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{{trope}}
This character's behaviour is so bizarre, so clearly outside the norm, that [[Real Life]] psychologists would be scrambling for the diagnostic manual to try to figure out what to diagnose them with. It's ''way'' beyond mere ordinary quirkiness. No reasons are given for the strange behaviour. No specific diagnosis is ever mentioned in the story. In fact, any resemblance to any real disorder is likely accidental; the character's symptoms are exactly those symptoms the writer wants them to have. It is a case of '''Ambiguous Disorder'''.
The disordered behaviour will almost always be [[Played for Laughs]]. This technique is generally used to avoid writing yet another [[Patient of the Week]] about some specific disorder and to focus in on the
Compare [[Soap Opera Disease]] and [[G-Rated Mental Illness]].
{{noreallife|as mentioned above, any resemblance to any real disorder is likely accidental.}}
{{examples}}
* Osaka from ''[[Azumanga Daioh]]'' thinks in ways so completely different from other people that it's easy to think she might be mentally disabled
▲== Anime & Manga ==
** The joke
▲* Osaka from ''[[Azumanga Daioh]]'' thinks in ways so completely different from other people that it's easy to think she might be mentally disabled in some way. She's dreamy and inattentive, prone to weird misunderstandings, has very poor motor control, and occasionally seems to suffer from actual hallucinations. But although she seems mentally slow, she gets only slightly below average grades at a regular school and manages to socialize more-or-less normally. She even has some [[Genius Ditz]] tendencies: she's prone to penetrating insights that escape all the other characters, she's surprisingly well-versed in some obscure topics like marine biology, and her odd way of looking at the world makes her ''extremely'' good at certain kinds of riddles.
▲** The joke here—which can easily escape Western viewers—is that Osaka's spacey, laid-back personality makes her a humorous inversion of the stereotypical brash, loudmouthed, [[Hot-Blooded]] [[The Idiot From Osaka|Idiot From Osaka]].
* [[Gentle Giant|Apa]][[The Berserker|chai]] [[Friend to All Living Things|Hopa]][[Pillars of Moral Character|chai]] of ''[[Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple]]'' acts childlike to a degree that goes ''way'' beyond the usual [[Man Child]] level.
* Inspector Lunge from ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]''. Absent staring, hand-tics, [[Spock Speak]], socially clumsy, isolated, compulsively obsessive. It's especially weird that nobody ever mentions any possible diagnosis, considering the manga's protagonist is a doctor and several characters who are psychologists, [[The Profiler|though mostly of the forensic variety]], also feature prominently.
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* ''[[Bakuman｡]]'': Eiji Niizuma has extremely odd sitting patterns, demonstrates some trouble with social conventions and nonverbal clues, and has an obsessive interest and talent in a particular subject.
** [[Ice Queen]] Aiko Iwase also qualifies.
* Edward from ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' is ludicrously intelligent, but shows absolutely no ability (or inclination) to socialize in a remotely normal fashion for even brief periods. She almost always skips, cartwheels or dances instead of walking, and she sings improvised songs about whatever she's doing, often as a substitute for normal conversation. Her closest friend is [[Intellectual Animal|a hyperintelligent, non-talking dog]].
* In ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'', [[Creepy Child|Maria]] has bizarre reactions (or a notable lack of the same) to events around her, and she never seems to be able to avoid hitting her mother's [[Berserk Button]] when she really ''should'' know better.
* [[Cheerful Child|White]] from ''[[Tekkon Kinkreet]]'': there's definitely ''something'' mentally different about him, but it's impossible to distinctly tell what. He's exceedingly childish for his age, refusing to bathe unless prompted, and is unable to tie his own shoes at age ten. Yet at the same time White has a... [[Cloudcuckoolander|''vivid'' imagination]] and occasionally a strange, [[Waif Prophet|almost cosmic insight]].
* ''[[Detective Conan]]'':
** Hattori Heiji's really thick about other people's feelings, bad at picking up social cues, and ''extremely awkward'' a lot of the time. He can't lie without stuttering and giggling like an idiot, and he latches onto ideas or interests and does ''not let them go.'' For example, when he first became friends with Conan, he talked about Shinichi SO incessantly that his childhood friend believes him to have a girlfriend in Tokyo with the last name Kudo. He's also extremely adept at remembering little details and noticing anything out of the ordinary, no matter how minor.
