Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears

Not pictured: Ronald. He sees everything.

"O be careful, little eyes, what you see,
O be careful, little eyes, what you see,
For the Father up above
Is looking down in love,
So, be careful, little eyes, what you see.
O be careful, little ears, what you hear..."

— Popular Sunday School song

Perhaps someone is letting loose a torrent of profanity. Perhaps there's a streaker running past. Perhaps somebody is about to rip out somebody's heart. Whatever the case, there are children around, and they are being exposed to some highly inappropriate content. Quick! Cover their eyes/ears!

This trope generally depends on the idea that Children Are Innocent, and furthermore, should stay innocent. Children should be protected from anything considered Harmful to Minors. Usually it's a parent who will do this. This can be played for laughs if the “innocent” kid still understands what's going on (e.g. The Simpsons episode “Bart Sells His Soul” where Todd still repeats a curse word after a parent covers his ears).

Usually the scene that causes this is concealed in a Discretion Shot.

For some, doing so may only make the "innocent" child want to see/hear the denied spectacle even more.

Compare Not in Front of the Kid, Take Five, "I Can't Look" Gesture, and Pulling Your Child Away.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A Progressive Insurance ad has a mother doing this to her kid's ears as Flo explains how auto insurance and home insurance are 'bundled'.
• One of the older delivery bots is upgraded in one of Shaw Communications' ads. Bud covers Bit's eyes with his clipboard to prevent him from seeing the supposedly unpleasant upgrade process (which includes lots of mechanical whirring noises) and Bit moves up and down to peek around Bud's clipboard.
• This advert for the USA launch of European grocery store chain Lidl has a twin girl cover her sister's ears with her hands when the word "fuck" is being spoken. Actually, the word turns out to be "fresh".
• This Australian ad for video ratings has an entire family enjoy the G video, followed by the parents covering the young girl's ears during the PG video and the boy's eyes during the M video. Then, during the MA video, the teenage daughter covers her own eyes. By the time the R video is shown, only the parents remain.

Anime & Manga

• Ana Satsujin: When Rio licks the ice-cream off Kurosu's face in an amusement park, you can see a mom covering her young son's eyes.
• In the seventeenth chapter of Asteroid in Love, Mira shows pictures she took of Hoshizaki's School Festival the year before. When it comes to the Literature club, Mira mentions that club was reprimanded because some pornography got mingled in other books in their second-hand book sale. Mikage immediately covers up Mai's eyes as Mira's picture gets mosaicized.
• Ayakashi Triangle: After Yayo learns her little sister can see some ayakashi, she covers their eyes when they spot a corpse-like iyo until Soga exorcises it.
  Iyo: Show them! Let's die together, OK?
  Yayo: [thinking] No way I'm letting them see this!
• Ciel Phantomhive of Black Butler is far from innocent, but he's only twelve. When he and Sebastian come upon the horrific sight of the corpse of a prostitute with her womb cut out, Sebastian immediately covers Ciel's eyes before he can get a good look — although it's unclear if Sebastian does so out of genuine concern for Ciel's welfare, or simply because that's what a proper butler would do. Given the later revelation that trauma will make Ciel's soul taste better, it's probably the latter. He also covers Ciel's ears a few chapters earlier when Madame Red tells sexually explicit jokes at the Undertaker's.
• A particularly horrifying example in Blade of the Immortal when Kuroi Sabato, the man who just killed her father in front of her, holds little Rin Asano close to his body and covers her ears to shield her from the sight and sounds of the rest of the Itto-ryu brutally gang-raping her mother.
  Kuroi: Shut these eyes; close these ears, child. For what comes next transcends your sanity...
• A Running Gag in Chobits. Every time Hideki acts strange in public, a woman's voice can be heard telling a child "Don't look at him, honey."
• Granblue Fantasy: Katalina covers Lyria's eyes in the 13th episode of the anime as the crew wreaks havoc on the Erste troops off-screen. However, the combat banter of the crew during the said scene can still be heard.
• In the 1999 version of Hunter × Hunter, Tonpa covers Gon's eyes when Leorio checks Leroute's sex by grabbing her chest.
• In an early episode of Inuyasha, Kaede and a group of village kids walk up on Kagome demanding Inuyasha undress (so she can treat his wound) while he protests. The mortified Kaede quickly tells the kids to avert their eyes.
• In One Piece, when Franky is stripped of his speedo and forced to run down the street, we get a lot of yells for people to keep their kids from seeing him.
• One-Punch Man: In the aftermath of the battle between the heroes and the Monsters Association, the surviving group of heroes sees the floating body of Pig God, whom they initially mistook as a corpse. Sekingar is seen covering Waganma's eyes after the latter expresses horror at the sight.
• Mizore casually covers Yukari's eyes in Rosario + Vampire Capu2 after Ruby trips and exposes herself, while a confused Yukari tries to look around her hand.
• Occasionally in Seitokai Yakuindomo, Tsuda will cover Mutsumi's ears when Shino says something more perverted than usual.
• In The Seven Deadly Sins, Merlin puts her hand over King Arthur's eyes (Arthur is 16 in this verse) when Meliodas starts groping Elizabeth in front of them.
• One episode of Tenchi in Tokyo has Ayeka, Sasami, Ryoko, and Ryo Ohki watching a soap opera. When the action onscreen starts to heat up, Ayeka blushes in embarrassment and covers Sasami's eyes, who then covers Ryo Ohki's eyes. Guess whose eyes were glued to the screen?

