"Born with incredible psionic potential, these agents are quarantined by the Confederate Government and trained from infancy to channel their psionic energies to augment their natural physical strength and endurance. As a precautionary measure, Psychic Dampeners are surgically implanted in all Ghosts."
— StarCraft I, "Ghost" lore
Professional killers and secret agents are plenty effective all by themselves, but when cybernetic enhancements, alien/superpowered DNA, a hyperevolved brain, or simply the march of time throws Psychic Powers into the mix, you have an unparalleled covert agent that can function as a telepathic spy, an untraceable infiltrator, or a telekinetic killing machine: the Psychic Operative.
When these characters appear in Science Fiction, Spy Fiction, or Superhero stories, they're often the result of a classified government program; they're especially popular as participants in (or holdover remnants from) Secret Histories and Weird Cold War stories, with villainous versions resulting from Nazi or Soviet Superscience. They'll usually start off as Psychic Children, and the viewer might see their Training from Hell as a series of flashbacks, in which they were conditioned by a super-secret government agency (at a Black Site facility, of course) to only follow orders and feel no remorse for their enemies. They will almost always have a Power Limiter implanted in some fashion (bonus points if it's called an "inhibitor" or "dampener"), and you can bet the agency will tell the Psychic Operative that the device is really for their own good.
Regardless of their manner or genre of origin, Psychic Operatives will usually come in one of two variants with some occasional overlap:
Psi Spy: The character is a psychically empowered spy, secret agent, or other espionage professional. Typically, their powers will revolve around reconnaissance, gathering of intelligence, and Social Engineering, as opposed to lethal application or brute force. If they use telepathy to psychically enhance their charisma, they will virtually always be The Face, The Social Expert, or a similar role within the team. If they have especially potent Astral Projection, Dream Spying, or host-based clairvoyance abilities, they might function purely as a sort of psychic surveillance specialist that perceives enemy movements and relays them back to their superior or handler. In many cases where the spy belongs to a psychic organization or team, you can expect each subset of psychic power specialization to have a catchy, codename-sounding title; memory manipulators might be "erasers", remote viewers might be "seekers" or "watchers", and so on.
Psychic Assassin: All of the classic psychic powers will have been forged into surgical tools of deadly and tactical precision. If they have telekinesis, they'll be able to use it to disarm an opponent from across the room, or curve the trajectory of a bullet around a corner. If they have precognition, it will have been trained to predict an enemy's next move in combat, rendering the agent effectively untouchable. If the character has any kind of mind-controlling ability, a very cinematic way to show it is to have the assassin force an enemy Mook into a Psychic-Assisted Suicide, while looking on with an icy, uncaring sort of attention. If the character is part of a Psychic Assassin squad, every squadmate will share a Psychic Link that keeps everyone in constant communication. Psychic Assassins will rarely have any of the psychic powers that are too overtly flashy (like self-levitation or pyrokinesis), as these abilities clash too much with their image and theming as stealthy infiltrators and shadow operatives. If the character is placed in a squad of non-powered personnel, expect the squadmates to have a hard time trusting their psychic comrade. At least one of them will make an observation or snide comment that it's impossible to determine who is actually giving orders to who.
A variant of this trope appears in some Ninja stories, where their psychic abilities will be a set of Magical Ninjutsu techniques that are passed down via inheritance in a specific clan, or simply that clan's exclusive property. These techniques will have more to do with deception and manipulation (like illusions, suggestion, and/or a limited form of Mind Control), as opposed to the more comic book-coded psychic powers like telekinesis or telepathy. They will usually be activated via Hypnotic Eyes, a Compelling Voice, or a similar stimulus, and they will almost always be wielded by a seductive, Femme Fatale kunoichi who uses these powers to amplify her natural charm.
While this trope is obviously pretty far from Truth in Television, its texture is inspired by actual research and experimentation on "parapsychological phenomena", performed by the American CIA and the Soviet Union's KGB in the 1950s and 60s as part of an intelligence arms race. This explains why characters of this trope are so often associated with classified research programs, Black Site facilities, and similar elements of governmental secrecy and conspiracy.
