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Throwing Off the Disability: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
A character who has been disabled for an extended period, often physically or visually, will suddenly regain use of the disabled organ.
Explanations for this tend to fall into five varieties. First, it could be a form of heroic will. Second, and most believably, their injury could be one from which they could recover, and they happened to have been healed by the plot-relevant moment. Third, they might not have actually been disabled at all, and it was just an [[Obfuscating Disability]]. Fourth, their otherwise incurable disability was miraculously cured through [[Deus Ex Machina|divine means]] or by [[Applied Phlebotinum]]. Finally, fifth, their disability could just disappear for no reason at all, possibly as a [[Retcon]] or as [[Canon Discontinuity]].
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* For a character who was just pretending, there's Richard Dragon, a comic book character created by Denny O'Neil. He reveals in an issue of [[The Question]] that he actually can walk, and the wheelchair was just to screw with people.
* In the comic ''[[Incredible Hulk|The Incredible Hulk]]'' Bruce Banner gets ALS, and is eventually cured by Reed Richards. (The issue ends with Banner [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]], saying it's Just A Story and there's no real cure for ALS, encouraging people to donate to the research to Find A Cure.)
* In ''[[52]]'' Ralph Dibny thinks that Dr. Milo is just pretending to be crippled in order to smuggle a magical artifact into the asylum in which he is incarcerated. Said artifact is one of the wheels on Dr. Milo's wheelchair. {{spoiler|Horribly subverted when it turns out Milo ''really is crippled and has no legs''. Ralph [[My God, What Have I Done?|only realizes this]] ''after he had already removed the wheel'' and Milo was left helpless and crawling on the floor.}}
* After [[Iron Man|Tony Stark]] had his nervous system replaced after a great deal of damage. He had to learn how to move. During that time, he was paralized from the neck down.
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* In ''[[The Ex]]'' the ex-boyfriend (Chip) reveals he can walk; this ends up being his [[Moral Event Horizon]] as he was pretending to be handicapped for ''years''.
* ''[[Tommy]]'', of The Who's album/film of the same name (deaf, dumb & blind, but it was psychosomatic).
* [[It Was His Sled|Famous]] [[Obfuscating Stupidity]] example at the [[The Ending Changes Everything|end]] of ''[[The Usual Suspects]]''.
* Parodied in ''[[The Big Lebowski]]'' where after it has been discovered that the title character ([[I Am Not Shazam|not the protagonist]]) has been a fraud in a number of aspects of his life, Walter suspects that he's faking being a cripple (he's not).
* Rufus in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]: [[Advent Children]]'' does a type 3, revealing he was playing up his illness all along.
* Parodied in ''[[Life of Brian]]'' when a blind man claims to be healed by Brian ("I was blind and now I can see!") only to immediately walk straight into a deep pit.
* Mikey from ''[[The Goonies]]'' throws away his inhaler at the end.
* In ''[[Lady and the Tramp]]'', Trusty the bloodhound had lost his sense of smell long ago, but when the Tramp is taken by the dog catcher, he manages against all odds to track him down.
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* In the book ''[[Wicked (novel)|Wicked]]'', Nessarose was born without arms, and cannot walk on her own - she always needs someone to steady her. The Silver Slippers, after Elphaba enchants them, give her the balance for independent locomotion.
* In the [[Lord Darcy]] mystery short "Murder on the Napoli Express", one man has a pronounced limp when walking slowly, and virtually no limp when walking quickly. The limp is a poorly done excuse for carrying a [[Sword Cane]].
* In ''The Lost Years Of Merlin'', Merlin has been blinded as a child, but for some reason later on can kind of see, or at least sense what's there, to the point where later in the book (and he's the narrator) he practically has his sight back perfectly.
* A [[Sweet Valley High]] book had a character paralyzed after an accident. Subverted in that her paralysis was never intended to be permanent and that her doctors stated she would walk again after rest and physical therapy. However, she remained wheelchair-bound long past her expected recovery time and it is soon realized that she is subconsciously creating her paralysis so that her boyfriend won't leave her. However, when her babysitting charge falls into the pool, she has to jump in to save him. Turns out the kid is a champion swimmer and did it on purpose to snap her out it.
* In ''[[Heidi]]'', once Klara's wheelchair is disposed of and other characters help her practice walking, she's soon completely cured.