Comic Books

• Batman: When the Graysons fell during their performance Janet Drake tried to cover her son Tim Drake's eyes, but since her husband Jack (who wasn't paying any attention to his son) was in between her and Tim she couldn't reach him in time to prevent him from seeing their deaths.
• Superman: An inversion happens in the chapter "The Most Bizarre Bizarro Of All" from the Bizarro Comics anthology. When a Bizarro starts walking on his hands and generally acting too strange even by Bizarro standards, all the children tell the adults not to watch or listen. (It is Bizarro World, after all.)
• In the Secret Invasion (2008) Runaways/Young Avengers crossover:
  • Chase hastily covers Molly and Klara's eyes after they stumble across a television display showing footage of the Young Avengers apparently getting slaughtered by the Skrulls.
  • Earlier, when the group goes to New York to prove Cloak innocent of attacking Dagger, Chase also covers Molly's eyes and tells her not to look when they watch a video of the attack. While it's not made explicit what happens, given the reaction of, "Oh God, is he...?" and the reveal that the real culprit was a Stalker with a Crush who seemed deluded into thinking Dagger was his girlfriend, one could only imagine.
• Ultimate Vision: When the Gah Lak Tus purple monsters show up, Vision takes the axe from Dima and orders her to close her eyes.
• Miss Martian covered Beast Boy's eyes in the 20th issue of the tie-in comic for the animated Young Justice when Zatanna kissed Nightwing.
• A variant in a The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck sidestory. Huey, Dewey and Louie ask Scrooge what happened that month Goldie worked for him at his mine. Donald immediately gets a look of terror and makes up an excuse to shoo them out of the room. They may be too young to realize what happens when two young adults attracted to each other spent a month in each others' company, but Donald is not.
• Happens in a Funny Background Event in American Splendor when Harvey and his family go to visit Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie in Northampton. While Harvey and Alan talk, Harvey's wife Joyce is shown worriedly covering their teenage foster daughter's eyes as Melinda shows them page 31 of the explicit Lost Girls comic book.
• The 18th issue of Earth 2 has the Red Tornado cover Jimmy Olsen's eyes and tell him not to look when Batman II shoots the Joker.

Comic Strips

• A post-9/11 Blondie (1930) strip parodied the, um, excesses in airline security by having Dagwood have to repeatedly go through a metal detector, with the operator making him take off more clothes each time. He's in his underwear and the machine is still beeping when another guard comes up and tells the operator that the machine's broken. Cut to Dagwood on the plane begging the flight attendant to let him put his clothes back on before take-off, with a mother covering her kid's eyes elsewhere in the panel.
• Garfield:
  • In one strip, when Garfield is watching TV with his teddy bear Pooky, and hears that "viewer discretion advised", he covers Pooky's eyes.
  • The February 8, 2023 strip has Garfield and Odie watching a television program with a warning that there is strong language. We only hear barks and meows, but Garfield finds the language vulgar enough that he immediately covers Odie's ears. Judging by their eyes, Odie has the same opinion as Garfield.
    Garfield: I can't believe they let that on TV!
• This Heathcliff strip has a mother covering up her son's ears while a flock of birds are angrily swearing at Heathcliff, with the mother saying "Don't listen to the birds, honey".

Fan Works

• Spoofed in a piece of NSFW Avatar: The Last Airbender fan-art by Sequestro: Seeing Ty Lee "cleansing her aura" naked, Katara covers Toph's eyes with her hands entirely by reflex.
  Toph: You know I'm blind, right?
• In All This Sh*t is Twice as Weird, during the game of Wicked Grace, Mahanon grabs Cullen's surcoat and throws it over his "little sister" Victoria's head before Cullen can remove the rest of his armor. It's worth mentioning that Victoria is twenty-one years old (and romantically involved with Cullen to boot)!
• Beyond the Wall: Fairy Dust covers Whisperleaf's eyes so she doesn't have to see the villagers murdering Rainbow Dash.
• In The Day The Dursleys Came To Hogwarts while Harry is trying to avoid dragonfire during the First Task, his aunt Petunia alternates covering his cousin Dudley's eyes and ears.
• The Flash Sentry Chronicles:
  • Enforced in the last chapter of War of the Lost City. After Flash and his team return from the Lost City of Faust and try to explain what happened, Discord decides to make it easier for them by projecting their memories of what happened like a movie so everyone can see for themselves. However, he creates a censor button at Flash's request which when pushed causes all the younger members present (the CMC, Fire Heart, Shining Soul, and Spike) to get blindfolds and headphones put on them so they can't hear or see the more traumatizing parts. Flash ends up pressing it several times, especially at the more violent parts, such as watching Cold Steel getting stabbed by Shadow Corrupter, and Flash's vision of Shadow's Bloodbath Villain Origin.
  • In "A Flurry of Emotions", right as Flash is about to finish off Trial-T, he tells for Twilight to cover Flurry Heart's eyes, with her doing so with one of her wings.
• When Smaug bites off one finger of Urgost during their fight in Heart of the Inferno, Kathryn covers the eyes of her and Smaug's hatchlings Kolstros and Vervenia.
• I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What?: Taylor sends a message, "Look this way, not at the portal," just before Karjn, Ulfric, and Tyr go through the portal and violently kill the people who had been chasing Jaya. Naïa, fortunately for her own peace of mind, listens.
• In Infinity Train: Boiling Point, Grace eventually covers Lucy's eyes and ears as the fight between the Apex and Boscha at Mana Academy progresses. Given how much more violent it gets, it was a good call.
• In chapter 33 of Magical Troubleshooting Crossover Fighting Federation Ultra succubus Morrigan strips herself naked in an attempt to distract Wolverine during a match. Combat Commentator Hiroshi covers guest commentator Sana's eyes, which she protests, since she has the same basic anatomy as Morrigan.
• When May gets a little too friendly with the snakes in Greece in My Ridonculous Race Dwayne and Leo cover Junior and Annie's faces.
• Persona Chaos Butterfly: When Shinjiro, furious at the amount of homework he's received, starts swearing furiously, Souji's immediate response is to cover Nanako's ears.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, when Kaiser (the Safari Zone warden) blurts out something profane, Red instinctively covers Yellow's ears.
• In the sixth installment of Skyhold Academy Yearbook, Isabela comes to Skyhold for a wedding and ends up talking about her infamous "friend-fiction." Dorian practically has to physically restrain himself from covering his nearby student's ears; fortunately, Aveline manages to stop Isabela before she shares any details.
• In Threads of Time an alternate-universe female version of Harry Potter covers baby Harry's eyes when she realizes that there's a porn movie on TV.
• In Total Loud Island, Dawn occasionally shows shades of clinginess towards Lincoln, such as when she foresaw Gwen's panties and Heather's breasts getting exposed in the episodes "Who can you Trust" and "X-Treme Torture", respectively, and prevented Lincoln from seeing anything by covering his eyes.
  Dawn: I WILL PROTECT YOUR INNOCENCE!
• Tyrantly Ever After: In an effort to get Fuka to stop harassing him about his love life, Valvatorez reveals that he and Fenrich are comrades who "trust each other wholly, mentally and physically". Fuka latches onto that last part, covering Desco's ears while pressing for clarification. (Emizel, meanwhile, covers his own ears to avoid hearing his response.)
• In "Wayne Manor", part of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts series, when eight-year-old Bruce Wayne's parents start getting flirtatious:
  Bruce made another face of disgust, sticking out his tongue and scrunching up his nose. Half as a joke, Alfred put a hand in front of Bruce's eyes. He seemed to appreciate it.
• When Fanfiction Girl starts swearing in Weakness, Amity covers Luz's ears until the swearing stops.
• Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: Yuri Ichiro frequently does this for his denizen partners Tobe and Netto whenever they're a witness to something gruesome (like how they see Sycamore seemingly going crazy and stabbing nothing but air in the Twisted Lab Car when he's actually attacking a shadow only visible to his eyes.). Humorously, Amelia does this to him to when he first sees Anubis.
• Aki-chan's Life: So Aki does not find out about their time-travelling, Asuka covers her time-displaced daughter's ears while Shinji tells Asuka's parents the whole story.
• Passion on Display: While at a restaurant, when Kirishima and Bakugo start making out for way longer than they need to (in order to prove a point to a rude manager), another restaurant patron covers his daughter's eyes.
• Played for Laughs in The Color of the World. After Muichiro Tokito makes an accurate drawing of Muzan's family, Sanemi Shinazugawa's cursing leads Nezuko to cover Tanjiro's ears as she lectures him about using foul language in the prescence of a toddler, explaining how Tanjiro's behavior has become that of a toddler after turning into a demon and she doesn't want profanity to be the next thing that comes out of his mouth. Shinobu, Tengen, Gyomei, and even Ubayashiki agree with Nezuko, either because they don't want their kids to pick up profanity or because they find it distasteful, with Sanemi reluctanly agreeing to censor his words at Ubayashiki's request.
• Parodied in the Marvel Cinematic Universe fic Snapped Strings, where Natasha and Wanda catch Steve and Sharon making out. Natasha puts a hand over Wanda's eyes.
• Played for Laughs in A Mother's Touch. Yoko ends up swearing what she'll do to Reiji for how he's trying to blackmail Yuya in order to get his Pendulum Cards. It ends up so terrifying that Gongenzaka and Sora have to cover Tatsuya and Ayu's ears...but then realize no one is able to cover the ears of Futoshi, as the LDS trio (Masumi, Hokuto, and Yaiba) are too terrified, and are LDS, to help out.
• Nier: Automata (RE)Birth: Played for Laughs when 9S desperately covers Alex's eyes after Jacqueline gives Hatchet a Big Damn Kiss. Then when the two decide to extend their passion upstairs, A2 is desperate to get him out of audible range.
  A2: Okay Alex time to play outside!
  Alex: But it's raining!
  A2: Then you get to play inside! Just not in here!

