I spy with my one normal eye...
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The power of the supernatural can affect the eye in many ways. Maybe it can turn them gold, turn them white, literally kill whoever they look at, make them glow, emit streams and so on.
Clockwise from top left:
And then there's this trope. It's not that blatant or fancy, it's often an unconventional item in the place of an eye.
The item itself can either be cursed or a source of power. It's often a result of Touched by Vorlons. Destroying it could often mean nullifying the power source. Another reason it exists could be Rule of Cool.
Basically, the item itself is a Mark of the Supernatural and is used to denote that a character isn't quite normal. These are often flowers, and flowers themselves are often used to symbolize different things (sadness, sensuality, and tragedy), so some try to incorporate them into character design.
Eye Scream might be related here (imagine a flower or coral growing through your eye socket...)
If a character has normal eyes that have flower patterns in them, go to Exotic Eye Designs.
Super-Trope of Glass Eye, where the eye is replaced with an artificial replica. Compare Electronic Eyes, Magical Eye, Petal Power, Wingding Eyes, Cyclops and Eyepatch of Power. Often overlaps with Faux Symbolism.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service: One chapter features people infected with parasites that replace their eyes with the parasite's elongated eggsacs, then climb poles or tall objects. Normally this causes the infested insect to be eaten by birds, but in the human victims it makes them "want to be birds".
- A hentai manga titled Kusa Musume Rakugaki features a female adventurer getting assaulted by a single roper, which causes her to transform into a plant woman with a flower blooming out out of her missing eye.
- Rozen Maiden: Kirakishou's main power is controlling rose vines. She has a white rose growing from the socket of her right eye.
- Transformers: Cybertron: Dirt Boss has a Gatling gun where his right optic should be.
Fan Works
- In the first chapter of Temporal Anomaly, Sougo, after his first encounter with the Watchers, realizes the influence they have over Zero through the Flower that has taken the place of her eye. Sougo's solution is to therefore rip the Flower out of her with his magically enhanced bare hand, stems and all, with the process being just as painful as it sounds.
- Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights: Crippled and close to death after self-destructing her own cybernetic-enhanced arm in battle, Tellu of the Witches 5 undergoes a Fusion Dance with a Xenian Flower she's cultivated and bonded with, and transforms into a hideous Botanical Abomination which has the Xenian rooted in her formerly-empty eye socket. Directly inspired by Zero.
Literature
- The Chronicles of Amber: When Coral loses their eye in an explosion, Dworkin sews the Jewel of Judgment into their damaged eye socket.
- Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: The Final Empire makes people into Steel Inquisitors by forging a set of magical spikes with Targeted Human Sacrifices, then hammering them into the candidate's body at specific points, including through the eyes. (Their powers include a replacement sense of sight.) By the time of Wax and Wayne, the last Inquisitor is Shrouded in Myth as "Ironeyes", a Grim Reaper-like figure.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: In Fire & Blood, after Lucerys slashes out Aemond's eye in a fight, the prince takes to wearing a sapphire in his empty eye socket.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Tomb of Horrors: The demilich Acererak appears as a floating skull with precious gems in place of its eyes and teeth. The placement is purely cosmetic — he doesn't use them to see, but to trap his victims' souls for consumption. They also serve as backup Soul Jars, so bad luck to a player character who tries to loot them.
Video Games
- Code Vein: The Successor of the Throat who serves as the boss for the Crown of Sands area and who is a transformed Eva Roux has a flower growing out of one of her eye sockets.
- CookieRun: Kingdom: Peach Blossom Cookie has a pair of peach blossoms where his left eye would be.
- Drakengard 3: Zero has a pink flower in her left eye. It actually latched itself on her, prevented her from dying, and views her as its host. Zero desperately craves death, so she hates being attached to the damn thing — even more so when it's the same flower that's behind her Intoner sisters' powers.
- ENA: Dream BBQ: Coral Glasses has a gigantic, yellow coral reef growing out of her right eye.
- Epic Seven: Sira-Ren is described as a magical flower that grows from a corpse. The card it appears on shows a white flower blooming from the eye socket of a normal-looking man with white/grayish hair.
- Flight Rising: The Primal eye type gives dragons something unusual regarding their eyes, depending on which Flight the dragon is a part of. It's downplayed in many cases, in that some Primal eyes mostly only affect the area around the eye instead of the eye itself.
- Earth Primal gives dragons dirt/pebble-like structures around their eyes.
- Fire Primal gives dragons fire coming from their eyes.
