Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Cyclops

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cyclops_collage_2_5.png
L - R, top to bottom: baby Leela and her parents,
Mike Wazowski, Rell, and Manako.
Gwog: Geez... what a bunch of freaks.
Dr. Thaddeus John Euphemism: Says the alien with one eye.
— The Petri Dish

To put it quite simply, a character or creature that only has one eye.

Monocular vision is symbolic of metaphorical narrow vision and lack of depth perception. As such, many human villains have one eye as an indication of their simplistic worldview. This also provides an excuse for an Eyepatch of Power. Characters who lack perspective on a temporary basis might sport bangs or some other ocular obtrusion.

It should be noted that "cyclops" more accurately translates to "circle-eye" or "wheel-eye", referring to the eye's size. Therefore, "cyclopean" technically means huge, and not one-eyed (not to mention that the Cyclopes themselves were giants).

Not to be confused with the Faceless Eye, as cyclopes typically have a recognizable facial structure (or at least a mouth), or with One-Eyed Shot, which is just a camera shot of a person's eye. In modern fiction, the visual of a single eye can give a character an intimidating feel as easily as it can be played as a cute trait on an adorable character.

For other deviations from normal eye structure, see Eyeless Face, Third Eye, Oculothorax, and Extra Eyes. Compare to the robotic version, the Cyber Cyclops, and Eyepatch of Power. For the mythological being, specifically, see Classical Cyclops.

Oh, wait, were you looking for that guy with the visor?

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • 3×3 Eyes: Yabaru, one of Kaiyanwang's followers, is a massive squid-like demon with a single massive eye composing most of his face. Worth noting that he's the one who relies the most on brute force.
  • Bakugan has Billy's guardian bakugan Cycloid, a giant one-eyed creature modeled after the ones from the Greek Mythology. His signature weapon is his hammer.
  • Mummymon of Digimon Adventure 02 has only one eye on the left side of his face.
  • Fairy Tail: Franmalth of the Nine Gates of Tartaros is a rotund yellow demon who has a single red and black eye in the middle of his forehead. Rather than rely on brute force though, he uses a Curse which let him absorb people and even Star Spirits in his body.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Hunter × Hunter has cyclops as monsters on Green Island.
  • Monster Musume: Manako, the Friendly Sniper. She's a Cute Clumsy Girl due to having trouble judging distance to objects that are really close and horribly self-conscious because of all the attention her eye gets. The anime clarifies that she is actually a race called a monoeye, while true cyclopes are a type of one-eyed giant, but the official English translation of the manga continues to call her a cyclopse.
  • Natsume's Book of Friends has the one-eyed youkai Chukyuu, and several other minor youkai as well.
  • Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan: Hitotsume Nyūdō is a cyclops and the chairman of the One-Eyed Demon Clan.
  • Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary: The title character is a school doctor with a single large red eye. Her name even means "pupil".
  • Tales of Wedding Rings: The most humanoid type of Abyssal beast is an orc-like creature with a single glowing eye in the center of its face. The Giant Spider Abyssal beast in chapter 47 likewise has a single glowing eye.
  • Toriko: Starjun's Intimidation and Gourmet Devil is a massive blue Cyclops with horns. One-Eyed monsters appears among the inhabitants of the Hex Food World, among them Dinner the Blue Oni.
  • In The Voynich Hotel, one of the three devils that are minor antagonists is a cyclops who keeps her eye hidden under a plate-like mask. She freaks out the one time she's seen with her eye uncovered... which is when she had just gotten out of the shower, so she covers her eye instead of her body.
  • Yaiba: Gold and Silver. In the latter case, it's also his weak point. (Gold's eye is just as bouncy as everything else.)
  • The anime of Yo-kai Watch has Insomni, a small, Cute Monster Girl youkai with only one eye. There's actually a large number of one-eyed yokai, including the ones mentioned under Japanese Mythology below.

    Card Games 
  • Magic: The Gathering: There are quite a few cyclopes in the setting's various worlds.
    • Dominaria, the closest the game has to a "main" setting, hosts cyclopes in the Ekundu Mountains. They're noted to have a very simple language — their tongue has only fifty words, ten of which mean "kill".
    • Ravnica's cyclopes are horned, towering brutes often employed by Red-aligned guilds. Most live among the Gruul Clans, but they also serve as fortress guards in the Boros Legion and in the Izzet League as heavy lifters.
    • In Theros, a plane heavily based off of Classical Mythology, cyclopes are animalistic, aggressive brutes who live in the wilderness and attack anyone they come across. They don't feel pain, and are capable of razing villages on their own. Some even wield lightning.
  • "Mystical Medleys: A Vintage Cartoon Tarot": "The Magician" and "The Hierophant" both have one giant eye for a head.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has a few, such as the Hitotsu-Me Giant (simply "Cyclops" in the Japanese version) and the Opticlops.