Films — Animation

• At the end of Batman: Assault on Arkham, Deadshot does this with his young daughter as he prepares to shoot Amanda Waller.
• A Bug's Life: At one point, the ants put on a play for the "warrior" bugs about a bloody battle to the death between them and the grasshoppers, making them realize that they're being expected to fight rather than perform circus tricks. By the show's end, Slim is covering poor Heimlich's eyes while he silently whimpers.
• In Onward, when the Manticore rips off the mascot costume's head, a little kid looks on with amazement before having their eyes covered by their parents.
• The Simpsons Movie: The Disney Creatures of the Farce who help Homer and Marge undress watch, aghast, as they have sex, and a buck puts his hoof over his son's eyes.
• At the end of Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse, the Superfriends incarnation of Batman covers the eyes of Robin when the Super Friends observe the Teen Titans getting into a squabble in the Teen Titans Go! universe.

Films — Live-Action

• The 6th Day: A variation when Adam leads his family to safety, but urges two guards to surrender quietly since he doesn't want to subject his daughter to horrible violence and then orders "daddy's friends" to tell his little girl to have a nice flight.
• Aftersun: The tween Sophie befriends a group of teenagers. When two of them start making out, the other three object and cover Sophie's eyes, jokingly accusing their friends of corrupting the youth.
• In the 1994 remake of Angels in the Outfield, Roger covers up JP's ears when George Knox starts swearing during the game.
• Bad Boys II:
  • A woman covers her sons' ears to keep them from hearing Mike and Marcus's inappropriate conversation which was accidentally broadcast around the TV store.
  • Near the climax, Johnny Tapia tells his daughter to cover her ears before dropping a Cluster F-Bomb at his workers.
• In The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, a mother is shown covering her child's ears during the "Texas Has a Whorehouse in it" number.
• Subverted in Best Seller. Meechum's daughter has been kidnapped by the Big Bad, but is rescued by Professional Killer Cleve. He tells her to look out the window; she doesn't and watches horrified as he shoots her guard with a silenced pistol.
• Blood Brothers (2007) has Mark, a Hitman with a Heart, assigned to kill several rival mobsters in a crowded restaurant, but there are three young boys playing in front of him. So Mark instead asks the kids if they wanted to play Hide-and-Seek with him... as two of the boys hid under tables and the third covers his eyes and starts counting, Mark expertly guns down every one of his rivals and leaves without the children seeing anything.
• In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mike wins his ticket by tracking a winning candy bar through info such as manufacturing dates. A reporter asks Mike what he would do with a lifetime supply of chocolate. After Mike says "I don't know. I hate chocolate," Grampa George begins to rant, "Well, it's a good thing you're going to a chocolate factory, you ungrateful little ba—", at which point Charlie's ears are covered by Mr. Bucket, and we hear nothing until he removes them. Fair guess that it's swearing.
• In DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, a botched package delivery mixes up the uniforms of Average Joe's and some bondage enthusiasts. Due to the strict rules, Average Joe's is forced to play their first match in S&M gear, and as soon as they enter the arena, a mother in the audience covers her child's eyes.
• Subverted in Elysium. When Kruger captures Frey and her daughter, he says that he doesn't believe in committing violent acts in front of kids. So he gets the kid to cover her eyes while he savagely beats her mother.
• A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!: Cosmo and Wanda cover up Poof's eyes at the sight of Timmy embracing Tootie, Tootie dragging Timmy through the park by a kite he's holding onto and one of Magnate's henchmen wearing a dress.
• The Fate of the Furious: Deckard Shaw rescues Dom's baby son from thugs. When he is about to beat one of them to death, he turns the baby carrier away so the child doesn't see it.
• In Hot Fuzz, Nicholas covers a child bystander's eyes when one of the bad guys impales himself on a model building.
• Done in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the hilarious things being first that the scene isn't really worth an eye-covering anyway (a dancer in a leotard), and second that the youngest brother Benjamin, whose eyes are being covered, is not a child.
• Jurassic World: Battle at Big Rock. A family watches from a nearby caravan as an Allosaurus battles a Nasutoceratops. The mother tries to cover the daughter's eyes at one point, but she pulls her hand down.
• Liar Liar has Mrs. Cole's children get this treatment from their caretaker when their mother's sex tape is played at the trial.
• In the film version of Li'l Abner, all of the town's menfolk, regardless of age, get their eyes covered when Stupifyin' Jones is brought out on display.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Avengers: Infinity War: In a flashback, Thanos is shown meeting Gamora as a child and giving her a double-bladed knife as a gift. At that moment his army start to carry out Thanos's genocide program by massacring half the population. As Gamora turns to look, Thanos gently pushes her face back to his gift instead. Of course, given that he's directly responsible for the death of her people, this comes across as quite hypocritical.
  • In Captain Marvel (2019), Talos is about to shoot some Kree soldiers and tells his wife to cover their daughter's eyes so she won't see. The kid manages to peek anyway.
• In Music and Lyrics a mother does this when she discovers she has taken her prepubescent children to a concert by a teen-age girl star that turns out to feature some very risque dances (in a scene that should be squicky, she looks over at her formerly bored husband who is having a delighted reaction).
• Invoked in the trailer for Naked Lunch. The film itself (which is still a Mind Screw in its own right) is more of a Pragmatic Adaptation with the most nausea-inducing content of the book left out, which the director noted to be "unfilmable".
