Cyclopean Creature

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A Cyclopean Creature -- better known just as a "cyclops" -- is a character or creature that naturally only has one eye.

Monocular vision is symbolic of metaphorical narrow vision and lack of depth perception. As such, many human villains have one eye as an indication of their simplistic worldview. This also provides an excuse for an Eyepatch of Power. Characters who lack perspective on a temporary basis might sport Peek-a-Bangs or some other occular obtrusion.

It should be noted that "cyclops" more accurately translates to "circle-eye" or "wheel-eye", referring to its size. Therefore Cyclopean technically means huge, rather than one-eyed (not to mention Cyclops themselves were giants).

For other deviations from normal eye structure, see Eyeless Face, Third Eye, Oculothorax, and Extra Eyes. Compare to the robotic version, the Cyber Cyclops, and Eyepatch of Power. For other uses of the term, see the disambiguation page.

Examples of Cyclopean Creature include:

Anime and Manga

• A lot of Japanese anime and manga feature Cute Monster Characters (usually girls), which are generally known as "monoeyes".
• Fullmetal Alchemist has the Doll Soldiers, which are one-eyed Zombie Mooks who look similar to EVAs.
  • Although his initial One-Winged Angel form is Extra Eyes / Eyes Do Not Belong There, Father takes on a cyclopean appearance right before crossing the Bishonen Line.
• Gold And Silver from Yaiba. In the latter case, it's also his weakpoint. (Gold's eye is just as bouncy as everything else).

Comic Books

• X-Men member Cyclops, so named because of the large visor spanning his head. Underneath the visor he's got two eyes, of course - but getting a look at them can be rather dangerous, however.
  • In the Age of Apocalypse timeline, he really did only have one eye, since Wolverine gouged out the other one.
• A couple appear as minor characters in Preacher. They're the kids of an isolated family living in the swamps of Louisiana, after generations of in-breeding.

Film

• Mike from Monsters, Inc. is a cyclopean Cephalothorax, and his girlfriend Celia is also one-eyed. The logo of the titular company also features a single eye.
• The Cyclops in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which looks like a giant one-eyed satyr with a horn on its head; it is defeated when Sinbad blinds it by shoves a fiery torch into its eyeball, then leads it off a nearby cliff. A second, two-horned one also appears, and follows Sinbad and the princess into a cave; Sinbad baits a dragon into fighting the Cyclops, and successfully make their escape while the dragon kills it.
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad had a one-eyed centaur.
• In the 2007 TMNT film, a one-eyed centaur is one of 13 immortal monsters released from a portal 3,000 years ago.
• The Cyclopes in The City of Lost Children are a group of religious zealots who are all blind, and see through the aid of Borg-like eyepieces called "Optacons" that they emphatically only wear over their left eye. Their temple is designed after the forges of the Cyclopes in Callimachus' hymns, and features huge open furnaces and mountains of coal.
• Krull has Rell, a cyclops that aids the protagonist Colwyn and his army.
• B.O.B. in Monsters vs. Aliens is a one-eyed Blob Monster.
• Many of the Minions in Despicable Me have only one eye.
• Disney's Hercules:
  • A giant fat Cyclops appears as one of the Titans, which Hades sent after Hercules while the rest of the Titans attacked the gods of Olympus; Villainous confirms his name to be Arges.
  • The three Fates share one eye between themselves as in the original tales, and one of them has a single orbit in her head.
• Agent Wendy Pleakley from Lilo and Stitch is a Plorgonarian, a race of tripedal one-eyed aliens.
• Bert I. Gordon films:
  • In The Cyclops, the titular monster is a man mutated into a 25-foot tall monster, with his left eye melted shut, as a result of massive and radioactive radium deposits.
  • Similarly, in War of the Colossal Beast the titular "beast" is former Army officer Glenn Manning, who was mutated into a scarred giant from the radiation of a plutonium bomb in a previous Gordon film, The Amazing Colossal Man. Manning is revealed to have survived the atomic bomb explosion at the end of that film, though at the cost of his right eye - unlike The Cyclops, his socket is visible and completely empty.
• In the Peter Jackson adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is represented as an enormous fiery eyeball. The Great Eye is also his symbol in the book, though he's implied to still have a physical body that presumably has two eyes.
• Shrek:
  • In Shrek 2, a cyclops serves as the bouncer of The Poisoned Apple.
  • In Shrek the Third, the same cyclops is a minor antagonist, aiding Prince Charming in his attempt to take over Far Far Away. He's not much of a villain though, and is in fact a devoted father who often brings his cyclops daughter to work.
• In Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, two Cyclopes are among the monsters that pursued Thalia Grace and her friends on their way to Camp Half-Blood seven years prior - one of them ends up nearly killing Thalia after she wounds the other in the leg. Another Cyclops, a young and friendly one named Tyson, is a son of Poseidon that attends the camp. Polyphemus also appears as the guardian of the Golden Fleece.
• In Cyclops Island, the ten-minute sequel to Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (also known as Sinbad and the Cyclops Island), Sinbad and his crew decide to spend their vacation on the tropical island of Krakatoa and end up fighting a tripe of Cyclopes.