Sub-Trope of Professional Killer and/or Spy Fiction, with added Psychic Powers. When applying to Ninja, will overlap with Magical Ninjutsu. May overlap with Cold Sniper, Corporate/Street Samurai (in Cyberpunk), Magical Rogue (in Fantasy), Sneaky Spy Species (in Fantasy or Space Opera), or Super-Soldier (usually in Military Science Fiction), depending on the work. If the Psychic Operative is some kind of rare, non-human creature, may overlap with Superbeing Soldier of Fortune. Aside from the standard-issue telekinesis and telepathy, they will often possess some combination of: Astral Projection, Charm Person, Combat Clairvoyance, Disposable Decoy Doppelgänger, Laser-Guided Amnesia, Mind Control (often with a side of Psychic-Assisted Suicide), Perception Filter, Psychic Link, Psychic Radar, and/or Stealthy Psychic Teleportation. Psychic Assassins might also have a psychic-energy version of Elemental Punch, and/or a version of Spontaneous Weapon Creation where they can conjure weapons made of psionic energy or telekinetic force. These weapons will typically be blades, claws, or some other weapon suited for assassins.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Basilisk: Kouga Gennosuke is ninja royalty with a special version of Hypnotic Eyes, where he can reverse an opponent's murderous intent back onto themselves and force them to commit suicide.
- Code Geass: In the second season, Rolo Lamperouge is a Geass-powered assassin serving the Britannian Empire. His unique Geass lets him paralyze everyone within a certain radius for a short time, allowing him to simply walk to his target, stab their vitals, and get away before everyone else's paralysis wears off.
- Cowboy Bebop: The Ax-Crazy Professional Killer Mad Pierrot (codename: Tongpu) uses his lab-trained Psychic Powers to create a force field and to levitate at will; his odd manner of floating enhances his aesthetic of a hauntingly deranged killer clown.
- Cyborg 009: In the Mutant Warriors arc of the 2001 series, the "Psychic Assassins" group are the antagonists. Their plan was to time-travel from the future to improve their timeline, but the evil Dr. Gamo Whisky wiped their memories and turned them into his personal assassin squad.
- Naruto: The Yamanaka ninja clan specializes in psychic jutsus, allowing them to read minds, temporarily control their opponents, and maintain Psychic Links between entire armies at once.
- Night Raid 1931: The protagonists of the series make up an elite team of Psi Spies, each with their own psychic specialization and tasked with protecting Japan's interests abroad.
- Sakamoto Days: Shin Asakura is the Psychic Assassin of the main team. Raised in a secret lab to refine his Psychic Powers, he later fell in with assassination work, which is how he came to know Sakamoto. As the story continues, Shin finds new ways to use his powers, becoming an even stronger fighter in the process.
- SPY×FAMILY: Downplayed with Anya Forger. She is a young girl who is able to read minds, having been subjected to experimentation by a secret organization within the government of Ostania (which is loosely modeled after East Germany and other Eastern Block countries). While not officially a spy, she loves spy cartoons and is aware of her spy adoptive dad's mission, and is trying to help him accomplish it. In her imagination, she sees herself as a spy as well.
Comic Books
- Age of Revelation: In the Bad Future created by Doug Ramsey, former would-be school shooter Quentin Quire has grown up to become an instructor who trains young telepaths on how to kill people with their powers.
- Casanova: The story follows Casanova Quinn, a thief and espionage professional with psychic powers, as he delves into the world of international spycraft.
- MIND MGMT: The series follows Meru, a true crime writer who ends up discovering an entire No Such Agency of Psi Spies, and is subsequently drawn into the world of espionage and psychic secrets.
- Rising Stars: Laurel Darkhaven was born with the power to manipulate small objects with her mind. The government quickly snatched her up and trained her to telepathically squeeze people's vital arteries, allowing her to become an undetectable assassin.