  William S. Burroughs: When I started writing Naked Lunch... people offered their opinions. "Disgusting" they said, "pornographic", "un-American trash", "unpublishable". Well, it came out in 1959 and it found an audience. Town meetings, book burnings, and an inquiry by the States Supreme Court. The book made quite a little impression. Now thirty years later Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, has turned it into a movie. Thirty feet tall, in living color. Cover your eyes, America, run for your lives!
• The Name of the Rose: When Inquisitor Bernado Gui catches a peasant girl inside the monastery, he declares her a witch and rips open her clothing to expose her breasts, causing the monks to avert their gaze in horror or cover their eyes. One monk does both, covering an eye and closing the other, which he quickly opens again for a peek.
• Used in the movie Old School, where Vince Vaughn's character sets up a system where he tells his child "earmuffs," and the kid will cover his ears, allowing adults to say what they will.
• In SHAZAM! (2019), after the siblings get teleported into a strip club, Mary covers Darla's eyes.
• In Silent Hill, Rose tries to cover Sharon's eyes and ears as a cult is horribly, gorily slaughtered by the vengeful Alessa.
• In Spy Kids, the parents ask the kids to shut their eyes before beating up a bunch of Mooks.
• Twice Round the Daffodils: As Henry and George watch Janet sneak into the ward kitchen through the window, her skirt falls off, leading George to cover his and Henry's eyes with a cucumber. Henry is not amused and shoves it away.
• Up Pompeii: When the tour guide shows his tour group the notorious Pompeiian murals, one of the men covers a woman's eyes with his map, only for her to pull it away and keep looking.
• In Violent Night, Santa asks the young girl he is protecting to cover her eyes and ears and sing "Jingle Bells" loudly while he takes a sledgehammer to the head of the mook who had just tried to murder her.
• War of the Worlds (2005):
  • Ray Ferrier blindfolds his daughter and tells her to cover her ears and sing her calming song so she won't see or hear as he kills Ogilvy.
  • Earlier, when a plane crashes into the house that they were staying at, Ray tells Rachel to keep her eyes on him as he carries her out.
  • And when Rachel comes across a river with dead bodies floating downstream, Ray covers her eyes and gets her out of there. He was too late to keep her from seeing it, though.

Literature

• Ascendance of a Bookworm: In Part 4 Volume 7, upon realizing that a group of people that all three of them can see (but are protected from thanks to a magic shield created by Rozemyne) are about to pull an Action Bomb, Ferdinand places his long sleeve in front of Rozemyne and her younger adoptive sister Charlotte's eyes. In Rozemyne's case, it has more to do with the fact that he doesn't want the consequences of the time she was Forced to Watch an execution to teach her a lesson to happen again if they can be avoided.
• In the Australian children's book Barebum Billy, one part has a father at church try to cover his daughter's eyes when Billy stands on the crucifix while urinating in the holy water. Why he didn't already shield his daughter's eyes when a young boy started prancing around the church in the nude is anyone's guess.
• In A Certain Magical Index, Brunhild Eiktobel puts to sleep a little boy she's been watching over when she senses danger. The last thing she needed was for the boy to see the ensuing carnage when her attackers struck.
• The Cornersville Trace Mythos: In Extraordinary, the protagonist's friend does a variant of this, though she isn't a child. When she wakes up after being knocked out by the villain, he sits in front of her and holds her shoulders in place, instructing her not to turn around. When he tells her it's okay, she turns to look and realizes why he didn't want her to see what was happening behind her. The villain has just literally been ripped to shreds, and birds were eating his remains. By the time the protagonist is allowed to look, all that remains is his hat.
• In the Diogenes Club story "The Case of the French Spy", three children rescue a Fish Man from captivity, then need to hide nearby as the Fish Man fights his captors. The fight gets gory very quickly, and the youngest of the children has his eyes covered by his older cousin, though he tries to pull her hands away.
• In the Elenium trilogy, the novice Pandion knight Berit has to dive into a lake in search of a lost relic. Being very young and bashful, he respectfully asks that Sephrenia, the "little mother" mentor of the knights, please turn her back. Sephrenia complies willingly, but also makes a point of pulling her little ward Flute to where she can't see either; the narrative even notes that Flute seems very curious.
• The Executioner: In the Able Team novel Justice by Fire, The Mole tries to set up a Salvadorean refugee family for a death squad, but Able Team jump him the moment he walks in the door. The mother holds her children to her chest so they won't see The Mole being brutally interrogated; when one peeks anyway, she pulls a blanket over their heads.
• In his travelogue The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain says he was shocked on seeing the Can Can Dancers and covered his eyes at such a scene — but peeked through his fingers.
• KonoSuba: Kazuma covers Megumin's ears when he and Aqua discover that the same Absent-Minded Professor who created the Destroyer was also responsible for the creation of the Crimson Demons.
• Played for Drama in Tailchaser's Song. One of the Clawguard found a dog running around nearby so they grabbed it (keep in mind it's described as a large dog and the Clawguard are just cats) and roughed it up to the point where Tailchaser describes that it's dying from internal injuries. They decide to eat it alive by disemboweling it, right in front of the Kid Hero Tailchaser and his even younger Kid Sidekick Pouncequick. All Tailchaser can do is curl around Pouncequick to shield him from the view, but they can't ignore the actual sounds.