** The protagonist, [[Older Than They Look|Shinichi Kudo/Conan]]: In the first episode, he does not know when to stop rambling on about Holmes and Conan Doyle, and talks to Ran about it the entire time they are at the roller coaster. Even whenever he dates her and starts off wanting to tell her his feelings, instead he ends up gabbing about Holmes again. He is not very social, and it is implied that many of his teachers and classmates believed him to be arrogant and self-absorbed. Also, he seems to be quite blunt and unaware of social tact.
* Considering how quirky most of the characters in ''[[Eyeshield 21]]'' are, the fact that both Shin and Tetsuma are both considered a little "off" by both the other characters and standards of the series says something:
** Shin speaks in monotone with textbook level formality, has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything related to physical fitness (he maintains a VERY strict nutrition plan and seems to be very well-read on human anatomy), and absolute devotion to improving himself as a football player. At the same time, he speaks his mind in the most direct way possible (both positively and negatively), has no interpersonal skills or awareness of social norms (he doesn't see anything wrong with walking around shirtless), and is completely oblivious about anything that's not football or school related (when his teammate Sakuraba grows a beard, gets a crew-cut, and starts training harder, the only thing Shin notices is that Sakuraba's muscle tone has improved). Nonetheless, he's very respectful and always means well, so the few friends he has seem to take his many idiosyncrasies in stride.
** Tetsuma is very literal-minded, even more oblivious to social norms then Shin (as well as being an expert on his position), and can't seem to function normally without his best friend to tell him what to do. When he does speak (which he'll only do if someone specifically tells him to speak), it's very robotic and formal. Most likely because of his difficulty in interacting with people, he dearly treasures his friendship with Kid, who accepts him regardless.
* Lain in her initial appearances within ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]''
* Jirarudan/Lawrence III from [[Pokémon: The Movie 2000|Pokémon 2000]]: He's an art collector of a ridiculously high magnitude who seems to have learned social skills entirely by rote
* Almost every mage in the [[Nasuverse]] who isn't a [[Complete Monster]] could qualify for this at some level.
* Nozomu "Mr. Despair" Itoshiki of ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]''. Focuses on one topic for an incredible amount of time; depressive and paranoid to a nearly delusional degree (although it's [[Played for Laughs]]); and is a self-proclaimed master of not looking people in the eye.
* Yuuki Rieko of ''14Juicy'' displays a limited emotional range and seems to have no interest in, or aptitude for, anything but soccer.
* Sawako from ''[[Kimi ni Todoke]]''. At the age of fifteen she's never made a single friend, and frequently misinterprets social cues with hilarious results. She doesn't seem to find this at all weird.
* ''[[Durarara!!]]'''s Shizuo Heiwajima is such a textbook case of intermittent explosive disorder (albeit a ''very'' exaggerated example) that one has to wonder if Narita had the DSM-IV in hand while he was thinking up his character. His brother Kasuka also qualifies for this trope.
* Amuro Ray of the original ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'' is capable of social interaction, but absolutely hates it. He's paranoid, prone to focusing on himself, and in his [[Establishing Character Moment]], is shown sitting in his room in his underwear, not having eaten in a day, and looking at a computer chip through a microscope
** Kira Yamato of ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' shares many of Amuro's personality traits; the main difference is that he tries to be social (despite sucking at it) while Amuro deliberately avoids other people at all times.
** ''[[Zeta Gundam]]'''s Kamille Biden is what you get when you take a very Amuro-esque personality (love of machinery, poor social skills, mild paranoia) and combine it with some serious daddy issues. [[Big Bad]] Paptimus Scirocco shares many of these personality traits, and compensates for them with his [[Psychic Powers]].
* Shu Ouma from ''[[Guilty Crown]]'' is an [[Extreme Doormat]] with [[No Social Skills]] who admits to himself that his mind might be out of step with everyone else's, and has only made "friends" by going along with what other people say. When he makes a carelessly cold remark about someone else and is reprimanded for it, he can only think about his own feelings that were hurt, rather than feeling bad about what he said. He also has trouble with making eye contact with other people.
* ''[[Komi Can't Communicate]]''; the disorder that keeps Komi from speaking or interacting with others is never given an official name.
▲== Comic Books ==
* Marv from ''[[Sin City]]'' is often considered stupid and insane, an opinion that he shares. He did poorly in school, has [[No Social Skills]], gets "confused" a lot, and often has violent blackouts. In his first story, he mentions that he has always been good at puzzles, implying that he's capable of solving complex mysteries. He was certainly intelligent enough to go up against a powerful crime family. He also cares a lot about his friends and family, is friendly towards complete strangers, and is something of an awkward gentleman with women. On the other hand, he often displays bizarre emotional responses, most prominently a near-sociopathic [[Lack of Empathy]]—there have been multiple instances of him remaining ''genuinely'' perfectly calm during moments of intense chaotic violence, and he's capable of cool, calculated cruelty and a complete lack of queasiness or discomfort while casually torturing people to death.