    Comic Books 
  • Alan Ford: During Number One's retelling of the Odyssey, we find out that the dreaded Cyclops living in Sicily were actually a tribe of shy one-eyed midgets who were using their reputation as fearsome man-eating giants to keep strangers at bay. They bribe Odysseus and Number One to make them keep the secret and leave their lands forever.
  • Copperhead: The Sewell family are from a species with only one large, centered eye among other alien qualities.
  • Dark Horse Monsters: A huge reptilian beast with one eye shows up in one of the stories.
  • The eighth issue of the Ewoks comic had the witch Morag attempt to kill the Ewoks by resurrecting a one-eyed beast known as the Kreegon.
  • Kull the Destroyer: The comic has Gasshga, a giant blue cyclops.
  • Marvel Comics:
    • Psyklop, a The Avengers and The Incredible Hulk supervillain, has one giant red compound eye. He can use it to fire energy beams and to hypnotize people.
    • New X-Men: Basilisk, in his second incarnation, is a mutant with an abnormally large physique, no hair, and a single eye in the middle of his forehead from which he can shoot paralyzing Eye Beams.
  • Saga: D. Oswald Heist is a cyclops who writes romance novels.
  • Supergirl: In Demon Spawn, Supergirl fights off Nightflame and her demonic minions. One of them is a short, wrinkled, bald, purple-skinned cyclops dressed in red robes. He attempts to suck out Supergirl's powers and life essence and transfer them to Nightflame.
  • Viz: Farmer Palmer is very proud of his cyclops grandson, the result of generations of first-class inbreeding.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Diana and Wonder Girl once had to deal with Cyclon, the giant, one-eyed progeny of Polyphemus and Medusa. Fortunately, he turned out to be friendly.
    • In Wonder Woman (1987), Diana and Hippolyta have to deal with Polyphemus, who was imprisoned in the underworld behind Dooms Doorway and has spent centuries starving in a cave still blinded from his encounter with Odysseus. He is further agitated because he ate the god Pan and god flesh doesn't take being eaten very well.
    • Slaughter, one of the Children of Cronus, is a big, blue, twelve-armed cyclops centaur with a single, red eye.

    Comic Strips 
  • Garfield: The January 16, 1981 strip has Garfield encounter a one-eyed dog.
  • The Wizard of Id: The Wizard makes a cyclops. Who then crawls around the floor looking for his "contact len." Eventually, the Wizard sends him away because they couldn't see eyes-to-eye with each other.

    Fairy Tales 
  • "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes": One-Eye has one eye in the middle of her forehead.

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live Action 

    Literature 
  • Bailey School Kids: Cyclops Doesn't Roller-Skate has Dr. Polly, who may or may not be a cyclops.
  • Carnival in a Fix: A number of background characters in the book have one big eye, which helps to emphasize that they're all aliens. The most notable example is Mrs. Mimms, who runs the Lost Property Office that Emily lives above.
  • The Crimson Shadow: The cyclopean race. Due to having only one eye, their depth perception is very bad, so they are generally poor at using ranged weapons. One that we see though makes up for this by having a crossbow equipped with small mirrors on each side to help him aim.
  • Disgusting McGrossface: A one-eyed creature can be seen on a police sketch.
  • The Divide Trilogy: There's a female cyclops by the name of Turpsik in the second book, who writes extremely depressing poetry.
  • Fighting Fantasy has used cyclopes as enemies plenty of times. The most notable one is the Final Boss of Seas of Blood, which you have to fight bare-handed and choose all your attacks.
  • The Girl, the Dog, and the Writer in Provence: Discussed when it's mentioned that even someone who was nearsighted and had one eye and dirty glasses could see that Vivi and Tobias were in love.
  • Kingdom on Fire: R'hlem, one of the seven Ancients, is a humanoid creature with no skin, who has a big yellow eye. This likely happened because of his transformation from William Howel.
  • The Lost Years of Merlin: Balor from The Seven Songs of Merlin, the second story in the series. It's made worse by the fact that his gaze can kill you.
  • The Odyssey: The most well-known cyclopes today, Polyphemus, was the son of Poseidon and a sea nymph, a shepherd and a man-eater. Depending on the Artist he's either shown with a single eye where a person's eyes would be or — worse — his eye sockets are covered skin and a single eye rests in his forehead.
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
    • Polyphemus appears as an antagonist in The Sea of Monsters. Both he and Tyson, along with almost every other cyclops in the series, are Percy's half siblings, to his surprise.
    • Tyson — Percy's half-brother on the divine side of the family — is a heroic example of a young cyclops introduced in The Sea of Monsters. He helps his half-brother take down Polyphemus. Polyphemus often tries to get Tyson to join him and act like a "real" cyclops, which Tyson delines.
    • The only ones not born to Poseidon are the trinity of cyclopes that are his elder half brothers. They are the ones that forged the iconic weapons the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon and Hades) used in their war against their father.
  • Time Out of Time: Balor's true face only has one eye, which has magical powers.
  • Underworlds: Loki releases a pair into Pinewood Bluffs to build him a suit of armor. Hades tasks the children with capturing them, which they succeed at.
  • Vainqueur The Dragon: One, in "Food Chain", called "Ogron the Ogre", where ogres are another another species that exists in the world, and how it's therefore a Non-Indicative Name, is discussed, with that name supposed to be one of the Names to Run Away from Really Fast, as it's a reference to how he eats people.
  • The Wandering Inn: One of the races, called Gazers, are basically cyclopes. They have one huge eye, although unlike the usual ones they have four more smaller ones.

