Pie-Eyed

When the dot in your eye looks like most of a pie...

"What a woman! Eyes like pies..."

—Felix the Cat, The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat

During the 1920s and going into the 1930s, animated characters were sometimes drawn with eyes or pupils that were black and circular, but shaped like a pie that's had one slice removed from it, with the missing slice being an oversimplified representation of a radial light reflection. It is remembered today as one of the most iconic features of the Inkblot Cartoon Style. Pie-eyes were widespread until around the time color became the standard for most cartoons in the early 1940s, by which time the Inkblot Cartoon Style had fallen out of favor, and Western Animation as a whole had undergone significant Art Evolution. The style sometimes appeared in comics as well, particularly the Disney ones, and others based on characters that first appeared in animation.

When it shows up in modern media, it's usually as an homage or throwback. Parodies of the Inkblot Cartoon Style will almost always employ this along with Rubber-Hose Limbs and the like.

Another variation is Crescent Moon Pupils, where the characters are drawn with pupils shaped like crescent moons.

See also Black Bead Eyes, which were also employed in black and white cartoons; Sphere Eyes, which began to replace them both around the 1940s; and Sudden Eye Colour, which happens when a character who was once pie-eyed gets more "standard" looking eyes in redesigns. Not to be confused with a slang term for being drunk, or with the results of a Pie in the Face.

Classic Examples:

Advertising

• Mascot example: When the Cleveland Guardians were known as the Indians, their mascot was Chief Wahoo◊. His design underwent slight revisions from 1946-2018, but he had always been pie-eyed.
• Another Mascot example: Big Boy of the Big Boy Restaurants originally had black dot pupils, but a redesign in 1956 gave him pie eyes and he's had them ever since.

Anime & Manga

• The works of Noboru Sakaoka depict characters this way, such as his Ultraman, Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Voltes V manga.

Comic Books

• Not a cartoon, but many characters from Carl Barks' Disney Ducks Comic Universe stories are pie-eyed.

Comic Strips

• Popeye characters in the cartoon sometimes had them, usually only during close-ups.

Films — Animation

• The Coachman's Nightmare Face from Pinocchio has a variant — he has black pupils and green irises, but the white highlight is the pie style.

Literature

• Dr. Seuss uses the crescent pupil variation on his illustrations.
• Some non-human characters in John R. Neill's illustrations for the Land of Oz book series had pie eyes,most notably the robotic Tik-Tok.
• Rocko The Christmas Bat: Every character but the titular one has their eyes drawn this way.

Puppet Shows

• Sam, the title character of Jim Henson's first TV show Sam and Friends, has pie eyes.

Western Animation

• Betty Boop, and most of her supporting characters.
• Dinky Doodle
• Porky Pig, in the 1930s.
• Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid, Depending on the Artist.
• Mickey Mouse occasionally sported these eyes (as seen in the above image) in his early days, when he didn't just have Black Bead Eyes. It sometimes went between the two within the same exact short. He had them more consistently in the comics.
• The characters in the Merrie Melodies short I Love to Singa, a rare color example.
• Felix the Cat in some shorts.
• Foxy from Merrie Melodies.
• Buddy from Looney Tunes, also Depending on the Artist. When brought back in Animaniacs in the 1990's as an overly dull parody of his former self he maintained them.
• Flip the Frog

Modern Examples and Homages:

Anime & Manga

• In Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Don Patch sometimes has these eyes.
• In Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure, Battamonda's anxiety-induced visions of the Cures all have dead, pie-shaped eyes that stare at him.
• Enrico Pucci in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean is drawn with pupils like these.
• My Hero Academia has Mirio Togata, whose appearance is supposed to be a reference to the Vault Boy of Fallout.

Asian Animation

• The dancing flowers in the intro to Happy Family have these.

Films — Animation

• Arlo the Alligator Boy uses this type of eyes for every character, to keep up the theme of its faux-retro asthetic.
• In The Lorax (2012), the cartoony version of the Once-ler depicted on advertising banners has pupils like this.
• Mindy from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie has pie-shaped pupils.
• Spinel of Steven Universe: The Movie once had black eyes with a cut taken out of them, part of her general Inkblot Cartoon Style. After she discovered Pink Diamond abandoned her, she shifted to beady eyes with red irises.

Films — Live-Action

• The animated segment in Johnny Dangerously uses them, as it's done in a 1930s art style.
• The Brownie from the animated segment in the Reefer Madness musical.

Live-Action TV

• Loki (2021): Miss Minutes has these types of eyes. As befitting the Schizo Tech of the TVA, she is designed to look like an old-timey cartoon character, just as everything in the TVA seems designed to appear as old-timey technology.

Pinball

• FunHouse: Rudy's Nightmare: The living hot dog in "Hot Dog Combat" has pie-shaped eyes, tying into its overall design resembling an old cartoon character.

Toys

• A Playmobil set with two vampire figures features these on the female vampire.