* Calvin from ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'': [[Wise Beyond Their Years|Highly intelligent for his age]] but performs poorly in school, prefers associating with his [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|(possibly)]] [[Imaginary Friend]] to socializing with real people, tends to retreat into an unusually rich fantasy life, has many strange [[Cloudcuckoolander]] quirks, can be a stickler for his own personal schedules and standards of behavior, and doesn't understand why people act the way they do.▼
* At the beginning of ''[[The Stupiders]]'' we are told that everyone has at least one problem or quirk, but what exactly those problems are is left up to the reader to discern.
* Every ''[[Batman]]'' villain, as well as Batman himself in some interpretations.
* Brian of ''[[Knights of the Dinner Table]]''. He has a job that involves running an online service from his home (which he is said to not clean) and painting model figurines. He has a savant-like memory of obscure roleplaying game rules, yet sometimes forgets his own phone number. He is stated to become very uncomfortable when any social group exceeds four to six people, especially when it happens away from the context of a shared interest. He rarely speaks unless dealing with gaming, and has a face and body language that is usually unreadable. And finally, some things that would annoy other people seem to have no effect on him at all, while something that others would take in stride can send him into a sudden and brutal fury, typically involving flipping over the gaming table in rage.
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[The Wizard (film)|The Wizard]]'': Jimmy, by way of [[The Rainman]] with the way he plays video games.
* ''[[The Social Network]]'': Zuckerberg. He cannot hold down a single topic in a conversation. He shows very little tact as well, as an offhand comment he makes to his girlfriend causes her to break up with him. In short, he is much more at home with his computers and code than he is with other human beings.
* ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes]]'': Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal in the 2009 film and its 2011 sequel was more socially challenged than usual, had some weird eye contact moments, and was implied to have issues with sensory integration.
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* ''[[Seance]]'': A character is antisocial and awkward, and takes an unnamed medication that he claims is supposed to make him "normal".
* Garth from ''[[Wayne's World]]''. His speech is stilted, he doesn't eat anything that isn't brightly coloured and fruity (to the point of eating a jelly donut with a straw), goes off on some extremely bizarre tangents in conversations, and spends hours obsessing over strange mechanical gadgets.
* ''[[Freddy Got Fingered]]'': Gord is a '''gigantic''' [[Psychopathic Manchild]] who is a social reject to say the '''least''', is somehow insane enough to still live with his incredibly [[Abusive Parents|abusive father]], is [[Literal-Minded]] enough to interpret someone telling him that becoming a respectable [[Funny Animal]] animator requires him to be able to "get inside the animals" as a suggestion for him to ''cut a road-killed deer's stomach open and then wear said deer's corpse on top of himself'', and even cuts women's umbilical cords by ''biting them in half with his teeth''.
* Lilo in ''[[Lilo
== [[Literature]] ==
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* Gracie Milne, a minor character in ''[[Tipping the Velvet]]'', is a bit like this. She doesn't really have any identifiable symptoms, but she's definitely more than a little odd, acts rather young for her age, and she may have sensory processing differences considering her fixation with colors.
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==▼
▲== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[Coronation Street]]'': has Roy Cropper who is simply seen as odd by his neighbours with his bizarre lectures on really trivial subjects, fascination with details, and that little bag he carries everywhere.
* ''[[CSI: Crime Scene Investigation]]'': Gil Grissom. His level of social understanding fluctuates between episodes, along with his attention to trivial details and love of bugs.
* ''[[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]]'': Detective Robert Goren; it's suggested he simply never learned proper social skills growing up because his entire family suffered from one mental illness or another. Goren is what happens when the genetic dice are loaded to roll Snake-Eyes and come up Lucky 7 anyway.
* ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'':
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* Leon from ''[[Tucker]]'' is obsessed with Mexican wrestling and sea creatures (even sponsoring an octopus) and has a strange collection of human hair.
* Brick Heck on ''[[The Middle]]''. He has the [[Verbal Tic]] of, at least once each episode, repeating what he just said in a whisper while looking downward. He's in a special social skills class at his school. He is obsessive about reading almost continually, to the point that he's delighted to get a toy robot for his birthday ... because the instructions are in different languages, and he hopes to learn Japanese that way.