Live-Action TV

• The page image comes from the Adam Ruins Everything episode "Adam Ruins... What we Learned in School" when Adam tells Ms. Frizzle Captain Ersatz Ms. Dazzle that when the Natives couldn't provide any gold, Christopher Columbus ordered his men to slaughter them. As the massacre begins, she covers the eyes of two of her students, but the Arnold Captain Ersatz sees everything, since no one covered his eyes.
• The Andy Griffith Show had Barney Fife get his foot run over by a clueless driver, who has to be told to get his car off of Barney's foot. Barney then tells Opie, who is standing nearby, to cover his ears as he chews out the driver.
• In Atlantis, Hercules covers Pythagoras's eyes when Jason walks into the house naked.
• Boardwalk Empire:
  • In the episode "Broadway Limited", Agents Van Alden and Sebso burst into a dentist's office, in order to wake up and interrogate a dying, unconscious mobster by giving him cocaine. The man does wake up, but when Van Alden tries to question him, he curses at Van Alden in Yiddish. A Jewish woman who was in the office with her son reacts with covering his ears. When Van Alden starts torturing the man, she covers the boy's eyes.
  • In "Margate Sands", after killing his way through a hotel full of Rosetti's men, Richard Harrow finds one of them holding a pistol to Tommy's head. While pretending to put his rifle down, Harrow tells Tommy to close his eyes, then fires a shot into the man's head.
• In an episode of Bones, while discussing the case of the week in front of Booth's young son, Booth covers his son's ears and makes him sing a little song while the adults talk.
• One episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has Buffy telling Dawn to close her eyes, so Dawn doesn't see the oncoming death scene.
• In the series finale of Chuck, Devon covers his baby daughter's eyes when Mary holds an amnesiac Sarah at gunpoint. He even reminds Mary how they discussed against guns in front of the baby to get her to put the gun down.
• Cheers: Lilith and Fraiser's ex "Nanny G" get into a catfight over him. Sam, who ends up holding young Frederick, covers his eyes.
• Criminal Minds: In a particularly morbid example, Affably Evil season 5 Big Bad covers five-year-old Jack Hotchner's ears while explaining to his father, Aaron, that he's going to kill his mother because Hotch wouldn't stop looking for him. He also plans on killing Jack, for the same reason. Combined with Censorship by Spelling.
  Foyet: Did you even tell her what this was about? About the deal?
  Hotch: (over the phone, to Haley) He's just trying to make you angry.
  Foyet: She should be. She's gonna...(puts his hands over Jack's ears) D-I-E because of your inflated ego.
• Frasier: In "Caught in the Act", Frasier and Roz are discussing the chemistry between him and his ex-wife Nanette while standing next to Roz's 5 year old daughter. They start out using "hug" as a euphemism but when Frasier needs to drop the euphemism he puts his hands over Alice's ears so she can't hear what he's saying.
  Fraiser: If truth be told, it's been a while since I (covers Alice's ears) romped with abandon through the perfumed gardens of Eros.
  Roz: Next time you say something like that, cover my ears.
• Friends: In "The One Where Joey Dates Rachel", Ross walks in with his son Ben just as Phoebe starts cussing out a game machine. He immediately dives to cover Ben's ears before shouting "Phoebe!" to get her attention and make her stop. When Phoebe finally notices Ben, she immediately covers the dirty words on the game machine while yelling "Don't look at the screen!"
• Full House:
  • In "Our Very First Show", Jesse tries to get some alone time with a date, but is constantly distracted by having to deal with his nieces. The date leaves (offscreen) while he's busy talking DJ into moving out of the basement and back into her room. When Jesse returns to the living room and asks where his date went, Stephanie responds, "She's history." Jesse frantically jumps over the couch, covers Stephanie's ears, and asks Danny, "What the hell did you do with Vanessa?"
  • In "Rock the Cradle", where it's learned Rebecca is expecting, the family congratulates Jesse, only for Jesse to think they're talking about a gig he got and say he couldn't have done it without lots of "practice" and wants the family to be present for the next one, resulting in Danny covering DJ and Stephanie's ears.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Averted in the first episode, when Ned Stark takes 10-year-old Bran to witness an execution. Jon Snow pointedly tells Bran not to look away.
  • Yoren clasps Arya Stark to his chest so she can't witness her father being executed via decapitation.
  • A rare Pet the Dog moment occurs for the ruthless Lord Tywin Lannister, who covers his grandson Tommen's eyes during Joffrey's death scene.
  • Ser Jorah urges Daenerys to look away when it’s obvious her brother Viserys is about to die a Cruel and Unusual Death, after threatening Daenerys' unborn child. She refuses.
  • Jon tries to shield his sister Sansa from the latter part of Ramsay Bolton's threatening letter but Sansa grabs the letter from him and reads it, calmly and coldly stating the intent of the Boltons to have her raped. Given that she's spent the better part of the last few months being raped by Ramsey on a regular basis, simply reading a threat about it has no impact on her.
• The George Lopez Show: In "George vs. George", Angie covers Max's ears when Benny calls her husband's second wife a "puta".^note It's Spanish for "whore".
• An episode of Get Smart had Max communicating with a trapped Chief via Morse code. After Max bungles his rescue, Chief sends out some angry sounding taps. Max responds with "Watch your language, Chief. There is a lady present." When the angry taps continue, Max covers 99's ears. A few seconds later, he covers his own.
• In an episode of Gilmore Girls, Dean covers his little sister's eyes so he can kiss Rory.
• There's a House episode where the mother of a preteen girl covers her daughter's ears so she won't hear the word "masturbation".
• In the Storybook Episode of Jessie, the titular character covers Emma's eyes when an anthropomorphic egg gets "scrambled" during a jousting match with Prince Smarming. Emma returns the favor later when Tony ends up stripped down to his underwear, though Jessie moves her hand away in order to eat the eye candy.
• On M*A*S*H, in the scene where Hawkeye walked into the mess tent naked to prove everyone in camp was so jaded they wouldn't notice. When the camp does notice, a soldier can be seen playfully covering the eyes of one of the nurses.
• In the first episode of Raising Hope, Jimmy has a one-night stand with a woman whom he doesn't know is a murderer. After she's caught, she phones him up later to tell him that she's pregnant. When she meets in at prison, she says there's no way they'll send a new mother to the electric chair. Cut to Jimmy and the baby sitting in the viewing box for the execution chamber. Jimmy covers the baby's eyes when the switch is thrown.
• Rome: When Pompey is betrayed and murdered on his arrival in Egypt, his wife, watching aghast from a vessel offshore, covers the eyes of her children so they won't see their father decapitated.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Lwaxana Troi, being lonely, has gotten engaged sight unseen to an official from another planet. She's dismayed to discover that his society is very prudish, and after repeated slights to herself and her culture, she takes her revenge by showing up to the wedding in traditional Betazoid bridal attire. The groom and his advisor are aghast, and the advisor covers his (elderly) employer's eyes, before they make an abrupt exit.
• In an episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Derek slaps his hand across a little girl's eyes as he shoots a guy in front of her.
• In Ugly Betty Justin is repeatedly told to put his headphones on during the second episode, when he is still rather young.

