Adaptational Disabilities

Kind of like a Race Lift, sometimes, a character is given a disability, even though they don't have any disabilities in their source material.

Why this is varies. Sometimes, it's because the adaptor has a disability, to add diversity, plotline reasons, or because the actor has a disability.

Examples of Adaptational Disabilities include:

Anime and Manga

• The Fullmetal Alchemist anime gives a few that weren't in the manga:
  • In the anime, Paninya lost one of her arms in addition to her legs. In the manga, only her legs were lost.
  • Rose more-or-less disappears in the manga, while in the anime, she's given more focus and is dealing with depression and anxiety.
  • In a Heroic Sacrifice, Scar loses his arms, while, in the manga, he still keeps them.
  • In the manga, Mustang is temporarily blinded but, in the anime's finale, he loses one of his eyes. On top of this, the anime focuses more on his alcoholism and PTSD
  • Ed in a few ways. Ed gets his limbs back but sacrifices them arm to get Al back and this gets him sent to an alternative universe where he loses his arm and leg again. In the manga's ending, Ed get his arm back. Likewise, in the anime, he seemed to be developing PTSD.
• In Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Kushana wasn't minus anything in the manga but, in the movie, she's lost her arms, legs, and some more body parts to Ohmu attack years ago.
• The pitch pilot for Toon Makers Sailor Moon would have given this to Sailor Mercury, putting her in a wheelchair.

Comic Books

• DC Universe:
  • The Penguin. Some adaptations has it where he has a case of syndactyly (fusion of the fingers), while others has it where his fingers aren't fused.
• In Star Trek: Khan, the Kelvin timeline's Khan claims that he was born a cripple with only one leg, contrasting his main timeline self who was said to have been born as an Augment. Though James T. Kirk suspects that Khan is an Unreliable Narrator and invented this to paint himself as the Tragic Hero.
• In First Strike, Joe Colton deliberately cut off his right hand to escape the Dire Wraiths.

Fan Works

• All too common in Fan Works. To add pathos and drama, many authors introduce some form of disability to a character who is fully abled in canon.
• Amoridere's plays with this in Nozomi Moritomo's case, where a Nendoroid of her is shown in a wheelchair, though she doesn't use one in the Rolling Girls anime. Apparently, according to the photo descriptions, Amoridere found her easier to pose for photos that way. This still carries over in Nendoroid doll form, as Nozomi is still using a wheelchair. One tweet says she's an ambulatory wheelchair user.
• Generally inverted in Harry Potter fanfics, particularly "Super Harry" ones, where Harry gets eye-surgery that allows him to forgo his glasses.

Film

• Inverted in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in this case, Quasimodo is more abled in this adaptation, as his book counterpart is mostly deaf from ringing the bells.
• Bumblebee in the Bayverse has a damaged voice box, forcing him to communicate by radio, whereas he could speak in the original Transformers Generation 1.
• The DC Extended Universe:
  • Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice strongly hints that Lex Luthor genuinely has some kind of mental disorder.
  • In Shazam, Billy's lame leg isn't healed when he's granted Shazam's power. Though his transformed body is still fully abled.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The events of Captain America: Civil War see War Machine be crippled, damaging his spine after a great fall and needing prosthetics to walk.
  • In Ant-Man and The Wasp, Ghost is infected with quantum instability, causing her to painfully phase in and out of reality.
  • Due to the actor portraying her, Lauren Ridloff, being deaf herself, Makkari in Eternals is deaf.
• Transformers One:
  • The mining class of Cybertron is usually those who turn into mining vehicles. In One, the miners are those who can't transform, their transformation cogs having been cut out by Sentinel Prime.
  • Starscream's shrill voice is the result of D-16 damaging his vocal processors during their fight.

Literature

• Beast Wars: Uprising:
  • Inverted with Transmutate. With her stasis pod not being caught in a violent quantum surge, Transmutate is a fully functional Cybertronian, capable of controlling her outlier powers and transforming into an alternate mode whereas her original counterpart in Beast Wars suffered from Power Incontinence and was so damaged that she didn't have an alternate mode.
  • Goldbug. As part of being a Decomposite Character with Bumblebee, Goldbug has a damaged voice box.
• In Percy Jackson & the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus, it's stated that the Greco-Roman demigods have ADHD and dyslexia (or at least something close enough to it as a result of their heritage) that causes them to struggle in mortal society. No mention of this existed in Classical Mythology.

Western Animation

• In the 2017 version of Duck Tales, Della Duck has a prosthetic leg, which didn't happen in the source materials.
• Strawberry Shortcake: Lime Chiffon could see well during the 1980's, but her Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City self needs glasses to see properly.
• In Voltron: Legendary Defender, Takashi Shirogane has a metal arm courtesy of his time in Galra captivity. His GoLion and Voltron counterparts did not. Later, it's also revealed he had a degenerative illness in the past.
• Transformers:
  • Like his movie self, Bumblebee in Transformers Prime and Transformers: Cyberverse (in its first season), is mute.
  • In the second season of Prime, Starscream loses his T-Cog, depriving him of his ability to transform.
• In Justice League, Aquaman willingly cut off his own hand to save his son.