    Live-Action TV 

    Magazine 

    Music 
  • Daniel Amos: In the short story that accompanies the ¡Alarma! album, the narrator gets threatened by a one-eyed giant.
  • Sheb Wooley's 1958 novelty song "Purple People Eater" is about a monster who, among other unusual physical traits, has only one eye. It comes down out of the sky to eat purple people, and play rock'n'roll music. It's a very silly song.
  • They Might Be Giants' song "Cyclops Rock" is (apparently?) a break-up song uses the cyclops as a central motif, and the narrator mentions his "one glass eye".
  • Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have a song called "More News From Nowhere" that is basically a Whole-Plot Reference to The Odyssey, but in the context of being a celebrity.
    I turn another corner
    I go down a corridor
    And I see this guy
    He must be about one hundred foot tall
    And he only has one eye
    He asks me for my autograph
    I write "nobody" and then
    I wrap myself up in my woolly coat
    And I blind him with my pen

    Mythology 
  • In Australian Aboriginal mythology, the Papinijuwari are a race of one-eyed giants who live in the sky and come down to Earth in the form of shooting stars in search of sick and dying humans to consume and drain of their blood.
  • In Brazilian Folklore, the Mapinguari is a giant humanoid with a single eye and a Belly Mouth. Other monsters are frequently said to be one-eyed as well, such as the Pé de Garrafa - a single-legged humanoid who lures people into the woods by screaming and imitating voices -, the Gorjala - a man-eating giant -, and the Labatut - a monster with round feet and large tusks who hunts people at night.
  • Celtic Mythology: The Fomorians have many descriptions, but some of them were weird creatures with one eye. Balor was their leader and in many ways resembled a cyclops from classical mythology, but his single eye had a Deadly Gaze with Eye Beams that obliterated everything in its path and could wipe out entire armies.
  • Classical Mythology:
    • The Trope Namers are the original cyclopes of Greek myth. Since Greek mythology is decentralized, there are plenty of different depictions of what cyclopses are like, but scholars divide Greek cyclopses into three kinds:
      • Hesiodian cyclopses (described in Hesiod's Theogony) were three brothers named Arges, Steropes, and Brontes. They were master craftsman and giants of considerable size and power (and prone to fits of rage). Their father Uranus was so afraid of their power and fits of rage that he imprisoned them in Tartarus. When their nephew Zeus finally freed them to help in overthrowing their brother Cronus, they worked together to forge Zeus's lightning bolt (each contributing one third of the weapon's elements; the blinding light, lethal heat, and deafening thunderclap, respectively). They also created Poseidon's trident and Hades's helmet of invisibility. Eventually, the brothers were surpassed by Zeus's son, Hephaestus, to whom they and their descendants became assistants. They also created the Solar and Lunar bows and arrows of Apollo and Artemis.
      • Homeric cyclopses (from The Odyssey by Homer and derived works like Euripides' Cyclops) are a lot more down to earth then their Hesiodian counterparts — We at TV Tropes call them the Classical Cyclops. They are big, dumb, uncivilized giants who live in caves and herd sheep for a living. The cyclopses of Homer-derived myths are all (or at least mostly) children of the ocean god Poseidon (which probablu explains why they tend to be island-dwelling). Humans are on the list of things they will eat but it's not the only thing. In The Odyssey, our hero Odysseus meets the famous cyclops named Polyphemeus on an island who holds him and his mates captive while preparing to eat them. Odysseus identifies himself as "nobody", and while Polyphemus sleeps he stabs him in the eye before running away, all the while Polyphemus complains to his fellow cyclopses "nobody" stabbed his eye.
      • Lastly, Wall-Building cyclopses are less attested in literature (and thus don't get a fancy literary name), but they were commonly believed to be a race of craftsmen. The Greeks saw massive ancient structures, so they assumed they must have been built by giant cyclops precursors — hence why they are called "Cyclopean architecture".
    • The arimaspi, a race of one-eyed humans and the archenemies of griffins.
  • Japanese Mythology is full of one-eyed creatures, including the Hitotsume Nyuudo (one-eyed monk), the Aobozu (Blue Monk), the karakasa (an umbrella come to life), and the Ippondatara (a giant with one eye and one leg).
  • Odin from Norse Mythology is depicted as having one eye after sacrificing the other to the Well of Mímir in exchange for the ability to tell the future.
  • Sinbad the Sailor has met a Cyclops in the Polyphemus mold before.
  • Slavic Mythology has the terrifying Likho, an embodiment of evil, fate, and misfortune.
  • Bungisngis is a one-eyed giant in Philippine folklore who is described as having huge tusks and superb hearing. He's said to be pretty dimwitted, but also very jovial and fond of laughing.