- X-Men: Betsy Braddock started out as only a psychic, but after her body swap with the assassin Kwannon, she became this trope. With a combination of ninja training, psychic powers, and her signature psychic blade, Psylocke is a deadly combination of martial arts and mental might. Betsy acted as the first Psylocke while puppeteering the comatose Kwannon's body, but in 2019, Betsy went back to her old body, while Kwannon inherited some of Betsy's psionic power and continued as Psylocke.
Films — Live-Action
- Scanners:
- After finding that an entire group of ConSec's psychic "Scanners" has gone rogue, company scientist Dr. Paul Ruth acquires an unknown Scanner by the name of Cameron Vale to find the Scanner movement and learn what he can. Vale's powers come in very handy as a secret agent, since he's not only able to learn classified information by scanning people in range, but even to psychically hack into computer systems with nothing more than a payphone.
- Daryl Revok, formerly a dysfunctional Scanner under the supervision of Dr. Ruth, is now a Super Supremacist organizing his own covert group of psychic agents... and he's not above handling his own assassination missions. In his first scene, he sabotages ConSec's big exhibition of Scanning by using his powers to burst the ConSec Scanner's head like a grape. Soon after, he eliminates ConSec's head of security via Psychic-Assisted Suicide so that he can be replaced by one of Revok's mundane henchmen; later, he uses mind control to direct a group of armed men to take out Kim Obrist's psychic commune.
Literature
- Agent of Vega: Strong psi abilities are a requirement to become a Zone Agent.
- Bitter Seeds:
- Played with. The Götterelektrongruppe are intended as a unit of psychic soldiers, each one with a different ability; however, a few have abilities that make them uniquely suited for use in assassination and espionage, from Heike's invisibility to Klaus' intangibility. However, these powers are frequently misapplied to Awesome, but Impractical ends by the Nazis; for example, the very sensitive job of eliminating a defector in public is given to the pyrokinetic Reinhardt — much to Klaus' irritation — resulting in an incident that only draws more attention from British intelligence.
- The Coldest War: Having captured Greta, Klaus, and the lion's share of Dr. Von Westarp's research at the end of WWII, the Soviet Union is able to develop their own psychic super-assassin. Worse still, improved battery designs allow their assassin longer use of his power and makes him immune to the EMPs that were once the bane of the Götterelektrongruppe. Worst of all, he exhibits multiple powers: intangibility, allowing him to infiltrate anywhere and kill by literally reaching into the hearts of his victims, and pyrokinesis, allowing him to destroy evidence in "accidental" fires — both of which are put to deadly use against the British warlocks.
- Evil Genius Trilogy: Invoked but ultimately subverted; the twins Jemima and Niobe (AKA Jem and Ni) possess a bond that extends into Twin Telepathy, allowing them to pull off multiple robberies before being recruited by the Axis Institute. It's hoped that they might be able to harness their powers for espionage or even assassination, but unfortunately, the sheer viciousness at Axis begins to wear at Jem and Ni, eventually shattering their bond after a Trauma Conga Line that turns them against each other; their part in the novel ends with Jem beating Ni into a coma with a computer monitor.
- Firestarter: Invoked and subverted; initially, the Shop considers Andy McGee the most dangerous of the two psychic fugitives because of his mental domination powers, and Cap Hollister even fantasizes about someone like Andy being planted in enemy governments to sabotage them from within, even using him to assassinate "pinko" US senators via Psychic-Assisted Suicide. However, when Andy's daughter Charlie incinerates an entire group of Shop operatives in the confrontation at the Manders' farm, the Shop's focus shifts towards harnessing her pyrokinesis as a weapon of mass destruction.
- Heralds of Valdemar: Mags, the main character of The Collegium Chronicles and The Herald Spy series, has an extremely powerful Gift of Mindspeaking, up to and including full control of anyone who isn't shielded — though he won't do that except in a very good cause. Combined with the training he gets from King's Own Herald Nikolas in spycraft, he is a fearsomely effective agent for the Crown.
