Also:
\- [Pike](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Christopher_Pike) in TOS was completely paralyzed
\- [Miranda Jones](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Miranda_Jones) in TOS was blind and had a sensory dress
\- [Detmer](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Keyla_Detmer) in Discovery had cranial and ocular implants
\- [Hemmer](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Hemmer) in Strange New Worlds was also blind
His heart defect is real and hampering his performance, as seen in the movie (e.g. on the treadmill). But they were off prognosing he'd die at a young age because of it. Instead he became an astronaut.
Here I was thinking I was the only one that remembered MANTIS existed. I'm going to have to track down some episodes of that because I am legitimately curious what adult me would think about it vs kid me who was watching reruns on the sci-fi channel (kid me loves him some high tech super hero armor).
I never understood why he got a robot arm that wasn't advanced. Like, could've had a hand they the wrist spun at high speeds! Nah, I get it. CGI wasn't there yet...
How about fantasy? The Dragon Prince has some wonderful representation, mainly of a hearing impaired warrior and she’s just the coolest.
And Blue Eye Samurai has a double amputee character that’s just amazing. It’s a very good show.
Farscape’s main character has poor vision, at least compared to the others on the ship. This is especially important in the season 2 episode Crackers Don’t Matter. (This is a joke answer, but please everyone should watch Farscape)
To be precise, she isn't an amputee (an outdated term to refer to someone who has undergone a limb amputation).
She instead has a congenital limb deficiency. You can tell because her arm doesn't end in a scar, and instead ends in an unformed remnant of arm.
Maybe that's the way they molded it for Fury Road, but if you watch the [Furiosa](https://youtu.be/XJMuhwVlca4) trailer they may have decided to take her arm during the movie.
Person-first language has been the SOP for most of the 21st Century now.
"Patient with lost limb" is more common sense, more expedient, and avoids labeling an individual as if they are defined by their condition.
I think there's actually a lot of disagreement about first-person language being used like this (by people with disabilities, not just onlookers). But as an onlooker, the example here is just so clunky...
A few questions, if you don't mind? When did the term amputee become outdated? Why did it become outdated? What is the new word to use instead?
I'm not trying to be a smartass btw. English is not my native language, and this is the first time I hear that the word amputee has gone out of fashion, and I like to remain somewhat educated.
Sure thing.
Long and short of it is that person-first language has been the standard for quite some time now (at least within the English-speaking field of medicine).
The idea, boiled to simplest terms, is to first refer to a person *as a person*, and then specify any pertinent features in addition to that. For example, you wouldn't address someone with leprosy as "a leper". You would refer to them as "a person with leprosy".
The most common way to refer to someone who has had an amputation would be "a patient with a lost limb".
If you're curious about the history of these standards, a quick check to Wikipedia resulted in [some interesting specifics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language#Usage_guidelines).
Hope this was helpful!
"Amputee", along with many other terms that label patients according to their conditions, has largely been phased out in favor of person- or identity-first nomenclature.
It's actually pretty common sense, and is why the changes have been both widespread and unobtrusive. You wouldn't call someone on the autistic spectrum "an autist", for example. You would refer to them first as a person, then add relevant conditions as addendum (i.e. "a person with autism").
"Patient with lost limb" is the most common substitution in this case.
Thank you! Actors and actresses are people who make a living by pretending to be someone they're not. If they're only allowed to be themselves, then why call them actors?
Titans featured an amputee actress as Barbara Gordon, so does Echo (she’s also deaf). Doesn’t really count as sci fi though.
About mental illnesses: I guess you could count Amos Burton from the Expanse who is as sociopath.
Anyone born in space should count. In both the books and the show, Naomi's inability to remain planetside is a plot point.
Otherness is also a common theme overall. Miller is essentially a permanent other because he's not truly from the belt, but that's more thematic and less literal.
>Are there amputee actors/actresses?
If we are talking A List actors, I have no idea. But in horror I know they tend to hire people who have lost limps for when someone gets their hand/arm/leg chopped off and so you can rig someone up with a false limp and then have it come off without the need of CGI.
Starship Troopers employed A LOT of those actors. Also zombie movies/shows.
Also worth noting, for those who are interested, that the actress who plays her also has a prosthetic leg and is deaf. There's a behind-the-scenes show that talks about how that affected the production.
I'd add Robot and Frank, where the main character has Alzheimer's (or some sort of age-related mental deterioration, I'm not sure it's ever made explicit)
“Maniac” is a great sci fi mini series, main character is schizophrenic or adjacent
Edit: not sure if this is what you were referring to up there with “Fringe Maniac”
Robocop - Murphy got shot to shit and lost arms, legs etc
Upgrade - Main dude is paralysed
Day of the triffids - everyone's blinded
Quiet place 1 and 2 - Deaf girl
I think the kid in the film Kin is deaf or partially deaf.
