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Our eyes had been removed, the sockets scrubbed and packed with far more efficient sensory devices, wired back into our visual cortices. Our eyeballs waited back at the shuttle, floating in jars like grotesque delicacies.

Eyes made from electronics. Prevalent in Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk works, occasionally crops up in Science Fiction works that don't focus as much on transhumanism.

Normally the eye is some kind of upgrade or super sense. It may have a superzoom, infrared or perhaps digitised vision. This is quite common with the Cyborg hero whose powers are his cybernetic upgrades. In First Person Shooters and other games controlled in first-person perspective, cybernetic eyes may be the reason you see the usual Video Game Interface Elements.

It can also be a prosthetic replacement for lost eyes. These are commonly found in stories set in the far future with widely available technology. In reality, artificial sight technology is already pretty advanced, so as writers catch up with science we should be seeing crude-but-workable Electronic Eyes in about 20 Minutes into the Future.

Sometimes the eye is very visually distinct. Bizarre irises or unusual pupils mark the individual. Working on the principle of the eyes being the window to the soul, these Technicolor Eyes can be a small but direct method of demonstrating the fact that an otherwise normal-looking individual is at least partially cybernetic. In the case of prosthetic eyes they also work as a scar signifier. Since the eyes are taken as so much more personal they can be a much smaller effect for greater emotional impact. And, of course, it can also show how evil a person is.

If only one eye is cybernetic, it is a form of Eyepatch of Power. If it can send images to its owner while detached, it functions as an Eye Spy. Compare with Glowing Mechanical Eyes in which case robotic eyes are usually able to produce light.

See also the supertropes Cyborg and Eye Tropes. When the person with these eyes dies, expect to see Eye Lights Out. See Glass Eye or Magic Eye for the fantasy version of this.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • Verizon's advertisements for the Droid X show this happening (for some reason) as the user watches the built in Blockbuster-on-demand feature.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Inaho from Aldnoah.Zero has one in season two after his is shot out by Slaine at the end of season one. It looks almost identical to his real one, but it's quickly revealed that it goes far beyond just a regular eye.
  • Cowboy Bebop: Spike Spiegel's right eye is artificial, as shown in a flashback in "Sympathy for the Devil". It functions practically identically to a natural eye, with no nifty technological tricks. The only sign of its falseness is the fact that it's a slightly different shade of brown than his real eye.
  • In Cyborg 009, 003's Super-Senses come from her being turned into a Cyborg. Her electronic eyes are shown in quite the detail in the 2012 movie.
  • Bandou of Elfen Lied gets these after Lucy destroys his original eyes. Notably, they're actually a little less functional than a normal human eye (they tint everything yellow and make things a bit blurry), but Bandou's not going to complain when the alternative was blindness.
  • In Ghost in the Shell (all versions), one of the main characters, Batou, has very obvious artificial eyes. In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex they are referred to as "ranger eyes", after the eyes used by the ranger unit he belonged to when he was in the military. Not much is revealed of their capabilities. These eyes look opaque and are unmoving, and there is no eyelid present, so they always look exactly the same.
    • They are shown to include night vision, a powerful zoom, limited ability to detect thermoptic camouflage and, in the final episode of 2nd Gig, a visual Trust Password when a corrupt official is silly enough to send Rangers after a former Ranger.
    • In Stand Alone Complex, Borma has a similar pair of eyes, except that they are red. Nothing known about their capabilities. Saito's left eye is his cybernetic "Hawkeye", which has a super powerful scoping ability, and he can access satellites to zoom in on his targets to help with his sniping. When not used, it remains closed, looking akin to an eye patch.
      • In the Stand Alone Complex version, these are implied to be fairly common, though with less conspicuous versions than Batou and Borma. The Major (being a full body cyborg) has them, as does the minister in the very first episode.
  • Goku: Midnight Eye stars private investigator Goku Furinji, whose sacrificed left eye is replaced by a mysterious benefactor with an electronic one that obeys his mental commands, providing (among other things) x-ray vision, night vision, targeting, thermal vision, GPS, visual chemical analysis and protection from hypnosis, and can also access and command virtually anything on the planet or in orbit controlled by computer, all of which leaves his cyberpunk noir future in his hands. And of the two toys he was given, this one wasn't even the magical one.
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes has Paul von Oberstein, who was born blind until he got a pair of rather creepy prosthetic eyes.
  • Lyrical Nanoha:
    • The Combat Cyborgs introduced in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Their eyes are among the many body parts replaced with cybernetic implants. Close-ups of their eyes reveal camera lenses that rotate when they're using their Super-Senses.
    • Nanoha ends up getting her right eye replaced with a cybernetic implant in the epilogue of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Detonation after the original is blinded from an explosion. It's unknown if it grants her any enhanced sight, though it is visually identical to the original (or at least similar enough that no Muggle on Earth would be able to tell the difference).
  • All the Hooba siblings from Princess Resurrection have these, though they are androids, not cyborgs.
  • In Tales of Wedding Rings, the Magitek Robot Girl Amber has mechanical eyes resembling sunken concentric diamonds. They can produce light for others to see by and fire lasers, amongst other things.
  • Usagi-chan de Cue!!: After his first fight against Inaba, Dekao plummets off the school's rooftop. He reappears on the public beach rebuilt with a camera-like right eye, plus rocket fists and shoulder-mounted missiles. During his last appearance, the audience is shown a view through this eye as it targets Inaba and Koshka.
  • Yurei Deco has a downplayed example: Practically all citizens of Tom Sawyer Island have electronic implants in their eyes that allow them to interact with the island's Augmented Reality systems (those without implants instead wear glasses). Main character Berry has a glitchy implant in her right eye, which allows her to see glitches in the system the system administrators and enterprising hackers cover up for everyone else.