    Pinball 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Call of Cthulhu: The supplement Pursuit to Kadath's adventure "The All Seeing Eye of the Alskali" has the titular Alskali monsters, whose single eye can hypnotize their victims.
  • Changeling: The Lost: One of the Ogre kiths is the Cyclopean. They almost always have a missing eye and their mien makes it look like one central eye. They do come in other varieties though.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has had a long history with Cyclopes.
    • The Greek Mythology version first appears in the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia. There are two variants, the Chaotic Good Greater Cyclops (based on the ones who serve Hephaestus in his forge) and the Lawful Evil Lesser Cyclops (based on Polyphemus and his ilk).
    • Cyclopes have also appeared as the core Monster Manual in some editions, but in those cases there are just one species of Cyclops, which has more in common with the Lesser Cyclops, being violent but dimwitted recluses that spend their days tending to sheep and smashing trespassers with their clubs.
    • Like many things in 4th Edition, Cyclopes were drastically changed. Instead, they originate from the Feywild's version of the Underdark, where they work as a Servant Race for the Fomorians, a hideously deformed race of insane, subterranean giants who constantly war with The Fair Folk on the surface. While this change was one of the more welcomed ones due to the depth it gave them, it was quietly dropped with the advent of 5th edition and cyclopes went back to their usual characterization.
    • There are also the Cyclopskin (who are blue Cyclopes) in the 1E Monster Manual 2, and Zargon, the "god" of the Lost City (B-4).
    • The orc god Gruumsh alternates between being portrayed as a cyclops-orc or simply having just one working eye (the other supposedly shot out by the elf god Corellon Larethian). As orcs hold that the "lost an eye to the elf god" story is elven propaganda, they usually show him as the former, while elves show him as the latter.
    • Nothics are hunched, gaunt, insane monsters with faces dominated by a single, immense, staring eye, and can rot flesh from bone with their gaze.
  • Earthdawn: The supplement Scourge Unending has cyclopean ghouls.
  • Pathfinder: Cyclopes are the degenerate descendants of an ancient civilization that once ruled much of the continent of Garund. There are also great cyclopes, which are even bigger and resemble the Ray Harryhausen Cyclops, and kabandhas, cyclopes with no heads and their eye and mouth on their chests (based on a character from the Indian epic The Ramayana).
  • Shadowrun: Cyclopes are a metavariant/subspecies of the troll player race, native to the Mediterranean. They're notable for largely avoiding the Fantastic Racism that baseline trolls face and having been mostly accepted into Mediterranean society, finding steady work at dockyards as labor and security.
  • Warhammer: Most one-eyed creatures have the ability to perceive the Winds of Magic.
    • The Fimir are one-eyed, skull-faced amphibious creatures whose superior perception of the Winds of Magic allows them to roll six dice to channel instead of one, although they're too greedy to share the power dice produced by this channelling.
    • The Beastmen creature known as a Cygor — essentially a hybrid of a cyclops, a minotaur, and a giant — has a degree of magical perception that it uses to find, kill, and usually eat enemy spellcasters.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The Primarch of the Thousand Sons was Magnus the Red, whose defining features were coppery red skin, being a giant, and having just one eye. It wasn't clear for a time whether he was a cyclops, had only one orbit, or simply lacked one eye, although artwork for the Horus Heresy novels and his official Forge World model for the game have him with a normal face and missing his right eye. His Daemon Primarch model has three possible face options, two normal faces missing the right eye and one which is a typical cyclops.
    • Plaguebearers of Nurgle usually only have one eye.
    • The mjordhainn were alien giants with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads.

    Toys 
  • Flick-to-Stick Bungees:
    • Lojo of Europe's Series 1 is a caterpillar-like Bungee with one eye.
    • Pak/Tok from Bionic Bungees and their American version Fulcram all have a one-eyed face.
  • Star Monsters: Belbo, Hanne, Xivu, and Guija have a mouth, but only one eye. In Hanne's case, it's because the star it formed from landed on a camera case. In Xivu's case, it's because it landed on a megaphone, the round shape of the horn-like speaker obviously being where its eye is. Guija came from a guitar, and its eye is mean to be the hole in a guitar.
  • Teddy Scares features a cyclops bear named Abnormal Cyrus.