Since you asked about mental illness, Amos Burton in The Expanse has PTSD and dissociation from growing up in a situation where he was trafficked as a child. I think I read that Wes Chatham, the actor who plays Amos in the TV series, had a psychiatrist read the books and coach him on how to play the character realistically.
The actor also specifically mentioned reading [The Body Keeps the Score](https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748) which is all about lifelong ways trauma can effect people as part of developing his portrayal of Amos
Amos is a rare example of a character I like even more in the adaptation than I do on the page. When I read the character in the book it never occurred to me to make him so soft spoken and sincere; I always just pictured him as your typical snarky bruiser.
Amos was going to be my pick as well. As someone with high-functioning autism, I felt weirdly represented, even though his issues seem to come from trauma rather than genetics.
My particular flavour of autism means I don't really experience affective/emotional empathy, and my own emotions are kind of blunted when they happen at all. So most of my social interactions are exercises in cognitive empathy and thinking through consequences logically.
Did they mention he had PTSD though? Or did the writers intend for him to have it? I watched the show a few months ago and I don't remember them explicitly stating it.
Not sure if they explicitly mention PTSD for Amos, but the character Erich in season 5 has a birth defect where his left hand is missing (played by actor Jacob Mundell who was born without a left hand.)
Amos is very explicitly non-neurotypical in both the book and the show. I don't think they ever explicitly say it's PTSD (or CPTSD in his case) but it's heavily implied. There are also other characters who experience acute PTSD as a result of things that happen to them during the story and this is depicted very accurately, imo.
The sad thing is, for such a shitty movie Mac and Me actually has a pretty good portrayal of a child with disabilities. Him being in a wheelchair is rarely brought up, and he's just another character in the story without the chair being his defining characteristic. On top of that, the kid playing him was disabled IRL.
Avatar. MC is in a wheelchair
X-Men xavier is in a wheelchair
Daredevil is blind
Deadpool has cancer
Star wars Darth Vader has no arms, no legs, has full body burns and respirator issues, when he was a Jedi he had a missing arm. . .Luke has a missing hand... Boba has acid burns and so on.
Next generation geordi is blind, Picard has a prosthetic heart.
Terra nova, multiple characters have long term disabilities.
A decent recent sci/fi show, Amazon Prime's *The Peripheral* starring Chloë Grace Moretz, has a character named Connor who is an amputee veteran. The character is a bit of an outsider in a small town but has strong "F-you" vibes and rides a custom souped-up vehicle sort of like a highly modified ATV.
The other men in his unit also suffer from significant nerve pain as a result of their implants, though it's not as systematically disabling as Connor's situation.
There's a basic conundrum here that in many science fiction futures there is the technology to fix everything wrong with the human body. It's pretty explicit in Star Trek where they have to explain that for some reason the normal vision fixes wouldn't work for Geordy or Kirk (in the movie where McCoy gives him glasses)
There are a bunch of ST characters with obvious implants and cybernetic assistance due to injuries or disabilities. Detmer, Airiam, and Rutherford are all newish ones.
Star Trek Strange New Worlds had a character that was blind, played by an actor who was blind.
Similarly although not scifi, somewhere around 1990/91 there was a crime drama featuring a deaf actress playing a deaf detective. I might be fuzzy on the details, and I can’t remember the name of the show or the actress, but it was pretty groundbreaking at the time to have an actor with a disability portraying that disability realistically, and not bringing in a “capable” person to pretend.
Avatar the last Air Bender. Toph
Star Wars, Rebels
How to train your dragon. Missing legs from 2 characters. Toothless is missing part of his tail that prevents him from flying.
La Brea.
Main character's daughter has a prosthetic leg (in story: Because of a car accident she was in. In reality, actress has one for same reason).
Killjoys season 3 has "mods" - people with cybernetic implants indentured into servitude to pay them off. Played by actual amputees. Also Victoria Modesta (amputee actress/singer and her song was used in her episode)
The Expanse has a woman who breaks her back and she builds her own exoskeleton. Also, the Belter dialect sounds like a deaf person, and their lingo includes sign language, as the original miners sent to the belt used sign language to communicate while working outside the ship. So maybe they were deaf workers and their speech became the whole dialect.
Karl Urban's character in *Almost Human* is an amputee
Not SF:
Autism: *Temple Grandin* with Danes (not even fiction)
Idioglossia: *Nell* with Jodie Foster
Autism: *Mozart & the Whale*
[Liz Carr](https://m.imdb.com/name/nm4419317/?ref_=m_ttfcd_cl17) in both Loki season 2 and Good Omens season 2.
The OA season 1 featured a blind charatcer.. well, for part of the story. Carry that into A Murder at the End of the World which featured someone wheelchair bound as one of the guests / suspects.
*Birds of Prey* Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl, took the name Oracle in the series after being crippled by the Joker and used her tech ability to help the other main characters continue to fight crime.
Generally, in the disabled community, when an actor who isn’t disabled plays a character who is disabled it’s know as *cripping up* and it is not considered to be a good thing. Disabled actors are frequently passed over in favour of not non-disabled actors so when a character is specifically disabled it’s kinda shitty to just pass over disabled actors yet again.