    Comic Books 
  • Police Captain Wiggins in Grendel: Devil's Legacy has a cybernetic eye. We never see how this works in detail, but the eye can be attuned to a person's physiology to function as a lie detector (much the same way as a real lie detector works). It's quite useful in questioning suspects. However, he apparently prefers to rely on his intelligence and intuition rather than his built-in lie detector. He's probably aware that a good liar can beat a lie detector.
  • Judge Dredd has bionic eyes, given to him during the "City of the Damned" story arc after his real ones are ripped out of their sockets by a zombie version of himself from the future. Dredd notes that the new eyes give him 20:20 night vision, enhanced clarity over distance, and a 50% reduction in blinking time. He praises the efficiency of his new eyes after he gets them and says that his one regret is that he never got them sooner. Truth be told, though, you'll probably be hard-pressed to ever find another Dredd story where any of these improved eye functions become useful to him. He's a crack marksman regardless, but it's unclear how much of this is simply due to Dredd's skills with the Lawgiver or his superhuman eyesight. Probably both. However, in the 2000 AD story The Dead Man, one of the earliest tip-offs to the reader revealing that the titular disfigured character is actually Dredd is the fact that his eyes "don't look natural". It also crops up in another story, where a group of perps use an EMP device. Unsurprisingly, Dredd is Blind Without 'Em.
  • Haazen from Knights of the Old Republic has one mechanical eye that is visibly artificial and glows bright red. His other eye seems to be simply an empty socket, leading one to wonder why he didn't get it replaced, too.note 
  • Mr. Marsh of No Hero has computers in his head, as is revealed by his glowing eyes.
  • When the Forgotten Heroes make a guest appearance in Resurrection Man, Silver Age spelunker Cave Carson has a cybernetic eye, a high-tech version of Eyepatch After Timeskip which is never explained. This was the inspiration for the Young Animal title Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): H'Elgn is able to design an electronic eye to replace one of the Daxamite's missing eyes. It doesn't have the potential powers of a natural Daxamite eye (Daxamites are descended from Kryptonian colonists), but it allows her to see.
  • X-Men: After losing her original eyes to her opponent Slaymaster, Psylocke has them replaced by Spiral with bionic ones that instantly adjusted to light — and broadcast everything to Mojoworld. She loses those (having them replaced with normal eyes) and Kwannon gains them when they have their body swap.

    Fan Works 
  • In 14,000,606, after Peter Parker loses his left eye and arm due to him being the one to destroy Thanos with the Snap rather than Tony (as happened in Avengers: Endgame), Thor gives Peter his own artificial eye as a 'reward' for the two of them being the ones to vanquish Thanos (Thor plans to get a new eye from Rocket later).
  • Boldores And Boomsticks: Watts uses his cybernetics expertise to replace the eye Tyrian lost to Whisper's Psycho Cut.
  • The Gunslinger Hero: Flintlock: Izumi has one to replace her lost right eye, with it granting her a plethora of enhancements, including but not limited to: a built-in Heads-Up Display,, the ability to hack into electronics, biometric scanner, access to her armory, and so on. Her original cybernetic eye was damaged at the USJ and she received an upgraded one after. Her original organic eye was lost in an event not yet revealed.
  • In If I Only Had A Heart, Izuku replaces the eye he lost in a villain attack with a cybernetic replacement of his own design. In addition to restoring his depth perception, it's equipped with telescopic and thermal vision and is a miniature supercomputer that allows him to connect to the internet. He hopes to eventually be able to use it to directly interface with other pieces of technology to remotely control them. It's also removable, allowing Izuku to use CT scans without a hitch and monitor his nerves to prevent damage. He also has a camera function installed so that he can record what he sees, uploading it to a computer via a USB drive in his prosthetic arm.

