathic subspecies, the Grogs have powerful telepathy and Mind Control (which, being immobile, they use to draw prey into their mouths), and several psychic humans have shown up, particularly Gil the ARM, who has a telekinetic third limb. Teela Brown was originally implied to have "psychic luck", but this is deconstructed and left ambiguous in later stories. Matt Keller had Plateau Eyes which could either make you really not notice him, or completely fascinate you.
 * Depending on how you count, you might say Gil the ARM has a telekinetic second arm (or forth limb); he's lost one arm, and his previously latent TK powers provide a "prosthetic" invisible replacement arm. While the tech level in the Gil stories do mean he could get the missing arm replaced, he deliberately doesn't do so as he suspects the telekinetic one might then vanish - and with creative use it offers substantial advantages over and above what a regular arm could provide.
 * Andre Norton stories that do not involve outright Functional Magic often involve this trope instead, particularly in Science Fiction settings.
 * Catseye: The protagonist has mindspeech with his enhanced animal companions, without technological assistance (unlike the handlers from whom he rescues them).
 * In the short story "The Gifts of Asti", the protagonist's people learned mindspeech from Lizard Folk; she acknowledges freely that her Lizard Folk companion is much more adept than she at the art.
 * Forerunner Foray: The protagonist, Ziantha, was taken into the Guild as a child because her sponsor saw her playing guessing games while begging for money, and realized that she must have psychic ability to do so well. Ziantha has psychometry, which she uses in the first foray in the book to steal information from a target without physically touching his physically isolated storage devices. She later (with the help of an alien friend) uses teleportation to steal the story's MacGuffin. She can also use mindspeech, at least with other psychics.
 * Moon of Three Rings: The Moon Singers have mindspeech, which they can also use with animals. As part of their training, at some point they swap minds with an animal, which can go badly wrong.
 * Storm Over Warlock and Ordeal in Otherwhere: The female Wyverns of Warlock are mistresses of illusion (a Gender-Restricted Ability) and have mindspeech.
 * The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars: Eet communicates through mindspeech and is a master of illusion, and teaches some of these skills to the human protagonist, who is effectively Eet's Human Sidekick once Eet enters the first book.
 * Fred Saberhagen's Berserker universe has the Carmpans, with the Framing Story being narrated by the Third Historian who has the power to sense events throughout time and space. Then there are the Carmpan Prophets of Probability who can predict more immediate events.
 * Coils (1980) by Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen features a whole team of psychics selected by a Corrupt Corporate Executive because of their mental powers. These include a female telepath, a bio-PK (a former faith-healer who can heal or kill with his mind, a female telekinetic, and the protagonist, a machine empath who can control machines and even "dive" into the global computer network.
 * Many of the Wild Cards characters have Psychic Powers -- in fact the case has been made in the books that nearly all of the super-powers displayed are actually psychic in origin or were caused by people having unconsciously bio-kinetically reshaped their bodies during their transformation. The Takisians are also ruled by a caste of telepaths.
 * In the Sector General universe, all species with psi abilities receive the classification of V regardless of physical type.
 * Sadako Yamamura from The Ring novels is an astonishingly powerful psychic who, at one point or another, exhibits all these powers. Not only can she manifest psychography (called "nensha" in the context) with such force as to create the Cursed Video, she can manipulate viruses and even human beings to alter their genetic structure -- if she doesn't content herself with creating tumors or stopping hearts. By the third book, Loop, her power is so great she's . Her mother, on the other hand, merely manifested precognition, and clairvoyance.
 * The Sharonans of David Weber's Hell's Gate series have examples of all the broad categories sprinkled through 25% of the population, which, layered on top of their 19th-century-level technology, makes them quite formidable.
 * Robert Doherty's Psychic Warrior series concerns a group of soldiers who have various tech-amplified powers, primarily the ability to project psychic energy avatars anywhere in the world. And give them Arm Cannons.
 * Though the Lord Darcy stories mostly use Functional Magic instead, precognition is one manifestation of the Talent that's poorly understood. Visions of the future arise spontaneously and without need of ritual implements, making it more like a psychic power.
 * In Enchantress From the Stars, the very advanced members of the Federation, the most enlightened race of humans, are able to use telepathy, telekinesis, and put up a Shield to protect themselves both physically and psychically.
 * In The Time Quartet, A Wind in the Door introduces the idea of 'kything,' a form of telepathy - basically, telepathy to the next level, where, no matter what distance, you can be with another on an emotional level. It's motivated (naturally) by love. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, kything is itself taken to the next level, of "Going Within" (basically, benign, non-intrusive occupation of another's body.) Charles Wallace has a gift for all these powers.
 * A very faint example of Clairvoyance in The Left Hand of Darkness - on the planet Winter, one of the unique religious elements is a council made up of specific people with specific aptitudes. They work their way into a collective trance, and then the speaker declares an answer to a given question after a certain period of time. The answer is nearly always correct; the narrator describes this as having "perfected the hunch." (One time someone asked such a council "What is the meaning of life?") At the end of it, some of the council was dead, others were insane, and someone started a new religion.
 * Of course, the Clayr in Old Kingdom exhibit clairvoyance, but it's as much a magical phenomenon as anything else.