Music

• Ray Stevens' comic song The Streak has the repeating gag of the elderly couple who are inevitably there when the town is menaced by the nude running man. Interviewed for TV:
  Reporter: Once again, your action news reporter in the booth at the gym, covering the disturbance at the basketball playoff. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?
  Witness: Yeah, I did. Half time, I's just goin' down thar to get Ethel a snow cone. And here he come, right out of the cheap seats, dribbling, right down the middle of the court. Didn't have on nothing but his PF's. Made a hook shot and got out through the concessions stand. I hollered up at Ethel, I said, "Don't look, Ethel!" But it was too late. She'd already got her a free shot.
• The Rodney Carrington song "Don't Look Now" is about the singer remembering moments in his boyhood where his father told him not to look as his mother got drunk and flashed her breasts.

Theatre

• Westeros: An American Musical: During "Knight's Watch Defeated", Davos re-iterates his disapproval of Stannis' plans of sacrificing Edric while Stannis' young daughter Shireen is in the room and covers Shireen's ears while he does so.

Video Games

• In Cafe Enchante, after spotting the grisly remains of Kororo's tribe, Canus tries to cover Kotone and Kororo's eyes to spare them from the sight but he is too late and Kotone sees it anyways. Meanwhile, Kororo is too young to realize what he is seeing and Kotone quietly muses to herself that he most likely didn't even recognize the desecrated bodies of his family.
• Final Fantasy VII Remake: In the "Intermission" DLC, Don Corneo's goons hit on Nayo and try to convince her to become Corneo's bride. Due to seeing Yuffie as a little kid, they tell her to turn around and cover her ears. Yuffie doesn't take kindly to being mistaken for a child and beats them up.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Flounder watch Eric and Ariel have a date in a rowboat. When the two are about to kiss, Sora covers Flounder's eyes while the latter complains.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, when Sulley scares Vanitas, Boo is shown covering her eyes while Mike covers her ears.
• If Jack, known for her unusually foul mouth in Mass Effect 2, survived that game's endgame, in 3 she turns up as a teacher and makes a special effort not to swear in front of her students. Joker teases her that her Swear Jar could fund the war effort by itself. At which point Jack tells the kids to cover their ears and the scene cuts away.
• In an advertisement showcasing the Nintendo Switch's parental controls, Bowser does this to Bowser Jr when the section discusses about setting age restrictions, presumably because Junior was playing a game above his age rating.

Web Animation

• Invoked in DEATH BATTLE! during the Deadpool vs. Deathstroke fight. Deadpool breaks the fourth wall to tell all the children in the audience to cover their eyes right before he shoots Deathstroke in the eye.
• For a period of time the parental advisory for Happy Tree Friends featured an image of a worried Pop covering Cub's eyes.

Webcomics

• In Brawl in the Family, the Halloween specials usually begin with Adelaide warning the audience to "send the little ones to bed early", before tuning in.
• Eerie Cuties has a scene where Maria, misinterpreting a little incident between Layla and Brooke, "soothes" the girls by happily giving them Too Much Information from her own... fond memories. Brooke covers Nina's ears.
• In Flaky Pastry, Sister Mona makes a little boy turn around before going Holy Retribution on Zintiel.
• Subverted in Girl Genius:
  [Chair Reveal of a long-dead corpse]
  "Don't look, Mademoiselle!"
  "Wha—you MUST be JOKING! I'm a medical student, I've SEEN dead people!"
• In Hoofstuck, Sparkler covers Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle's eyes after they hear Rainbow Dash shout something about baby-making.
• Scoob and Shag: Resident Fourth-Wall Observer Bugs references this as a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner to the readers.
  Bugs: Parents, if ya got kids watching at home... dis is da part where 'dey should cover deir eyes.
• Unsounded: When taking his daughter Mikaila to work with him Duane has her turn her face into his chest when the pass the open pit in the center of town were the government has people publicly tortured to death and their bodies hanged on display.
• White Rooms: Ed covers Claire's eyes to keep her from seeing disturbing things.
• In the Wooden Plank Studios series "Everyone is Home" the Smashers have a "Taunting Contest" one of the contestants is Lady Palitina. When she "taunts", Sakuri and Captian falcon (the judges) along with Bowser and Greninja cover Ness, one of the Ice Climbers, Bowser Jr. and Young Link's eyes to avoid them seeing it. Captian Falcon gives a shocked "y-yes" when he sees it.
• In Yamara, a dark elf mother covers her son's eyes when the tour they're on visits an erotically-carved temple. Ironically, the tour members had already been tortured as part of their visit, but the boy's mom doesn't mind that, only the raunchy art.
• In this JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind fan-comic, the deceased members of the gang are watching Giorno become the boss, but Bruno and Abbacchio immediately cover Narancia's eyes when they see what looks like Mista giving Giorno a blowie.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe: When fighting an enemy that is wielding a pair of magical artifacts called Agamemnon's Balls in There's No Place Like Poe (Part 4):
  "Quit playing with your balls! There's children present!" The Cajun girl shielded Vasiliy's innocent eyes.
• One half of a popular exploitable meme has a character casually say "fuck", resulting in the Team Mom (or Dad) of the group becoming so shocked they cover the "innocent" one's ears while moving them away. The kid picks up on it in the second half, however, shocking the Team Parent again enough to punch the first guy out.

Web Videos

• Bronies React: Spoofed in the video for the season 4 finale of Friendship Is Magic, by Nowacking putting a hand before his potted plant when Tirek destroys the Golden Oak Library.
• In the Christmas Episode of Carmilla the Series, LaFontaine covers Laura's eyes while they're watching a grisly death. Which is pretty funny, considering the fact that not only is the death caused by Laura's own (vampire) girlfriend, Laura told said girlfriend to kill the person.
• In SMPLive, Angel tells Ty to cover his ears before she goes off on Senzu.