    Film — Animated 

    Film — Live-Action 
  • In Cube Zero, the villains' leader Jax lost one of his eyes due a mechanical mishap and had it replaced with a robotic one. However, it's only a Red Right Hand and he never uses it for superhuman feats.
  • The character Roddy from Death Watch (1980) has voluntarily had cameras and transmitters implanted behind his eyes, allowing everything he sees to be recorded without the giveaway presence of a camera.
  • The protagonist of Doomsday loses one eye in the opening of the film, and has it replaced with a cybernetic one that can be popped out and used as a remote camera.
  • Dredd: The Clan Techie has cybernetic eyes he uses when he's working with computers. The area around them looks pretty badly irritated, and to make matters worse it's later shown that Ma-Ma gouged his eyes out with her thumbs before the surgery.
  • Ghost in the Shell (2017): After his eyes get damaged in a bomb explosion, Batou gets the familiar eyes we know from the anime, rejecting the more discreet versions used by the Major as he's Married to the Job, and so doesn't see the point in fitting in with society.
  • In the James Bond film No Time to Die, cybernetic eyes have apparently become common for one-eyed people. Spectre leader Blofeld uses his and its network to run his organization from his cell via his one-eyed henchman Primo/"Cyclops" (as Bond nicknames him). Blofeld's is later taken away by Q so that he can analyze images from the eye's network, and Primo's eye kills him when Bond fries it with his EMP watch in the Final Battle.
  • In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Blind Mag was born blind but given the ability to see by GeneCo at the price of having to sing for the GeneCo Opera. Eventually she is marked for repossession, but before it can happen, she removes the eyes herself at the end of her final performance for GeneCo, and is killed for her defiance.
  • RoboCop says that his eyes are "the best money can buy"; they are somehow superior to human vision, despite having visibly poor screen-resolution Robo Cam. However, the built-in HUD featuring target identification, police database interface, system status readouts, and recording capability is a considerable upgrade over the original human eyes. (It's not in his faceplate: the readouts persist even after he's taken it off.)
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation films after Generations, Geordi LaForge replaces his VISOR with streamlined ocular implants.note  From what we see in First Contact, the implants are far superior to the VISOR, as he is actually able to see people in normal colors, as opposed to rainbow shapes. It is unknown if he can still tell when people are lying. Given that during the TV series, Geordi specifically declined ocular implants because they'd give him inferior vision to his VISOR, most likely the ones developed by the time of First Contact could see everything his VISOR could and more.

