Extra Eyes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The googly eyes! They do nothing!

At the same time, the thrones are big many-eyed orb-like things. That have flashy lights. So God rides a chariot made entirely out of multi-eyed flashing orb creatures that are actually angels. I can't help but feel that God would totally win a low-rider contest.

—The Book of Ratings, "Angelic Orders, Part I"

Most people only have two eyes. This is generally considered a good thing—it's part of bilateral symmetry, those elements of nature that make sure you only have two arms and two legs. However, if somebody has three or more eyes, well... you want to avoid those people. Sometimes they're harmless but freaky, other times they're actively evil, and occasionally they represent spiritual enlightenment. Sometimes opening a "third eye" shows a level of Psychic Powers, but sometimes a creature will have many eyes so it can freak you the fuck out.

Having some Extra Eyes can become Nightmare Fuel if done right or Nightmare Retardant is done with Special Effects Failure (although if done wrong, it can still be freaky).

Contrast Eyeless Face, where it's the lack of eyes that's freaky, or Cyclopean Creature, for a creature with a single eye. A Sister Trope to Eyes Do Not Belong There, as the extra eyes have to go somewhere, and not always the usual places. Supertrope to Third Eye.

Examples of Extra Eyes include:

Anime and Manga

  • Lilith in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
    • Also Unit-02, which has four eyes.
  • Hiei of Yu Yu Hakusho, especially in his demon form, which has eyes sprouting all over his body.
  • Tenshinhan from Dragonball Z has three eyes.
    • A more alien example would be Guldo of the Ginyu Force.
  • Garyu of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, who has four eyes. Also, Sein, who has a third eye built into her right index finger, so that she can see where she is going when she passes through solid objects.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has a monster called Thousand-Eyes Restrict. It has, well, a thousand eyes, each of which has tremendous hypnotizing potential. Yami must blind all of them simultaneously if he's to have any chance of winning. And he does, of course. By using a combination of Kuriboh and the Magic Card Multiply. Who says that little fluff ball's useless?
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has a good example of it with Yubel which is justified by her being a (In Japan hermaphroditic) demon at the time. In the flashback when she was human she had 2 eyes.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's also has the Hundred Eye Dragon, which is easy enough to describe.
    • Infernity Death Dragon also has a ludicrous number of eyes, but at least they're all on its head.
  • In Hellsing, Alucard's Hell Hound familiar/transformation is basically an amorphous dog-like mass of eyes and shadows. Alucard himself also has a number of eyes that appear on his body sometimes when he is released.
  • The long running Manga series 3×3 Eyes revolves around this trope.
  • The final forms that Aizen took as the Hougyouku ascended him in Bleach had lots of eyes.
  • In the manga of Fullmetal Alchemist, Envy's true form has extra everything, but the creepiest are the many, many eyes which can be found, among other places, on his tongue and gums, and in the corners of his eyes, like frogs' eggs.
    • Also Pride and Father's true forms...
  • Kishin Asura the Big Bad of Soul Eater, has black hair patterned with white to look like eyes, has a third eye on his forehead, and HAS ANOTHER PAIR OF EYES WHERE HIS PUPILS SHOULD BE!
    • He also has eye markings on the back of his hands, and on the skin scarves that cover his head sometimes.
  • Wisely from D.Gray-man has five eyes; the three on his forehead can read minds.
  • Zommari Le Roux, Espada #7 of Bleach fame, has many extra eyes in his power-up form. Initially, it's stated(by his opponent) that he only has fifty, but after guarding against the attack said opponent was using on him, he reveals a couple more eyes hidden in slits in his forehead.
  • MAR's Chimera has multiple eyes hidden under her Peek-a-Bangs.
  • Some aliens in Space Adventure Cobra are four-eyed humanoids. Most notably Dan Brad in the "Rugball" story arc, the captain of the rival team. He proves to be a Worthy Opponent in the end.
  • In Hare+Guu, Guu sports these once or twice.
  • In Digimon Tamers, all of the Digimon Gods/Sovereigns have four eyes. Xuanwumon/Ebonwumon pulls this off by having two heads. There's also Beelzebumon from that season (and from Xros Wars), who has three eyes. Digimon Frontier introduces us to Duskmon, the corrupted Human Spirit of Darkness, who has nine eyes (only two are on his face), and Sefirotmon/Sakkakumon, who is basically made of eyes.