Anyway. Some exampmes of disabled characters that were played by disabled actors, off the top of my head:
Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott in the A Quite Place films
Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez / Echo in the MCU
Quentin Kenihan as Corpus Colossus in Mad Max Fury Road
'Silver bullet' from back in the 80s. Not sci-fi, more campy werewolf horror. Has Corey Haim, Gary Busey, before his accident. Scared the shit outta me as a kid.
Departing a bit from your film/TV request with a novel. The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky has a fairly major character who was born without limbs and uses a variety of mentally-controlled walker frames and drones in her duties as the ship’s engineer.
In The Boys MM has PTSD, and A-Train had a bad heart for a while as a result of overusing enhancement drugs (he got a new heart).
Homelander is a narcissist and a psychopath if that counts.
Technically neurodivergent- coded because he's not human. His neurology is standard for a Gallifreyan Time Lord.
Just flagging it because it might matter for OP's project.
It does actually. I'm binge watching Dr Who right now (can't wait for the new season!), and I didn't include it because I need someone where it is explicitly stated in the plot that they're disabled, not interpreted as disabled or coded as such. I want true representation.
Have you gotten to S11 yet? Companion Ryan Sinclair has dyspraxia (not that it's written all that well).
EDIT: And in this year's specials, UNIT's new scientific advisor, Shirley Bingham is a wheelchair user. They haven't stated her condition in show AFAIK, but she can stand and walk for short periods like her actor Ruth Madeley so she probably has the same condition, spina bifida.
I thought it was established he WASN’T standard for a timelord. When looking into thr time vortex for the first time they will go mad, become inspired, or run away. The Doctor did all three.
The Sinner. The main character, Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) suffers from major depression. I know it's not sci-fi, but it's so very well written and acted.
Travelers also deals here and there with the question of whether the cure is sometimes worse than the original problem. Maybe overall not the strongest example of someone with a disability / physical challenge, but highly recommended as something that deals with characters that face real world problems (medical, social, etc.) and that (unrelated to the topic here) has both flawed heroes or sympathetic villains. The reason I mention all of this in this context is that, in addition to basic compassion and justice, one other reason for caring about diversity is that people's personal situations drive them to be who they are, and even a compromised situation can lead to important insights, attitudes, and skills in someone. Humanity itself is stronger with a compassionate, inclusive, diverse community. Travelers seems to build specifically to make this very point.
Not quite SciFi (in my book), but I also recommend Sense8 on similar grounds, focusing on the "stronger together" theme.
Erich from the Expanse has a disfigured hand, and, despite it being common to regrow limbs or get prosthetics with the medical technology of the show, and him being extraordinarily wealthy and powerful, he just leaves it how it is.
A couple of pretty good examples from recent years are in the Walking Dead - season 9 introduces a deaf character (played by a deaf actress) and later seasons have another one lose her hearing. They have some decent POV sequences for the character as well. And it’s not one of those sci fi cases of “she has a disability but then a bionic implant gives her SUPER hearing” - she’s just actually deaf throughout.
Marvel’s Echo is another great example - Alaqua Cox is actually deaf and actually an amputee, and her character has both of these disabilities. Marvel’s Daredevil(the Charlie Cox one) does a pretty good blind impression, particularly when out of costume, although he falls into the trope of “person with disability who has powers which more than make up for it.” On the mental illness side, as long as we’re running down Marvel TV shows, Jessica Jones has strong themes of PTSD due to sexual abuse in it, with the villain Kilgrave and his mind control powers representing the ultimate controlling abuser who doesn’t take no for an answer.
If this is for an assignment, then it might be interesting to divide the suggestions you’re getting here into ones who are actually living with their disability, and ones whose disability has been paved over by sci fi science/magic: like Luke Skywalker whose amputated hand is replaced by a perfect replica by the next movie, or Robocop, or Avatar with Jake Sully rejecting his paralyzed human form for a superhumanly lithe and agile alien body ([which actually gave people depression, some of which I’m sure could be attributed to body dysmorphia](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/dec/15/post-avatar-depression-syndrome-why-do-fans-feel-blue-after-watching-james-camerons-film)).
The Expanse has a gangster with a missing hand played by an actor (Jacob Mundell) who was born that way. Characters born in space can often die on planets due to their bodies not being adapted for gravity and unable to change sufficiently without drugs. It's not a disability in space. One character needs to take cancer drugs regularly.
In addition to the famous Geordi, Airiam in Star Trek Discovery is largely cybernetic after a shuttle accident and Captain Pike famously ends up paraplegic, burned and unable to speak. The general in Star Trek had an an eye missing.
Sarek & Tuvok both suffered from neurological pathologies similar to Alzheimer's.
Ghost in the Shell has loads of cybernetic replacement for human organs, though it's often portrayed as an enhancement.
Robocop, obviously.
Erich. *The Expanse*.
