Not just anyone can play water polo and murderball in the same day.
Mermaids, like most aquatic creatures, are more mobile and graceful when in their own element. On land, if they can't grow legs, their choices are either to drag themselves around or use a wheelchair.
If they have to disguise their nature for whatever reason, merfolk can hide their tails under a blanket.
Mermaids can be an outright metaphor for or commentary on disability,note perhaps implying that someone who seems disabled/hindered in a conventional environment might flourish under the right conditions. But just as often the work doesn't explore that and merely uses the wheelchair as a prop for the character to be able to move around on land.
Compare Bathtub Mermaid for a less mobile example of mermaids on land, and Mobile Fishbowl for another way for aquatic species to move around. For other creatures with fantastic anatomies varying uses of human furniture, see Human Furniture Is a Pain in the Tail. Contrast Tailfin Walking.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Di Gi Charat Nyo!: When Aqua the mermaid moves in to the protagonists' town, she uses a skateboard to move around land.
- Fairy Navigator Runa has Shizuku, a mermaid with water powers, use a wheelchair to get around on land.
- Im Not A Succubus: One of the teachers at the school for Monster Girls is a mermaid, who sits in a wheelchair as she gives a class.
- Monster Musume: Mero the mermaid uses a wheelchair to travel around, although she sometimes has trouble controlling it, as seen in her first appearance.
- Mysterious Disappearances: The mermaid-themed Virtual YouTuber Yorumun is revealed to be a full-time wheelchair user in real life, with her character being designed without legs so that she could live out her dream of being an Idol Singer while having an excuse for not doing mo-capped dances at concerts.
Comic Books
- Amazing Adventures (1961): An early issue has an elderly couple (named May and Ben, and looking very much like the better known Amazing Fantasy characters by those names) who live by the sea with their niece, who is a full-time wheelchair user. The couple talk about how she'd leave them and return home one day. The story ends with the couple waking to find the tracks from her wheelchair leading to the ocean. They find the wheelchair overturned at the water's edge. The last panel showed the niece is actually a mermaid, swimming away from shore.
- Aquaman: One cover from Erik Larsen's run shows the Landlovers somewhere on the surface world. Among them, the mermaid Sheeva uses headphones as well as a wheelchair.
- Meat Cake: Effluvia the mermaid travels usually about on land with a wheelchair.
- Superman: The Girl in Superman's Past! introduces Superman's college ex, Lori Lemaris, a mermaid who lives on land by using a wheelchair and keeping her tail covered. Eventually she is magically given the power to turn into a human (any contact with water changes her back, though.)
Fan Works
- Dragon Ball: Superman: Due to being part-Atlantean, Ariel was born with a fish's tail instead of legs, making her use a wheelchair while on land. Bruce makes things easier for her by giving her a hoverchair to offer her much greater mobility outside of water. Clark also lends her his Nimbus to let her get around much more quickly, particularly when she's going to visit her father.
- A Fistful of omake
(by metroanime): Chapter 29, "The Tendo Bunch", revolves around Soun Tendo having adopted twenty-two daughters from across the multiverse after his wife left him and took their three birth daughters. One of them is Ariel, who's still in her mermaid form and, though she spends most of her time in the expanded koi pond or other water, has to use a wheelchair to get around on land.
- Gensokyo, Tokyo: Chapter 39 fully confirms Wakasagihime to be a mermaid in the story's setting, and she uses a wheelchair to get around.
- Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay: When Tiobald the merman enrolls at Hogwarts, he uses a magical wheelchair to travel around. It can even climb stairs by itself. He still needs an interpreter, though. Notably, having non-human students is normal enough by then that the news of a wheelchair-using student spreads faster than the news of a merfolk student.
- Resonance Days: Oktavia, a mermaid-like Witch, usually uses a wheelchair on land and has to be wheeled around by the other characters. The rest of the time, she's being carried around.
Films — Live-Action
- in the 1948 English film Miranda the titular character is a mermaid using a wheelchair with a blanket covering her tail. Played by Glynnis Johns Mrs. Banks from Disney's Mary Poppins.
- In the ABC Family Made-for-TV Movie Princess, Ithaca, the titular princess, sometimes receives mythological creatures in her castle. In order to maintain the Masquerade, in front of the castle's visitors, a mermaid uses a wheelchair, her tail hidden under a blanket.
- A recurring background character who uses a wheelchair who appears in all three of the Descendants films is popularly speculated by the fandom to be the daughter of Ariel, given that she attends Auradon Prep and is usually wearing the same colours worn by Ariel and Melody from the animated films.
Literature
- Aquamarine: Human girls Claire and Hailey borrow a wheelchair from Claire's grandfather so Aquamarine can leave the pool and go on a date with human boy Raymond. Notably, this was absent from the adaptation, where she could grow legs.
- The Laundry Files: Ramona Random spends a book or two slowly transforming to her natural state, needing a wheelchair to move around on firm ground.
