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"The boss always looks so stoned when he goes into a trance."
Spark, Dominic Deegan

Characters with cataracted eyes. Sometimes it's just that — cataracted eyes.

Characters with this specific type of Monochromatic Eyes tend to be Blind Seers or have a blindness-related Disability Superpower. This kind of blindness is "extra psychic" or special and is also associated with powers other than prescience. It's not uncommon for some characters in a trance to have their eyes turn milky white while concentrating (rather than roll back into the skull).

Zombies and some other undead or monsters also have milky white eyes, though in that case, it's that they don't blink for the former, leading to all sorts of crap in your eye. Don't expect this to stop them from actually seeing/smelling their prey with unerring accuracy.

And sometimes, white eyes simply alert the audience that their owner is supernatural or pure evil.

This effect can be useful for blind characters in live-action productions because human beings instinctively follow movement and zero in on important things like faces with their eyes, an instinct that is just about impossible to suppress. Milky white eyes make it impossible to tell which way an actor is looking and makes the effect of a blind, fixed stare more convincing.

This trope has nothing to do with Blank White Eyes except for the color. For other colors, see Monochromatic Eyes. See also Third Eye, Mind-Control Eyes.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach: Although there Tousen and Chojiro have blank white eyes, there's no known reason for it in terms of power or mysticism, although Tousen is known to be blind. He doesn't have any powers from being blind, however. In the case of Tsukishima, however, when his mind-control power kicks into full gear, his eyes take on an all-white cast and become both eerie and evil.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Himejima was a simple blind monk before he became a powerful demon slayer, his eyes are always shown as fully blank, with it comes the wisdom of a Buddhist monk and the power of a demon slayer.
  • Fist of the North Star: Shuu, who can still fight with the best of them, despite his blindness. He actually slashed his own eyes out in order to spare a young Kenshiro's life.
  • Get Backers: Some rather highly powered characters in the manga version, including Akabane, Kagami and Miroku Natsuhiko. All three are not blind and fall under the "supernatural" category.
  • High School Of The Dead features zombies with the classic "undead eyes" version; they make up for it by hearing unbelievably well, but having other senses dulled (i.e. dumbly walking into a wall, easily being pushed out of the way by someone walking quietly and carrying a wooden sword, walking right past someone who's just staying out of the way, etc.)
  • Horus: Prince of the Sun: The silver wolves are the supernatural type, and are directly working for Grunwald, who ironically, is referred to throughout the film as "The devil".
  • Junji Ito depicts his fiancee "A-ko" with blank eyes and a wide smile in Junji Ito's Cat Diary.
  • Naruto: The Hyuga clan inverts this trope. While their clan Kekkei Genkai, the Byakugan, looks the part (it's larger-than-usual pale lavender irises with no pupils), it allows them to see pressure and chakra points on their opponent, theoretically allowing them to inflict maximum damage with every strike. Not to mention 359-degree X-ray telescopic night vision with a solid angle blind spot.
  • Tokyo Babylon and X1999: Seishirou Sakurazuka and Subaru Sumeragi get one blank eye each due to massive trauma (in separate but related events). In this case, it's because their eyes are made of glass.
  • Witchblade: Masane temporarily gets white eyes when an X-Con or Cloneblade user is near.