Western Animation

• In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode "League of Villains", Grandma Taters covers Baby Eddie's eyes when a Love Potion causes Beautiful Gorgeous and the Junkman to start making out, while he argues about wanting to see what happens.
• In a flashback episode of Adventure Time, Simon is trying to find some chicken soup for the sick Marceline. They come across an ambulance, which Simon hopes will have some. Upon only finding clam soup in the vehicle, Simon looks at the back door and sees that it's a clambulance. Simon tells Marcy to cover her ears before unleashing his wrath on the door.
  MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER!!
• In the episode "The Matchmaker" from The Amazing World of Gumball, Gumball and Carrie cover each other's eyes after Darwin and Teri, under the effect of a Love Potion, start making out offscreen. But since Carrie is a ghost and as such see-through, a horrified Gumball states that he can still see the scene. At the end of the episode, when an Act of True Love finally cancels the potion's effect and Darwin kisses Carrie, who again ineffectively covers Gumball's eyes, he states that this time he doesn't mind.
• In the opening scene of Arcane, Vi is leading a young Powder by the hand, because Powder has a hand covering her eyes so she won't see the dead bodies of their parents. Powder is also singing throughout, with the implication that either their parents or Vi told her to, in order to distract her from the sounds of violence around them.
• Batman Beyond:
  • In "Sneak Peek", Terry covers his little brother Matt's eyes when the news starts showing Paxton Powers cavorting with a woman at a party.
  • In "Unmasked", Batman covers a little boy's eyes when a mook commits suicide by jumping into a cobra pit.
• In the Bob's Burgers episode "Beefsquatch", when Bob and Gene become the stars of a daily segment on a local morning show, Linda tries to put a stop to it after their constant fighting, though great for the show, start to destroy the family. After an unsuccessful conversation with the executives, she takes matters into her own hands by storming onto the set during a show and tells her kids present to cover their ears as she tries to get the show cancelled by cursing on the air, but all that comes out is gibberish.
• In the Bojack Horseman episode "Fish Out of Water", Bojack covers the baby seahorse's eyes when he decides to purchase a skin magazine as well as the bottle of seahorse milk he needs to feed the hungry infant.
• The Boondocks:
  • In "Ballin'", Sarah covers Jazmine's ears when Tom starts swearing, after the basketball team he is coaching not only loses, but he misses the opportunity to have a "miracle" win.
  • In "I Dream of Siri", Sarah covers Jazmine's ears again when Uncle Ruckus starts talking about female anatomy.
• In an episode of Braceface, when Sharon accidentally comes across a pornographic website, she covers the eyes of the cat sitting on her lap.
• In CatDog, whenever something particularly violent happens, like Randolph getting cut in half by a giant ax, Cat covers Dog's eyes (while also closing his own).
• Parodied in the DC Super Hero Girls (2019) short "#Vegecide", where Pamela tells her potted plant Phil (who doesn't have eyes anyway) not to look when she is horrified by the sight of vegetables being sliced up and prepared as food at the vegan cafe Jessica Cruz is eating at.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In the episode "Hand Me Down Ed", Eddy, while under the influence of a magical boomerang to act motherly to a briefcase, orders his "baby" to shield his eyes when Double D, under the influence of the same boomerang to go naturalist, strips off his underwear.
• A Running Gag in The Fairly OddParents! involves someone covering another person's eyes and shouting "Shield your eyes!" when something disturbing happens.
• Family Guy:
  • Peter takes Stewie to the bar with him in "The Courtship of Stewie's Father", and Quagmire is about to tell a story of what he did with some women last night. Peter covers Stewie's ears so he won't hear and we see some very strange pantomime on Quagmire's part, but hear none of it thanks to Peter.
  • In "The Thin White Line", Lois would have Meg take Stewie up to his room before starting serious conversations that she thought too mature for him to witness. Here's one example.
    Brian: Here, baby, I'll show you the channel Lois doesn't know about.
    Lois: Brian, would you— Chris, look away! Meg, take Stewie upstairs!
    Stewie: Wait, wait. That man seems to have suffered a rather serious snake bite.
  • In "And I'm Joyce Kinney", when the Griffins show the porn film Lois acted in called Quest for Fur to the churchgoers, one shot of the audience's reactions is of a boy enjoying what he's seeing before his mother covers up his eyes in shock.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "The Secret Snake Club", Grim attempts to log onto a website for the titular nerds, but he misspells it and ends up logging onto what is implied to be a porn site. He ends up trying to cover the computer screen, claiming "this isn't for children to see". And at the end of the episode, Mandy tells Wiggly Junior to cover his eyes, as she prepares to beat the ever-living shit out of the aforementioned nerds.
• In season 2 episode 12 of Harley Quinn (2019), "Lovers Quarrel", upon seeing Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have sex courtesy of Doctor Psycho releasing the footage in revenge over Harley ruining his chances of world-domination with Darkseid, both Barbara Gordon and Jim Gordon do this to each other.
• Kaeloo:
  • Played for Laughs in Episode 184, where Kaeloo says a bunch of swear words and Quack-Quack covers Stumpy's eyes instead of his ears.
  • In Episode 232, a series of mishaps involving a Teleport Gun lead to Stumpy and Violasse traveling across several different dimensions and trying to find a portal that will lead them home. One of the dimensions they enter is a haunted tomb, and Stumpy covers Violasse's eyes to keep her from getting scared by the ghosts they encounter.
• King of the Hill often does this when Hank and/or Peggy don't want Bobby to hear anything remotely adult, but instead of covering his eyes and/or ears, they usually tell Bobby to go somewhere else.
  • In "Hank's Dirty Laundry," Peggy tells Bobby to get out of the house after Peggy thinks Hank is masturbating to a porno flick^note when he's actually taking notes as evidence to claims that he rented a porno and never returned it, and is shaking out the pen.
  • In "Ceci N'est Pas Une King of the Hill," Hank orders Bobby to get in the truck when one of the artist shows him a sculpture known as "Industrial Penis #5"
  • The same thing happens in "My Hair Lady" when Bobby goofs around in "Hottyz" hair salon.
    Bobby: [to store clerk] Which hair gel do you suggest for my hair type: Virgin or Dirty Girl?
    Hank: Bobby, truck!
  • Taken to extremes on "Harlottown" when, after Hank and Peggy pick up a pair of porno actors who are stranded on the road, Hank leaves Bobby with John Redcorn in his house.
  • In another episode Hank and Peggy order Bobby to leave the living room while a tampon commercial plays on TV and to come back when it's over.