- Wind Primal gives dragons clouds of wind/air coming from their eyes.
- Water Primal gives dragons waves of water circling in/around their eyes.
- Shadow Primal gives dragons black/purple goop dripping from their eyes.
- Ice Primal gives dragons snowflakes coming from their eyes.
- Lightning Primal gives dragons bolts of electricity coming from their eyes.
- Light Primal gives dragons bright lights coming from their eyes.
- Nature Primal gives dragons flowers/vines growing around their eyes.
- Plague Primal gives dragons red veins and green pustules in place of their eyes.
- Arcane Primal gives dragons a galaxy-like pattern in their eyes, along with a glowing pink rune shape around their eyes and forehead.
- If you'd like to see what the eyes look like, this guide
has pictures.
- Flower Knight Girl: Belle, AKA Bergamot Valley, is a Nature Spirit personified from a World Flower, like Bloss and Win before her. As such, she's got a daffodil flower sprouting from her right eye — though she's the only instance of this trope among her group of spirits, which generally signify their nature with special insignia in their eyes.
- Genshin Impact: Hanyuuda Chizuru is a youkai. In her human form, she takes the appearance of a pale-skinned woman that has kanzashi flowers over her left eye, a nod that she's Not Quite Human.
- Guilty Gear -STRIVE-: The flower in Asuka's eye is a Rosenkreuz (Rose Cross). His whole design is a Visual Pun, since it's a symbol of the Rosicrucian Order (Order of the Rose Cross). A close-up of his character design reveals Rosenkreuz-related phrases like "Dat Rosa Mel Apibus"note . Even his name references it — Asuka R. Kreutz.
- Planescape: Torment: One of the equipment slots of the Nameless One is his eye socket, and you will find various pieces to put into it. Including an eye, that did belong to one of his past incarnations.
- Sunless Skies: In order to survive an audience with the divine Daughter of the Sun, the player character needs to temporarily Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence in body and mind — a visceral, piecemeal operation that starts with the eyes. They retrieve their mortal flesh on the way out.
Attendant: Your eyes must be replaced by gemstones. That is the simplest part of the procedure.
- Virgo Versus the Zodiac: Capricorn has a lotus flower growing out of one of her eyes that she claims has left her Unable to Cry. It's actually a parasitic virus, or at least it was until Pisces removed the viral part of it, but the flower remains.
- Wildermyth: A hero who attempts to steal the gem of a deep stone god will become crystalline. The first stage involves the hero's eye being replaced with a gigantic chunk of crystal and grows from there.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus: Ragatha has a large blue button in place of a right eye.
- SolarBalls: Both Mimas and Thebe have gigantic craters where one of their eyes should be. Mimas' crater Herschel takes the place of his left eye, and Thebe's Zethus replaces his right.
Webcomics
- Mare Internum: When Mike is exposed to a Martian ecosystem, he starts sprouting what looks like various parasitic growths, including a shelf fungus that quickly grows over his left eye. It turns out to be benign Organic Technology that's actually grown beyond its original programming to bond with him and help him survive, but the effect is described as like a man having a toaster fused to his face.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: SCP-679 is a parasitic fungus that infects the eye, causing the eyeball to rot out as it takes root in the socket. It actually restores and even improves the host's sense of vision; the trouble — aside from having a writhing mass of mycelia replace their eyes — is that the fungus causes hallucinations to encourage the host to spread it to fresh eyes.
Western Animation
- On Galtar and the Golden Lance, Tormack has a metal orb replacing the eye he lost when he tried to claim the Golden Lance.
- Hazbin Hotel: Vaggie has a large red X in place of her eye, in the place where she lost it.
- The Owl House: The form Papa Titan takes to converse with Luz has a miniature Hooty growing out of his right eye socket. What it means in relation to the real Hooty or if it's even an accurate representation of his true self are never explained.
- Steven Universe: Many Gems have their gem located where an eye should be, including Emerald and the Ruby Steven appropriately nicknamed "Eyeball".
Real Life
- One species of flatworm lays eggs inside snails. The eggs end up in the snail's eyes stalks, swelling it and turning it green until it looks like a caterpillar so that birds will eat it, allowing the parasite to spread itself further.
The pulsating, green broodsacs fill the eye stalks of the snail, thereby attracting predation by birds, the primary host. [...] Observations in captivity indicated that birds tore the broodsac out of the snail before eating it, so the snail may survive this. Birds may also become infected by eating broodsacs that have spontaneously burst from the tentacle, surviving for an hour whilst they continue to pulsate