Comic Books

  • Eye-ful Ethel, an Earth native rejected from the Legion of Super-Heroes.
  • The demon lord Trigon of DC Comics fame and many of his servants sport an extra pair of eyes.


Films -- Animation

  • Gallaxhar, the Big Bad in Monsters vs. Aliens has four eyes. By contrast, all of the monsters (save the one-eyed B.O.B.) have the usual two.
  • Many of the monsters in Monsters, Inc.. have multiple eyes. One even has extra eyes applied before going to work.
  • Jumba from Lilo and Stitch also has four eyes.
  • The Green Death from How to Train Your Dragon has six eyes, three on each side.
  • Cobra Commander in GI Joe: The Movie (the animated one). Oddly enough, as he was turning into a snake ("I wassss oncccce a man!"), his extra eyes gradually disappeared, and when he was restored to a humanoid state in the DiC-produced "Operation: Dragonfire", he retained only his original two eyes.
  • Captain Flint in the Treasure Planet prologue has six eyes.


Films -- Live Action

  • Taking a cue from The Bible, the Angel of Death from Hellboy II: The Golden Army, had multiple eyes in his wings... and none on his face.
    • The Angel is a "she", by the way.
    • Sammael in the first Hellboy film has three eyes on his face, one on the left side and two on the right.
  • Nearly all of the native Pandoran animals in Avatar have four eyes.
  • In Beetlejuice, the Maitlands try altering their features to scare the new tenants away - Adam stretches his face out by the nose, plunks two fingers into his eye sockets, and ends up with an eyeball on the tip of all five fingers.


Literature

  • Triclops and Trioculus (the so-called "Emperor's son") from the Star Wars: Jedi Prince series.
  • Discworld: Blind Io doesn't have any eyes on his face, but rather they float around him and he can send them out to spy on anyone he likes.
    • Being inspired by Odin, Blind Io was also originally accompanied by a pair of ravens... but he had to get rid of them because they occasionally snacked on his floating eyes.
    • Twoflower was accidentally portrayed as having four eyes on the cover of The Colour of Magic when artist Josh Kirby took the book's description of Twoflower's glasses a bit too literally.
  • In the Animorphs series, Andalites have four eyes—two in the regular spot on their faces, and two eye stalks that can rotate around for 360-degree vision.
  • Several examples from the Cthulhu Mythos:
    • The barrel-shaped Elder Things in the story At the Mountains of Madness has 5 eyes on stalks.
    • Yog-Sothoth is sometimes depicted as having many eyes on stalks.
      • When depicted at all, he's normally described as a cluster of iridescent globes akin to soap-bubbles, except several miles wide. His half-human sons did have several, though—Wilbur had two extra on his pelvis, and the other one had lots and lots in all sorts of odd places.
      • Don't call me soap! *ZAP!*
  • Nigauble of the Seven Eyes had seven (okay, sometimes only six) glowing eyes.
  • Chun the Unavoidable from The Dying Earth.
  • In Keith Laumer's Retief stories, the somewhat insectile Groaci have five eyes on stalks. Retief once whistled in admiration at the dexterity with which two Groaci each looked in several directions at once.
  • This troper once read a short story where a young woman is going to a remote party with her boyfriend while listening to him retelling his dream of three-eyed Human Aliens. She finally gets fed up and offers to show him something interesting and lifts up her long hair, revealing a third eye.
  • The Elabrej from Star Trek: Klingon Empire have eyes all over. Actually, given their initial confusion regarding the Klingon eye, it's more like they're covered with light-sensing organs that are equivalent to eyes.