* Saga Norén of ''[[
* ''[[Sherlock]]'', much like the source character, is obsessively [[Sherlock Scan|detail-oriented]], generally displays a [[The Stoic|lack of affect]], [[Allergic to Routine|needs to be mentally stimulated at all times]], seems to have [[Lack of Empathy|very little regard for]] or [[No Social Skills|understanding of]] others' emotions (but can [[Manipulative Bastard|manipulate them very capably]] when he really wants to), and tends to be [[Jerkass|astonishingly self-centred]]. People who dislike him describe him as "a psychopath," his best friend half-jokingly refers to his "autism," and Sherlock describes himself as "a high-functioning sociopath." All these diagnoses seem to come pretty close, but none of them quite entirely fits.
* Lucy Payne in ''[[DCI Banks]]'', apparent in the first sequel. A strange combination of post-traumatic stress disorder, masochism, an apparent [[No Social Skills|lack of social skills]] rendering her a loner, while at the same time being a [[Manipulative Bastard|surprisingly good manipulator]], and highly suggestible herself. Plus she's apparently quite [[The Sociopath|indifferent]] to other people's suffering. Her emotional state wavers between [[Tin Man]] and bouts of anxiety. And all that combined with a somewhat stiff mimic and posture, and a prosody that is either exaggerated or nonexistent. At first it appears like she's simply the victim of her husband's [[Domestic Abuse|domestic abuse]]; however, it later turns out {{spoiler|she [[Moral Event Horizon|actively assisted]] him in committing a series of murders, and [[Forced to Watch|watched]] him as he [[Moral Event Horizon|turtured and raped]] the victims "just in order to please him" while "feeling nothing"}}. While some members of Banks' team assume she must be psychotic, he himself insists she has - and has always had - sound judgement. The fact that {{spoiler|she's had a very bleak childhood with [[Abusive Parents]] }}, and her [[Villainous BSOD]] at the end of the sequel don't make it any easier to judge her mental state. Psychopath? [[Obliviously Evil|Insane]]? Or an unfortunate combination of [[Asperger Syndrome]] with a [[Dark And Troubled Past|highly abusive past]]? Or [[Personality Disorders|dependent personality disorder]] turned [[Up To Eleven]]? An extreme case of [[Stockholm Syndrome]]? All of that comes close, but doesn't fit really well. (The fact that she has just {{spoiler|lost her husband}} probably plays into this as well.)
** To a lesser extent, DI Helen Morton fits this trope as well, being [[The Spock]] of the team, especially in her early appearances. And in a later sequel, she's the only one out of the team who really understands an autistic teenager.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
▲* Calvin from ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'': [[Wise Beyond Their Years|Highly intelligent for his age]] but performs poorly in school, prefers associating with his [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|(possibly)]] [[Imaginary Friend]] to socializing with real people, tends to retreat into an unusually rich fantasy life, has many strange [[Cloudcuckoolander]] quirks, can be a stickler for his own personal schedules and standards of behavior, and doesn't understand why people act the way they do.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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** Rin's behavior is just plain ''weird'' in a way that's hard to pin down: she definitely [[Strange Girl|does not think like most people]], and her behavior and comments can be socially inappropriate, not in the manner of someone who [[No Social Skills|doesn't understand normal social interaction]] but more as if she simply doesn't care. In any case, having no arms may not be her biggest problem.
** Misha is an inverted variant. She has no obvious disabilities, so many players are left wondering why exactly she's at Yamaku. She's a bit quirky ([[Genki Girl|energetic]], laughs a lot, has some [[No Indoor Voice|volume control issues]]), but not to the point that she'd be considered seriously mentally unstable, and Yamaku is not supposed to cater to mental disabilities in any case. Certain scenes imply that she came to Yamaku for other reasons: namely, she wants to be a sign language instructor and Yamaku is one of the only schools that has sign language courses.