- Lensman: Kimball Kinnison undertakes a number of undercover and infiltration missions in the series, using his superior "second stage" mind-reading, mind-control, and sense-of-perception abilities to obtain information and commit acts of sabotage.
- Necroscope:
- In the first book, Russia's E-Branch acquires Max Batu, a psychic with the power of the Evil Eye; essentially, he can induce heart attacks just by making eye contact and concentrating, making him an ideal assassin for targets who can't be eliminated in private. For good measure, when he's sent after the head of Britain's E-Branch, Sir Keenan Gormley, Batu is partnered with the necromancer Boris Dragosani so that Gormley's secrets can still be extracted post-mortem.
- One notable psychic ability is the power to detect other psychics. Britain's E-Branch commonly uses these "spotters" to covertly identify potential recruits. Russia's E-Branch does much the same thing, but it also uses spotters to capture or (if necessary) assassinate enemy psychics. In one memorable case, Viktor Shukshin was a Soviet spotter who was planted in England as a sleeper agent to be used against the British E-Branch. Unfortunately, Shukshin also possessed a psychotic compulsion to kill psychics — hence why he went off the rails and murdered Harry Keogh's mother.
- As a Necroscope, Harry Keogh's psychic power allows him instant communication with any dead soul within range and the ability to channel their knowledge, from fighting skills to priceless covert data. As such, Sir Keenan is very eager to acquire Harry as an agent, especially after he nearly throws him off the scent by channeling the charisma of a dead confidence trickster.
- In The New Minds by Dan Morgan, this trope is invoked but ultimately subverted: the British government has given its funding and supervision to a successful ongoing study of psychic phenomena in the hopes of profiting on them for use in espionage, most prominently the use of the Dobie twins as a means of transmitting information between each other without anyone being able to intercept it. Unfortunately, everything goes to hell when the powerful psychic Victor puts the twins in a coma before they can counter his rise to power, then begins brainwashing members of the program into minions and replacements for his defective birth body. In the finale, after the twins recover and force Victor to share control of a functional body, it's decided that the power being studied is too sensitive to be exploited, least of all for espionage. So, the twins and the project leaders dupe the government into believing that psychic phenomena cannot be weaponized, then disappear into obscurity.
- Sekret focuses on Yulia, a teenager in the USSR who is forcibly recruited into the government's covert Psi Spy program.
- Star Wars Legends:
- The Anzati are a vampire-like species that feed on the brains of other sentient species, usually by mesmerizing their victims with telepathic power before moving in for the kill. Combined with their impressive physical talents, and Anzati can often find work as assassins, most notably Dannik Jerriko of Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales from Jabba's Palace.
- The Shi'ido are primarily shapeshifters of incredible power, but they also possess psychic abilities that are mainly put to use in "correcting" any mistakes they might make while shapeshifting. However, older Shi'ido can use these same abilities to edit the memories of those around them, allowing them to slip in and out of a role completely unnoticed. As such, thanks to their reclusive natures, the few Shi'ido to have left their isolated homeworld have given the species a nasty reputation as spies, thieves, and assassins.
- Ubik: In the world of the future, psychic powers and Psi Spy agencies have become so commonplace that there are entire organizations that specialize in "anti-psychics", or personnel that have the ability to nullify psychic powers.
- In What Brings the Void by Will Murray, a remote viewer for the US government uses his abilities to look into areas of the United States where the Old Ones have taken over. Some areas are simply black, other areas he's forced out of. So his superior orders him to go look in person as he's the only one likely to survive doing so. He doesn't.