    Literature 
  • In The Company Novels, Mrs. Corvey, who appears in the novellas set in the Victorian era, started life in poverty and lost her eyesight working as a child in a pin factory. She was working as a child prostitute when approached by a member of the Company's front organization the Gentleman's Speculative Society. In exchange for working for them, she was promised and given a better life and had her nonfunctional eyes replaced with electronic once which allow her to see perfectly and have telescopic functions and night vision built in.
  • In the Cyborg novels by Martin Caidin, Steve Austin's bionic eye is played much more realistically than in the subsequent TV series. The book Austin's artificial eye does not allow him to see again; instead, it's merely a miniature (but still highly sophisticated) camera with 20x zoom and infra-red capability, capable of taking up to 30 exposures before the film(!) in it has to be changed.
  • The Dune universe has "Tleilaxu eyes": metal eyes that the Bene Tleilax claim improve on the originals. The Duncan Idaho ghola Hayt was given them by his Tleilaxu creators. They are sometime bought to replace the eyes lost due to attacks by stone burners (indeed, when a stone burner goes off in Dune Messiah, someone comments, "The Tleilaxu will sell many eyes here"). Some Fremen believe that they enslave their user.
  • Gearbreakers: Sona Steelcrest has an artificial left eye.
  • In The Heroes of Olympus, Orion is depicted as having cybernetic eyes replacing the ones he lost and went to Hephaestus to get replaced.
  • Honor Harrington gets one after the second book in the series. It includes nifty features like a zoom function and night vision, but because the input doesn't quite match the remaining organic eye there's always a sense of something off. She ponders if having the other eye replaced would change that but isn't interested experimenting to find out. It does help her out during the duel with Denver Summervale, as she's able to zoom in on his face and watch for twitches.
  • In the Maximum Ride series, this is how Iggy was blinded — the Mad Scientists at the School were trying to replace his eyes with robotic eyes and massively screwed up.
  • In the world of Poster Girl, the tyrannical Delegation demanded that every citizen receive an Insight eye implant, a glowing circle around their iris able to display various kinds of media and information and also used to constantly monitor the actions of each and every citizen, rewarding or punishing them for just about everything they did. Ironically, after the Delegation was overthrown by a rebellion, only their old loyalists and supporters kept their Insights, while everyone else had theirs removed (or so they think).
  • In Quantum Gravity, Lila Black has had her eyes replaced, along with many other body parts. They are perfect mirrors because of this, which pushes her into the Uncanny Valley for some characters.
  • The Red Vixen Adventures: Lady Sallivera Darktail's right eye is a prosthetic thanks to her ex-husband's abuse. She can make it look like a natural eye of any color, but halfway through "Captive" she turns off the camouflage so that it looks like a black camera lens, to signify that she's no longer going to act like it didn't happen.
  • This is common in the Revelation Space Series. The Ultranauts (crews of the starships) frequently adopt these, with their quality varying greatly. Dan Sylveste has artificial eyes which were locally made on a planet with little advanced technology, so his vision is terrible, like a public CCTV feed. Captain John Brannigan has red, multifaceted cameras where his eyes should be, though by that point he looks more machine than a man.
  • In Speaker for the Dead, Olhado lost his sight when he was young. Technology was advanced enough to replace his eyes with metal ones, which allowed him to videotape everything he saw and play it back in slow motion. However, he only used one functional replacement; he gave up binocular vision to have one of the eyes be a jack that he could use to upload the video of his father's abuse of his siblings. Olhado, by the way, is supposed to be a nickname for "The Guy with the Eyes"; his actual name is Lauro Sulémão Ribeira von Hesse.
  • Cyber eyes are a pretty common implant in the Sprawl Trilogy, both for correcting bad vision and for vanity. Simstim stars always have them as they're used for the 'stim visual feed.
  • One character in the Time Wars books loses an eye and gets a bionic replacement.
  • On the cover of the fourth book of the Uglies trilogy, Extras; the characters have "eyescreens", which are like permanent internet interfaces embedded in the eye that can be shut off at will.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Book of Boba Fett. Boba tells a member of the cyborg youth gang he's recruited to keep an eye on the Pyke Syndicate... and then realizes that he has a cybernetic eye. Boba apologizes, meaning it as an expression. The young man is not offended and laughs it off, saying not to worry because he's proud of his eye and spent a lot of money on it.
  • In Century City, a hopeful baseball player has a bionic eye and has to appeal in court in order for him to play on the grounds that bionics give an unfair advantage to a player.
  • Doctor Who:
  • In Gamesmaster, the Gamesmaster (played by Patrick Moore) is a cyborg with a removable camera-like attachement over one eye, as a riff on Sir Patrick's real life High-Class Glass.
  • In Orphan Black, Rachel gets one of these to replace her left eye after a pencil gets shot into it.
  • The "Bionic Eye" was first introduced in The Six Million Dollar Man. Not only could Steve Austin see perfectly with it, but it had a 20x zoom lens and infra-red capability, and was coordinated with his bionic arm to give him pin-point hand-eye coordination and accuracy, even making him an unbeatable tennis-player.
  • The Silicates of Space: Above and Beyond have eyes that look like targeting reticules — however, the Silicates are all robots, just realistic-looking ones.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Geordi La Forge usually has a visor, but future or alternate versions of him have high-tech prosthetic eyes; sometimes brown like the actor, sometimes not. The "prime" Geordi finally gets them in Star Trek: First Contact (see Film).
    • The Borg are equipped with ocular implants. Most drones have cybernetic hardware covering (or replacing) one eye (or, occasionally, both). Seven of Nine's eyes look normal, but she retains the ability to see things normal humans cannot.note 
    • Star Trek: Picard:
      • In "Maps and Legends", the rims of F8's irises and pupils suddenly glow when he turns rogue.
      • In "The Impossible Box", we get a brief glimpse of what the world looks like through Hugh's eyes, and his field of vision is peppered with green Borg symbols.
      • In "Broken Pieces", Seven of Nine's eyes light up with green Borg graphics when she becomes the Artifact's Queen.
      • In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2", Saga's memories are stored in her optical processors, but because her eye is damaged, some of the data has been corrupted.
  • Hawkeye from Terrahawks has computer-enhanced vision due to a childhood accident, hence his nickname.

    Music 
  • The narrator of Jonathan Coulton's "The Future Soon" imagines meeting the girl he has a crush on in the future: "I'll see her standing by the monorail / She'll look the same except for bionic eyes / She lost the real ones in the Robot Wars..."