Live-Action TV

  • The Dick Van Dyke Show: "It May Look Like A Walnut," they do a science fiction episode as All Just a Dream where people live on walnuts and water (which they call "air") and grow eyes in the back of their heads after watching a scary movie.
    • The Other Wiki's description of it is awesome: "Under the influence of science fiction, Rob fears that a walnut will steal his imagination and his thumbs. Danny Thomas guest-stars." Somebody must have been tripping.
  • The Twilight Zone TOS episode "Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up". At the end, one of the characters proves that he's an alien by taking off his cap and revealing the third eye in the middle of his forehead.
  • Noranti in Farscape. Also, the mantis-like green alien from the same show (was it called a Hanji?) which had multiple removable eyes with special properties. Farscape I am sure has more examples of this than God.
  • One of the critters on a Discovery Channel program about hypothetical alien lifeforms had four eyes: one pair for vision on the always-dark side of its planet, the other pair for use on its ever-lit side. The creature was a predator that hunted along the equator, from a planet where one pole points directly at its sun.
  • The original Battlestar Galactica has a four-eyed singer on one planet, using really Nightmare Fuel special effects.
  • Shuten/Retinax of Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger/Power Rangers Wild Force, has eyes all over his body.


Music

  • A great deal of Tool's music videos are a fan of this.


Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

  • This trope is Older Than Feudalism with Argos Panoptes, or Argos Many-eyes, a giant in Greek mythology who had four eyes (or two faces) in early versions of his myth, and 100 eyes all over his body in later stories.
  • Descriptions of angels in The Bible portray them as having multiple eyes, wings, and heads (and many combinations thereof). Since most of these are in the symbol-heavy apocalyptic genre, they are probably not meant to be taken literally.
    • In particular, the Ofanim (a type of angel also known as "The Wheels") are described as literally covered in eyes:

As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. ... Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

—Ezekiel 1:15-16,18

Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Beholders. One large central eye, and ten smaller ones on eyestalks. With a busload of subspecies and related creatures, even more in the Spelljammer setting. And in most it's far from a decorative feature.
    • Also, the Gibbering Mouther, a monster that's essentially a gelatinous mass covered with eyes and mouths.
      • It was also the form of Moander, god of decay. Except it was a pile of rotting stuff swarming with stalks-tentacles ending with eyes, mouths and whole bodies it absorbed. Double Yuk.
    • The Umber Hulk monster has four eyes, two of which can cause confusion in an observer.
      • 1st Edition Monster Manual artwork actually played this off well, portraying the creature in such a way that the viewer's attention repeatedly moves from its insectile outer pair of eyes to its human-like inner pair, switching back and forth in a vain attempt to "meet its gaze". Confusion, indeed, much like an optical illusion.
    • The Book of Vile Darkness contains a spell that blocks a corridor by summoning a shifting wall of eyeballs. Not only is it hard to get through but anyone who gets too close will be sucked in and turned liquid, his eyes added to the wall.
    • In the setting on which this troper has been at work for some time, the "Stouts" have three eyes.
  • Providing further evidence that there's a Warhammer 40,000 entry in everything, there's Givrillian in Soul Drinker, who grows a number of extra eyes from a facial scar.
    • All Mutants in Warhammer 40,000 have potential to grow eyes or lose eyes, especially Chaos Spawn.
      • Of particular note are the Navis Nobilite, who are a sanctioned noble caste of stable mutants whose forehead-mounted third eye allows them to see, understand and navigate (well duh) the Warp. Its other properties are unclear, but it's been stated by at least one author that looking into it will send normal men mad.
  • Seraphim and their Evil Counterparts Balseraphs, from the table-top RPG In Nomine appear as six-eyed winged serpents in their true forms.


Toys

  • Bionicle, for all its crazy-looking characters, doesn't have many examples to offer. There is Kalmah, the squid-inspired Barraki warlord, who has a third eye on his forehead. Though he can't use it, as Pridak blinded it.