    Video Games 
  • Age of Mythology:
    • Cyclopes appear as Myth Units if you progress to Classical Age with Ares.
    • Another cyclops, Gargarensis, is the main antagonist.
  • AI: The Somnium Files: AI-Balls are AI-controlled prosthetic eyes that can take on an autonomous form outside of their user's body, forming a gelatinous body around the eye, evoking the appearance of a cyclops.
  • In Animal Jam, the Phantoms (evil blob creatures) have one eye in the middle of their bodies.
  • In Assassin's Creed Origins, Brontes (from Greek mythology, above) appears as a boss fight at the end of a side-quest line. Arges and Steropes were later added as Optional Boss enemies for high-level characters via patch.
  • Basketball Nightmare: You can play against a team of cyclopes.
  • Battle Monsters has Drethdock, a cyclopean monster who comes from the "Monocle" tribe.
  • Castle Crashers: You must defeat a cyclops to rescue the Green Princess. He's revived by the Necromancer as part of the final Boss Rush.
  • Castlevania: There are several cyclopean creatures in the series, two of which serve as bosses in Castlevania III and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. They seem similar to the one from the Golden Voyage of Sinbad, except that they're blue skinned instead of red and carry enormous hammers.
  • Coffee Crisis have one-eyed aliens as the second-most recurring enemy (the first being The Greys), whose heads are just a single eyestalk and their mouths on their torsos. They can attack by launching their eyeballs like projectiles, regrowing a new eye after losing their previous one in seconds.
  • Cuphead: A grey-skinned cyclops with a single centrally-positioned horn appears in Rugged Ridge as an Advancing Boss of Doom, starting to chase the player halfway through and destroying any platform in its way.
  • Dark Souls:
    • Kalameet, the one-eyed black dragon from the Artorias of the Abyss DLC for the first game.
    • More traditional cyclopes are relatively tough enemies in Dark Souls II, hippo-like Ogres you can encounter within the first minute of gameplay. Late-game dungeons heavily imply that they are an artificial creation of Aldia.
  • In Day Dreamin' Davey, there is a cyclops that Davey has to destroy by attacking his eye in one Greek mythology stage. Of course, that "cyclops" in his imagined state turns out to be a girl whom he just hit in the eye in class. Oh, Crap! ensues.
  • Don't Starve has the Deerclops, a giant, one-eyed humanoid deer.
  • Doom: Massmouth, from the Game Mod series The Adventures of Massmouth, is an alien with a single eye on an eyestalk. (He was originally a Quake II skin.) He also appears as a bot in Skulltag, a source port focused on multiplayer, where one of his lines is a complaint about his lack of depth perception.
  • Dragon's Crown: Big, blue cyclopes appear as boss monsters, and you fight them two at a time.
  • Dragon's Dogma:
    • Giant, tusked cyclopes can be found as enemies.
    • Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen introduces the "Gorecyclops", which are darker, evil versions of the normal cyclops.
    • On top of that, the "Condemned Gorecyclops" is also introduced in Dark Arisen. This one is a gigantic enemy boss chained to a wall. It's one of the largest enemies in the game, and far larger than any other Cyclops.
  • Dragon Quest II: Atlas is an amber-skinned, one-eyed, horned giant.
  • Dragonvale: It's possible to breed a Cyclops Dragon.
  • Duke Nukem:
    • The Cycloid Emperor boss from Duke Nukem 3D. Duke even makes a field goal with its eye.
    • Zero from Duke Nukem: Zero Hour.
  • Eternity: The Last Unicorn have Cyclopses as a regular Giant Mook enemy, one-eyed giants swinging huge clubs. Beware their Shockwave Stomp!
  • Final Fantasy:
  • Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance: Smaller than most examples (despite the game's setting in ancient Rome), but the game has gorilla-sized cyclopses as enemies in the Isle of Titans. And you later fight Cyclops skeletons, the Undead Counterpart of their living equivalents.
  • Ghosts 'n Goblins: The strangely-named Unicorn Demon is a somewhat traditional-looking cyclops.
  • Gigantic: Cyclopes are a type of creature the players can summon. They can create stone walls around the control point they're summoned on to prevent enemy heroes from taking certain pathways.
  • God of War, being based on Greek Mythology, has these as recurring enemies in a few varieties. A common method of finishing them off is to rip their eyes out, which you can trade in for goodies. God of War: Ascension has Polyphemus as an especially gigantic cyclops boss on the multiplayer map "Desert of Lost Souls".
  • Grow: A lot of creatures only have one eye, the most prominent ones being the Tonties, who live underground in some sort of ant-like society.
  • Hero of Sparta have it's first boss being a cyclops the size of a skyscraper, where you run circles around it while finding a way to fight back. And just like in the myths, you slay it by stabbing it through the eye.
  • Inexistence Rebirth: Some enemies in the game have only one eye, like the poisonous Blob Monsters.
    • And of course, there's cyclops enemies who will throw axes at Hald if he's close enough.
  • Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu: Nyudo Monster, the fourth stage boss.
  • A number of characters in Kid Baby Starchild only have one eye.
  • Kid Icarus (1986): Eggplant Wizards are cycloptic purple wizards with the power to turn Pit into an eggplant. They've been in every Kid Icarus game to date, and one was a recurring villain on Captain N: The Game Master.
  • Killer Instinct: Eyedol is a two-headed cyclops, as is Eyeclops from CarnEvil, who however has several more eyes all over his body.
  • The Kindergarten Monstermon card Cyclops Duckling. The reason it only has one eye is because the other one was pecked out by a bigger duckling.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, Donald Duck only has one eye while in Monstropolis.
  • Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning: The Balor is a gigantic Lord of destruction with powerful claws and a single massive eye that shoots beams of light.
  • Last Armageddon: The single-eyed Cyclops is one of your party members.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • Majesty features a single cyclops named Dirgo, who sports a single enormous eyepatch. According to his Backstory, he was blinded by an unnamed sailor, and is roaming the land seeking revenge.
  • Might and Magic: Cyclopes have appeared in almost every game, either as enemies or as units.
  • Moshi Monsters:
    • Fishlips the Glump has one rather large eye.
    • Lefty, Captain Buck's assistant, has one eye. He jokes about this fact by saying "eye eye, captain!".
    • Zommers are a species that are born with one detachable eye. Later on, they grow an empty eye socket that never has an eye in it.
  • Muramasa: The Demon Blade: The Blue Monk is a large cyclops with a big head.
  • Neopets has the Meowclopses, one-eyed cats.
  • Nicktoons Unite!: Globulous Maximus from the final game Globs of Doom qualifies after becoming SpongeGlob, as this form resembles a one-eyed SpongeBob and he has other eyes around his body in his original form.