- The Witcher: Pretty much each and every polity in the saga that has secret services of any kind is employing psychics, clairvoyants, dropouts from magical colleges and what not — many of which are put both into espionage, but also their natural talent training (the Nilfgaard Empire even has a tiered license for those). So do various covert organisations, along with one of the merchant guilds. Even the conspirators under Skellen help themselves with Joanna "Kenna" Selborne, a minor point-of-view character who is hired to help locate Ciri, being a half-and-half mercenary and seer. This was later used both by the original tabletop, along with later video game series.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: The Psi Corps is supposed to be a regulatory body for human telepaths, but they also engage in numerous "off the book" ops such as espionage, assassinations, and implantation of sleeper personas. Especially as the Earth Alliance becomes increasingly fascistic under President Clark.
- Farscape: In mid-season 4, Commandant Grayza acquires the services of a telepathic alien known as a Skreeth, intending to use it in order to capture Crichton alive and assassinate his defenders. Alongside the ability to make itself invisible, the Skreeth can telepathically communicate over immense distances, though this requires Grayza to force the Skreeth's psychic receiver onto Captain Braca so it can speak through him. More alarmingly, it can also use its abilities to psychically interrogate its targets, allowing the Skreeth to easily track down Crichton once it begins ambushing and killing his friends.
- Firefly: Child Prodigy River Tam was the subject of years of experiments, to turn her into a living psychic weapon for covert operations and intelligence gathering. While the full extent of her psychic powers is unknown, they come in handy multiple times over the course of the show.
- Fringe:
- In "Bad Dreams", the Monster of the Week is a troubled psychic by the name of Nick Lane, who has the power to project emotions onto anyone around him, often to lethal extents. When Olivia finally catches up with him, Nick states that he was empowered and trained as a child to serve as a soldier in a future war, presumably using his powers as an assassin, and despite having received no orders since he was a kid, he continuously prepares as instructed by keeping fit and dressing in dull colours so he can blend in. Unfortunately, Nick is suffering from chronic depression, resulting in several people in his vicinity committing suicide as a result of his runaway emotions, to the point that an entire crowd joins him on the edge of a building when he finally tries to commit suicide.
- Fortunately, Agent Olivia Dunham turns out to have gone through the same experiments: she was actually buddied up with Nick as a child and has formed a Psychic Link with him, hence why she finds herself dreaming of the deaths that occur around him. With a little assistance from Walter, she's able enhance the visions to the point that she can spy on Lane's activities and finally track him down; thanks to her, Nick ends the episode alive, in custody, and receiving treatment.
- Stranger Things: Dr. Brenner's experiments were — on paper — intended to create a squad of psychics able to carry out espionage and assassinations via astral projection, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. Eleven is shown being used to spy on Soviet officials from a sensory deprivation tank before being sidetracked by sensing the Demogorgon.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The soulknife is a character class that comes and goes from edition to edition. In Edition 3.0, they were a Prestige Class that advanced pre-existing psionic powers and rogue abilities, also gaining the signature ability of a psionic "mind blade" which they could deliver their powers through. Edition 3.5 reworked them into a (significantly weaker) full class which eschewed all psionic abilities other than the mind blade, still having mundane stealth skills but their previous Back Stab being replaced by a Charged Attack which imbued their blade with a melee-range Psi Blast. They reappeared in 5th Edition as a subclass for Rogues, where they retained their mind blades and gained a diverse range of telepathic tricks.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition:
- Complete Adventurer: Shadowmind is a Prestige Class for psionic characters with some stealth training and access to the concealing amorpha power. It grants minor sneak attack, access to the read thoughts, cloud mind and mass cloud mind powers at greatly reduced PP cost, and finally the ability to deliver a cloud mind effect on a successful sneak attack.
- Complete Scoundrel: Psibond Agent is a Prestige Class with unusually easy class-based requirements (sneak attack as a 1st level rogue, and some form of psionic ability), its lv6+ level gate instead coming in the form of 8 ranks in the Gather Information skill and 4 ranks in Sense Motive. Their main ability to to establish a "Psibond" with another creature, allowing them to see through their senses, subtly influence their thoughts and perceptions, and with enough experience take direct control of their actions. Normally they must spend their turn concentrating each round to maintain the bond, though at high levels they can pause for a round or maintain two bonds at once.