  • The propane convention episode has a mother covering her child's ears when Hank goes on a drunken rant denouncing Buck Strickland as a "bastard".
• The Looney Tunes Show: In "You've Got Hate Mail", Daffy writes a hate mail towards everyone he knows (except Porky) after learning that it's an exercise in venting anger from Tina, but he accidentally sends it instead of deleting it. When Witch Lezah reads over the email, she covers her son Gossamer's eyes so he can't read it.
• In an episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, when Flapjack accidentally revealed that he faked a muteness curse so Captain K'nuckles can take him to a fair, the captain gets very mad and tells Flapjack to cover his ears. When he does, K'nuckles starts spewing unintelligible swears. After K'nuckles tells Flapjack he can take his hands off, a carnival barker awards him for his swears.
• In Mike Tyson Mysteries, "A River Runs Through It Into a Heart of Darkness", Mike does this to Yung at the end of the episode when the Earth extends its penis into the moon.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In episode "Flutter Brutter", a mare does this to her foal whenever she hears Fluttershy shout the word "peeved". The same mare does it again when Rainbow Dash uses it a few moments later.
  • In "The Cutie Map – Part 1", the adult ponies of Our Town cover the ears of foals when the Mane Six have a bout of bickering.
• An episode of Peter Pan & the Pirates had Hook spouting some strong insults at Peter, prompting Wendy to cover Michael's ears. One of the pirates decides Hook's language is too strong by even pirate standards and covers the cabin boy's ears.
• The Simpsons:
  • Maude Flanders does this to her son, Todd, in "Bart Sells His Soul" after Moe loses his temper and repeatedly uses the word "freakin'". Todd cries "Ow, my freakin' ears!"
  • A variation in "Whacking Day" where Bart is sent to a religious school and is asked by the teacher to recite a psalm. Bart complies with "Beans, beans the magical fruit! The more you eat the more, you toot!" Cut to Bart fleeing the furious mob, with the teacher yelling "Avert your eyes, children! He may take on other forms!"
  • "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One" has Homer telling Bart and Lisa to go outside before he unleashes an Atomic F-Bomb.
  • Another instance occurs in "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" when Santa's Little Helper gets into a greyhound racing circuit and manages to jump She's The Fastest. Bart and Lisa are confused by what's going on, with Bart thinking SLH is trying to jump over STF and can't quite make it. Marge groans and covers their eyes the moment she catches on to what's actually happening.
  • Homer covers his son Bart's eyes and drags him away in "Homer's Phobia" after seeing that the workers at the steel mill are all gay and that their workplace turns into a disco when their shift is over.
  • In "Steal This Episode", a mob of FBI agents storm the Simpson home when Homer illegally screens movies in his backyard and try to shield their eyes from the copyrighted content.
    Agent: Somebody please sell me a ticket!
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Squid's Day Off", when Squidward is left in charge of the Krusty Krab, he hallucinates that SpongeBob is spying on him to see if he's really doing errands, when SpongeBob has actually been sitting at the cash register the entire time. When Squidward runs to the Krusty Krab, clad only in a shower cap and Censor Suds (odd for the latter, given that Squidward normally doesn't wear pants anyway), a mother fish covers her son's eyes as she tells Squidward, "Hey! Put some clothes on!".
  • In "Sailor Mouth", SpongeBob indulges in some Innocent Swearing over the PA system of the Krusty Krab. Among the shocked customers, one octopus mother uses her arms to cover up her children's ears, and manages the fifth by sticking a soda cup over his head.
  • In the episode "The Fry Cook Games", while Plankton is announcing the entrance of his champion for the Fry Cook Games, as the stadium shakes with the stomping, a couple of adult fish cover the eyes of a kid fish (presumably their son) in the middle of them. The kid replies in kind by covering their eyes.
• Steven Universe:
  • In the episode "Coach Steven", Pearl tries to cover Steven's eyes when Garnet and Amethyst start to fuse, which involves some mildly suggestive dancing including pelvic thrusting. It's likely at least partially because she was jealous that Garnet chose to fuse with Amethyst instead of her.
  • During a Shattering Robonoid raid, Rhodonite covers Padparadscha's Cyclops eye so she won't see what happens when the Robonoid locks on to the Rutile Twins' gem. She then uses her other set of arms to cover her own eyes.
• Total Drama:
  • In "Who Can You Trust?", Geoff covers Bunny's eyes when Trent starts suffering if not nearly dying from fugu sashimi poisoning.
  • In the "That's Gonna Leave a Mark!" segment of "Aftermath I: Bridgette Over Troubled Waters", an outtake of "Anything Yukon Do, I Can Do Better", Tyler rides an ice floe but keeps slipping and getting up only to slip again. A polar bear and its cub witness his bumbling and after several falls the adult bear covers the cub's eyes to keep it from seeing Tyler get too injured.
• In Transformers: Prime, Bulkhead tells Miko to look away as he rips out a Vehicon's fuel pump. It's different for robots obviously, and she watches and declares "Cool!"
• Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa: In "Thoroughly Moo-Dern Lily", when the dance-off between Lily and her rival Sadie Wowcow devolves into a Cat Fight with their daring showgirl costumes being torn apart, the Dakota Dude is quick to cover Tagalong Kid Cody's eyes.
• The Yogi Bear Show: The Yakky Doodle segments, where his protector and best friend Chopper (a bulldog) would ask Yakky to cover his eyes and ears whenever Chopper got ready to pound one of the duckling's antagonists — usually Fibber Fox or Alfie Gator, who were looking for a quick meal — into a lifeless pulp. Said beatings always happened off-screen, with Fibber, Alfie or any other antagonist screaming and yowling off-screen (implying they are suffering severe punishment), although the aftermath was shown.

Real Life

• The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings poster (for when the new NC-17 rating was issued in 1990) had illustrations for each rating; the one for "PG" (Parental Guidance Suggested) included a woman covering (presumably) her daughter's eyes — the implication being that "some material may not be suitable for children." The PG-13 rating had the father covering one of his son's eyes, while the girl — still with both eyes covered — also covered the eyes of an anthropomorphic rabbit. (The rabbit later humorously appears in the NC-17 portion of the poster... wearing dark sunglasses!)
• In one scene from Little Miss Sunshine, the adults in the van were having an obscenity-filled conversation while young Olive listened to music on her headphones. The director made sure that Abigail Breslin (who was only nine at the time), had the music playing on her headphones turned up loud enough so that she couldn't actually hear the conversation.

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