  • Nioh:
    • Hitotsume-Nyuudo are massive enemies which can be stunned if you land a hit on their eye. Smaller variants also exist.
    • Trailers from Nioh 2 show the Ippondatara, depicted as a fanged, one-eyed and one-legged monster brandishing either a smith's mallet or a giant sword.
  • Orcs Must Die! Unchained: Stinkeye is a cyclops hero class who uses arcane magic.
  • In Pathfinder: Kingmaker, we have Vordakai, the Arc Villain of The Varnhold Vanishing. He was the last king of a race of Abusive Precursors, and is planning to retake his position in the present day.
  • Pilgrim (RPG Maker): Nekaneminorpe is a Cute Monster Girl version of one with Girlish Pigtails.
  • Pokémon: Several Pokémon have only one eye, but the most cyclops-like ones are Dusclops and Trevenant.
  • Raging Blades has a chubby but acrofatic cyclops as a boss, who alternates between using his hammer to squish you or jumping around to flatten you with his gut as attacks.
  • Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan: A number of characters in the game, such as Giro and Rodrigo.
  • The Rampage series has Kyle, Myukus, and Eyegore as playable monster Cyclopes.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal has two examples.
    • The lowest-ranked Tyrrhanoids have only one eye. A few times in the game, Ratchet will use a Tyrrhaguise to turn himself into one to get through locations guarded by them.
    • The monkeys found in the Florana Jungles also have just one eye. One of them, Skrunch, is adopted by Captain Qwark and becomes a partner for Clank during his three segments in the game.
  • Rayman 2: The Great Escape: Jano has one eye.
  • RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore has Lore, a living, floating book with only one big blue eye.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations: The Final Boss, Norman's One-Winged Angel, is a Tyrant-like monster riddled with Body Horror; notably, his whole face split in half, revealing a red tumorous mass with a single eye beneath. It's not merely cosmetic, as it allows him to blind the players with sudden flashes of light to perform Flash Step and illusionary clones.
  • Rift: Cyclopes seem to be denizens of the Plane of Earth. They're built along the same large and solid lines as bahmi (although they tend to be even taller), but have ivory-yellow skin, vaguely bestial features, and the definitive single, centrally-positioned eye.
  • Run 3: Everyone in the game has this trait, considering they're all aliens.
  • The Shantae series:
  • The Skylanders series has a number of them. And there are some Skylanders who might not be Cyclops, but still only have one eye, including:
    • In Giants, we have the mushroom Shroomboom, and Eye-Brawl who is a giant eye without a body and a body without a head put together.
    • In Swap Force, there's Magna Charge, who is a robot built with only one eye.
    • In Trap Team, Rocky from the duo Skylander Rocky Roll has one giant green eye.
    • In SuperChargers, Dive-Clops, the twin brother to the eye of Eye-Brawl, is a walking scuba suit with a giant eye inside it.
    • And finally in Imaginators, we have another robot cyclops, the tech Bowslinger Ro-Bow.
  • Space Fury: A cyclopean alien head comes onto the screen to antagonize you throughout the game. A Distaff Counterpart appears in the homebrew sequel game Ms. Space Fury.
  • Space Harrier has one-eyed woolly mammoths.
  • Spelunky: One of the unlockable spelunkers is a "goofy cyclops◊".
  • Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: The Kyororo are cyclops monsters in the Pumpkin Zone.
  • Metroid:
    • Metroid II: Return of Samus: Senjoo, Seerook, Mumbo, Halzyn, Gravitt, Yumee, and Ramulken all have one eye, although they are also much smaller than the mythological cyclops. Autoad and Autom are Cyber Cyclops, while Pincher Fly takes it to Oculothorax.
    • Super Metroid: Mother Brain's alternate form is an one-eyed giant.
    • It's seen again in a flashback in 3D at the beginning of Metroid: Other M.
  • Tak and the Power of Juju: Rufus, the right head of the two-headed Juju, has one eye.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters: In the Genesis version, the "Magma Ocean Planet" stage has a gigantic cyclops lava monster in the background.
  • Mimit from Temtem is a Waddling Head with a single, large eye at the centre of its "face".
  • Timothy vs. the Aliens: The small orange aliens have one big eye.
  • In Titan Quest, Polyphemus the cyclops from the Odyssey appears as a boss. You also meet some other cyclopes while ascending Mount Olympus. One last one is shown turned to stone prior to the fight with the Gorgon Sisters. Finally, a duo of cyclopes named Brontes and Steropes are bosses in a sidequest of Act IV in Hades. All of them are massive reddish humanoids armed with stone clubs and capable of attacking with stone-shattering shockwaves and stunning howls. They were classified as Magical beasts before Ragnarök, which classified them as "Giants".
  • A Total War Saga: TROY: Polyphemus is a pirate who uses a dwarf elephant's skull as a helm and wields a mace tipped with a ram's skull, implied to be the distant source of myths about a monstrous, cyclopean son of the sea god who lived on a distant island and reared sheep.
  • Trog: The one-eyed cavemen called the Trogs.
  • Turtle Pop: Journey to Freedom: One kind of enemy you can run into in the game is a Cartoon Bomb with two feet, and a single eye.
  • A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: The enemies that use the Puppet.png art are a cloth hung on a cross of wooden poles. The cloth looks like it has a head in the center, that has one black-pupiled yellow scalera eye further surrounded by some red flesh.
  • Warcraft: Ogre magi have two heads, one with two eyes and another with one. Cyclopean ogres of the single-headed variety also exist in the Warcraft Expanded Universe. The latter category rarely appear in World of Warcraft (although ogre magi are common enough), but WoW did introduce their kin the Gronn, who bear a resemblance to the cyclopes from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
  • Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening: Mystic Books◊ have one eye in the center of their open pages, bad wings, four tentacles and four legs with two joints each.
  • Will Rock: A cyclops appears as the first boss, capable of hitting you from far away by spitting stones at you. It becomes a Degraded Boss soon enough.
  • Wizard101 has an area called Cyclops Lane, which has quite a few of the creatures.
  • Wrath Unleashed: A monstrous cyclops with a spiked turtle-shell (that may just be a form of crude armor) is part of the Dark Chaos roster.
  • In the Xena: Warrior Princess game for the PlayStation, a cyclops guards King Valarian's island stronghold in the Isle of Kronos stage. In a Shout-Out to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, he has one horn on his forehead, and if the player uses the "chakram-cam" feature, it can be seen that he has satyr-like legs similar to Harryhausen's cyclopes.