- Complete Warrior: Mindspy is a Prestige Class which specialises in the detect thoughts spell (though intended less for spellcasters, and more for monsters who can produce the effect innately). Mindspies expand the Area of Effect of their detect thoughts from a cone to an omnidirectional effect, can maintain concentration on the spell while performing other actions, can retrieve information faster and from more targets at once,note and gain accuracy and evasion bonuses against foes whose minds they are in contact with.
- Races of Eberron: Atavist is a Prestige Class for kalashtar (see Eberron below) who tap deeper into the abilities of their quori spirit. This allows them to recall information more easily, use their racial mindlink power more often, boost the morale of mindlinked allies weaker than themselves, gain Kung-Fu Clairvoyance which is stronger in the presence of other kalashtar, project a Psychic Block Defense, and sense or dispel various forms of Demonic Possession. This is on top of advancing their existing Monk and/or Soulknife abilities, and gaining some minor bonuses which vary based on the personality of their quori spirit (different class skills + an increase to either speed, reach, morale or sensory abilities).
- Also Races of Eberron: Cabinet Trickster is a Prestige Class representing membership in "The Cabinet of Faces", a secret society of monstrous Doppelgangers and their Changeling descendants. Doppelgangers have a 3-level variant of the class which augments their detect thoughts ability to allow poking at a foe's thoughts to disrupt their actions. The standard 5-level version of the class aimed at Changelings also grants them the ability to cast detect thoughts a few times per day (eventually becoming at will) and improves their shapeshifting from merely a disguise to being able to replicate physical traits like Doppelgangers can (e.g. taking the form of a Winged Humanoid race allows them to fly).
- Eberron: The kalashtar are an inherently psionic race descended from a group of 67 not-Tibetan human monks who agreed to provide sanctuary for rogue quori from their evil kin by housing them within their own subconscious minds (this link was inherited by their descendants, but gradually dulled as each quori was shared between an increasing number of hosts). After a few centuries of peace, the evil quori learned how to reach the Material Plane through Demonic Possession, and many kalashtar became embroiled in a guerilla war against Riedra, a neighbouring nation that had fallen under the control of the quori-worshipping Path of Inspiration. Kalashtar favour classes like Monk, Psion and Soulknife, their most prominent traditional fighting styles resemble a dance, and they have the inherent ability to establish a temporary mindlink with another creature which is often used in a manner similar to Mission Control.
- Mage: The Awakening: The Subtle Ones are a Mastigos-descended Guardians of the Veil Legacy that specializes in the Mind Arcanum. They are secretive even for Guardians (which is saying something), seek to subtly manipulate society toward universal Awakening, and practice the way of the unseen assassin. To really drive the point home, they are also called "Ahl-i-Batin" (Arabic for "People of the Inner Truth") or simply "Batini
", and The Hashshashin are considered to be either their crowning achievement or their worst excess, depending on who you ask.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Inverted in the Culexus Assassins. They all have the Pariah gene, which makes them psychic nulls, meaning they are not only immune to psychic effects but also dampen and even prevent nearby psykers from using their powers around them. Naturally their specialization is in taking out Psykers.
- Sanctuses, the assassins of the Genestealer Cults, are latently psychic like most other Genestealers. In their case, this mostly manifests as the ability to sense the "psychic spoor" of their targets — that is, implicitly, they can perceive the "feel" of a particular mind, which they use to track down their targets.
Video Games
- City of Heroes: The top supervillain organization Arachnos has entire divisions dedicated to these, trained from psychic children collected over the years. The girls are trained as Night Widows (assassins and spies) and Fortunatas (seers), while the boys become Bane Spiders and serve as a hive-minded Praetorian Guard for Lord Recluse. The "Arachnos Widow" epic archetype starts off learning melee combat powers utilizing concealed blades, before specializing into either night widow or fortunata training to gain a selection of psychic abilities.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series: Psychically-capable operatives become a major feature of the series starting in its second installment.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2:
- One of the main antagonists of the game is Yuri, a powerful psychic who is the product of and current head of the Psychic Corps, one of Josef Stalin's forays into psychic research. He initially acts as Romanov's advisor before being revealed to have ambitions of his own. In-game, he acts as the Soviet Commando and he and his fellow Psi-Corps Troopers are able to Mind Control enemy units.
