History Main / GogglesDoSomethingUnusual

* ''WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment'': Dr. Insano's Science Googles [[OverlyLongGag can produce]] {{Death Ray}}s, give him [[SuperSenses telescopic vision]], XRayVision, [[HypnoRay hypno vision]], [[NightVisionGoggles night vision]] and [[BlindedByTheLight flash bang protection]], contains a terabyte of UsefulNotes/{{MP3}}s, can be used as a [[EleventyZillion zillion]] mega-pixel camera, [[MundaneUtility a garage door opener]]. [[ArsonMurderandJaywalking And they're hooked up to Facebook and Twitter]].

* [[UsefulNotes/ThreeDMovie 3D Glasses]], of the various types that have existed throughout history.

* ''Manhwa/WitchHunter''[='s=] [[TheRival Ryu Hwan]] has a rather stylish pair that allows him to track sources of mana.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'s'' Lt. Renji Abarai has a stylized visor that doesn't seem to do anything but cover his tattoos and absurdly-styled hairline, but from his POV, they check if Ichigo's power is OverNineThousand. The [[AllThereInTheManual databooks]] explains this as him just ''really'' liking the brand. He gets very depressed when they break, because they take a few months of savings to buy each time.
*** Of course, they therefore break every time they're seen.
* In ''Manga/CaseClosed'', Conan's glasses have been given upgrades throughout the series. Initially they contained a screwed-in GPS bug that could be taken out and placed elsewhere while the glasses tracked the device's location with ''its own minimap''. Agasa later replaced the glass with ''bulletproof'' glass and the bug was updated with listening functions and its own frequency. The listening device is also designed so it "stimulates the eardrum," thus only the wearer can hear it.
** The glasses have been further upgraded to include night vision and a digital zoom function, among other things, though their primary purpose is still ClarkKenting.
* The Sisters from ''Literature/ACertainMagicalIndex'' are not as powerful with their [[ShockAndAwe Electromaster abilities]] as their genetic template Mikoto Misaka is, so they can't see electrical currents. They wear special goggles to compensate for this.

* Anyone that fights a gadoll in ''Anime/DecaDence'' wears goggles. They are used to see fluctuations in the magnetic field created by a gadoll's, which allows the goggle wearer to move in and out of these fields to effectively fly. They also appear to allows seeing of Oxyone.

* In the kiddie anime ''KiteretsusEncyclopedia'' (from the people who brought you ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}''), Kiteretsu's glasses also allow him to read the book in question, a secret trove of BambooTechnology ancient Japanese inventions.
* In ''Anime/JinRohTheWolfBrigade'', the Cerberus corp have their armor outfitted with goggles that have night-vision. All the better to shoot Little Red Riding Hoods in the dark with.
** In ''Film/IllangTheWolfBrigade'', the goggles are also used to scan someone's body to identify anything that stands out of place.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** In ''Anime/PokemonHeroes'', Annie and Oakley have sunglasses that allow them to not only see invisible Pokémon via their body heat, but even distinguish between a human and a Pokémon pretending to be a human. This does cause a bit of FridgeLogic, as Latias is the same size, but nobody bumps into the rest of her body.
** In ''Anime/PokemonMewtwoReturns'', Domino has a pair of binoculars that have night vision, magnification, resolution filters, body heat sensors, AND can tell a normal Pokémon from a clone Pokémon.
*** That's nothing. Team Rocket (the ones we know and love) have binoculars that enable them to hear conversations over a mile away.
** Another girl that owned a Bagon had stylish icicle goggles that told an opponent's health and fighting morale.

* Latooni Subota's (or however we're [[InconsistentSpelling romanizing it this week]]) glasses let her see enemies' combat data in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars''. They eventually get her to take them off, and at some point Princess Shine gives her a new, transparent pair sans the ScaryShinyGlasses ShrinkingViolet impression.
* Shino from ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'' is a borderline case. She has better than normal vision, yet still wears glasses. In this case, her spectacles are made of bullet-proof glass, and help her deal with her crippling fear of guns.