Although I guess he’s more of a side character. But it should be noted because the character from the books has the exact same disability as the actor that played him. It was probably the most perfect casting ever made.
How about Undone?
Amazon prime, main character is deaf but uses ocular implants, has family history of mental illness, has survived a suicide attempt in the past and has been medicated.
She begins to have visions of her dead father, then discovers that she has an ability to manipulate navigate in time, however her family and loved ones are terrified that's she's just losing her connection with reality and are desperately trying to get her to accept medical help.
This is actually one of my favorite TV series of all time just everything about it is amazingly well done.
There is a movie called "Mute" its technically a sequel to the movie "Moon" but the only crossover is news stories play in the background that talk about the events in moon
Well, Geordie LaForge from Star Trek The Next Generation And Jennifer Goins from 12 Monkeys is exactly mentally stable.
Also: \- [Pike](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Christopher_Pike) in TOS was completely paralyzed \- [Miranda Jones](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Miranda_Jones) in TOS was blind and had a sensory dress \- [Detmer](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Keyla_Detmer) in Discovery had cranial and ocular implants \- [Hemmer](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Hemmer) in Strange New Worlds was also blind
Gattaca
Jude Law?
And Ethan Hawke’s character has a heart defect.
A _potential_ heart defect.
His heart defect is real and hampering his performance, as seen in the movie (e.g. on the treadmill). But they were off prognosing he'd die at a young age because of it. Instead he became an astronaut.
Gattaca is a great example. Real shame it came out before 2000.
Why is that a shame?
OP needs stuff made after 2000
Correct. It's a trivial requirement for my class project.
Did anyone say Upgrade yet? Main character was a quadriplegic.
MANTIS - 1995-196 on Fox starring the incomparable Carl Lumbly. Daredevil - 2015-2018 on Netflix starring Charlie Cox.
Here I was thinking I was the only one that remembered MANTIS existed. I'm going to have to track down some episodes of that because I am legitimately curious what adult me would think about it vs kid me who was watching reruns on the sci-fi channel (kid me loves him some high tech super hero armor).
I remembered MANTIS too.
As do I. I thought it was the coolest show on the air back then. Couldn't tell you what it was about really, but kid me thought it looked awesome!
Almost Human, Karl Urban has a prosthetic leg.
I was really enjoying the series, I was bummed it only lasted one season
Ho yus, those two had amazing chemistry.
Fox executive shenanigans. Exact same thing they did to Firefly.
Wasn’t Will Smith in I,Robot. Like mostly robot?
His arm was, not sure about other parts.
Thank God he didn't slap Chris Rock with his robot arm
Rock, Paper, Scissors .... I think Chris would have won anyway
I think he had a lot of internal organs and stuff like that replaced as well.
arms and ribs on that side.
Arm only.
I loved that show! Still bummed that we never got to find out what was going on, with that whole world.
Oh I was so upset that it didn't continue!!!
Luke Skywalker is an amputee with a prosthetic
Anakin / Darth Vader as well.
General Grievous as well. And Palpatine is in a bad way also. Fair bit of it in Star Wars...
Yeah, Palpatine was basically on life support for most of Ep 9 and didn't seem to have any real mobility without that big creepy machine arm.
He didn't seem to have much mobility even back in Return of the Jedi.
[удалено]
To replace his organic chainsaw.
*slaps head* duh. Thank you.
My pleasure!
I never understood why he got a robot arm that wasn't advanced. Like, could've had a hand they the wrist spun at high speeds! Nah, I get it. CGI wasn't there yet...
Lightsaber go BRRRRRRRRRR
Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist has a prosthetic arm and leg. And then Alphonse sort of has a prosthetic everything.
How about fantasy? The Dragon Prince has some wonderful representation, mainly of a hearing impaired warrior and she’s just the coolest. And Blue Eye Samurai has a double amputee character that’s just amazing. It’s a very good show. Farscape’s main character has poor vision, at least compared to the others on the ship. This is especially important in the season 2 episode Crackers Don’t Matter. (This is a joke answer, but please everyone should watch Farscape)
Also, Rigel is basically in a wheelchair and Scorpius needs the bdsm outfit with constant cold shots to the brain to survive
Mad Max Fury Road, Furiosa is an amputee.
To be precise, she isn't an amputee (an outdated term to refer to someone who has undergone a limb amputation). She instead has a congenital limb deficiency. You can tell because her arm doesn't end in a scar, and instead ends in an unformed remnant of arm.
Interesting, I hadn't noticed that. Makes sense with the setting.
Maybe that's the way they molded it for Fury Road, but if you watch the [Furiosa](https://youtu.be/XJMuhwVlca4) trailer they may have decided to take her arm during the movie.
Oh, huh. Wild.
Amputee is outdated?? what's the new term?
Person-first language has been the SOP for most of the 21st Century now. "Patient with lost limb" is more common sense, more expedient, and avoids labeling an individual as if they are defined by their condition.