Video Games

• Appropriately enough, when Namco's Pac-Man is pictured in his mascot form (as having arms and legs) he usually has these eyes. It shows up on the arcade cabinet art, and in later games such as Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures and Pac-Man World. Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures also features this for most characters, while '80s American Pac-Man art such as the Hanna-Barbera cartoon avoided it.
• B-Sha in Megadimension Neptunia VII occasionally gets these. Quite fitting, as she's a Moe Anthropomorphism of Bandai Namco, who made the aforementioned Pac-Man.
• EarthBound Beginnings' clay models had these kind of eyes on Ninten and Ana. Loid and Teddy's aren't apparent because they wear Opaque Nerd Glasses and Cool Shades respectively. This is another rare modern usage that is not a throwback. However, the characters in the two sequels feature Black Bead Eyes instead.
• Several villagers in the Animal Crossing series have pie-eyes.
• Kingdom Hearts II uses this for the Retraux segment, where Sora and company travel to the time of Steamboat Willie to help out Mickey Mouse. In Super Smash Bros., Sora has a costume that represents this segment, where he again has pie-shaped eyes.
• The Japanese version of Crash Bandicoot had characters with these eyes.
• The characters in the 2017 video game Cuphead have these kind of eyes (fitting, since the entire game is a giant homage to animation circa the 1930s).
• The Toons from Bendy and the Ink Machine have these.
• AiAi and most of his fellow monkeys in Super Monkey Ball have their eyes drawn in this manner.

Web Animation

• The titular character in Double King has these kind of pupils, although he is the only one with them save for minor background characters.
• In The Grossery Gang webseries, characters from "back in the day" are portrayed with this style of pupil instead of the standard round ones for an old-fashioned feel.
• Most of the characters in Happy Tree Friends have pie-shaped pupils, except for Lumpy.
• Homestar Runner: Coach Z's Old-Timey counterpart.
• The song "The Ghost of Stephen Foster" by the Squirrel Nut Zippers has an Animated Music Video that paid homage to the Max and Dave Fleischer cartoons of the 1930's. Every character in the video is pie-eyed.

Webcomics

• PepsiaPhobia has a Western storyline drawn in this style.
• Most characters in Tony Comics have these eyes.
• Doggy D. Dachshund in The Cartoon Chronicles Of Conroy Cat, whose shtick is being a Jaded Washout from the appropriate era, has these.
• Tony the Alp from Charby the Vampirate has tall black oval eyes with a wedge of yellow when deprived of his hat (which kind of depowers him).
• Most of the male Toon characters in the webcomic Love Me Nice are pie-eyed, possibly as an homage to the old Inkblot style. One character, Roger, essentially is an Inkblot cartoon character.
• Being based on old-timey silent-era cartoons, the characters of Silent Sillies have this as part of their designs.

Western Animation

• It was used in the 2 Stupid Dogs short "Hobo Hounds", which was made to look like an old silent cartoon.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot, which uses a Retraux style, has most of the characters with a small "slice" taken out of their eye, though Jenny has eyes like slotted screws.
• Toot Braunstein from Drawn Together, who is a parody of Betty Boop.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Truth or Square", Patchy shows a SpongeBob short in a 1920s style, where everything has this eye style.
  • Also, SpongeBob is comically pie-eyed when he learns that he will be the cashier in "Squid's Day Off".
  • In the first movie, King Neptune and his daughter Mindy are drawn with these. SpongeBob and Patrick also briefly gain them during an extreme close up.
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Silent Treatment", the girls gain these when they get trapped inside a silent cartoon.
• Mostly everyone in the The Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon has this feature, a rare modern usage not meant as a throwback.
• Mr. Hankey and his family from South Park. Also, in the episode "Red Sleigh Down", proximity to Christmas presents caused children to briefly morph into old-fashioned pie-eyed cartoons.
• The Futurama episode "Reincarnation," which parodies several animation styles, gave these to the cast◊ in the 1930s-style segment.
• Used in El Tigre by almost every character.
• The rebooted Mickey Mouse cartoons (2013-present) such as "No Service" have these eyes on everyone, with more consistency than the original black and white shorts.
• The characters' models in some seasons of Thomas & Friends have these.
• In the first season of American Dragon: Jake Long, nearly all the characters are drawn with these.
• Nearly all the characters in King of the Hill are drawn with a subtle Crescent Moon variation, with the exceptions of Bill and Kahn having more standard looking rounded cartoon eyes, while Cotton and Boomhauer have Black Dot Eyes.
• Mr. Sparkle, the Japanese detergent mascot that happened to look like Homer in The Simpsons episode "In Marge We Trust", had them.
• The characters from Max and Ruby have pie-shaped pupils.
• Most Harvey Beaks characters just have dots for pupils, but Piri Piri, her mother Hanzi, and Michelle have large pupils with notches in them. For the first two is emphasizes their New Aged outlook, while Michelle's is simply because she's a baby. The notches are a bit less triangular than classic examples, with a noticeable taper.
• DuckTales (2017) characters have thin slices in their eyes as a nod to Carl Barks' style.
  • Their version of Magica De Spell is an inversion; her Hellish Pupils are triangular slits, representing the "missing slice."
• In various scenes, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power has drawn characters with black eyes (like Bow and Scorpia) as either pie-eyed or with an explicit reflection.
• Spinel from Steven Universe is pie-eyed as a default, as shown when she was hit with the Rejuvinator and reset to that state.

Real Life

• Cat clocks with moving eyes often are pie-eyed.

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