 * In NISIOISIN's Zaregoto novels (at least the first one), Himena Maki is a world-renowned psychic. She's capable of precognition  and mindreading, which she uses to insult the main character about his major personal problems every chance she gets.
 * Jean Lorrah's Savage Empire books feature the vegetarian Readers (telepaths/remote viewers) and the meat-eating Adepts (physical psychic powers like pyrokinesis and telekinesis.)
 * Ian Tregillis' Bitter Seeds features a team of Nazi child soldiers with psychic powers.
 * In an interesting inversion, The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice has vampires whose abilities are purely psychic, as opposed to being some form of magic. Likewise, other supernatural phenomena such as "witches" and "spirits" are also explained in psychic, rather than magical, terms.
 * In The Pale King, Claude Sylvanshine has Random Fact Intuition, which is basically ESP but with useless information.
 * In Time Scout, a few people have various psychic powers.
 * Ianira Cassondra, the living Goddess, with precognition, clairvoyance (both willing and unwilling), postcognition, and powerful empathy.
 * Ianira states outright that Margo could learn the same.
 * Jack the Ripper has mesmerism and an aura of evil so powerful it can send psychic sensitives into paralytic visions.
 * A number of species in the Uplift 'verse have psi abilities as well as individuals of many other species (including humans). Most notably two Clients of the Tandu, the Acceptors, who are used as long-range metaphysical sensors, and the Episiarchs, Reality Warpers most often used for extremely fast but dangerous FTL travel. There are also several psi amplifiers used for long-range communications and psi-"bombs" that are not only weapons but distress beacons.
 * A number of species in the Uplift 'verse have psi abilities as well as individuals of many other species (including humans). Most notably two Clients of the Tandu, the Acceptors, who are used as long-range metaphysical sensors, and the Episiarchs, Reality Warpers most often used for extremely fast but dangerous FTL travel. There are also several psi amplifiers used for long-range communications and psi-"bombs" that are not only weapons but distress beacons.

Live-Action TV

 * Star Trek: The Betazoid race is entirely telepathic; Counselor Troi, a half-Betazoid, is an empath, implying that "empathy" is a "lesser" telepathy.
 * The Vulcans also have limited telepathy-- the "mind meld". In "The Omega Glory," Spock uses telepathic suggestion on an unknown woman, to cause her to send a distress signal and save the crew.
 * Kes's species on Star Trek: Voyager also had some telepathy, as did Species 8472. Kes later developed powerful telekinesis.
 * At least one Vorta on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was telekinetic. The other Vorta never demonstrated any such ability.
 * On Star Trek: The Next Generation, a genetically-altered species of children were also telekinetic-- even at the molecular level, to the point that their immune-systems would eradicate harmful germs at a distance.
 * In ''Plato's Stepchildren," the crew not only encounters super-powerfully telekinetic race of enemy aliens, but Kirk learns how to become even more powerful than they are, and so defeats them using telekinesis. He also states that the Federation can acquire such powers any time "in a matter of hours."
 * In "The Cage/The Menagerie," a race called "Talosians" were able to read minds and project illusions that were indistinguishable from if they were real.
 * Doctor Who: The TARDIS hooks up through the Doctor to telepathically translate for him and his companions; also, the "psychic paper" used in the new series.
 * The Master, at least in the original series, possessed powerful telepathy, able to "completely control a human mind".
 * The Doctor has telepathic powers as well. He can read/wipe someone's mind by just touching their head.
 * His Granddaughter has also shown some psychic powers.
 * Babylon 5: Telepathy, telekinesis, and in the case of the Centauri, a form of precognition.
 * The Centauri took this Up to Eleven: Specially trained-from-birth teams of telepaths could communicate with each other across interstellar distances.
 * Firefly: River Tam demonstrates uncontrolled telepathy and empathy. It's theorized by some that her combat prowess may be partly attributable to low-level precognition -- seeing seconds into the future to determine an enemy's next move. She also has other abilities, such as an ability to discern health problems and locate dead bodies, find her way through strange environments with no guidance, and locate electronic devices or discern problems with machinery. Interestingly, the bonus feature on the Serenity DVD title "The R.Tam Sessions" implies that River already had some form of latent psychic ability before the Academy started working on her.
 * Heroes has several characters with Psychic Powers, among them a mind-reader, a precognitive painter, and a man who can delete memories and "damper" other characters' powers by creating a psychic static. In fact, it's implied all the characters' powers are technically Psychic Powers, as the "seat of power" is universally in the brain.
 * Medium: precognition, postcognition, psychometry, communicating with ghosts, empathy/telepathy, and the ability to be possessed by ghosts. The show is inspired by the real-life Allison Dubois, who claims to be a medium.
 * Ghost Whisperer: Melinda plays with this by claiming she isn't a psychic, and honestly compared to Allison's powers she's quite limited: she can't see the future at all, psychic dreams and postcognition are directly caused by spirits, and psychometry only works on items related to the ghost-of-the-week. Her "partner" Eli James is even more limited: he can only hear spirits after a near-death experience and surprisingly.
 * The Tomorrow People had these courtesy of being the next stage of evolution.
 * The Dead Zone, based on the Stephen King story (see below) is entirely based on the premise of Psychic Powers.
