Lennon Specs

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Lennon Specs is a type of sunglasses with perfectly round lenses, preferably black or red. They are, not surprisingly, named after John Lennon. They are mostly commonly worn by beatniks, hippies and - since they are uncommon and noticeable - unconventional but notable characters. Thanks to John Lone in The Last Emperor, they're known as 'Pu Yi' glasses in Chinese-speaking countries.[1]

A subtrope of Cool Shades. See also Triangle Shades. Furthermore, please note that perfectly round but clear glasses, despite also having been worn by John Lennon, do not fall under this trope. Neither do oval sunglasses, square-ish sunglasses with rounded edges, or any other type of sunglasses with less than perfectly round lenses.

Examples of Lennon Specs include:


Anime and Manga


Comic Books

  • In one X-Men storyline, the X-Men are tracking down a group of hippies who have used Lady Mastermind's mind control powers to turn the Haight-Ashbury area back to the way it was in the sixties. Emma Frost mentally alters their clothing to fit in, and Cyclops's visor turns into ruby-quartz Lennon specs.
  • Black leather 90s Superboy wore these.
  • King Mob in The Invisibles wears them.


Film


Literature


Live Action TV

  • In the pilot episode of Firefly, Simon first appears wearing a red pair.


Music


Video Games


Web Animation

  • A red-lensed pair of these have been the trademark of Madness Combat's Hank from Depredation onward.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • The Slappy Squirrel short "Woodstock Slappy" has Skippy wearing sporting these specs.

Slappy: On stage, Skippy. Look, see the band?
Skippy: No I don't.
Slappy: Get rid of those John Lennon glasses and look!

  • Carl in Jimmy Neutron wore these when he channeled John Lennon in the episode where Jimmy forms a band. He also adopts the Liverpudlian accent and travels with a generically-Asian-looking "assistant." (It's a kid's show.)
  • The Warden from Superjail has them.
  1. For some reason, these characters tends to be collaborationist traitors (especially when they are worn together with a changshan and a fedora) in Chinese historical films