    Visual Novels 
  • Love at First Sight is about a romance between the two-eyed protagonist and Sachi Usui, an injury-ridden cyclops girl.

    Webcomics 
  • Axe Cop:
  • The Beast Legion has Gorgorath.
  • Boozle is a webcomic centered around a grumpy gnome wizard and a large female cyclops named Bitsy.
  • Close to Your Heart: Like their original designs from the game, the antagonists Blixer and Cuda only have one eye each. Cuda's younger brother, Rave, also has only one eye, but he's far less malicious.
  • Girl Genius: A number of monsters and constructs have a single central eye. For example, a crowd of individuals from Sanaa's backstory that are possibly what became of her crew.
  • The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has the annually appearing Halloween Monster, who only has one eye.
  • The Mansion of E features a similar-shaped species called Eyebolts.
  • Monster Pop!: Genevieve "George" Tinsley is a college freshman and cyclops.
  • Pebble's dad in Pebble and Wren has one eye.
  • In The Petri Dish, all the aliens have one eye, as does iBall the cyborg.
  • In The Property of Hate, Madras, the current proprietor of the House of Paint until she leaves and gives the house to Hero, who has a... relationship with RGB. She is a Cute Monster Girl of sorts, having only one eye and spindly limbs.
  • Rusty and Co.: In Level 1: #26, Mimic gets a single eye, by multi-classing into Beholder, making him a Chest Monster with one eye.
  • Schlock Mercenary: The appropriately named Uniocs have one basketball-sized eye on top of a stalk on their shoulders above the mouth; their brains are apparently down in the pelvic area. Depth perception isn't a problem because their one big eye can rapidly shift focus, and they can see on the microscopic scale as well. There's also a comic where it's mentioned that there was a Unioc dressed as a cyclops at a physics convention.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time: Cyclopes aren't uncommon. One plays a major role in the episode "Another Way".
  • Aladdin: The Series: Fasir is eventually revealed to be one. Also, there's his brother Fashoom.
  • The Angry Beavers: In "Friends, Romans, Beavers!", after accidently time traveling to Ancient Rome and being forced to fight in the Colleseum, the beaver brothers face off against a giant cyclops. Norbert points out that the cyclops has two eyes instead of one, which drives the senstive monster into a crying fit as the other cyclops' made fun of him for it.
    Cyclops: You don't know what it's like being born with two eyes.
    Norbert: Well, actually, I kinda do.
  • Arthur "D.W. Tale Spins" has Buster (a rabbit) as a cyclops who also only has one ear.
  • Beany and Cecil: In "The Wildman of Wildsville", the Wildman paints two TV tuning knobs on Cecil's nostrils. When he turns one of them, Cecil's eyes conjoin to form the CBS eye, making him a default cyclops at least for the gag.
  • Ben 10:
  • Best and Bester: Grafifi is a living can of spray paint. As part of her design, she only has one eye, which is located where the spray can nozzle is.
  • Biker Mice from Mars: Eyemore from "Manchurian Charley", who can hypnotize people with his one, massive eye.
  • Butt-Ugly Martians features a race of overweight and one-eyed aliens called the Karsh.
  • Captain Sturdy: Back in Action villain Moid is a cycloptic alien.
  • ChalkZone: The magic chalk mine was originally guarded by a cyclops who wouldn't let anyone have any. The poor depth perception made him trip a lot, so as Rudy escaped with some of the chalk, he drew him a second eye above the first. When Rudy returns later, the cyclops, who now calls himself "Biclops", is actually very grateful for his improved vision, and lets Rudy take as much chalk as he wants.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog has Carmen, a serpentine sea monster with one eye, from the episode "Serpent of Evil River".
  • Final Space has a variant with Ash; she has bangs, but as revealed in "The Notorious Mrs. Goodspeed", there's absolutely no eye underneath them, so her left eye is the only one she has. At the end of "Change is Gonna Come", Invictus restores her missing eye and gives her a new hairstyle to go with it.
  • Futurama: Leela, who only has one giant eyeball and is somewhat touchy about it. A couple of episodes reference the fact that she has very poor depth perception. She was initially presented as a member of an unknown alien race, but later turned out to be a human mutant. Both of her parents are cyclopes as well.
  • The Godzilla Power Hour: The Cyclops Creature from "The Horror of Forgotten Island" is a mutant cyclops kaiju.
  • Gravedale High: One of the students is a cyclops named Seymore.
  • Gravity Falls: In "Little Gift Shop of Horrors", one of the stop-motion monsters in the "Clay Day" segment is a cyclops.
  • Hazbin Hotel has a few demon characters who possess only a single eye in the middle of their head, such as the diminutive, psychotically cleanly Niffty and Australian-accented Mad Bomber Cherri Bomb
  • Inhumanoids: Gagoyle is a giant blue monster with one eye.
  • Jimmy Two-Shoes features multiple such characters, with the most prominent being Beezy's feral girlfriend Saffi and Jimmy's pet monster "dog" Cerbee.
  • Jumanji: The Animated Series: The Draken from "Eye of the Sea" is a one-eyed sea monster.
  • Mixels: Very common. The toy sets use 2x2 discs for most of them, though some have started using minifigure heads instead. Some include Seismo, Teslo, and Vulk.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Mysticons: Doug Hadderstorm, an Acromancer Cyclops in "How to Train a Mysticon".
  • Numberblocks: One has one eye, and several powers of ten also possess this trait: One Hundred, One Thousand, One Million...
    • Also, One’s teddy bear. And the One Times Table.
    • Lampshaded when One says “No, this is my eye.”
  • In Numberjacks, the Problem Blob has one eye on the end of a stalk in his mouth.
  • Oscar And Friends: The aliens Oscar, Doris, and Bugsy interact with in "Oscar Takes Off" are all cyclops aliens.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Billy from the Gangreen Gang is revealed to be a cyclops under his bangs.
  • ReBoot: The one-binomes all only have one eye, in contrast to the two-eyed zero-binomes.
  • Ruby Gloom: Iris, a Cute Monster Girl version who's also Ruby's best friend.
  • Scooby-Doo as a whole has had several cyclopes as monsters, including the Tar Monster and the Creepy Heap from the Deep, the Grim Creeper from Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, and the villain Dr. Cyclops in the episode "Scooby-Doo and Cyclops, Too" from The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show, who is actually a man with a weird emerald eye that turns people into zombies behind his Eyepatch of Power.
  • Sidekick: Uni-cyclops, so named because she's a cyclops who rides a unicycle.
  • The Simpsons: Kang and Kodos from the Halloween Specials are aliens with a single gigantic eye each.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Plankton, a small marine critter with a single eye. Truth in Television too; there's actually a genus of microscopic crustaceans called Cyclops (see the Real Life folder for more). One episode has him figure out that this is detrimental to his plans because he lacks depth perception. He spends the episode trying to grow a second eye through experiments, finally getting one via SpongeBob's DNA... but SpongeBob's naturally good personality begins to take over Plankton's and he ultimately has to get rid of it so he can continue his plans.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Sapphire is revealed to be one when her hair is moved out of her eye in the episode "Keystone Motel". The same applies to Padparadscha, an Off-Color orange Sapphire.
    • Centipeetle/Nephrite has her gem as a single, functional eye.
    • Emerald and Eyeball Ruby both have their gems where their eyes would otherwise be, thus giving each only one functional eye.
  • Super Wish: The caker pops who make up Balloonicus' army all only have one eye each. It probably has to do with how big their faces are in comparison to their heads.
  • SWAT Kats:
    • "The Giant Bacteria": The way the title creatures work is that they divide or not depending on the number of eyes they have. The original monster has four, so it divides into two creatures with two eyes. These then have the potential to divide into a total of four single-eyed bacteria monsters, of which there wind up being two (animation errors aside).
    • "Bride of the Pastmaster": The Pastmaster uses a trio of huge kat cyclopes as part of his army of mythological monsters. Two of them have horned foreheads.
    • "Mutation City": The "scum snake" that drags the Turbokat down under the surface of the mutagen has one single cycloptic eyeball. T-Bone even exchanges glares with it through the cockpit - "What're you lookin' at, ugly?"
  • Tak and the Power of Juju: One of the Jujus featured in the animated series who isn't present in the original video games is Killjoy Juju, a Juju with a talent for ending parties who has the appearance of a one-eyed monster. She is ironically the significant other of the Party Juju.
  • What It's Like Being Alone: Seymore Talkless, due to being a mutant, has one eye. He's also notable for being entirely mute.
  • Xiaolin Showdown has Cyclops, a giant, red, one-eyed creature similar in appearance to the ones from the Greek mythology. He is physically strong and can fire a laser beam from his eye, but he's also immature and Jack has to take care of him like a baby.