 * Daphne on Frasier claims to be "a little bit psychic" in the pilot. This is phased out after a few seasons.
 * Corporal "Radar" O'Reilly from Mash gets his nickname from either some form of clairvoyance ("able to tell things before they happen") or telepathy (the ability to read other characters' minds), although the original movie-character simply had super-acute hearing.
 * Bridge from Power Rangers SPD had many of these abilities (enough to constantly be a Deus Ex Machina) in a highly technological society during the year 2025. The reason he and his five teammates have "genetic powers" in the first place is explained as a laboratory accident all their parents were involved in, making the kids technical Mutants. One of his teammates, Sam, gets both teleportation and apportation as a power as well. The other four get abilities far less supernatural in design.
 * Trip from Power Rangers Time Force (and, like Bridge, a Green Ranger, but from much further in the future) is from a race of aliens called Xybrians. All Xybrians are empathetic and telepathic to the point where lying is completely impossible on their planet, and thus completely alien to Trip. He's also shown some precognitive abilities.
 * Examples from Lost:
 * Desmond, who
 * Walt, whose powers
 * Numerous smaller examples, such as the psychic from Claire's flashbacks . But
 * And then there's Miles, who can hear dead people's thoughts, but only the last thoughts they had before death.
 * Oddly enough, an episode of Gilligans Island has our castaways discovering a plant whose seeds give them mind-reading powers. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Although Buck, Caleb, and Merlyn are all shown to have varying examples of such powers (the latter never hinted at in life but justified by her new position), in the very first episode of American Gothic Gail Emory is also implied to have some form of a Psychic Link with her cousin. After he has vanished from the hospital to answer his sister's summons to their old house, Gail somehow 'feels' a connection to him, even seems to indulge in a bit of Psychometry when she touches the door, and then instantly 'knows' where Caleb has gone. Even the writers, when speaking in the commentary, noted that they didn't really know how she did it, that it was only introduced as a way to get all the characters together for the climax, and the ability is never shown again.
 * That's So Raven is about a precognitive teen who can't quite master the interpretation of her visions, so Hilarity Ensues (though not a lot of it). In one episode she also meets a group of teens with other psychic powers.
 * In "Leave it to Diva," she briefly becomes a telepath as well, when she goes through a strange illness dubbed as a "psychic cold."
 * In the 1970's sci-fi series UFO (set in the year 1980) Extra-Sensory Perception is a mental condition being treated by mainstream psychiatrists. While most sufferers adjust to its effects, the subject of the episode "E.S.P" cannot cope with knowing everything that's going to happen before it occurs. He decides to murder two of the leaders of SHADO (blaming them for the death of his wife in a UFO incident) knowing they will be helpless as he can predict their every defensive move before they can make it..
 * On My Favorite Martian, Martin the Martian had string-pulling telekinetic "levitating" ability as well as "telepathic" antennae.
 * Supernatural has generic clairvoyant psychics Pamela Barnes and Missouri Mosely as well as the Special Children, a gaggle of young adults with psychic abilities of varying usefulness.
 * Poltergeist: The Legacy has main characters Derek and Alex possess "The Sight", a mix of clairvoyance and precognition.
 * On Fringe, William Bell and Walter Bishop tested a drug on young children that was supposed to give them Psychic Powers in adulthood. Several have been encountered by the team so far, including . They seem to have both telekinetic and telepathic powers, and apparently have an easier time.
 * demonstrated pyrokinesis in an event during the.
 * In the season 2 finale, one of the now-adult children on whom Bell and Bishop performed experiments has a short-lived role and demonstrates strong pyrokinesis; she is able to create balls of fire with her mind and throw them.
 * A running joke on The Mentalist is someone asking Patrick Jane if he has these, only for him to state that psychics don't exist. He "reads" people by observing details about their wardrobe, surroundings, and/or nonverbal tics. Of course, this doesn't stop anyone on either side of the fourth wall from asking questions.
 * Shawn Spencer does pretty much the same thing on Psych, except he doesn't mind grabbing the Phony Psychic trope with both hands and giving it a big, warm, wet kiss in every episode. Even if doing so freaks everyone else out. Which only makes it even more hilarious.

Tabletop Games

 * Is pretty much a pseudoscience-flavored magic substitute in the Mortasheen setting, given that it's meant to be a setting of crazy mad science with not a single hint of magic in there. Almost all of the game's Mons can learn various forms of it.
 * Dungeons and Dragons has psionics as a Redheaded Stepchild. The original game system had any number of magical spells and powers that mimicked the stock psychic powers and even later retained spells with names like ESP and Telekinesis, so the relevant themes could be used without any separate mechanics. Most of the issues with old versions of psionics (besides some players feeling its flavor was too 'sci-fi' and didn't fit into most settings) were that it wasn't well integrated--most monsters weren't equipped to defend against psionic attacks (which had separate defenses from magic), so psionic classes could easily mop the floor with most non-psionic enemies. This was fixed in later editions.
 * Original D&D (Eldritch Wizardry) got "psionic combat", mostly overcomplicated telepathic extension and a handful of class-related powers duct-taped as optional replacements of characters' basic abilities. Demons and a few monsters got them. ...Yes, the chief beneficiaries of the new rules were not human psychics or aliens From Beyond, but the traditional demons and devils described in the original rules as "fantasy" monsters. Under the rules, most of them could annihilate a human psychic before his friends, armed with mere weapons and spells, could lift a finger to help him.