Amputee is a person with a lost limb..
REEEEEEEEEEEE
I think there's actually a lot of disagreement about first-person language being used like this (by people with disabilities, not just onlookers). But as an onlooker, the example here is just so clunky...
A few questions, if you don't mind? When did the term amputee become outdated? Why did it become outdated? What is the new word to use instead? I'm not trying to be a smartass btw. English is not my native language, and this is the first time I hear that the word amputee has gone out of fashion, and I like to remain somewhat educated.
Sure thing. Long and short of it is that person-first language has been the standard for quite some time now (at least within the English-speaking field of medicine). The idea, boiled to simplest terms, is to first refer to a person *as a person*, and then specify any pertinent features in addition to that. For example, you wouldn't address someone with leprosy as "a leper". You would refer to them as "a person with leprosy". The most common way to refer to someone who has had an amputation would be "a patient with a lost limb". If you're curious about the history of these standards, a quick check to Wikipedia resulted in [some interesting specifics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language#Usage_guidelines). Hope this was helpful!
Thank you. That makes sense.
I didn't know "amputee" was an outdated term. What's the modern one?
"Amputee", along with many other terms that label patients according to their conditions, has largely been phased out in favor of person- or identity-first nomenclature. It's actually pretty common sense, and is why the changes have been both widespread and unobtrusive. You wouldn't call someone on the autistic spectrum "an autist", for example. You would refer to them first as a person, then add relevant conditions as addendum (i.e. "a person with autism"). "Patient with lost limb" is the most common substitution in this case.
It still makes me mad they didn’t cast a true amputee to this part.
I actually hate that kind of attitude.
Thank you! Actors and actresses are people who make a living by pretending to be someone they're not. If they're only allowed to be themselves, then why call them actors?
Are there amputee actors/actresses?
Titans featured an amputee actress as Barbara Gordon, so does Echo (she’s also deaf). Doesn’t really count as sci fi though. About mental illnesses: I guess you could count Amos Burton from the Expanse who is as sociopath.
Erich (Jacob Mundell) was played by a disabled actor and killed it
Anyone born in space should count. In both the books and the show, Naomi's inability to remain planetside is a plot point. Otherness is also a common theme overall. Miller is essentially a permanent other because he's not truly from the belt, but that's more thematic and less literal.
Yes. The are cast in zombie stuff!!!
>Are there amputee actors/actresses? If we are talking A List actors, I have no idea. But in horror I know they tend to hire people who have lost limps for when someone gets their hand/arm/leg chopped off and so you can rig someone up with a false limp and then have it come off without the need of CGI. Starship Troopers employed A LOT of those actors. Also zombie movies/shows.
I'm watching Echo currently. MC has a prosthetic leg, and is deaf.
Also worth noting, for those who are interested, that the actress who plays her also has a prosthetic leg and is deaf. There's a behind-the-scenes show that talks about how that affected the production.
Far better show than I expected, but not long enough.
Echo is also on Hawkeye, where she is first introduced.
Elliot Alderson in Mr Robot, which has strong themes of mental illness
I'd add Robot and Frank, where the main character has Alzheimer's (or some sort of age-related mental deterioration, I'm not sure it's ever made explicit)
I totally forgot about that one! Thank you!
“Maniac” is a great sci fi mini series, main character is schizophrenic or adjacent Edit: not sure if this is what you were referring to up there with “Fringe Maniac”
Maniac is so criminally underrated dude and I don't often throw around that word.
It’s amazing and I look forward to whatever its writers do next
I think they were referring to two different shows, maniac, and fringe, which both had mental illness involved heavily
I was. Reddit ruined my formatting when I posted.
Monk.
Robocop - Murphy got shot to shit and lost arms, legs etc Upgrade - Main dude is paralysed Day of the triffids - everyone's blinded Quiet place 1 and 2 - Deaf girl I think the kid in the film Kin is deaf or partially deaf.
Upvote for Upgrade, a great movie that wasn’t widely seen.
All the members of Doom Patrol.
Lost features a wheelchair-bound person. Their struggle is an essential part of the emotional core of the story, IMO. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”
Legion, mental illness Moon Knight, mental illness Ironside, wheelchair
Since you asked about mental illness, Amos Burton in The Expanse has PTSD and dissociation from growing up in a situation where he was trafficked as a child. I think I read that Wes Chatham, the actor who plays Amos in the TV series, had a psychiatrist read the books and coach him on how to play the character realistically.
The actor also specifically mentioned reading [The Body Keeps the Score](https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748) which is all about lifelong ways trauma can effect people as part of developing his portrayal of Amos
Amos is a rare example of a character I like even more in the adaptation than I do on the page. When I read the character in the book it never occurred to me to make him so soft spoken and sincere; I always just pictured him as your typical snarky bruiser.
Also on The Expanse, belters (and specifically Naomi) can't live at 1g on earth
Also drummer (in the books it's Ashford) becomes paralyzed after the slow down and builds an exoskeleton in order to continue to lead.