- In the expansion pack Yuri's Revenge, Yuri's ambitions are fully realized with him and the Psychic Corps becoming their own faction. His forces utilize a wide range of psychic weaponry ranging from pyrokinesis to loads and loads of Mind Control.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Despite the Continuity Reboot and Yuri and his faction being seemingly butterflied away as the result of Cherdenko erasing Einstein, psychic research has resurfaced in the Empire of the Rising Sun. Their commando Yuriko Omega is the product of their own psychic research program, being a dangerous psychic along the likes of Tetsuo Shima. Not to mention their Psychic Dominator superweapon is powered by six clones of her.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2:
- Diablo II: The Assassins from the Lord of Destruction expansion have shades of this trope, as some of their skills (like Psychic Hammer and Mental Blast) confirm that they possess some psychic ability.
- Killer7: Among the Killer7, both Harman and Garcian (in his former persona as Emir, following his absorption of Harman) have the ability to psychically absorb the souls and consciousnesses of other people, leading to the creation of the Killer7 in the first place.
- Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: The game introduces Sith Assassins as both an enemy in the service of Darth Sion and Darth Nihilus; in contrast to most Jedi and Sith, who prefer more openly impressive displays of the Force in combat, Sith Assassins use their powers to detect Force-sensitives, hunting them down like bloodhounds, and though many use cloaking devices, some are powerful enough to camouflage themselves with the Force. However, what makes them really dangerous is the fact that they can draw strength from their targets: the stronger their target is, the stronger they become — hence why they get more dangerous as the Exile levels up.
- Mass Effect 2: The drell assassin Thane Krios is very much the contract killer flavor, with some biotic skills (namely, telekinesis and warp blasts) to round out his assassin skillset.
- Mortal Kombat: Red-clad ninja Ermac is very much the Psychic Ninja variant of this trope, with telekinetic powers and Psychic Teleportation integrated into his fighting style.
- Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy:
- Jov Leonov was blinded in a childhood accident that left him with the power to control minds. Not long afterwards, he was taken in by the Soviet government and groomed to become a secret agent, since his abilities not only allowed him to "see" through the eyes of others, but also to covertly gather intelligence and enact assassinations through Psychic-Assisted Suicide. After the Cold War ended, however, he joined the Movement, where he used his powers for the Meat Puppet program.
- Sara Blake is telepathic and a veteran secret agent from the Mindgate Program, having infiltrated the Movement to look for her twin sister. She's Nick Scryer's partner throughout the game, and since Nick's a bit of a blunt instrument with powers more suited to straight-up combat, she's the one who actually does all the real intelligence gathering, using her telepathy to serve as Mission Control to Nick. Unfortunately, her sister Tanya is also a telepathic spy and working for the Movement.
- Wei Lu is a psychic Master of Illusion who was trained by the Chinese government to serve as a covert agent, using her powers for infiltration, brainwashing, and even assassination — since, as she points out, "delusion of the mind is still deadly to the soul." As with many psi-agents, she was enticed into joining the Movement, now using her powers to both shield the Movement's Hong Kong base from prying eyes and to psychically assault any intruders who make it into the building.
- Nicholas Wrightson is a master of remote viewing and mind control; back when he was working for Mindgate, he used his abilities to spy on events from great distances away regardless of enemy security. Unfortunately, Wrightson grew dangerously obsessed with his own powers and entered remote viewing permanently, to the point that he had to be hooked up to life support while his mind went on roaming. He joined the Movement as a psychic equivalent of The Spymaster, but eventually the General relegated him to working as security for the Movement's efforts to harness the power of the Monolith in the Himalayas — resulting in Wrightson making his own secret bid for godhood.