    Music Videos 

    Tabletop Games 
  • This is present in Cyberpunk 2020, too. No brands mentioned in the main rulebook, but one piece of artwork features two eyes with Nikkornote  on them, and one caption mentions Kiroshis as the brand one lady uses.
  • This is common in the Shadowrun game 'verse, to the point where there are several brands, with Zeissnote  being the state of the art for cyber-eyes.
  • The Net Profits Catalog in the Toonpunk 2020½ setting for Toon offers laser eyes and x-ray eyes. They can be bought singly, so presumably a character could have one of each...
  • Among the many cybernetic implants that the Imperium uses in Warhammer 40,000, "augmetic optics" are quite common. Gaunt's Ghosts features an electronic-eyed soldier who's a valuable reconnaissance asset as his range of vision extends across the electromagnetic spectrum.
    • Ocular augments in the Imperium can range from the comparatively cheap (yet still far beyond anything available yet in Real Life) kind mentioned above to implants that are nearly indistinguishable at first glance from natural eyes.
    • Particularly notable is Commissar Yarrick's "Baleful Eye", which shoots lasers. Why did he get an eye that shoot lasers? Because Yarrick once heard a rumor that he could kill you by glaring.
    • Artificial eyes are surprisingly common in ork society; this is mainly due to either the local painboy deciding to replace some unfortunate ork boy's eye in the middle of stitching their arm back on, the local mekboy accidently cobbling together a surplus of them while hammering together a new shoota, the ork boy actually wanting the crude implant in his skull because ork eyes are notoriously bad at seeing (hence the ork's infamous terrible accuracy) or most likely a combination of all three.

    Theme Parks 
  • The Terminator ride at Universal Studios has a fake ad for cybernetic enhancements which shows a basketball player with artificial eyes that aid in his targeting. He sinks the perfect shot. And then his eyes glow red...