    Real Life 
  • Cyclopes aren't restricted to mythology — a number of defects in fetal development can result in the birth of one-eyed creatures, although the severity of these defects and related disorders means these creatures usually die soon after. Exposure to natural or man-made poisons is often to blame nowadays.
    • Cy, the internet-famous one-eyed noseless kitten, who was born December 2005 and died a day later.
    • A cyclops goat was also born in Nigeria. It caused quite a stir — they even accused the owner of an act of bestiality.
    • A one-eyed piglet with a severely deformed nose was also born in China in 2005.
    • Cyclopia, as it's known, can manifest in humans as well. You can Google it, but the pics can be rather squicky, so be warned. Most cyclopia babies don't survive more than a day or so after birth, if they're not stillborn.
  • The cyclopes from Greek legend are thought to have been based on a misconstrual of a fossilized mammoth or other prehistoric elephant skulls. If there were no tusks present, the trunk hollow could easily be mistaken for a single eye socket (it's actually the nasal cavity). You'd even have tourist travel guides telling travelers where they could see a cyclops's remains. This was especially true of dwarf elephants, which tended to have smaller or no tusks, and were common throughout the islands of the eastern Mediterranean during the Pleistociene, with most or all populations having gone extinct some time before humans were thought to have colonized the islands.
  • Anime blogger Danny Choo took a few pictures of someone dressed as a cute and fashionable little cyclops girl at the 2012 Wonder Festival. They were also spotted at the Tokyo Design Festa of the same year, always clad in the latest Harajuku fashion. So far they've never appeared again, and nobody knows if they were a part of some publicity stunt or just a fan of unusual cosplays.
  • Cyclops is a common genus of copepods (tiny crustaceans that range from 0.5 to 5 millimeters in size) found in freshwater environments around the world; they are easily identified by (you guessed it) their single large eye. They are harmless in and of themselves and form an important link in many aquatic food chains, but they can serve as intermediate hosts to some pretty nasty parasites (such as tapeworms and guinea worms). Plankton from Spongebob is based on these guys.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

One

In the first crossover film, I mistakes One’s numberling for a letter I. Hilariously, One thinks she said “eye.”

Example of:
Fun with Homophones

Eye-Brawl

Colored Contacts

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top

One

In the first crossover film, I mistakes One’s numberling for a letter I. Hilariously, One thinks she said “eye.”

How well does it match the trope?

4 (5 votes)

Example of:

Main / FunWithHomophones

Media sources:

Report

One

Eye-Brawl

Colored Contacts