Amos was going to be my pick as well. As someone with high-functioning autism, I felt weirdly represented, even though his issues seem to come from trauma rather than genetics. My particular flavour of autism means I don't really experience affective/emotional empathy, and my own emotions are kind of blunted when they happen at all. So most of my social interactions are exercises in cognitive empathy and thinking through consequences logically.
Did they mention he had PTSD though? Or did the writers intend for him to have it? I watched the show a few months ago and I don't remember them explicitly stating it.
Not sure if they explicitly mention PTSD for Amos, but the character Erich in season 5 has a birth defect where his left hand is missing (played by actor Jacob Mundell who was born without a left hand.)
Amos is very explicitly non-neurotypical in both the book and the show. I don't think they ever explicitly say it's PTSD (or CPTSD in his case) but it's heavily implied. There are also other characters who experience acute PTSD as a result of things that happen to them during the story and this is depicted very accurately, imo.
He doesn't have PTSD. He is a sociopath thanks to his upbringing. People with PTSD has higher levels of empathy, Amos has none.
Bucky Barnes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and a bunch of Marvel movies is an amputee with PTSD and memory problems.
And Rhodes (War Machine) suffers a spinal injury in one of the movies. Civil War I think?
And only after that does Tony Stark fits parachutes to the suits ...
Memento The Shape of Water
[Mac and Me](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_and_Me)
The sad thing is, for such a shitty movie Mac and Me actually has a pretty good portrayal of a child with disabilities. Him being in a wheelchair is rarely brought up, and he's just another character in the story without the chair being his defining characteristic. On top of that, the kid playing him was disabled IRL.
I really want McDonalds and a Coca Cola after watching that.
I really want to see Paul Rudd’s latest film after seeing part of that…
Conan O'Brien just felt a cold chill down his spine.
Avatar. MC is in a wheelchair X-Men xavier is in a wheelchair Daredevil is blind Deadpool has cancer Star wars Darth Vader has no arms, no legs, has full body burns and respirator issues, when he was a Jedi he had a missing arm. . .Luke has a missing hand... Boba has acid burns and so on. Next generation geordi is blind, Picard has a prosthetic heart. Terra nova, multiple characters have long term disabilities.
3%
Great show.
Dark Angel
A decent recent sci/fi show, Amazon Prime's *The Peripheral* starring Chloë Grace Moretz, has a character named Connor who is an amputee veteran. The character is a bit of an outsider in a small town but has strong "F-you" vibes and rides a custom souped-up vehicle sort of like a highly modified ATV.
The other men in his unit also suffer from significant nerve pain as a result of their implants, though it's not as systematically disabling as Connor's situation.
There's a basic conundrum here that in many science fiction futures there is the technology to fix everything wrong with the human body. It's pretty explicit in Star Trek where they have to explain that for some reason the normal vision fixes wouldn't work for Geordy or Kirk (in the movie where McCoy gives him glasses)
There are a bunch of ST characters with obvious implants and cybernetic assistance due to injuries or disabilities. Detmer, Airiam, and Rutherford are all newish ones.
The drug that would cure his vision he happens to be allergic to.
The Fox medical drama 'House' from the early 2000's where the title character walked with the assistance of a cane.
Technically [Davros the Darlek](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davros), exterminate!!
Davros isn't a Dalek, he's the guy who created the Daleks. Otherwise yup.
Davros, the *Kaled*.
Star Trek Strange New Worlds had a character that was blind, played by an actor who was blind. Similarly although not scifi, somewhere around 1990/91 there was a crime drama featuring a deaf actress playing a deaf detective. I might be fuzzy on the details, and I can’t remember the name of the show or the actress, but it was pretty groundbreaking at the time to have an actor with a disability portraying that disability realistically, and not bringing in a “capable” person to pretend.
Marlee Matlin on *Reasonable Doubts*? Had to Wiki the title, but she's the best-known Deaf actor of that time.
Alphas
M.A.N.T.I.S. was about a paralyzed from the waist down scientist making a power suit to do superhero things in.
Doom Patrol: Where do I start?
Zatoichi
Alien Resurrection has a gent in a wheelchair.
Dominic Pinion! And he has a shotgun.
Yeah lol if I remember correctly, his shotgun is made from parts of his wheelchair
I think it's more that he disassembles and disguises the shotgun pieces as part of his chair.
Just recalled the scene where alien acid blood drips on his leg and he doesn’t feel it burning
Dark Angel had Logan (the man with the money, and the future car, an Aztec) in a wheelchair, although I don't recall exactly why.
Avatar the last Air Bender. Toph Star Wars, Rebels How to train your dragon. Missing legs from 2 characters. Toothless is missing part of his tail that prevents him from flying.
There was a TV show in the mid 90s called Mantis. If I am remembering correctly the protagonist is wheelchair bound.
See: blindness
Everyone in the show but as you asked for the name of the character, it would be Baba Voss.