Video Games

  • The Spore tools lend themselves so well to this that almost any depiction of creatures for a Cosmetic Award will have three eyes.
  • The Vortigaunts from the Half-Life series have one big eye and five smaller ones.
  • Opera and Ernest in Star Ocean the Second Story both have three eyes, though the third eye isn't all that noticeable. Both are quite nice people and come from a planet, Tetragenes, where everyone has three eyes.
  • The Pfhor in the Marathon series have three eyes.
  • Wizeman from the NiGHTS Into Dreams series has six eyes, one on each floating hand.
  • Sadler. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
  • Batarians from Mass Effect have four eyes; one pair of two above the other. Protheans/Collectors also have four eyes, but they have two eyes on each side of their head, forming a vertical line of four.
    • The yahg, a pre-spaceflight race of apex predators from the planet Parnack, have eight.
    • The Prothean eyes appear to be able to move independently of one another.
    • In the Batarian case, they have a hard time reading facial expressions on the two-eyed faces of most species, as they're used to reading four eyes.
  • In Subterranean Animism, three of the characters have a third eye on their chest. Two of them (Satori and Koishi Komeiji) have psychic powers because of it. Satori plays the trope straight, as her eye is open and allows her to read thoughts. Koishi subverts it, as her third eye is permanently CLOSED, but this in turn allows her to manipulate people's subconscious. The third one, Utsuho Reiuji, has a massive eye à la Sauron in her chest, but it seems to be either decorative or a reactor. Also, Yukari Yakumo can open dimensional warps which are typically full of eyes.
  • In The Guardian Legend, the late-game bosses Eyegore and Grimgrin are floating, pulsating masses of flesh and eyes. Also, the bosses of Corridors 17 and 7 are clusters of 4 large and 8 small eyes that shoot eyeballs at you.
  • Most of the Chimeran creatures from the Resistance games have extra eyes. The Hybrids, for example, have six.

"Remember; two eyes goods, six eyes bad!"

  • Octeyes, the second boss of Altered Beast, is almost nothing but eyes, and it can launch masses of them at its enemies as projectiles.
  • Subverted with Q-Bee in the Darkstalkers series. The two eyes on top of her head are in fact her only eyes. The ones in the "normal" place on her face are fakes. That's why she always has her head bowed.
  • Boobus Tuber, an enemy in Commander Keen, has multiple eyes. This is fitting, since he's a potato.
  • City of Heroes has a Third Eye option for faces, as well as one option with what appears to be four alien eyes on each side of the face.
  • In World of Warcraft, C'Thun is an Old God who is primarily eye-themed.
  • To continue the DC Comics connection from above, DC Universe Online also has Trigon and his minions. The Teen Titans each play their part in one version of the story.

Web Animation

  • Stolas from Helluva Boss is an owl-demon who has an extra set of eyes above the normal ones. Usually, they appear on the brim of his hat, but are still there when he takes it off.

Web Comics

  • Done outstandingly in Schlock Mercenary. While having multiple eyes is not a medical concern for Sergeant Schlock's species, the epic chain of events that leads to him acquiring them reaches a quite unnerving climax in the emotional confusion of this strip.
  • In Haru-Sari a race of people named Thestalians have four eyes.
  • In Gunnerkrigg Court, Coyote has many eyes scattered all over his body. Like the rest of him, they are rather stylised.
    • Lindsey, the giant sea-scorpion-thing who supervises the Year 9 girls' dorm, has 47 eyes, and 15 not-eyes.
  • The P.E.P.S.I. monster in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob has five.
  • The Something*Positive side feature Super Stupor has a villain named "Eye-Sore" ... who used to be a hero named "Eye-Score" ... who, as the name suggests, has twenty eyes.
  • DMFA has Matilda, who has a third eye on her forehead, and Cindy, who was born with an eye on the palm of her hand because her father was exposed to too much magic. Both are friendly types.
  • The title character in Zebra Girl has three eyes.
  • Frog Raccoon Strawberry's friend Marissa is of an alien race which has seven eyes, two big ones on either side of her nose and five smaller ones that she hides rather well.
  • In El Goonish Shive, the Bloodgrem, The Omega Goo, and Sirleck all have more than two eyes. In the case of the Bloodgrem and Sirleck these make them look like spider-like while The Omega Goo's eyes are placed randomly as are its mouths.
  • The Carduchians in The Lydian Option have a set of tarantula-like eyes - including one partially blinded by Hudson in his first day in the prison.
  • In Homestuck, Roxy Lalonde keeps a small herd of mutant cats that have an extra pair of eyes in their forehead.