    Video Games 
  • The protagonists of AI: The Somnium Files and its sequel all possess an artificial "AI-Ball" in place of their left eye that comes with X-ray and infrared sensors, the ability to take and receive phone calls, a wireless hacking tool, AR projection, and an onboard AI program to manage it all. When "in use" the only thing that outwardly gives them away as artificial is that the user's eyes do not match color. That's right — a justification for heterochromia, out of all things. The sequel reveals that if a new ABIS agent has two functioning eyes such as Ryuki, they must have one surgically removed to house their "AI-Ball" partner.
  • ANNO: Mutationem: Ryan Flores lost one of his eyes in a past incident, the injury that struck him wasn't too severe and he soon got treatment via a cybernetic replacement with bioskin, making it indistinguishable from the original that he previously had.
  • In Civilization: Beyond Earth, all leaders, such as Vadim Kozlov, have their eyes replaced by glowing, golden electronic ones when they have high Supremacy affinity, with it being more noticeable for some than others. The effect is more than a little unsettling and badass at the same time.
  • In the Japanese campaign of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, a cutscene reveals that President Howard T. Ackerman's eyes are actually cameras.
  • Psybe from Cosmic Star Heroine has a large chunk of his head replaced with cybernetics, including a large red orb that substitutes his left eye. There's also a minor NPC in API headquarters who was left blind as her cybernetic eyes were downloading an update... and then crashed.
  • Dr. N. Gin of the Crash Bandicoot series has a mechanical eye as part of the life support system in his head crafted from a still-live rocket. In some games, it looks more like a Mad Eye, which also fits.
  • Pretty much every character in Cyberpunk 2077 has a pair of these. You can tell which ones either by an unusually colored iris (like a purple or a red one), or when they glow blue when the character is using the net. Special mentions go to River, who has a very crude-looking prosthetic eye and the girl group Us Cracks, who are sponsored by a brand called "Kiroshi Optics", so they sport exotic-looking eye cyberware. Kiroshi is even noted in-universe as providing the best optical implants. Early on, V is even shocked that Viktor got his hands on one, let alone installing it while still in debt. It ends up providing your HUD, including map, weapons, and target scanning.
  • In Dead Space 3, Ellie Langford gets a replacement for the right eye that was cut out with a screwdriver in Dead Space 2. It's noticeable as green, unlike her blue natural eye.
  • The Deus Ex Universe features these.
    • One of the characters in Deus Ex lampshades the fact that JC wears his glasses everywhere, and he responds by saying "My vision is augmented." Apart from a retina implant which allows seeing in dark areas, you can find an augmentation which allows you to see in infrared, and even through walls.
      • 2027 features these as an augmentation upgrade.
    • Deus Ex: Human Revolution features these. You can upgrade them to allow you to see through walls, tell when an enemy will stop looking for you, and keep you safe from flashbangs.
      • Also included are a pair of delightful built-in sunglasses.
  • In Dirty Bomb, Proxy gets one of these from Redeye after one of her eyes gets shot through by Aimee.
  • Markov of Evolve has one of these, as well as metal plating that covers part of his head.
  • The Courier from Fallout: New Vegas has the option to get these by means of the Optics Enhancer, an implant surgically placed within your eye that boosts your perception stat by one. One of the game's many mods, Project Nevada, expands upon this by offering Bionic Eyes that give the player night, thermal, and electro-magnetic vision.
  • Used to avoid an Artifact Title for the James Bond game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. GoldenEye has a cybernetic eye upgraded with powers over the course of the game, with powers like seeing through walls and hacking electronics.
  • Mass Effect:
    • The Illusive Man's eyes are notable for being obviously artificial. The tie-in comic, Mass Effect: Evolution, reveals where he got them: a Reaper artifact on Shanxi. Notably, only one character ever mentions the Illusive Man's unusual eyes: Joker, in an off-hand remark about TIM's "freaky eyes" in Mass Effect 3. These are most likely the vector through which the Reapers were able to indoctrinate him.
    • The protagonist, Commander Shepard, is also mentioned as having implants to aid with targeting and so forth (along with various other body modifications) following Mass Effect 2 when they were rebuilt. Kick the Dog enough with Renegade actions and they glitch out and become a case of Red Eyes, Take Warning.
    • Zaeed Massani is a more subdued example — he has a cybernetic prosthetic eye to replace the one he (probably) lost when he was shot in the head. Said prosthesis is grey, while his real eye is green.
  • Mega Man:
    • In Mega Man 8, Robot Master eyes are shown to work similar to LCD screens, although due to the vastly inferior animation it appears more as the eyes being a blank white until the rest fades in. The comics do this too, with inactive robots having blank eyes, and the eyes of forcibly shut down robots tending to glitch and display weirdly before going blank.
      • Turbo Man, Astro Man, Galaxy Man, and Bounce Man have LED screen eyes.
    • In Mega Man X: Command Mission, while X is a robot, and thus obviously has electronic eyes, a close-up on his eye shows up all kinds of little circuitry doodads visible on the iris.
    • This is also true in Mega Man X8, where X's irises are drawn like camera shutters. Strangely, the other robot characters have normal-looking eyes. Maybe it has something to do with him being an older model?
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • Kano has a cybernetic eye grafted to the right side of his face as part of his metal plate after he lost his real eye in a battle with Jax. In some games, it can emit Eye Beams.
    • By the time of Mortal Kombat 11, one of Frost's introductions shows that she has LED-ringed cameras for eyes after she collaborates with Kronika, who turns Frost into a highly advanced version of a Cyber Lin Kuei. It shows just how much of her humanity she's discarded.
  • Ads for these can be found in the first few levels of Perfect Dark Zero — and, as it turns out, Killian has them.
  • Rimworld has bionic eyes that give pawns better vision than normal.
  • Major "EZ" Wheeler, the main character of RTX Red Rock, lost his left eye during combat and had it replaced with an artificial one that allows him to see in four different vision modes.
  • Peacock, from Skullgirls, possesses an unusual version of these. Her eyes (on her face) are cartoony-looking Black Bead Eyes, but in reality, they're just empty sockets. Instead, she has three large artificial eyes attached to each of her mechanical arms. She takes this further with the ability to summon an indefinite amount of these eyes; they are all free-floating and she can see out of every single one, giving her a massive field of vision. On top of that, they can all shoot lasers.
  • Space Station 13 features various forms of this trope, their nature depending on the codebase.
    • The research department on /TG/Station and similar can develop and create eye implants that can grant perks such as x-ray vision and the ability to see the security status of anyone nearby but can malfunction catastrophically when exposed to an EMP.
    • Robotics on Goonstation and similar has standard cybernetic eyes that function like perfectly normal, mundane biological eyes, meant for restoring vision to those who have lost their original eye. There are also various prosthetic eyes that more in-line with other versions of this trope and can allow people to see through walls, determine the exact composition of chemical mixes, indicate the health of people in sight, or even shoot lasers!
  • In StarCraft, ghosts can get an upgrade called "Ocular Implants", increasing their sight radius. It is actually quite useful as it allows the ghost to call in nuke strikes from outside the blast radius.
  • An NPC in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Gadon Thek, apparently has a pair of these, although they don't look too different from normal eyes. You can even ask him about his "freaky eyes".
  • Juri Han in Street Fighter IV had her eye gouged out by Shadoloo, and S.I.N. replaced it with a cybernetic one, which contains a miniature Feng Shui Engine that stores energy and powers her moves. In Street Fighter V, M. Bison rips out her eye to study it, so she goes back to the abandoned S.I.N. lab to find a replacement. Her "new" eye is a prototype, and unlike the one in IV that was designed to look like a human eye, this one looks like a robotic eye.
  • In Super Smash Bros. 4, the original Mega Man's eyes behave like the above examples for MM8 and the Archie comics. In his reveal trailer, they're LCD screens that are shown to flicker on after he powers up and then flash erratically after he's sustained damage.
  • System Shock doesn't make a big deal of it (when the Hacker wakes up from cryogenic suspension at the beginning of the game's intro sequence, his eyes look normal), but given that Hacker can literally turn on eyes in the back of his head and has an option for enabling night vision, his vision is clearly more cybernetic than it used to be.
    • The remake never shows the Hacker's face, but makes it clear that he's plugging all the fancy upgrades into his body (or just putting them on, like the boots), while also clarifying that your in-game view, with HUD, map and target crosshair, are part of his cybernetic vision.
    • System Shock 2's protagonist appears to have these as part of his cybernetic enhancements.
  • Rhys, one of the two protagonists of Tales from the Borderlands, has an Echo implant in his left eye, distinguishable from his natural brown by its bright blue color. It allows him to scan objects and people to find out more information about them, and glows when he does so. In the present time his implant is yellow due to the fact that in the final episode, he tears out the chip in the eye through its pupil to get rid of the Handsome Jack AI.
  • Theia - The Crimson Eclipse: In the second half of the game, Seth replaces his left eye with the Falcon Eye, which is a machine that can detect the line-of-sight of guards during stealth missions.
  • Garrett from Thief has a prominent Steampunk prosthetic eye from the second game onward. It allows him to zoom in, as well as see through a special remote camera that can be tossed around corners. In one cutscene, it is shown that the eye apparently requires regular removal and maintenance, at least refilling with some fluid.
  • The Engineer of Team Fortress 2 can equip an accessory called "The Googly Gazer," which has alternate styles to make it look like either a regular Glass Eye or an electronic one. He also has Special Eyes, which look like glowing goggles with expressive metal eyelids.
  • Princess Julia, one of the protagonists of Tribes: Vengeance, had her natural, grayish-brown eyes replaced with golden-irised electronic prosthetics in order to have Heads-Up Display output without wearing a FOV-constricting helmet.
  • Quite a bit of the eye customization options in Xenoblade Chronicles X can give your Player Character this look. This could be seen as foreshadowing for the true nature of your character, as well as the rest of humanity in NLA.

