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* This is part of the plot of the 1986 film ''[[Flight of the Navigator]]'', where a young boy discovers an alien probe had experimented with using the unused ninety percent of his brain for [[Neuro Vault|data storage.]]
{{quote| '''Max:''' Back on Phaelon, we discovered that your inferior species uses only ten percent of your brain. So we filled it all the way up with star charts to see what would happen.<br />
'''David:''' What happened?<br />
'''Max:''' ''It leaked.'' }}
* Besides the milk-white complexion and hairlessness, this is what made the protagonist of the film ''Powder'' so special.
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* Mark McHenry of ''[[Star Trek: New Frontier]]'' could not only use 100% of his brain, he could specify at any given time what percentage of his brain is dedicated to what activity. This is because {{spoiler|Mark isn't quite human, due to his being descended from the Greek God Apollo.}}
* Comes up in ''[[X Wing Series|Starfighters of Adumar]]'', but context makes it pretty clear that this is a joke. Wes is known for being somewhat [[Adult Child|immature]], and he tells Wedge that he thought he heard something last night, when Wedge was... [[Did You Just Have Sex?|getting lucky]].
{{quote| '''Wedge''': "That old lack of oxygen thing will get you every time. How much brain damage did you suffer? [...] And, more importantly, was it to any of the parts of your brain that you use, or was it in the majority portion?"}}
* In ''The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flammel'', this is the basis for the idea of having one's powers "Awakened".
* ''The Zombie Survival Guide'' makes this same error in comparing zombies' senses to those of humans, speculating that undead without eyes have a "sixth sense" derived from the unused part of the brain. Oh, and it claims that we, the living, only use ''5%'' of our brains, doubling this trope's inaccuracy.
* The [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] novel ''The Gallifrey Chronicles'' comes ''very close'' to getting this right ... but doesn't.
{{quote| There was an old myth that humans only used ten percent of their brains. This was a simple misunderstanding. Give or take, there was activity in every part of the human brain. But the physical structures were capable of ten times the activity they performed. It wasn't that a human being had a brain like a house with nine tenths of the rooms sealed off, it was more like a road network wasn't carrying as much traffic as they were designed to carry.}}
* In ''[[Discworld/Small Gods|Small Gods]]'', Terry Pratchett said that the other 90 percent of the brain powers a sort of ''[[Weirdness Censor]]'' so that the fact that the entire world we take for granted is, in fact, amazing, is ignored.
{{quote| It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to [[Brain Food|serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys]]. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.<br />
Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by [[The Stoner|certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected]]. They’d say “Wow!” a lot. And no one would do much work. }}
* The protagonist of ''[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32272/32272-h/32272-h.htm Insidekick]'' by J. F. Bone develops psi powers (telepathy and teleportation), plus eidetic memory, after being invaded by a symbiote which activates a "large dormant portion" of his brain.
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* In ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'', this is cited as why Dr. Bashir can lose a portion of his brain and be completely fine. (This was before Bashir was [[Retcon|Retconned]] to be superintelligent.)
* Spoofed in an Italian [[Real Trailer, Fake Movie]] parody of ''Limitless'', mercilessly titled ''Italiano Medio'' (''[[Self-Deprecation|Average Italian]]'').
{{quote| '''Protagonist's friend:''' You know that story, that we use only twenty percent of our brain? *hands him pill*<br />
'''Protagonist:''' OK, I'll try it just out of curiosity. *swallows pill*<br />
'''Protagonist's friend:''' With this, you'll only use ''two percent''. }}
* Disproven on ''[[Myth Busters]]'', Tory's brain scans showed him using 15-30% of his brain, depending on what he was doing.
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* ''[[Freak Angels]]'' seems to be hinting at the fact that they have simply not reached their full psionic potential. Arkady's continual experimentation with her abilities seems to be a testament to this.
* A joke that unfortunately never made it into ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' but does show up on their podcast uses the concept:
{{quote| "You know how people only use ten percent of their brain?"<br />
"I've heard that."<br />
"Well I only use ten percent of my ''penis''." }}
* [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/2/19/ One comic] uses this trope as part of an advertisement for "air for gamers".
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** Which also happens to be the premise of ''The Daily Pangram''.
* Parodied in ''[[AH Dot Com the Series]]'', episode "The Narcissus Syndrome":
{{quote| '''Thande''': You know how we only use ten percent of our brain capacity?<br />
'''Torqumada''': No, because that's a ridiculous urban myth.<br />
'''Thande''': Shut up, I'm trying to [[Lies to Children|explain something]] to the unscientific Muggles here. }}
 
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