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* In ''[[The Poisonwood Bible]]'', {{spoiler|Adah, who has walked with a slant and had difficulty talking all her life due to "hemiplegia," finds out she was misdiagnosed, and that her habits were learned in childhood rather than the results of a medical condition}}.
* Eragon, of the [[Inheritence Cycle]], has a most egregious one of these, losing the debilitating scar he picked up at the end of the first book. Combines heavily with [[Deus Ex Machina]], and as we find out in the fourth book, was the actions of {{spoiler|[[Man Behind the Man|the dragon eldunari]] who hid themselves in the ruins of the Riders' city}}.
* Gillian Grayson, in ''[[Mass Effect Ascension]]'', was established as having high-functioning autism that clearly has a serious impact on her thought processes and the way she relates to the world. By the end of the novel, when she's off {{spoiler|Cerberus-provided experimental chemicals}} and wearing an environment suit, she's seen as being in somewhat better shape, but not remotely "cured". In ''[[Mass Effect: Deception]] '' her autism isn't mentioned; she had been an "unstable" twelve-year-old with a "temper", implying that she was in and ''got over'' an adolescent phase.
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** In the flashsideways, {{spoiler|Jack operates on Locke and fixes his paralysis in the series finale}}.
* Inverted in ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', as Daphne's disability comes back during the eclipse, when her powers are turned off temporarily.
** Played straight in the first season, when Mr. Linderman [[Good Powers, Bad People|heals Nathan's wife]], who was paralyzed from the waist down, as a "gift" to her and Nathan.
* One of the few high points of ''WWF's'' Invasion angle was when Vince McMahon brought in the legendary "Classy" Freddie Blassie to give the WWF roster a pep talk. Blassie rose from his wheelchair to give an impassioned speech about the history and legacy of the WWF, imploring the gathered wrestlers to not let the forces of the Alliance destroy what took so long to build.
* In an episode of ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]'' David Banner gets paralyzed from the chest down; when he Hulks Out at the end of the episode Hulk is at first paralyzed as well, but eventually recovers due to his Healing Factor, which heals Banner too.
* An episode of ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' ended with an apparently wheelchair bound woman being pushed into a swimming pool by her angry husband (who the detectives had just made realize had only her word that she was still disabled). {{spoiler|She was indeed faking and the episodes ends with the detectives, perhaps a little too smugly, informing her that she'll now be going to jail.}}
* Parodied in a famous ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch which billed itself as an alternate ending to ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]''. George and the townsfolk think that Mr. Potter is pulling the [[Obfuscating Stupidity]] version and throw him out of his wheelchair. Sure enough, it turns out he's faking his paralysis as well.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp", one character who uses a wheelchair turns out to be faking it.
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* Played up, down, back and forth by ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'', with a lawyer who fakes blindness in order to get jury sympathy. Michael figures this out and throws a book at her to prove it - unfortunately on the one day when she had been temporarily actually blinded. For unrelated reasons, she is also faking a pregnancy.
* Olivia does this in the second season of ''[[Fringe]]'' after seemingly fruitless rehabilitation with Sam Weiss.
* On [[Downton Abbey]], Matthew is told he'll never walk again after a bomb blast in the WWI trenches. A few episodes later, he starts feeling tingles, but is told it's just psychosomatic. He finally bolts up out of his wheelchair to grab Lavinia when she falls.
** This is treated somewhat realistically, for a number of reasons:
*** The 1915 medical technology wasn't sensitive enough to detect his chances of recovery.
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* Used a couple of times in ''[[South Park]]'':
** In "Krazy Kripples", Christopher Reeve regains the ability to walk (among other things) by [[Squick|sucking the stem cells out of an embryo]].
** In "Bloody Mary", attending an AA meeting convinces Randy that he is powerless to overcome his drinking problem, and starts using a wheelchair for some reason. When sprayed with the blood of the eponymous Mary, he triumphantly stands up and throws his drink to the ground. [[Justified]], of course, because he was only ever disabled in his hypochondriac mind.
* Peggy in ''[[King of the Hill]]'' had to go through this when her muscles had atrophied after being released from her body-cast due to a skydiving accident. In this case she chose to forgo normal physical therapy for Cotton's method, where he purposefully got her angry in order to provoke a response. It was still a long and involved process, though.
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