    Web Comics 
  • In Agents of the Realm, Folami has a Magitek golden left eye.
  • Kimiko in Dresden Codak acquires one of these after the Hob storyline.
  • Girl Genius: The Corbettite monk/cook/general Vadaxxus has a red-glass-and-brass prosthetic eye. Spark-minion/grad student Miss Baumhund has a device strapped over one eye, though it's not entirely clear if it's a replacement or just an enhancement of some sort.
  • Dabbler from Grrl Power, a succubus who is a Jack of All Trades including being a technological expert, has an electronic prosthetic eye after losing the real one in a swordfight. The eye is capable of some features like video recording and the like. It never falls out unintentionally during the course of the story, but it is loose enough that Dabbler pulls it out of her socket during dinner with her coworkers.
  • This pops up in a few places on Last Res0rt:
    • Some of the children in Gabriel's care on the White Diamond Crisis have bionic eyes (implied to be part of the 'infection' aboard the ship), giving them a heterochomatic appearance.
    • Daisy's cybernetics end up inflamed under stress, revealing a network of circuits not otherwise visible in her eyes and elsewhere.
  • Berc of Magience has a prosthetic eye. He sometimes removes it and plays with it, which discomfits other characters.
  • Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: Jet, the main character's brother, is a Super-Soldier from a nondescript spacefuture, and has a yellow eye with crosshairs instead of a pupil. It's eventually revealed that the military put it inside Jet to be used to take photos of strategic locations/targets. Jet mostly uses it to take photos of his velociraptors being cute.
  • Both Michael and Vendetta in Pilot have these. Michael's look normal, though he can cause them to turn black with white pupils for police interrogations. Vendetta's, however, are all white for reasons unknown.
  • Robert of S.S.D.D. has some with special features. Unfortunately, they are a little unsettling to look at.
    • The black-eyes thing has now been averted. It turns out that his eyes always had the ability to change their appearance to perfectly mimic natural eyes; the surgeon who installed them just forgot to turn on that functionality. As a bonus, he can now actively change their appearance just by thinking about it.
  • Schtein of String Theory (2009) has replacement eyes after an accident. Unfortunately, they only work in black and white, which causes a problem later.