** This is partially TruthInTelevision. There are devices in the real world which take a camera image and project it directly into the brain, albeit only as single-bit low-res images. Still experimental yet.
*** They don't put the image "directly into the brain", (in the sense that the words conjure up, i.e. a brain implant) - they use a low-res matrix of stimulators on an area of skin -- back, stomach and tongue have all been used in studies. It works much better than you'd think.

* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'':

* ''ComicBook/{{Robin|1993}}'': In addition to being NightVisionGoggles and protecting his eyes from debris during flight Jaeger's orange goggles contain a HeadsUpDisplay.
* Back when ComicBook/{{Superboy|1994}} only had Tactile-Telekinesis, he briefly had a pair of sunglasses that doubled as X-ray vision goggles - though they were destroyed shortly after their introduction.
** They had a heat vision function too.

* ComicBook/{{Cyclops}} of the ComicBook/XMen has a pair of ruby quartz sunglasses that prevent his [[EyeBeams optic blasts]] from [[PowerIncontinence firing uncontrollably]].

** There's also Cannonball, whose goggles serve to protect his eyes while he flies at jet speed. Technically this isn't the goggles doing something unusual, so much as them doing ''more'' of the usual: they're an aversion of RequiredSecondaryPowers.

* The title character of ''Series/{{Chuck}}'' once gets an "update" to his brain's OmniscientDatabase through a pair of sunglasses.
** As we soon learn, said sunglasses also have the ability to [[BroughtDownToNormal ''remove'' the database]] from one's head, or even insert it onto an unsuspecting person.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E7TheWarGames "The War Games"]]: The (HumanAlien) villains' glasses and monocles let them hypnotize humans.
** The Doctor spends most of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts "Army of Ghosts"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday "Doomsday"]] wearing 3D specs since they let him see "[[VoidBetweenTheWorlds void]] stuff".
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E8TheHungryEarth "The Hungry Earth"]]: The Doctor wears sunglasses that provide thermal and night vision.
** The bad guys in [=NewWho=] Series 6 all wear eyepatches. It's finally revealed in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong "The Wedding of River Song"]] that they continually download information about the Silence into your brain so you don't forget them when you're not looking at them.
** In the Series 9 premiere two-parter [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E1TheMagiciansApprentice "The Magician's Apprentice"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E2TheWitchsFamiliar "The Witch's Familiar"]], the Twelfth Doctor's CoolShades (first worn when he, in the midst of having TheLastDance, is performing a rock concert... in a castle in medieval Essex) turn out to double as the successor to his old sonic screwdriver in the climax, as he [[spoiler:uses them to recall the seemingly destroyed TARDIS to him and Clara]].
** The sonic sunglasses return in Series 10, as the Doctor starts wearing them in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E6Extremis "Extremis"]] [[spoiler:to compensate for getting blinded in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E5Oxygen "Oxygen"]].]] They show him a wireframe view of the world, with, instead of people's appearances, statistics like their species, age, and heart rate.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E1E2Spyfall "Spyfall"]]: The [=MI6=] agent on the airplane at the beginning is wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera, which she uses to photograph a secret message shortly before she's attacked by an {{intangib|ility}}le alien.

** In "Odds On Evil", the team use special contact lenses to enable them to read marked cards.

** His pants have a printer in them. That is not innuendo.
* ''Series/{{NCIS}}''. [[BunnyEarsLawyer Tony]] has worn NerdGlasses with a hidden remote-transmitting video camera in at least three episodes. Most of the time, he has to be reminded to look at faces, [[MaleGaze not their rears]]. "Pop Life" has Tony and Kate go undercover in a nightclub to get images of the go-go dancers. One season later in "Under Covers", the glasses return when Tony and Ziva have to go undercover as married assassins. In the same episode, Ziva gets her special order IR-spectrum sunglasses. "Driven" has Tony go on a special mission for Jenny as a guitar player on the street across the street looking into a restaurant.
-->'''Jenny''': ''(via earwig in Tony's ear)'' Keep your eyes on the prize, Tango Eight, and I may even let you keep the money you're making.
* ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' and ''Franchise/SuperSentai'':

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' has an example that borders on FridgeBrilliance. Garrus is always seen wearing a holographic monocle that covers his left eye, but it's never commented on. In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', you can buy a nearly identical headset that is designed for human use. Equipping this headset causes you to inflict an additional 10% of weapon damage on enemies every time you fire a headshot. Garrus is a renowned sniper, both as a [[CowboyCop C-Sec officer]] and [[TheGunslinger vigilante]]. Who knew?
** According to the Shadow Broker's dossier, it also provides a variety of spectrographic enhancements, alternate vision modes, lets him monitor his teammates' status, keeps track of everyone's relative kill ratios, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and plays music]].