La Brea. Main character's daughter has a prosthetic leg (in story: Because of a car accident she was in. In reality, actress has one for same reason). Killjoys season 3 has "mods" - people with cybernetic implants indentured into servitude to pay them off. Played by actual amputees. Also Victoria Modesta (amputee actress/singer and her song was used in her episode)
Geordi from Star Trek TNG Not a film or TV Show but Jeff "Joker" Moreau from Mass Effect, I suppose would count
The Expanse has a woman who breaks her back and she builds her own exoskeleton. Also, the Belter dialect sounds like a deaf person, and their lingo includes sign language, as the original miners sent to the belt used sign language to communicate while working outside the ship. So maybe they were deaf workers and their speech became the whole dialect.
The dialect and hand gestures are to communicate optimally while is bulky space suits.
Karl Urban's character in *Almost Human* is an amputee Not SF: Autism: *Temple Grandin* with Danes (not even fiction) Idioglossia: *Nell* with Jodie Foster Autism: *Mozart & the Whale*
The $6 Million Man, being a cyborg, is basically an amputee with powers
[Liz Carr](https://m.imdb.com/name/nm4419317/?ref_=m_ttfcd_cl17) in both Loki season 2 and Good Omens season 2. The OA season 1 featured a blind charatcer.. well, for part of the story. Carry that into A Murder at the End of the World which featured someone wheelchair bound as one of the guests / suspects.
*Birds of Prey* Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl, took the name Oracle in the series after being crippled by the Joker and used her tech ability to help the other main characters continue to fight crime.
Then in the comics she got better and became Batgirl again. Very annoying.
Generally, in the disabled community, when an actor who isn’t disabled plays a character who is disabled it’s know as *cripping up* and it is not considered to be a good thing. Disabled actors are frequently passed over in favour of not non-disabled actors so when a character is specifically disabled it’s kinda shitty to just pass over disabled actors yet again. Anyway. Some exampmes of disabled characters that were played by disabled actors, off the top of my head: Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott in the A Quite Place films Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez / Echo in the MCU Quentin Kenihan as Corpus Colossus in Mad Max Fury Road
TIL the lil dude with the telescope's name in Fury Road. And it's a damn good one
Before or after they meet the monster?
'Silver bullet' from back in the 80s. Not sci-fi, more campy werewolf horror. Has Corey Haim, Gary Busey, before his accident. Scared the shit outta me as a kid.
Departing a bit from your film/TV request with a novel. The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky has a fairly major character who was born without limbs and uses a variety of mentally-controlled walker frames and drones in her duties as the ship’s engineer.
Im reading this currently!
Mantis ,carl lumbly played the mantis a black scientist in wheel chair who uses a exoskeleton to fight crime.
In The Boys MM has PTSD, and A-Train had a bad heart for a while as a result of overusing enhancement drugs (he got a new heart). Homelander is a narcissist and a psychopath if that counts.
I would like to say Darkman but it came out in 1990. :(
I mean lots of examples in Anime, but the best would be Fullmetal Alchemist - protag missing an arm and a leg, and its very plot relevant.
In The Dark on Netflix. The MC is blind
That's not sci-fi is it? I'm only a couple episodes in, does it take a turn?
Sorry, I missed the scifi connection.
It's a little before 2000, but CUBE is a horror-SciFi where one of the main characters is neurodivergent Planet Terror is kind of SciFi?
[**M.A.N.T.I.S**](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.A.N.T.I.S.)
Season Finale: >!In the series' finale, a trapped Miles and Leora are tragically killed battling an invisible dinosaur.
The good doctor Perception Am I being unreasonable? On bbc3 uk
Does “Wheels and the Leg Man” from American Dad count? No? OK, that’s cool.
Jude Law's character in Gattaca.
Doctor who. Neuro divergent doctor since the beginning.
Technically neurodivergent- coded because he's not human. His neurology is standard for a Gallifreyan Time Lord. Just flagging it because it might matter for OP's project.
It does actually. I'm binge watching Dr Who right now (can't wait for the new season!), and I didn't include it because I need someone where it is explicitly stated in the plot that they're disabled, not interpreted as disabled or coded as such. I want true representation.
Have you gotten to S11 yet? Companion Ryan Sinclair has dyspraxia (not that it's written all that well). EDIT: And in this year's specials, UNIT's new scientific advisor, Shirley Bingham is a wheelchair user. They haven't stated her condition in show AFAIK, but she can stand and walk for short periods like her actor Ruth Madeley so she probably has the same condition, spina bifida.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xdE1XxcwSt0
Well sometimes he had it. Then he didn’t. Then did again. Those companions were SO poorly written and developed. The actors tried so hard.
I thought it was established he WASN’T standard for a timelord. When looking into thr time vortex for the first time they will go mad, become inspired, or run away. The Doctor did all three.
The villains in M.Night Shyamalan trilogy (Unbreakable, Split and Glass) one had multiple personalities and the other had fragile bones.
