Brain Critical Mass
So you want to write a superhero comic. You have your Five-Man Band, and are giving each member some of the Stock Super Powers. But what will you give The Smart Guy?
Well, he already has an amazing brain. Let's make it even more amazing, saying that all that mind has reached critical mass, and now: Psychic Powers. Whenever a superhero has Psychic Powers, he is likely to be the genius of the group. Bonus points if it is said to come from his genius, 90% of Your Brain or both.
May be brought about through actual evolution, though not necessarily. Also, likely to be a human in the next level of evolution, as psychic powers are the next stage. Can be the reason why Humans Are Psychic in the Future and for Telepathic Spacemen.
Examples of Brain Critical Mass include:
Comic Books
- The Leader in Ultimate Marvel developed telekinetic abilities as a result of the experiments to increase his intelligence.
Film
- The far future villain in The Time Machine (2002) has a massive brain that extends down his back. He uses it to control the beasts that prey on the humans.
- In The Lawnmower Man, when Jobe get his intellect increased up to - and possibly beyond - genius level, he also gains a wide variety of worryingly strong Psychic Powers.
Literature
- Matilda Wormwood, a girl from Roald Dahl's Matilda who had read Moby Dick before kindergarten. Her Mind Over Matter powers are stated to be because she's so bored and has no other way to use her brainpower. Once she is being challenged in school, they disappear.
- In the film version it's said she uses a greater portion of her brain then most people, and so she keeps her powers at the end of the film.
- Once AM in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream gained sentience, he also gained psychokinesis.
Live Action TV
- River Tam, The Empath Woobie in Firefly.
Newspaper Comics
Video Games
- Alakazam, a psychic Pokémon with an IQ of 5000.
Web Original
- Brainchild of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe combines superhuman intelligence with powerful Psychic Powers to make his way as a supervillain. Likewise, The Brain combines lots of smarts with telepathy.
- For the most part, the Global Guardians PBEM Universe avoids this trope. Most of the smartest people in the setting are super-inventors rather than mentalists.
Western Animation
- In Jimmy Neutron, Jimmy's normally ditzy friend Sheen gets his intelligence increased with Jimmy's Phlebotinum and gains telekinesis.
- In Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot, there was Dr. Neugog, who got mutated into a borderline Eldritch Abomination when a spider got between him and an invention of his that would have allowed him to read minds. After being mutated, he had the power to suck people's brains out, and add them to his own. The more brains he had sucked, the greater his intelligence became, and he eventually developed psychic powers. Later, Dr. Donovan's nephew Pierre had the same thing happen, but without the Body Horror, and it was later reversed.
- When Mandark first appeared in Dexters Laboratory he was shown to be telepathic, to underline the fact he was smarter than Dexter (that's before Villain Decay settled in, of course). This is used to an eerie effect when, in his first spoken line, he answers the question the teacher was going to ask next.