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'' has the [[EyepatchOfPower Solid Eye]], which has as a HUD, a radar, infrared/nightvision mode and zooming function.
** More mundanely, the Solid Eye also serves as a corrective lens for Snake's farsighted vision.
** You can also watch baseball games on it.

** Both played straight and [[TheGogglesDoNothing averted]] in the ''Sonic Riders'' series. While most of the characters that have eyewear don't actually use it, the Babylon Rouges are almost never seen using Extreme Gear without them, presumably to shield their eyes from the wind at high speeds.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* InvokedTrope in the Jethro and Monty ''Manga/GunslingerGirl'' fancomic when Monty has to explain how she can see the LaserHallway in the vault they're robbing, when the rest of the CaperCrew don't know she's a cyborg. So Monty produces some wraparound glasses that the claims have been specially modified to see the light frequency of the beams.

* InvokedTrope in the Jethro and Monty ''Manga/GunslingerGirl'' fancomic when Monty has to explain how she can see the LaserHallway in the vault they're robbing, when the rest of the CaperCrew don't know she's a cyborg. So Monty shows them a pair of goggles and says they've been specially modified to see the light frequency of the beams.

* Latooni Subota's (or however we're [[SpellMyNameWithAnS romanizing it this week]]) glasses let her see enemies' combat data in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars''. They eventually get her to take them off, and at some point Princess Shine gives her a new, transparent pair sans the ScaryShinyGlasses ShrinkingViolet impression.

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
* ''Film/TheAdventuresOfBuckarooBanzaiAcrossThe8thDimension'': The goggles that arrived in the big pink box for Buckaroo Banzai allowed him to see the hologram sent from the queen of the black Lectroids.

* In ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'', Comicbook/TheFalcon wears a pair of goggles that protect his eyes while he's flying. He gets an upgraded pair in ''Film/AntMan1'' that now allow him to zoom in from great distances and track targets.
* ''[[Film/TheFastAndTheFurious Furious 7]]'' gives Nobody a pair of night-vision sunglasses.
* The Paragoggles/Ecto-Visor as featured in ''Film/{{Ghostbusters 1984}}''.

** In ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'', James Bond has glasses that allow him to see through clothes. Therefore spotting concealed weapons -- and [[MaleGaze ladies' undergarments]].
** In ''Film/AViewToAKill'', he had sunglasses that allowed him to see through polarised glass. It's the shades that are polarised -- they just cut out reflections and allow him to see what's going on inside.
** In ''Film/TheLivingDaylights'' he has ''binocular'' shades. They look a bit odd, though.
* The night-vision goggles in ''Film/JurassicPark'' let Tim know [[OhCrap that the T-Rex is loose]].

* ''Film/SpyKids''
** The [[Film/SpyKids1 first film]] has those glasses which gave you biographical information about someone just by looking at them.

* The John Carpenter movie ''Film/TheyLive'' is about a guy who finds a pair of strange sunglasses that allow him to see aliens through their human guises and the subliminal messages that they use to control the human populace, and the movie is about him trying to find the people who made the shades so he can join their fight against the aliens. Meanwhile, LaResistance has already moved on from shades to less conspicuous contacts that have the same effect.
* In the 2001 version of ''Film/Thir13enGhosts,'' the ghost-hunters used special glasses to allow them to see the title spirits. This was a shout-out the the fact that the original 1960 ''Film/ThirteenGhosts'' used this gimmick on the '''audience''' -- you wore the special glasses the theatre gave you, and if the ghosts got too scary, you could take them off and see nothing.
* The map-engraved spectacles that had belonged to Sam Witwicky's great-great grandfather in ''Film/Transformers2007'' showed the location of the All Spark.

* Inverted in ''Literature/TheDemonHeadmaster''; where the Headmaster takes off his glasses to hypnotise people.