 * AD&D has a set of psionic powers (or at least supplementary talents for exceptional individuals) as a part of core rules (or at least Players' Handbook appendix). Monsters statistics got "Psionic ability" entry. ...Just so--an option, and still too complicated and not elaborated enough at the same time.
 * AD&D 2nd ed. got psionics cleansed out of the core, in exchange for the much more developed and ordered system along with a dedicated class (the Psionicist) isolated... sorry, introduced in The Complete Psionic's Handbook as an option. It was good enough to have the Dark Sun setting built upon it. ...But the older settings got an abovementioned incompatibility issue at full power.
 * Late AD&D (Player's Options) got the Skills & Powers psionics system, supposedly simplified. ...And it was: the old boring Big Hit Points approach instead of skill checks and tricks. In its initial published form the attacker in telepathic combat lost more than the target, so poorly it was thought out (and obviously never playtested). It was used for the new Dark Sun--as if it hasn't enough shocking swerves to get a Broken Base anyway.
 * In the 3rd edition, psionics became an almost-core part. ...And essentially became one more strange sort of magic (up to sort-of-Familiars)--stumbling on all the weakest sides of D&D3 in process--so it's unclear what's the point to have it at all. Also, it got a lot of weird new paraphernalia (like weird psionic items and a preoccupation with crystals) never seen before and inappropriate for most established settings. Though it apparently got along well with other Epic Epicness.
 * 3.5's psionics system, in contrast, is one of the most celebrated alternate casting systems in the game, despite utilizing very similar mechanics. The most dramatic changes were the removal of Psionic Combat and the ability to "supernova", both of which were major Scrappy Mechanics.
 * D&D 4th Edition introduced the Psionic power source in the Player's Handbook 3, which includes the Psion, Battlemind, Ardent, and Monk (for some reason) classes. As with many other parts of the edition, Your Mileage May Vary as to how well it was implemented. Plot-wise it is mentioned to have been produced by the world in the humanoid races as a defence against the many Eldritch Abominations coming from The Far Realm
 * Later fantasy RPGs merged the powers (and naming conventions) from magic and psychic traditions and treated them as roughly equivalent uses of preternatural powers.
 * Science Fiction role-playing games almost always include psionic powers of some sort. There is a difficulty in these games of trying to provide adventures for characters who are neither cops nor soldiers but are not obvious parallels to mundane activities such as street crime, computer hacking, smuggling, and cryptozoology. In other words, the easiest way for both TV series and role-playing games to lend an "unearthly" aspect to adventures is to give characters, machines, or creatures psychic abilities. Anything else tends to be very complicated or too subtle for a lot of the audience.
 * Warhammer 40000 features a lot of these, tied heavily into the hell-dimension full of daemons used for Faster-Than-Light Travel. Psychically sensitive humans ("psykers") can have their power amplified by various twisted procedures, and are used for long-range communication (Astropaths), steering ships through the aforementioned hell-dimension (Navigators), combat units (Sanctioned Psykers, Space Marine Librarians) or just plain sacrifices for various awful machines. The processes used generally leave them completely insane, but sanity is highly overrated when working for the Imperium anyway. That's not to mention all the other really nasty things that could happen when attempting to use your psychic powers. Like your head asploding. And those psykers without such "treatments" can attract daemons of the Warp and wind up with even worse fates.
 * Cthulhu Tech has its parapsychics, who vary quite a lot in power. At the low end, they can keep their coffee hot. At the high end, they can crush a Humongous Mecha into a little tin can, set fire to entire buildings with a thought, and rebuild your personality from the ground up. For this reason, they're subject to mandatory registration with the OIS, and those with powers deemed Dangerous or Invasive have to wear public identity tags. On the plus side, both the government and corporations love their abilities, so they tend to migrate to high paying jobs.
 * The Traveller universe has an entire human-variant subspecies, the Zhodani, whose ruling class has psychic abilities. The Zhodani consider other humans dishonest and criminal, since a society of mind-readers cannot lie or steal.
 * GURPS has nine flavors of psi (astral projection, ergokinesis, ESP, probability alteration, psychic healing, psychic vampirism, psychokinesis, telepathy, and teleportation), along with anti-psi for players who'd rather mess up the psychics' day. Psi is treated completely different from magic spells -- in general, psis are less versatile than mages but their abilities are safer and more reliable.
 * The Slann in Warhammer Fantasy Battle fantasy battles have a telepathy rule that allows them to cast spells through skinkpriests (for range and line of sight and such).
 * In Paranoia, many mutations grant various psychic powers. This being Paranoia, they tend to be dangerous to all involved.
 * Every supernatural in the New World of Darkness has some variety of stereotypical psychic power, ranging from mind control to telepathy to psychometry to pre-/postcognition. However, the most "purely" psychic examples are psychic rules for mortals (ranging from medium powers to telepathy to pyrokinesis to biokinesis to mental assault). There's also the Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit from Hunter: The Vigil, a branch of the FBI that gains access to Teleinformatics, psychic powers dedicated towards interrogation, evidence gathering, and skill augmentation. Think Frank Black on steroids.