- October Daye: Dianda Lorden, like most merrows, can transform her tail into legs, but that doesn't mean she wants to. When she meets Toby privately for the first time, she's using a wheelchair with no human disguise.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians has a variant of this happen in regards to Mr. Brunner. While not a mermaid, he uses a magic wheelchair to hide his centaur legs.
- River of Dancing Gods: After one of the characters gets body-swapped with a mermaid, she gets the ability to transform into a human when she's dry (because the wizard who transformed her had recently seen Splash). However, her human legs are extremely weak so she needs a wheelchair to get around.
- Rubber Girl: Selina Gill uses a wheelchair for her on-land dates with her human boyfriend, Arthur Fisher. Katie Elaz and Robert Patrix go on a double date with Selina and Arthur at the restaurant McDaffy's. Her wheelchair has a bucket and water tubes so that her gills can stay wet.
- Well World: On land, the mermaid-like Umiau move using electric wheelchairs unless they wish to crawl about.
- Whateley Universe: the minor character Sylene, who has the appearance of a classic mermaid, is noted as using a wheelchair in her relatively rare appearances. She can be contrasted with Grabby, whose tentacles are sufficiently strong to allow her to traverse on land; Ricou, who has a human torso and legs but a fish-like head, requiring him to wear a breather when on land; Mezzo, who is able to shapeshift to various non-human forms aside from a mermaid (most often a centaur) but can only hold her original form for short periods; and Fubar, who can't leave his water tank at all.
- Xanadu (Storyverse): Most of the people transformed into mer by the Change are permanently stuck in their forms. As such, they mostly use wheelchairs to get around on land.
Live-Action TV
- H₂O: Just Add Water: Emma's first moonspell renders her unable/unwilling to change back to human form, which means the others have to hide her from her extended family. Lewis manages to get ahold of Emma's grandmother's wheelchair, while Cleo and Rikki cover her with a jacket and blanket, and they wheel her into her room.
- Round the Twist: In the final scene of "Nails", Andrew is now using a wheelchair as his father takes him to the harbor, at which point he jumps into the water, revealing his Slow Transformation made him a merman.
- Invoked in Season 10 of RuPaul's Drag Race. For one of the runways, the queens were tasked with dressing as mermaids in wheelchairs (wheeled onstage by one of the Pit Crew members), as an homage to Bette Midler mentioned below.
Manhua
- Old Master Q: In one strip, Master Q sends a mermaid in labor to the hospital in a wheelchair.
Music
- Bette Midler, in her 1978 world tour, introduced the character Delores De Lago, the "Toast of Chicago," a mermaid who would come out onstage in an electric wheelchair (though she didn't always stay in it).
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder: Merfolk are a playable ancestry, but for any land-based adventuring, it's recommended they use a "supramarine chair", which is essentially an upright bathtub on wheels that combines this trope with Mobile Fishbowl.
Toys
- Monster High: Finnegan Wake is a merman who attends the land-based Monster High by using a wheelchair, but he is meant to have a genuine motor disability in his tail, saying it "never worked" in his diary.
Video Games
- Pixel Cat's End: The tutorial for mercats states that they often use wheelchairs to get around on land.
- Tattered World: It has balloons rather than wheels, but Calypso is a merfolk and uses a balloon-festooned chair to get around.
Webcomics
- This comic by Lee Ostertag has a selkie using a wheelchair to find her human lover on land.
- Bubbly Parfait: Bunny girl Casey helps Juliette the mermaid out of a bathtub and into her wheelchair.
- Electric Wonderland: Lululu Lopez plays with this, as a mermaid often seen in a different type of wheeled object (such as a shopping cart or a wheelbarrow) instead. She does receive a wheelchair from the government in "Friends of Lululu", only for someone to steal it from her. She then steals someone else's wheelchair, but loses it during a Chase Scene.
- Pet Foolery: A normal-looking young woman approaches a werewolf who's holding a Monsters Anonymous meeting. She claims that she's the daughter of a mermaid/minotaur romance who got the human half of both. After the werewolf chews her out for mocking their problems, she tells him she's just here to drop off her brother. Cut to a bull-man with a fish tail, using a wheelchair-like contraption and looking unhappy at the werewolf bothering his sister.
- Tinder Skitty: Primarina, a Pokémon with a mermaid motif, is presented using a wheelchair whenever he appears.
Western Animation
- American Dragon: Jake Long: One mermaid goes undercover at Jake's school for several months as his principal, using a wheelchair. Justified by the fact that she doesn't know how to use her legs in her human disguise.
- Disenchantment: Mora uses a steampunk wheelchair, a pedicab, and even a baby carriage to get around in Steamland.
- Supernatural Academy: Opal, one of the students at the titular academy, is a mermaid who uses a wheelchair on land, though she prefers being in the water.
- In Wishfart, Dez's love interest is Tsuni, laidback mermaid who rides around on land on a skateboard.