    Comic Books 
  • Anderson: Psi-Division: Psi-Judge Shakta's eyes turn a monochromatic white after being blinded. It really emphasizes her seer visage.
  • Daredevil: Whether or not Daredevil has these or is simply unfocused depends largely on the artist. Or perhaps he just has cataracts.
  • The Goon: For a comic about a hulking anti-hero fighting supernatural entities such as ghouls, ghosts, skunk apes obsessed with pie, aliens, demons, and mad scientists, it's never made clear why his human sidekick, Franky, is drawn without pupils. He has no supernatural attributes or abilities, and he's certainly not blind (demonstrated by his signature "knife to the eye" technique). It appears to be an artistic preference. Franky's eyes are not so much Prophet Eyes as they are "Blunked Out" — an old-time comic book style (Little Orphan Annie is a prominent example of "Blunked Out" eyes).
  • Lady Death: Lady Death is a goddess of Hell with solid white eyes.
  • Superman: Superman and Supergirl get blank eyes when an orange sun makes them blind in storyline Krypton No More.
  • Usagi Yojimbo: Jei-san has this due to being "divinely blessed" (more likely demonically cursed or possessed), and he also has a small amount of psychic power: he kidnapped Jotaro because he felt there was some connection to Usagi, but didn't know what it was. It turns out Jotaro is actually Usagi's son; not even Usagi knew that. His current "host" Inazuma also gained the white eyes and demonic aura as has his next host, a monk named Hama.
  • Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan has completely white eyes with no pupils. Again, his case is an inversion, since he isn't blind.
  • X-Men: Storm has the "when using powers" version. Since in a few adaptions (the movies in particular), her powers require a lot of concentration, this trope fits. It's been theorized that her eyes might be forming a protective membrane against the elements.

    Comic Strips 
  • Saxon in Candorville can make his eyes look like this at will. It's uncertain whether they have any special powers, but they're clearly different from the red eyes demonstrated by other vampires. This may be because he's a Dhampyr, or because he's a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire.

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, the Many tend to turn the eyes of their assimilated victims milky and blank. Methuselah's Prophet Eyes glimpsed in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) are addressed in this fic, as it's confirmed that Methuselah is half-blind.
  • Camera Shy: In this fic, part of Taylor's powerset is the ability to see through the eyes of any sapient being who has her in their field of vision. As a side effect, this power also makes her unable to see through her own eyes and gives her some surprisingly lovely cosmetic cataracts.
  • In I Never Really Knew, Ryuuko having these is what proves to Satsuki that there's something wrong with Ryuuko's vision. When she brings it up to the former, Ryuuko insists that her eyes are fine.
  • In the MLP Fan Animation Snowdrop (2013), the titular blind filly has clouded, pale blue eyes.