 * White Wolf also has their discontinued Trinity series, which focuses on this exclusively. All the players are different flavors of Psions with their splat specific Psychic Powers which cover pretty much every form of _____-kinesis there might be.
 * Adventure!, set in the same universe, features mesmerists, the psions' predecessors.
 * Psychic Monsters in the Yu-Gi-Oh card game, however they activate their effects, require you pay life points.
 * Fading Suns has both psychic and theurgic powers.
 * Eclipse Phase: Asyncs, as psychics are termed, result from exposure to the Watts-McLeod strain of the Exsurgent virus. Given that the Exsurgent virus is quite simply The Virus, most asyncs in the know worry that they might be slowly being corrupted by the TITANs.

Theatre

 * On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is all about discovering Psychic Powers.

Video Games
"Sam: Are these powers dangerous for Max at all? Dr. Momma Bosco: Well... probably not. If he's careful and uses them responsibly. Sam: And what if it's Max? Dr. Momma Bosco: Then he'll overwork his brain so much that it catches fire and explodes. Max: Oh I have got to see that!"
 * Alma from F.E.A.R. possesses incredibly powerful natural psychic abilities, ranging from simple telekinesis and pyrokinesis to the ability to boil the flesh off human bodies, reanimate the dead as either soldiers or hostile psychic ghosts, induce hallucinations, possess and control certain minds that have attained "synchronicity" with hers, and in a few cases actually rewrite reality around her. In fact, her psychic powers are so potent that they allowed her to survive drowning for six days without life support, and her psychic ghost retains all of her psychic powers. She also appears to be able to control the Replica soldiers and read minds.
 * Paxton Fettel possesses the ability to control the Replica forces, and to perceive information from them. After  his psychic abilities also allow him to possess   However, we don't get a good understanding of what the man himself is truly capable of until the third game. He can generate blasts of telekinetic force, possess other bodies, seize enemies and hold them up in the air, generate defensive shields, and blow people to pieces with his mind. And keep in mind, this is while
 * Also, the Point Man, Michael Beckett,  and   all possess the ability to use Bullet Time due to their attunement with Alma and their psychic powers resulting from it. Int he non-canon Perseus Mandate expansion, the Nightcrawler Commander also has this ability. Most of the soldiers in Team Dark Signal (Beckett's squad) possess at least latent psychic powers, which is why Alma targets them.
 * In F.E.A.R. 3, Armacham has created special soldiers called "Phase Casters" who utilize a combination of psychic abilities and technology to generate powerful defensive shields and to warp soldiers into the battlefield by creating gateways through solid objects. The more powerful Phase Commanders are able to do this as well as walk through walls, teleporting around the battlefield.
 * The King of Fighters. Pyrokinesis is passed down genetically through the Kusanagi and Yagami clans, with the Kusanagi having regular red and orange flames and the Yagami having "cursed" purple flames. One character, Ash Crimson, possesses green flames, but how he got them is left unexplained. There's also Athena Asamiya and her Psycho Soldier Team.
 * Street Fighter III has SNK Boss Gill and his dual pyrokinesis and cryokinesis (ice manipulation) abilities. His status as The Messiah among the Illuminati is primarily because of his ability to balance these two powers. His Seraphic Wing Limit Break also hints at a third, unidentified power.
 * Psychic powers seem to be the source of Street Fighter II's yoga master Dhalsim's abilities--levitation, teleportation, limited shapeshifting (the whole rubber limbs thing), and fire-breathing--though he comes by them through a very spiritual path of meditation and introspection.
 * Rose is the primary psychic among the cast of Street Fighter, being a Tarot-reading Fortune Teller with powerful psychic abilities, and relying most heavily on her supernatural power to fight.
 * Psychic powers are a staple in the Earthbound/Mother series. The powers known as PSI/PK were brought to Earth after being stolen from the alien race by the great grandfather of the first game's protagonist. (This would lead into events in said game as well as act as footing for the other two) In the games themselves at least two or three members of your party will be able to use those powers with differences in who can use each. Most if not all the powers listed above (plus some not listed) are seen but not to every character and not in every game.
 * The Golden Sun series has "Psynergy", which also includes all of these powers. However, unlike in most universes, any powers which seem to be psychic in nature originate from one of the four magical elements--except in rare cases, where they come from magical artifacts you must equip to use them.
 * The entire point of Psychonauts. Raz learns such powers as telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and levitation; various campers and staff have other specialties, and even the local wildlife at Whispering Rock includes things like telekinetic bears and firestarting cougars. The levels are various people's minds---first your teachers in order to learn to use your powers, then later the patients of an insane asylum.
 * The powers of Nick Scryer from Psi Ops the Mindgate Conspiracy include telekinesis, mind control, and pyrokinesis.
 * In the various Super Robot Wars games, some of the original characters are "Psychodrivers", which is a telekinetic ability that enables them to use attacks unavailable to normal people.
 * The Pyschodrivers have the Telekinesis skill, which not only allows a pilot to use certain attacks (but it's a multi-level skill, so just having Telekinesis isn't enough; you might need L8 for some attacks, and only L4 for others, for example), but also passively increases their attack/defense ratings by a small amount. Not everyone is a Psychodriver though, and plenty of the Badasses do fine without it.
