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The Rainman: Difference between revisions
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[[File:rain_man_dirty_harry2.png|link=Xkcd (Webcomic)|right]]
The Rainman has a [[Disability Superpower]]. Karmic law dictates that every mental birth defect has a compensating benefit. Like [[Min
These skills are usually mental and often geeky. At the low end are [[Hyper Awareness|super keen observation]], [[Photographic Memory|memory]] and [[If My Calculations Are Correct|calculation]]. At the high end are [[Mind Over Matter|telekinesis]] and [[Rewriting Reality|hacking into the world's computational substrate]]. In the [[Trope Namers|namesake film]], the skills are near-instantaneous observation and counting that makes Dustin Hoffman's character a nightmare for a decent casino.
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* Friendly of ''Best Served Cold'' (followup novel to ''[[The First Law]]'') is a bit odd, taciturn, and, well, [[Ax Crazy]], but he's also ''excellent'' with numbers. He gets hung up on counting especially, such as the fact that there are eight letters in "counting," and that two times eight is sixteen which is the square root of two hundred fifty-six which...
* It's been speculated that Jeremy Clockson in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'' is autistic. He's also a brilliant clockmaker who instinctively knows what time it is. In fact, he knows it so deeply that he gets [[Berserk Button|really upset]] if he sees a clock that's wrong.
* In ''My Godawful Life'' by Michael Kelly, a parody of [[Misery Lit]], Euphemia has Asperger's ''and'' [[Tourettes Syndrome|Tourette's]] Syndromes {{spoiler|although it's also implied that she fakes them as an excuse for her lack of empathy}} but also serves as a walking dictionary, thesaurus, A to Z, clock, calendar, episode guide for ''[[
* ''[[Mass Effect]]: [[Mass Effect (Franchise)/Ascension|Ascension]]'' has Gillian Grayson, a high-functioning autistic preteen with extremely high biotic potential (gravity manipulation/telekinesis). Early on while she's doing schoolwork she only occasionally types in an answer, but it's always the right one. However, she does seem to be somewhat realistically portrayed - physical contact is alternately not felt and painful, she doesn't understand other kids, she doesn't always respond to someone speaking. Kahlee Sanders, taking care of her, thinks that going off the Cerberus medication she was taking and being in an environment suit among suited-up quarians contribute significantly to her disability becoming somewhat less severe by the end of the book. She shows some emotion and more curiosity about things happening around her, and with the suit insulating her from the outside world, physical contact doesn't overload her senses.
* One of [[The Babysitters Club]]'s clients was an Autistic girl who couldn't talk unless she was asked to name a date or if singing was part of the music she heard (she was a piano savant). At one point her sitter discovers that a neighborhood boy was charging other children to see the freaky savant girl.
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'''Professor Duncan''': Yeah, ''subjects''! Not ''[[Rain Man]]''! }}
* Jerry Espenson on ''[[Boston Legal]]''; he has Asperger's Syndrome and is also one of the most brilliant lawyers at the firm.
* Gary Bell from ''[[
** Indeed, part of ''[[
** There's also Anna, who was diagnosed with Low Functioning Autism but actually has a different atypical brain disorder, whose Alpha ability allows her to understand any language-- even though she herself can only speak a language of her own devising made up mostly by the sounds made by stroking a brush. Once she has her tablet computer which translates what she's saying, she is revealed to be highly intelligent {{spoiler|and one of the leaders of Red Flag}}
* The upcoming FOX series ''Touch'' seems to be all about this, seeing as it focuses on the father of a severely autistic child (he's even nonverbal) who serves as a conduit for the patterns of the universe.
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Marzo: [[Crowning Moment of Funny|Well, they kind of ride up in the back, and I don't like some of the colors. (pause) Oh, was I supposed to say what I ''liked'' about them?]] }}
* [http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298154n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.2 Derek Paravicini] (in part 3), a blind and clearly autistic man who happens to be a piano savant (he met his teacher when he shoved him off the bench and began banging the keys). Not only can he play any kind of song or music style on his piano, he can instantly "remix" a song if someone gives him the title, style, and key. Incidentally, he also happens to be Camilla Parker-Bowles' nephew.
* Neurologist Oliver Sacks met autistic twins who would later become the inspiration for the Rainman character. Instead of just being good at counting, however, they could, as they described, ''see'' primes. The toothpick scene in Rainman was actually taken from a similar incident in real life, but with matches. After seing the matches fall, the twins instantly count to 111, then say 27 three times, which Sacks noted is a prime number, and that 3 * 27 = 111. Sacks recorded another incident where he would communicate with the twins by using primes, as part of a game they developed between the two. Unfortunately, they were both "treated" to operate without each other to fufill a role in society, which Sacks noted took away everything unique and special about them. Sacks's entire documentation of the twins can be found in the book ''[
* Synesthesia has been mentioned a couple times already, but one of the experiments that proved that such people really do see letters and numbers as different colors is a test involving picking out specific letters from a large rectangle of similar-looking letters. People with grapheme-color synesthesia do this much more quickly than people without -- after all, how hard is it to pick out all the ''blue'' letters?
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[[Category:Disability Tropes]]
[[Category:The Rainman]]
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