    Web Original 
  • In Avalon's Reign, OSIs are devices that are implanted inside a person's eyes, giving them access to Augmented Reality features such as a Heads-Up Display.
  • Talies from The Motley Two has an electronic left eye, his real eye lost in some Noodle Incident. It's black, with a white pupil.
  • RWBY: Maria Calavera has had a pair since losing her eyes decades ago, which were Silver. Unlike most examples, they're actually quite clunky, looking more like a pair of over-sized high-tech goggles, and cast everything she sees in a bluish tint; she also has to have them taken in for maintenance every few years, or they start breaking down and malfunctioning.

    Western Animation 
  • In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Mad Scientist Lazarus Slade has a cybernetic eye that shoots laser blasts.
  • In Futurama, all robot characters have square pupils instead of round ones.
    • In the episode "A Head in the Polls", Bender demonstrates that (at least in his case) they are actually shaped like the standard "stop" symbol on a recording device, and can change to the "play" or "rewind" shapes when he is performing those functions.
  • In Littlest Pet Shop (2012), Ramona's eyes look pretty normal most of the time (for a macaw, at least) but become like this when she starts scanning her surroundings for intruders.
  • Metalocalypse: Dick Knubbler, sound engineer for Dethklok, has a pair of robotic eyes after his real eyes were literally exploded by the power of the band's rocking. Each eye can move independently, like a chameleon.
  • Matrix, Enzo's adult form in Reboot season 3, after he lost an eye to an opponent in a fighting game, replaces it with a gold optic with a stylized M. When he gets angry, it rolls and the M on the other side glows red.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
    • Clone Commander Wolffe sports a cybernetic right eye from his second appearance onwards, thanks to an offscreen run-in with Asajj Ventress. Unlike most other cybernetic eyes on the series, his is a utilitarian grey and doesn't glow.
    • Separatist Admiral Trench, when he reappears as a Cyborg after his presumed demise in his first appearance, has the left-most of his many eyes as a glowing red prosthetic.
    • Clone commando Wrecker of the Bad Batch is a more ambiguous example: his left eye is completely white, and the scarring on the left side of his head would seem to support that it's a cybernetic replacement, but it hasn't been explicitly confirmed that this is the case.
    • There are also various minor characters with glowing prosthetic eyes that usually tend to be on the bulky side, completely covering their old eye socket.
  • Cyborg of Teen Titans (2003) has a mechanical eye. This is a plot point in one episode where the Titans are facing robots built with the same technology and Cyborg reveals that his mechanical eye has a weakness that can be exploited to make objects invisible to it, which they use to sneak past the robots.

    Real Life 
  • Many scientists are working on creating retinal implants that can send information directly into the optic nerve, effectively curing many kinds of blindness (and simpler models, such as those which transmit image data onto another kind of receptor, such as the tongue, already exist). These same scientists are perfectly aware that once you can turn an electronic camera into an effective human eye, there is (theoretically) little difficulty in giving these eye cameras night vision, zoom functions, etc... Unfortunately, these optic nerve/visual cortex devices currently have far lower resolution than even the cheapest digital camera and are generally limited to producing "white" or "black" (on or off) pixels. It's better than being blind, but it produces nowhere near the detail of normal vision.
  • In 2005, Tanya Marie Vlach has lost her left eye in a car accident. Now she is collecting funds to help her build an HD-equipped prosthetic eye capable of augmented reality. Apparently, it will shoot in a 720p resolution. However, it will not send the data to a nerve of some sort. Instead, the video will be transmitted to a mobile device. Vlach wants the eye to take photos from blinks.
  • Rob Spence, "the Eyeborg," lost one of his eyes in a shooting accident as a teenager, and eventually had a prosthetic eye installed that matches the motion of his existing eye and transmits the video to a handheld receiver. It's not HD and it doesn't have Augmented Reality capabilities yet, but the technology is a proven element.
  • The US Army is working on a cybernetic eye code-named "Luke's Binoculars".
  • Brian Stanley, an American CNC machinist, was diagnosed with cancer and had to have his left eye surgically removed when he was a child. In his adult years, he took to making prosthetic eyes of his own loaded with LEDs of various colors and arrangements, including white ones that he can use as a built-in flashlight.

Alternative Title(s): Electronic Eye

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