* Dutch van der Linde from the ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'' series reads almost like a textbook example of Borderline Personality Disorder. He has grand delusions of outwitting the US government, is prone to irrational decisions and violent emotional outbursts, obsessively distrusts many members of his gang to the point of paranoia, and has a tendency to snap between loving his surrogate sons and despising them as ungrateful "traitors" with absolutely no middle ground. His startling [[Lack of Empathy]] towards the people he hurts {{spoiler|save for Arthur at the very send of the second game}} and inflated ego combined with many of these traits also hint that there's a bit of Narcissistic Personality Disorder thrown into the mix. And thanks to a lot of these issues getting worse in the wake of a head injury during a heist gone wrong, he might also be suffering from brain damage of some kind.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* First Prince Piers of the Soleil Empire in the [[Reincarnation Fantasy|isekai]] web novel ''[[Tori Transmigrated]]''. When he first appears in the story, he is ill at ease in social situations, has difficulty looking people in the eyes, doesn't fully understand other people's emotions and responses, intensely dislikes being touched by anyone including his mother, and cannot cope with crowds or loud noises. He also has trouble speaking to strangers, but if you get him started on a topic that he knows and is interested in, he can speak eloquently and at length on it. He's clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum, although the author [[Single-Issue Psychology|makes a token effort to imply it was caused by]] a near-assault by a pair of [[Shotacon]] courtiers when he was very young.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* ''[[My Little Pony]]'':
** Draggle from the original shows signs of many disorders, and by default of her family life, [[Stockholm Syndrome]]. Also, her voice in "The End of Flutter Valley" indicates, erm, slowness due to [[Flanderization]] messing with her intelligence.
** In the 2010 series, ''[[My Little Pony:
* With Cheese from ''[[Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends]]'', you can't really pin down what's wrong with him. He clearly was imagined by a special needs child (this is made painfully obvious when he's introduced), but what exactly that special need was is left ambiguous. Most likely it's just an amalgam of general "mentally challenged".
* ''[[King of the Hill]]'': Dale is an awkward, paranoid [[Cloudcuckoolander]] whose conspiracy theories border on outright delusional—and yet despite his constant suspicion of everyone and everything, he's completely oblivious to ''actual'' conspiracies that are obvious to absolutely everyone else, such as his wife's affair with John Redcorn.
** Worse than Dale is recurring antagonist Jimmy Wichard. Something's wrong with him that makes him aggressive, stupid, antisocial, and unstable, but it's not clear what. Dale claims this happened as a result of staring at the sun too long, but then also adds, "He couldn't have been too smart to do something like that in the first place. Kind of a chicken and egg thing."
* Baljeet of ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]''. Extremely dependent on routines and clear direction, socially introverted, observant but somewhat oblivious and emotionally stunted, able to focus for long periods on repetitive behaviors.
* [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] with the "Newton" disguise of Octus from ''[[Sym-Bionic Titan]]''.
* Ed the otter from ''[[Brandy and Mr. Whiskers]]'' has something. He has awkward speech patterns, uses big words, he's also a bit on the stoic side for the most part and is also physically clumsy when it comes to sports.
* Nonny from ''[[Bubble Guppies]]'' is a smaller example. He rarely ever smiles, has a bored, monotone voice, and is quite awkward compared to the other guppies.
▲* Lilo in ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'' has a bad case of [[All of the Other Reindeer]], but unlike many examples of that trope, she really is a genuinely strange little person who weirds out her "friends" with a strange mix of eccentricities, behavioral issues, social inappropriateness, and unusual interests (not many six-year-old girls these days are obsessed with Elvis).
* [[Daffy Duck]] in ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]'' (carried over somewhat from older cartoons in which [[Mad Hatter|he was]] [[Cloudcuckoolander|clearly insane]], but [[Crazy Awesome|not debilitatingly so]]). [[Bugs Bunny]] guesses that he's "a [[The Sociopath|sociopath]], "a [[Narcissist]]" and "probably a [[Ax Crazy|psychopath]]". (He also sometimes seems to be unable to tell fantasy apart from reality—just see the music video for "The Wizard.")
* Ralph Wiggum from ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''. He acts ''much'' younger than his age, has weird mood swings, is quite the [[Cloudcuckoolander]], doesn't seem able to tell fantasy apart from reality, and it's implied that he hears voices. He's also implied to be on meds.
** It is revealed in "Moms I'd Like to Forget" {{spoiler| that poor Ralph's condition is due to an injury suffered as an infant when his father dropped him on his head; which sadly, comes as no surprise to the fans.}}
* ''[[Clarence]]''{{'}}s grandmother Dilliss appears to have Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and Dementia. This has been shown in "Hurricane Dilliss" when she: judges Mary's new boyfriend Chad, possesses dozens of items{{verify}}, disrupting everyone's sleep while trying to help Clarence with his school project{{verify}}, rudely enters the bathroom while her daughter is using the shower, and makes the house a huge mess at night.
{{reflist}}
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