- Psychonauts: Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp is in fact a training facility for Psi Spies, masquerading as a children's summer camp. As a result, many of its faculty are actually Psi Spies or military personnel, and the main thrust of the game (at least, for the beginning) is honing Raz's powers to become a Psychonaut.
- Second Sight:
- During the backstory, Project Zener was commissioned by Josef Stalin in order to harness psychic powers for the Soviet Union, with a major priority being its use in espionage. However, though chief scientist Viktor Grienko was successful in finding several potential Psychic Children, unlocking their abilities, and even identifying which of them could be used for spying and/or assassination (most prominently the Invisible Introvert Nadja), the procedures that had been used to awaken their talents ultimately left the "Zener children" unable to physically mature, disfigured many more, and even killed a few. With so few survivors and most of them uncooperative, the Soviet government shelved the program, leaving Grienko and his staff with nothing to do but care for the Zener Children for the next few decades.
- Just prior to the events of the game, Grienko was able to make a deal with NSE Director Silas Hanson to restart the program in the United States. Unknown to Grienko, Hanson's ambitions were to simply take samples from the Zener Children and use gene therapy to imbue volunteers with their powers. During the present-day segments of the game, the early psi-agents are still flawed, with powers more broadly focused on combat... but in the penultimate level, it turns out that Hanson has actually been planning on replacing the Zener gene samples with ones taken from John Vattic. It turns out the entire present-day events of the game, including John's escape, were all part of Hanson's efforts to test the usefulness of his powers... and given that the most successful playthroughs feature Vattic progressing through the levels completely unseen thanks to the use of his Perception Filter powers and Astral Projection, he's proved that the next round of psychic agents should be engineered from his genes.
- Spiritual Assassin Taromaru: Taromaru is a psychic Ninja who journeys searching for a kidnapped princess, as he takes on evil ninjas, Yōkai, and all kinds of supernatural and spooky enemies.
- StarCraft:
- The Dark Templars of the Protoss are psionic assassins with a Ninja aesthetic; rather than draw their power from the Protoss communal mind link, they have trained themselves to use the Power of the Void instead.
- The Ghosts of the Terrans are psionically empowered covert agents, who also use a cloaking device to conceal themselves from enemy units.
- XCOM 2:
- Some aliens and ADVENT Troopers—most commonly the Sectoids, Priests, and Gatekeepers—have psychic abilities they can use to attack, shield themselves, attempt to mind-control enemies, and reanimate dead allies as zombies. It's eventually revealed that the Elders—aliens with godlike psychic powers at the cost of degrading their physical bodies—are harvesting the DNA of humans with psychic potential to create the Avatars, vessels that can contain their immense power without degrading.
- By unlocking and building the Psy Lab, XCOM can train Psi Operatives—soldiers who have psionic abilities resembling those of the Sectoids and Priests.
- The Warlock is one of the three Chosen—elite formerly human warriors who retain their individuality and personalities, to the chagrin of the Elders—and wields potent psionic abilities in combat.
Webcomics
- Star Power: The Psychological Operations division of galactic government is not psychic, but there's a Psi-Cop show that makes a pun out of it, and the only known representative of the branch reads his target well enough that she thinks he's telepathic.
- TwoKinds: The wolven siblings Zen and Natani had to join an assassination guild when they were children, and on one mission Natani was attacked by their target's black magic. It almost destroyed her mind and soul, and so, as a desperate measure, her brother Zen stitched her mind with his own, creating a life-long telepathic bond between the two assassins (as well as many of identity and gender issues for Natani). Way later in the story, after a long journey of self-discovery by Natani, the two were finally able to both sever the bond and leave life as hitmen behind (not that they were ever great at their jobs in the first place).
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Book 3 introduces Combustion Man, a mysterious fire bender with the ability to create explosions with his mind. Zuko hires him to quietly eliminate Aang and friends.