Live-Action TV

• In Classic Doctor Who the ambassador from Alpha Centauri in the "Peladon" stories is from a Cyclopean species.

Music

• Long time fans of Dr. Demento will remember the song "Cyclops" by David Little, which received some airplay on his show in the 1980s.

Newspaper Comics

• Garfield meets a seeing eye dog in one strip.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

• The Trope Namers are the Cyclopes of Classical Mythology, of which there were two types:
  • One was a group of people-eating giants - the most famous of them is Polyphemous from The Odyssey.
  • The other was a group of giants that worked in Hephaestus' forges, and were responsible for creating Zeus's thunderbolts among other things; these Cyclopes feature somewhat prominently in the first three Hymns of Callimachus.
• Sinbad the Sailor encounters a man-eating giant during his third voyage, which Sir Richard Burton translates as a Cyclops (believing it to be Polyphemus specifically).
• Japanese folklore is full of one-eyed creatures, including the Hitotsume Nyuudo (one eyed monk), the Aobozu (Blue Monk) and the Ippondatara (a giant with one eye and one leg).

Tabletop Games

• The Cyclopean Ghoul in the Earthdawn supplement Scourge Unending.
• Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game) supplement Pursuit to Kadath, adventure "The All Seeing Eye of the Alskali". The title Alskali monsters, whose single eye can hypnotise their victims.
• Dungeons & Dragons has had a variety of cyclopes:
  • The 1st Edition Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia has a Greek-style Cyclops, while Monster Manual 2 from that same edition also features Cyclopskin.
  • Zigzagged with the beholder, who has one big eye on its face but ten smaller eyes on eyestalks.
• In Changeling: The Lost one of the Ogre kiths is the Cyclopean. They almost always have a missing eye and their mien makes it look like one central eye. They do come in other varieties though.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons, is also known as "the Red Cyclops" - his defining features are coppery red skin, being a giant and having just one eye. Magnus lost his right eye in a bargain to save his Legion from mutation, with a being whom he would later discover to be Tzeentch; the mutations did go into remission, albeit temporarily. After the Burning of Prospero, Magnus gave in to Chaos, becoming a Demon Prince of Tzeentch.
    • Older material describes the pre-daemonic Magnus as resembling the mythological Cyclops, as does his Epic miniature; later editions established the above lore, which is a parallel to that of Odin from Norse Mythology.
    • In Horus Heresy novel Betrayer by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Lorgar remarks that the truth is kept deliberately skewed; Magnus himself seems to prefer the version where he lost his eye to gain ultimate knowledge.
• The Yu-Gi-Oh! card game has many an instance:
  • "Hitotsu-Me Giant" (or simply "Cyclops" in the OCG) is an EARTH Beast-Warrior and one of the earliest examples. A very similar-looking monster named "Cybernetic Cyclopean" is a Cyborg example and possibly a counterpart, as they share a Type and Attribute.
  • "Opticlops" (OCG "Red Cyclops") is a DARK Fiend-type example.
  • "Cameraclops" is a LIGHT Warrior-type with a camera lens as its "eye" - it helps that their entire head is a camera.
  • "Sengenjin" is another EARTH Beast-Warrior type, and in some video games appears as a Ritual Monster that explicitly uses "Hitotsu-Me Giant" as a base.
  • "Serpent Marauder" and "Flame Viper" are cyclopean snakes (and no, not that kind).
  • "Diceclops" is a FIRE Machine-type that uses the "one" side of its die-like head as its face.
  • "Granel" is one of the three Meklord Emperors, and has a single red eye.