    Films — Animation 
  • Kashekim Nedakh, the King of Atlantis from Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire as opposed to having darker eyes like all of the other Atlanteans (except, oddly enough, his blue-eyed daughter Kida). At the very beginning of the film, his eyes are drawn normally, meaning that he was blinded shortly after Atlantis ended up underwater (due to him being exposed to the Heart of Atlantis crystal as a result of his dead wife being sacrificed).
  • Vitruvius from The LEGO Movie. In his case, however, it's not a side effect of being a seer, so much as it is a side effect of taking a laser beam to the freakin' face.
  • The incredibly aged rat Nicodemus and The Great Owl in The Secret of NIMH.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • As noted above, zombies in most horror flicks are depicted as having milky white eyes. This may be attributed to the fact that, in real life, a human corpse can have its eyes depleted of oxygen if its eyelids are left open. Because of the lack of oxygen, the human eye loses its moisture and the pupil will turn into either a gray or bluish color as a result.
  • In Atlantics, when the women are stricken with the spirits, their eyes turn blank and white. It turns out they are being possessed by the spirits of The Boys, and access information from beyond the grave while possessed.
  • Lon Chaney claimed a number of techniques for portraying this form of blindness on screen. For short shots, he would simply roll his eyes up into his skull. For longer takes, he would either use a mixture of guncotton to form a film over his eyes, or he would spread a thin layer of egg-white over his eyes to obscure them.
  • In The Chronicles of Riddick, the eponymous character has silver/white eyes, initially claimed by Riddick to be the result of a forced surgery to let him see in the dark of a prison planet with no natural light. A lie. They show that he's an Alpha Male Furyan.
  • In the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans, Perseus encounters three Stygian witches who cannot see (except through a Crystal Ball). Although they planned to eat him, he gains their assistance by taking the ball from them and only giving it back when he gets the answers he needs.
  • The Mentats in Dune (2021) have their eyes roll all the way back whenever they make their calculations, giving them a ghostly white look.
  • The deadites of the Evil Dead films, much to the chagrin of the actors and actresses who had to wear thick white contact lenses over their eyes and be led blindly around the movie set. Interestingly, they're not only undead monsters, they also have the "prophet" angle of this trope covered: the first person to be possessed in the original film announced her transformation by correctly listing a series of hidden playing cards in an increasingly demonic voice, and all of them can read their victim's minds and play on their weaknesses.
  • The Made-for-TV Movie of Going Postal has Moist's eyes do this when he "receives a message from the Gods" about where to find the money he needs. It's achieved in-universe through the use of turtle eggshells.
  • The film version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has Viktor Krum having these eyes when he points his wand at Harry with the Lumos spell during the Third Tournament of the Tri-Wizard Cup. This, along with his action towards Harry, are early hints (both to Harry and the audience) that Krum wasn't himself during the tournament.
  • Mrs. Slydes (the scary old lady mistaken for a ghost) in House on Haunted Hill (1959).
  • The aliens from I Come in Peace have white eyes.
  • The emerald seer in Krull (probably) has this. He rarely opens his eyes though, and his doppelganger has all-black eyes.
  • In Long John Silver, Israel Hands' blind eyes are milky white with no pupils. No powers though; he's just blind.
  • In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the old man from scene 24 has whited-out eyes as he gives out his prophecy.
  • There is an old seer with white eyes in The Others (2001), although this is because she is presumably blind.
  • Red Heat (1988). Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing Ivan Danko, a Soviet cop in the United States trying to lean on Abdul Elijah, a Black Muslim drug boss.
    Danko: You ship drugs to my country, you wake up and find your testicles floating in a glass of water next to your bed.
    Elijah: I'm a holy man. I don't need testicles.
    Danko: Then I'll settle for your eyes.
    Elijah: You don't scare me, white boy. (takes off sunglasses to reveal his milky white eyes)
  • Blind Mag in Repo! The Genetic Opera has high-tech camera-eyes of a strange color and pattern, that let her record and project images.
  • Darryl Revok gets this in the psychic duel at the end of Scanners.
  • A partial example is Halle Berry's version of Storm in the X-Men Film Series. When channeling her power, her eyes go milky white (taken from the comics, when the artists remember). In the first film, this was done with contacts, but she complained, so in the sequels, they added the effect digitally in post-production.
  • The Rise of Skywalker: Palpatine has these, among other things due to the degradation of his clone body. He does have psychic powers, but he had those before he Came Back Wrong too.