 * The einst also have this ability, but it seems a little different from the TK fields produced by Psycho drivers. They can communicate telepathically with each other,
 * Metal Gear Solid had Psycho Mantis. Interestingly enough, while he did have abilities like psychokinesis, precognition, and telepathy (telepathy being deconstructed painfully), his favourite (or at least creepiest) use of his powers is to peer beyond the fourth wall...
 * Other entries in the Saga give us The Sorrow, able to speak with the dead, whose powers are so strong that he is even able to return from the dead in a sort of near death experience; The Sorrow's son, Revolver Ocelot inadvertently becomes possessed by his former boss's severed arm; Fortune, who throughout the second game is protected by a Sufficiently Advanced Technology shield -- until it turns out she doesn't need it; Ursula and Elisa who are so powerful they get a broken Metal Gear working and make a prediction about the future; and Gene, who... I'm not sure, the screen flashes purple with his face superimposed and you start taking damage. He's also near impossible to hit; he cuts bullets with a bowie knife.
 * Two examples in the Sonic the Hedgehog series: Blaze the Cat is (unsurprisingly) a pyrokinetic, while Silver the Hedgehog uses psychokinesis and levitation.
 * Amy also has some psychic abilities, according to one of the manuals, though they don't come up much. This would explain her uncanny Sonic-finding abilities, and certain other plot-critical encounters with Shadow and Silver.
 * Starcraft has the Protoss as a race and the Terran Ghosts as individuals with psychic powers. Even the Zerg have them to the degree of being able to communicate over great distances through the hive mind and the Overlords, Cerebrates, and Overmind (and later ). This aspect is usually more accented in the novels than in the actual game, though.
 * Second Sight starred a man with every power on the list above except teleportation.
 * In Metroid, the Chozo (and by extension, Samus Aran) are heavily implied to have some degree of Psychic Powers. In particular, Samus can usually summon her Power Suit just by thinking about it.
 * The Flatheads in Zork are telepathic.
 * In X-COM series, several aliens have psychic powers, and by interrogation and research, humans can learn them as well. In X-Com: Apocalypse "Mutants" has a greater potential, Androids has none (but are immune to alien telepathy in turn).
 * There's an entire Pokémon type called Psychic. Moves with this type cover pretty much all the specific powers listed above, and many of them can be learned by Pokémon that aren't Psychic-types themselves. The typing, due to various reasons, was ridiculously overpowered in the first generation, but later generations of the franchise have balanced it out much more. Now, while Psychic-types are relatively common and useful in the game itself and in competitive play, they're not all the game-breaking powerhouses they were originally.
 * A few characters are psychics too. Sabrina, Will, Tate and Liza, Lucian, Caitlin, and an entire trainer class. They're all treated in a positive light, too, and generally use fellow Psychic-type Pokemon in battle.
 * Everyone who plays The Reaper's Game in The World Ends With You is called an ESPer, and are given Psychic Powers (called Psyches) by their pins. Every Player has the power to "scan" (allowing them to read minds and see Noise Symbols), and each player usually has one additional psyche pin they can use. (Shiki uses "Groove Pawn", to animate her stuffed cat, Joshua uses his to spam Jesus Beams, and Beat uses "Respect" to... um... hit things). Neku (by virtue of being the protagonist) can use any psych pin. Remember kids, fashion is magical! (If you're dead anyway...)
 * Clive Barker's Jericho has a few psychic side-characters, most notably Hanne Lichthammer, an extremely powerful psychic/telepath, who leads a unit of soldiers trained in psychic warfare. After her death and subsequent revival thanks to the powers of the Firstborn, her powers increase to even greater levels than before. Not only is she able to telepathically control her entire army, she is also extremely fond of delving into the minds of others, exposing their deepest memories, demons, and fears, and using this information against them (she rather cruelly does this to Billie Church). As an extreme sadist, she also gains great pleasure from using her powers to break the minds of her victims, driving them completely insane and causing them to do dreadful things, such as devouring their own children or dissecting themselves.
 * Another of the game's villains, Arnold Leach, is also shown to be a telepath, although less emphasis is put on his powers.
 * The minor character of Patrick Buckland is also shown to be a psychic, although it is not made entirely clear on just how powerful he is.
 * System Shock 2 features psionic abilities as one of the possible character paths. However, the game states that naturally, psionic abilities in humans are extremely weak, only detectable in a laboratory. Therefore, psi-users must make use of a psionic amplifier in order to access some of the nifty abilities - cryo/pyrokinesis, telekinesis, psycho-stimulated regeneration, and even teleportation and matter manipulation at higher levels.
 * The Halo series has this in minor doses in the form of Flood. The hivemind organize and communicate with the Gravemind via a form of telepathy. It also communicates telepathically with Master Chief in the third installment...for some reason. Also in the third installment, it can talk to Master Chief indirectly, by talking through one of the pure flood forms.
 * Typically, it's.
 * Stormrise has this in the form of "Sai energy", which the different Sai troops can use to, among other things, create blades or whips that come out of their arms, bend light around you at will, control enemy units for a limited time, teleportation, etc.
 * Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 used this as one of its main gimmicks. In the vanilla game, the Soviet agent Yuri uses his psychic abilities, amplified with Psychic Beacons, to mind-control large parts of the USA. Not to forget he performed a psychic possession via TELEPHONE. In the expansion pack Yuri's Revenge, he goes rogue and uses Psychic Dominators to take over the entire world (until a bit of Set Right What Once Went Wrong takes place) and commands pyrokinetic Initiate footsoldiers and mind-controlling clones of himself as well as giant mobile brains and towers with similar abilities.
 * In Red Alert 3, the Japanese Empire has Magical Girl Emotionless Girl Yuriko Omega, who in the normal game can lift up ground objects like soldiers and tanks, destroy buildings by ripping them apart, pull aircraft out of the sky and send a shockwave to kill infantry around her. In the expansion in her own campaign, she learns psychic possession, how to throw enemies at each other and energy shielding. Did I mention the Imperial superweapon is powered by SIX clones of her?
 * Imperium Nova includes psionics as an entire sphere of operation. The nature of psionics varies from galaxy to galaxy, depending on the preference of the players, but the fact that it provides a mechanical benefit to covert operations provides a base from which to develop fluff.
 * The title character of The Legend of Zelda is famous for precognitive dreams, at least in the Ocarina of Time era. For that matter, Link in Ocarina of Time could be included in this category for also having a precognitive dream at the very beginning of the game.
 * Tetra, as well as Zelda in The Minish Cap are able to create a (mostly) one-sided connection to Link while being Taken for Granite, allowing them to follow his adventure. Not that this helps him in any kind or way... Except for causing Nightmare Fuel sequences upon loading a saved game file in Phantom Hourglass.
 * Noctis Lucis Caelum of the upcoming Final Fantasy Versus XIII. For now the only apparent ability he has is telekinesis and teleportation.
 * 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.
 * In Star Control 2 it was mentioned that some humans have minor... abilities, though never used beyond the flavour text. Syreen excel at it--their ships has a weak weapon but large telepathic amplifiers and can use them to devastating effect. We encounter an old species who used their power to dominate people on the star system scale and Power Nullifier others created to counter this.
 * Mass Effect has Biotics, people exposed in utero to dust-form Element Zero, the exotic matter used to create the eponymous Mass Effect. If it doesn't cause miscarriage-inducing fetal cancer, the dust-form eezo collects in nodules throughout the nervous system. Through biofeedback, a Biotic can learn to create their own mass effect fields and manipulate things. However, for their powers to have any practical use, they have to undergo brain surgery to have an implant installed that syncs up all the nodules in their body to amplify the effects. A botched surgery can have unpleasant neurological side effects. These are purely Telekinetic in power. They have the ability to forcefully push people around, encase themselves in a biotically created kinetic barrier, "warp" a target with an unstable mass effect field, make a target float weightlessly into the air, freeze someone in place, or create a singularity that pulls in all around it. In the sequel, many new powers are introduced, a tandem wave of upward bursts, the ability to dash-tackle someone across a room, and various other new powers.
 * Kamek of the Super Mario Bros. series has precognitive abilities; he kidnapped the baby Mario Bros. because he foresaw that they would become a thorn in his master Bowser's side. He didn't count on the Yoshis' interference, though...
 * Touhou Project has vague psychic powers on some of its characters, but the Komeji sisters have the most obvious:
 * Satori Komeji has outright mind-reading powers thanks to being a... well, satori, a mythical ape-like monster that reads (and apparently gains energy from reading/eating the thoughts) the minds of humans, but can be driven away by blanking your mind. Satori uses her powers for Mega Manning superpowers from other people, making her a functional Mirror Boss.
 * Koishi Komeji gave herself a Poke in the Third Eye, which cut her off from reading the conscious mind, but gave her the ability to manipulate the subconscious of others. She uses this to turn herself functionally invisible by scrambling people's ability to recognize what they see when they see her (making them think It's Probably Nothing). She apparently lives her life as a homeless thief, stealing food from others and sleeping in random people's houses by abusing this power.
 * The heroine, Miko Reimu Hakurei has a vague power of "intuition" that allows her to somehow just make lucky guesses at the plots and powers of the various Youkai she goes out exterminating. This is generally explained as part of the package of Hard Work Hardly Works she gets for just being born a Hakurei.
 * A key gameplay element of the third season of Sam and Max Freelance Police. Max gains a small slew Psychic powers after coming into contact with Psychically imbued Toys from the Devil's Toybox. These powers also tax his system with repeated (ab)use.


 * The Psion class in Twilight Heroes fights with the power of their minds.
 * "Psycho" is one of the five types of powers in Phantom Dust, and contains abilities like levitation, teleportation, and telekinesis.
 * OtherSpace features over seventy psionic powers, including telepathy, telekinesis, biokinesis, pre- and postcognition, ESP, and teleportation.
 * Advent Rising, oh so much. The humans here are pretty much the psionic race, and as such are worshiped as gods by some of the alien races. By the end of the game, it is easy to see why: the protagonist, Gideon Wyeth, gets augmented strength and speed, healing factor, telekinesis, force fields, electromagnetic bolts (and tied to that devastating energy explosions), ice bolts, gravity control (and through it time control and what is essentially a teleport), and, oh yeah, that nifty ability to create microscopic black holes which you use against the epilogue boss.