Theatre

• Cyclops by Euripides tells the story of the aforementioned Polyphemus from The Odyssey.

Video Games

• Ogre magi in the Warcraft universe have two heads, one with two eyes and another with one eye. Cyclopean ogres of the single-headed variety also exist in the Warcraft Expanded Universe. The latter category rarely appear in WoW (although ogre magi are common enough), but WoW did introduce their kin the gronn, who bear a resemblance to the cyclopes from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
• God of War, being based on Greek Mythology, has these as recurring enemies in a few varieties. A common method of finishing them off is to rip their eyes out, which you can trade in for goodies.
• Several Pokémon including Magnemite, Unown, Beldum, Dusclops, Dusknoir, and Sigilyph.
• Massmouth, from the Doom Game Mod series The Adventures of MassMouth. (He was originally a Quake II skin.) He also appears as a bot in Skulltag, a source port focused on multiplayer, where one of his lines is a complaint about his lack of peripheral vision.
• Many enemies in The Legend of Zelda, including Tektites, Diababa, and most famously, Gohma.
• The Cyclops in Castle Crashers, whom you must defeat to rescue the Green Princess. He is revived by The Necromancer as part of the final Boss Rush.
• Cyclops appear as Myth Units in Age of Mythology if you progress to Classical Age with Ares. Another Cyclops, Gargarensis, is the main antagonist
• Cyclopes in Rift seem to be denizens of the Plane of Earth. They're built along the same large and solid lines as bahmi (although they tend to be even taller), but have ivory-yellow skin, vaguely bestial features, and the definitive single, centrally-positioned eye.
• Polyphemus the Cyclops from the Odyssey appears as a boss in Titan Quest. You also meet some other cyclops while ascending Mount Olympus.
• A Cyclops (which is heavly based on the one from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) appears as the first boss in Will Rock, capable of hitting you from far away by spitting stones at you. It becomes a Degraded Boss soon enough.
• The boss enemy Gorpus from Musashi: Samurai Legend is a gigantic scorpion with a single huge eye hidden under his helmet.
• In the NES game Day Dreamin' Davey, there is a Cyclops that Davey has to destroy by attacking his eye in one Greek mythology stage. Of course, that "Cyclops" in his imagined state turns out to be a girl whom he just hit in the eye in class! Oh Crap!
• The Inkies and their leader in De Blob have one eye, which also functions as a mouth, or at least it flexes when they talk.
• In the Xena: Warrior Princess game for the PlayStation, a cyclops guards King Valarian's island stronghold in the Isle of Kronos stage. He tosses rocks at Xena from afar before climbing up to confront her at the top of a cliff. In a Shout-Out to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, he has one horn on his forehead and if the player uses the "chakram-cam" feature it can be seen he has satyr-like legs similar to Harryhausen's cyclopes.
• Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu: Nyudo Monster, the fourth stage boss.
• Space Harrier had one-eyed woolly mammoths.
• Fleepa, Optomon and the Final Boss in The Guardian Legend.

Web Comics

• The Beast Legion has Gorgorath
• Gastrophobia has a goblin magically transform into a biclops. "Exactly like a cyclops, only with twice as many eyes and therefore twice as dangerous."
• Order of the Stick, when one character asks what a superhero would be doing on a deserted island, Elan mentions that it's been known to happen, leading to an Imagine Spot of Odysseus and his crew meeting that other Cyclops.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob has the annually-appearing Halloween Monster.

Western Animation

• Leela of Futurama, who initially was presented as a member of an unknown alien race, but turned out to be a human mutant.
• Saffi, Cerbee, and Dorkus on Jimmy Two-Shoes.
• ChalkZone: Biclops ononly had one eye before Rudy drew him his second one.
• Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween Specials.
• Iris from Ruby Gloom.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • The Monster of the Week roster includes a few one-eyed creatures.
  • In "Schoolhouse Rocked", Billy from the Gangreen Gang is revealed to be a cyclops under his Blinding Bangs.
• Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants.
• Cherri Bomb and Niffty from Hazbin Hotel are one-eyed demon-girls.

Real Life

• Cy, the internet-famous one-eyed noseless kitten, who was born December 2009 and died a day later.
• A cyclops goat was born in Nigeria. It caused quite a stir - they even accused the owner of an act of bestiality.
• A one-eyed piglet with a severely deformed nose was also in China in 2005.