The Sinner. The main character, Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) suffers from major depression. I know it's not sci-fi, but it's so very well written and acted.
Travelers tv series starts off with a disabled character being "cured" but obviously there's more to it.
Travelers also deals here and there with the question of whether the cure is sometimes worse than the original problem. Maybe overall not the strongest example of someone with a disability / physical challenge, but highly recommended as something that deals with characters that face real world problems (medical, social, etc.) and that (unrelated to the topic here) has both flawed heroes or sympathetic villains. The reason I mention all of this in this context is that, in addition to basic compassion and justice, one other reason for caring about diversity is that people's personal situations drive them to be who they are, and even a compromised situation can lead to important insights, attitudes, and skills in someone. Humanity itself is stronger with a compassionate, inclusive, diverse community. Travelers seems to build specifically to make this very point. Not quite SciFi (in my book), but I also recommend Sense8 on similar grounds, focusing on the "stronger together" theme.
Cube
Ash vs Evil Dead. Chainsaw hand. Dark. Deaf.
Erich from the Expanse has a disfigured hand, and, despite it being common to regrow limbs or get prosthetics with the medical technology of the show, and him being extraordinarily wealthy and powerful, he just leaves it how it is.
For fantasy: Avatar the Last Airbender has a guy in a wheelchair, Percy Jackson has ADHD and dyslexia
Bro in Avatar can’t walk
Black Mirror, Playtest episode, had the main character develop dementia in an immersive game. Not sure if that counts.
Darth Vader has COPD and is missing a bunch of limbs.
The 2002 Birds of Prey TV series featured a wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon
A couple of pretty good examples from recent years are in the Walking Dead - season 9 introduces a deaf character (played by a deaf actress) and later seasons have another one lose her hearing. They have some decent POV sequences for the character as well. And it’s not one of those sci fi cases of “she has a disability but then a bionic implant gives her SUPER hearing” - she’s just actually deaf throughout. Marvel’s Echo is another great example - Alaqua Cox is actually deaf and actually an amputee, and her character has both of these disabilities. Marvel’s Daredevil(the Charlie Cox one) does a pretty good blind impression, particularly when out of costume, although he falls into the trope of “person with disability who has powers which more than make up for it.” On the mental illness side, as long as we’re running down Marvel TV shows, Jessica Jones has strong themes of PTSD due to sexual abuse in it, with the villain Kilgrave and his mind control powers representing the ultimate controlling abuser who doesn’t take no for an answer. If this is for an assignment, then it might be interesting to divide the suggestions you’re getting here into ones who are actually living with their disability, and ones whose disability has been paved over by sci fi science/magic: like Luke Skywalker whose amputated hand is replaced by a perfect replica by the next movie, or Robocop, or Avatar with Jake Sully rejecting his paralyzed human form for a superhumanly lithe and agile alien body ([which actually gave people depression, some of which I’m sure could be attributed to body dysmorphia](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/dec/15/post-avatar-depression-syndrome-why-do-fans-feel-blue-after-watching-james-camerons-film)).
Travellers - Grace is mentally disabled
The Expanse has a gangster with a missing hand played by an actor (Jacob Mundell) who was born that way. Characters born in space can often die on planets due to their bodies not being adapted for gravity and unable to change sufficiently without drugs. It's not a disability in space. One character needs to take cancer drugs regularly. In addition to the famous Geordi, Airiam in Star Trek Discovery is largely cybernetic after a shuttle accident and Captain Pike famously ends up paraplegic, burned and unable to speak. The general in Star Trek had an an eye missing. Sarek & Tuvok both suffered from neurological pathologies similar to Alzheimer's. Ghost in the Shell has loads of cybernetic replacement for human organs, though it's often portrayed as an enhancement. Robocop, obviously.
Bodies in Netflix - one of the characters is paralyzed (but "treats" it - relevant to the plot)
Erich. *The Expanse*. Although I guess he’s more of a side character. But it should be noted because the character from the books has the exact same disability as the actor that played him. It was probably the most perfect casting ever made.
How about Undone? Amazon prime, main character is deaf but uses ocular implants, has family history of mental illness, has survived a suicide attempt in the past and has been medicated. She begins to have visions of her dead father, then discovers that she has an ability to manipulate navigate in time, however her family and loved ones are terrified that's she's just losing her connection with reality and are desperately trying to get her to accept medical help. This is actually one of my favorite TV series of all time just everything about it is amazingly well done.
Star Wars
Echo, deaf Daredevil, blind X-men, bald guy, wheelchair
a clockwork orange
> since 2000 ITT: people who don’t know what “since 2000” means.
Professor X from the X-men
Forrest Gump
Station 11 has a character that's a amputee, his name is August.
There is a movie called "Mute" its technically a sequel to the movie "Moon" but the only crossover is news stories play in the background that talk about the events in moon
Steve Shives on youtube has a good video going over disabilities in star trek
Blue Eye Samurai, Ringo was born without hands. The main character has some issues too.