Web Comics

 * Gunnerkrigg Court: communicate with each other telepathically.  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.
 * A Blinker stone was 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.
 * Zap is about a renegade psychic with amnesia.
 * 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.
 * 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. Odd that people don't seem to make the same argument against Jedi mind tricks.
 * Members of the audience do in fact make that argument about Jedi mind tricks when they're at the fridge, but Star Wars is a fairly well-controlled IP and Lucas intentionally tries to keep the good/evil thing simple so its never brought up in canon. Same as no one ever mentions that the Jedi actually did rebel against the elected government in Episode 3 and from a legal standpoint order 66 was more or less the appropriate response to attempted religious coup, dark-side or not.
 * The Order of the Stick has shown us a Goblin Psionicist mind reading O-Chul.
 * Grace in El Goonish Shive is telekinetic, presumably because of her Alien Heritage. It only really shows up when she's seriously pissed.
 * Karcharoth and Hati of Cry Havoc 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)
 * Servants of the Imperium One of the main characters, Lyle, is an Imperial Psyker with the powers of Electrokinesis, Illusion and PSIONIC BLAST!
 * Jade Harley of Homestuck has precognitive dreams, and knows several specific details regarding the other characters that they've never mentioned to her otherwise.
 * Some of the trolls have psychic powers of some sort. Aradia can hear the voices of the dead and summon ghosts, Tavros can commune with animals, Sollux has powerful telekinetic abilities and Eye Beams in certain unfortunate instances (and has "vision twofold", whatever that means), Kanaya can predict the future just like Jade, and Vriska can Mind Control people and used to have "vision eightfold" which seemed to involve X-Ray Vision. It's also been stated that the "lower" castes of Trolls happen to be more susceptible to psychic disturbances as well.
 * The people with supernatural powers in Shadownova are described as Espers. While this implies psychic powers, only a few of them really fit the description of a psychic.
 * Memoria These powers, they're known as psi.
 * Brian in Think Before You Think can read minds.
 * In Impure Blood, Dara can concentrate and get clairvoyance.
 * The eponymous gang in Freak Angels 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",
 * Last Res0rt has the thought-reading Jigsaw Forte. Qin Xu's probably counts too.

Web Original

 * Heartwarming Orphan Shandala of Broken Saints has abilities of the empathic variety, which are later revealed to have been
 * There are too many people with Psychic Powers in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe to mention. Oracle and Delphi are mother-and-daughter telepaths who may well be the most powerful psychics on Earth. However, in an interesting subversion, not only are Psychic Powers the rarest of all super powers (only 10% of all superhumans have them), most psychics in the Global Guardians Universe are driven insane by their own powers. Because of this, most mentalists in the setting are villains.
 * The Salvation War: demons and angels are able to use a form of telepathy based on quantum entanglement. Humans actually learn how to use it against them.
 * Played for Laughs in the Shiny Objects Videos appropriately titled "Psychic Powers".
 * At the Super-Hero School Whateley Academy there are so many teenagers with psychic abilities of one kind or another that there is an entire Psychic Arts Department full of teachers who also have psychic abilities. In addition to pretty much every case mentioned above, there are also Package Deal Psychics who have multiple powers (which typically can only be used one at a time): most have ESP, Psionics, and some form of PK ability. Some can even use the PDP talent to simulate the Superman bit (the Flying Brick), levitating themselves for flight, using the PK to give themselves a super-strong field about their body, yada yada yada. Living near the academy is a sweet little old lady... who may be the most powerful precog on the planet.
 * Many of the villains - and some of the allies - in Sapphire are Psychics, and demonstrate all manner of powers. Even ninjas are Psychics, in a sense. Alec makes the connection that "ninjutsu is probably some variation on the whole psychic philosophy".
 * The aptly-named Psi-Experiments from Darwins Soldiers are capable of using a multitude of psionic powers.
 * The Academy of Superheroes Universe has many psychics. Telepaths in particular are regulated and trained by a government agency called MetaPsych. Telekinetics, precogs and the rest abound of course.

Western Animation

 * Combustion Man seems to be a unique case of Psychic Powers in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Unlike other firebenders, he doesn't produce and 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.
 * The Power of Heart on Captain Planet and the Planeteers is a kind of empathy, natch.
 * In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Niko has inborn Psychic Powers which are amplified by her Series 5 implant.
 * The five heroines in WITCH, 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.
 * Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles took the movie's wimpy Psychic Powers and turned them Up to Eleven.
 * As mentioned in the page quote, Mentok, The Mind Taker from Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. He possesses just about 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".
 * The original comics Brother Blood was a cult-leading sorcerer, but the one from the Teen Titans animated series 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.
 * An episode of The Fairly Odd Parents 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.
 * An episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron 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.
 * Shirley from Tiny Toon Adventures has a variety of psychic powers, including fulgurkinesis, Aura Vision, and telepathy.
 * In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, all unicorns have telekinesis, and Twilight Sparkle has some limited telepathic abilities such as altering the minds of Parasprites to not eat food and forcing her good memories onto her friends. She also demonstrated limited pyrokinetic powers on occasion and also has the ability to teleport.
 * Pinkie Pie, an earth pony, has Pinkie Sense, which is effectively a form of precognition by reading various twitches and aches along her body.