Web Original

  • Ruby Quest gives us the three-eyed title character and a Lovecraftian version of Tom Nook. Sure, the latter doesn't have eyes on his face...
  • In one Bionicle serial, Tren Krom sprouts an extra eye on his back and uses it to vaporize Carapar.
  • It appears that The Mercury Men have a third eye, since the Mercury engineers' facemasks have a third eyehole.


Western Animation

  • Blinky the Fish in The Simpsons.
    • And that mutated squirrel in The Simpsons Movie.
      • And the mutated whale from the Future Simpsons episode. Wait, three eyed fish, then three eyed whale?
  • Tri-klops from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is a possible example; His eyes are all technological, and he can only use one at a time, but they all have different abilities.
  • One of the evil Wizards on Thundarr the Barbarian had eyes all over his head, and every one could fire Eye Beams.
  • Nibbler on Futurama has a third eye on a stalk atop his head. He uses it occasionally to erase people's memories.
  • In Teen Titans, ubervillain Trigon the Terrible has four eyes. Since she's his daughter, Raven gets them when she's really POed about things.
  • Several of Ben 10's alien forms have more than the standard two eyes, specifically Fourarms, Stinkfly, and Spidermonkey. Chromastone only has one, and Wildmutt doesn't have any. Max's old friend Xyleen has three.
  • Blackarachnia of Transformers Animated has four eyes in robot mode, as well as four in spider mode.
    • By that proxy Tarantulas from Beast Wars, who had eight eyes in beast mode, but built-in Sinister Shades in robot mode. BW Blackarachnia also had eight eyes in beast node, but two in robot mode.
  • Played for laughs in Danny Phantom, where a ghost cop asks a multi-eyed ghost if he had seen someone pass by, but he replies that everything happened so fast.
    • The multi-eyed ghost also happens to be Argus Hundred-Eyes mentioned above.
  • Parodied slightly in Swat Kats, with the initial villain Morbulous in "The Giant Bacteria" (Who later is mutated by Dr. Viper into the monster of the episode title).

Razor: This guy must have eyes in the back of his head!
(Turbokat rolls over, hovering over the other jet "Top Gun" Style so Razor can look up and look at their opponent)
Razor: He really DOES have eyes in the back of his head!
T-Bone: No excuses.

  • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, a few members of The Legions of Hell have extra eyes.
  • Meap's mother-in-law from Phineas and Ferb. Given that Meap is a cute little alien, this raises some odd questions.
  • In the episode "Chalkboard Bungle" of Animaniacs, at one point the Warners keep goofing off whenever Miss Flamiel turns her head. She eventually tells them that she has eyes in the back of her head. "Really?" replies Yakko. "So do we." All three twist their bodies around to show that Dot and Yakko each have a pair of eyes on the back of their heads, while Wakko has a whole mess of eyes.


Real Life

  • Many species of insects and arachnids have multiple eyes.
  • Brownsnout spookfish (Dolichopteryx longipes) has two pairs of eyes. Two look up and two (of a very different structure with much higher sensitivity) look down.
  • Many of the Cambrian Explosion's creature, like Opabinia which had five, as well.
  • Experimentation on fruit flies has shown that there is a master gene ey for creating eyes, a scientist can insert the ey gene at random places and create mutants with eyes sticking out of the abdomen or the legs
  • Triops https://web.archive.org/web/20090105190532/http://eidolon.co.uk/page/triops, small crustaceans popular as low-maintenance pets similar to brine shrimp (sea-monkeys), have a small third median eye (hence the name).
  • Many species of giant clam have multiple eyes lining the outside of their shells.
  • Teratomas. These are (usually, though not always) benign tumors that can appear anywhere in the body, and may feature a hodgepodge of different body parts, including eyes, hair, and teeth.
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