* In ''Literature/{{Accelerando}}'' by Creator/CharlesStross, Manfred's sunglasses contain a vast amount of smart computing power, permanently connected to his thought patterns. When he loses them, it's as if he's lost chunks of his memory, and the guy who finds them and puts them on starts thinking the way he does.

* ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' and Butler are spared the effects of the fairies' magic hypnosis by using specially coated mirrored contact lenses, preventing them from forcing Artemis to give up his secret plans for getting his memory back when they are mind-wiped.

* In Richard Ellis Preston Jr.'s ''Literature/ChroniclesOfThePneumaticZeppelin'', Max has special reservoirs in her goggles, needed for her half-Martian eyes.

* Inverted in ''Literature/TheDemonHeadmaster'' books, where the Headmaster takes off his glasses to hypnotise people.

* In ''Literature/TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse'' Zaphod Beeblebrox has two pairs of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses: "At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black, thus preventing you from seeing anything that might alarm you."

* Molly Millions (aka Rose Kolodny, Sally Shears etc.) from William Gibson's [[Literature/SprawlTrilogy "Sprawl" novels and short stories]] has mirror-lenses surgically implanted over her eyes. They're fully sealed, so more like goggles than CoolShades, and equipped with image-enhancers so she can see in the dark.
* ''Literature/TheSpiderwickChronicles'' had a seeing stone. If one looked through it, one could see TheFairFolk who were either invisible or glamoured to look like something else.
** Getting hobgoblin spit in the eye turned normal eyes Sighted, which made the viewer's own eyes the goggles that do something.

* Also featured in Gibson's novel ''Literature/VirtualLight'', where a pair of seemingly ordinary glasses sport an augmented reality device that lets the user access all sorts of data.
* The EV-helmet used in ''Literature/TheWarAgainstTheChtorr'' sci-fi novel "A Matter for Men". Scans the spectrum from beyond ultraviolet to below infrared, then the image is digitized (with colour values assigned) and projected directly onto the retina. Used in conjunction with a frequency-hopping LaserSight.

* ''Website/SCPFoundation'', [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1344 SCP-1344 ("Eye-Catching Goggles")]]. Anyone who wears one of these goggles can see colored orbs above the heads of most mammals (including human beings). The orbs are invisible to normal sight and it's not clear what they are.

* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': Phase has a pair of CoolShades which do nothing but handle the 'Jericho' problem. Jericho is a BlindBlackGuy[[note]]though he has a NeuralInterface that lets him plug a camera directly into his brain, and secretly has a DisabilityNegatingSuperpower in the form of a 360 degree radar vision, a la ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}[[/note]] inventor who deliberately wears [[ImpossiblyTackyClothes clothing combinations so horrible]] that people tend to [[BrownNote throw up in his vicinity]]. Phase's shades convert all colors to black, white, and gray, so she can talk to Jericho without heaving.

* ''Literature/LockwoodAndCo'' has a pair of goggles found by the heroes which appear to [[GogglesDoNothing Do Nothing]], but once they're given to [[spoiler:Quill Kipps]] it turns out they [[spoiler:allow people who've lost their Sight to [[ISeeDeadPeople see ghosts again]].

** Butler has a hard hat with lenses cannibalised from Holly and a LEPRetrieval team's helmets with IR, UV, and anti-Shield settings. Holly's helmet has these, as well as heads-up displays with useful information from Foaly patched through, and it also aims automatically for her.

* ComicBook/DoctorMidNite's goggles give him StatOVision. Including, because he's a doctor first and a superhero second, identifying ''health risks''.

* ''ComicBook/RobinSeries'': In addition to being NightVisionGoggles and protecting his eyes from debris during flight Jaeger's orange goggles contain a HeadsUpDisplay.
* Back when ComicBook/{{Superboy}} only had Tactile-Telekinesis, he briefly had a pair of sunglasses that doubled as X-ray vision goggles - though they were destroyed shortly after their introduction.

* One of the [[WordOfGod actual inspirations]] for Creator/CheriePriest to write ''Literature/{{Boneshaker}}'' was the desire to create a SteamPunk setting where the [[GogglesDoNothing omnipresent brass goggles]] actually served a purpose. It turns out polarized lenses make a certain very, very nasty poison gas visible.