Cyclopean Creature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Revision as of 18:17, 29 November 2021 by Umbire the Phantom (talk | contribs) (Small example quality pass before I start on the larger one...)

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

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.
  • 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 one-eyed Cephalothorax, and his girlfriend Celia fits also the bill. The logo of the titular company also features a single eye.
  • The Cyclops in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which looked like a giant one-eyed satyr with a horn on its head. A second, two-horned one also appears in the film.
  • The Golden Voyage of Sinbad had a one-eyed centaur.
  • 2007's TMNT also has a one-eyed centaur.
  • 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 one eye (their left). Their temple which features huge open furnaces and mountains of coal is also a reference to the cyclopes in Callimachus' hymn in Greek Mythology where they were blacksmiths who assisted Hephaestus.
  • Rell in Krull.
  • B.O.B. in Monsters vs. Aliens.
  • Many of the minions in Despicable Me.
  • There is a giant cyclops in |Hercules as one of the Titans. The series also included smaller cyclopes. The Fates from the same movie also shared one eye between the three of them, with one even having only one eye socket in the middle of her face.
  • Agent Wendy Pleakley from Lilo and Stitch.
  • The Bert I. Gordon film The Cyclops, although there, the titular beast is a normal (albeit giant) man who is just missing his left eye due to half his face having melted off (similar to Gordon's War of the Colossal Beast).
    • The scarred, one-eyed Glenn Manning in that film also probably counts.
  • In The Lord of the Rings adaptations, 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.
  • A Cyclops appears on the Shrek movies as the bouncer on The Poisoned Apple.

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

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.
  • Sinbad the Sailor has met a Cyclops in the Polyphemous mold before.
  • 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 cyclops:
    • Greek Mythology version in the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia
    • Cyclopskin (cyclops kin) in the 1E Monster Manual 2.
    • Zigzagged with a 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.
  • In Warhammer 40,000 the Primarch of the Thousand Sons was Magnus the Red, whose defining features were coppery red skin, being a giant and having just one eye. However, it is no longer known for certain wether he was a Cyclops, had only one orbit or simply lacked one eye. However, now that he is a Demon Prince of Tzeentch, it is probably quite hard to say if this still applies or if it is something special.

Theatre

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

Video Games

Web Comics

Western Animation


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.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Cyclopean_Creature?oldid=1942968"