    Literature 
  • A particularly irritating Blind Seer has this quality in The Belgariad. Eddings uses it to good effect — when Polgara destroys her foresight by restoring her vision, he describes it as looking like the milkiness drains out the bottom of her eyes.
    • In the sequel series, the Malloreon, The Dragon Naradas has these eyes. It's specified that he isn't blind; they're more of a Red Right Hand.
  • In the second series of The Chronicles of Amber books, Coral winds up with the Jewel of Judgment in place of her missing eye, allowing her to see the Primal Pattern directly.
  • The Ancient from Robin Jarvis' The Oaken Throne in Deptford Mice, a Seer sent to earth in the form of a hare by the Lady of the Moon, has eyes that resemble bright twin moons. Ysabelle draws back in fright when she sees them for the first time:
    "Why dost thou fear them?" he asked. "Dost thou fear the moon when it shines above thee?"
    "No."
    "Then be not afraid now, for I look on you with the sight of one who has seen the Lady in the splendour of her youth, and in mine eyes that vision is forever mirrored."
  • Cathan from the Dragonlance Kingpriest Trilogy has these. He isn't blind, however — it's just a cosmetic side-effect of his having been resurrected. Other supernatural beings associated with the same god who brought him back are shown to have similar eyes.
  • In Dune, users of the "awareness spectrum narcotic" known as the Spice Melange have "blue within blue" eyes. Extreme Spice intake makes the eyes so blue that they almost appear black, referred to as the "Eyes of Ibad."
  • Aragog the spider in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has milky white eyes because he is blind.
  • House Of The Stag by Kage Baker opens with a semi-mythological prologue of a Blind Seer who "sang down the stars" and had silver eyes because stars fell into them.
  • N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy: Oree's eyes are completely covered with petal-like layers of grey tissue, which tend to put people off when they realize they're not simple cataracts. Oree herself is blind to everything except magic.
  • InCryptid: All Johrlac have blank white eyes when actively using their telepathy (Sarah calls it a form of bioluminescence). They can still see fine, though focusing on both another mind and their surroundings at the same time can be difficult. The rest of the time, they have Occult Blue Eyes.
  • Wights, the primary antagonists in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children have this as their defining feature. Because they hunt the titular Peculiar Children, said children always want to look into the eyes of someone they distrust to check whether they are a Wight or not. Unfortunately, with the recent invention of colored contact lenses, Wights can perfectly hide this abnormality, making them completely unrecognizable from ordinary humans.
  • At the climax of the Ted Dekker book Saint, the title character removes the sunglasses he's wearing and his startled nemesis informs him that his eyes are white.
  • The Seventh Tower: Icecarl women who become Crones undergo three Eye Color Changes as their magical powers grow: to Occult Blue as apprentices, to glowing silver as full Crones, and to milky white as Mother Crones. It doesn't impede their vision a whit.
  • Shadows of the Apt: All Moth- and Butterfly-kinden. The Moths also have perfect (though presumably monochrome) night vision, as well as tending to be seers and prophets.
  • In Robert Newman's young adult novel The Case of the Baker Street Irregular, Sherlock Holmes impersonates a blind man and uses gutta-percha contacts to make his eyes appear this way.
  • Silverwing: Zephyr, an ancient bat with supernatural sonic powers, is described as having eyes that are completely white with cataracts due to his advanced age.
  • Sword of Truth: Adie is blind, but capable of seeing with her magic. This becomes a major issue when the Pristinely Ungifted appear because she can't see them at all since they don't show up in Magical Sight. She does hear and feel and smell them, though, so she knows they're there. She's justifiably creeped out as all get up by that. All the other wizards at least see them normally.
  • Tailchaser's Song: The far-senser Eyeshimmer is named for his milky blue eyes.
  • "The Tell-Tale Heart": The old man has an eye like this, which provokes the main character to kill him.
  • The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: White eyes, especially when blind, are a sure sign that their owner is immensely wise and should not be ignored.
  • The Tygrine Cat: Etheleldra is a Blind Seer who permanently has her third eyelids covering her eyes, creating this effect.
  • Warrior Cats: The Blind Seer Jayfeather is often drawn this way in fanart and he appears like this on at least one foreign edition cover, even though in the books he's described as having rather normal eyes. Rock, on the other hand, has "sightless eyes" mentioned in his physical description, so we can assume the only way a cat could tell by sight that another is blind is because the blind cat has eyes that look like this.
  • World War Z: A soldier mentions that zombies have these sorts of eyes, but not for any magical reason: since they do not blink, dust and random debris in the air produce microscopic scratches in the eyes of the undead. This is one of the only ways to tell the difference between actual zombies and quislings (humans who have gone insane and started acting like zombies).

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Babylon 5, after becoming the Trope Namer for Touched by Vorlons, Lyta's eyes had a tendency to do this when demonstrating her powers.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    • Vampires started off with blank white eyes in their vampiric forms, as an homage to Evil Dead. However, a combination of Executive Meddling and concerns about making Angel look attractive even in his vamp form led to the design gradually becoming less demonic and more feral. Monsters of the Week such as the Gentlemen, though, are still prone to having them.
    • Whenever Willow makes intensive use of magic, her eyes turned pitch-black. When she buffed up Buffy with magic to fight Adam, Buffy's eyes turned gold/yellow. In the series finale, when using the scythe to activate all the potential slayers, her eyes (and hair) turned white, hinting she was using powerful white magic.
    • A blind assassin on Angel, as well as three children.
    • Cordelia also has them while she's having a vision (or just using her new powers), after being changed into a half-demon. Before that, her eyes remained normal, but she felt excruciating pain until the vision ended.
  • Doctor Who: In "Oxygen", the Doctor has eyes like this after being temporarily blinded. It turns out, however, that he's still blind after his eyes are restored to their normal appearance.
  • Played somewhat straight by Chiana of Farscape in Season 3 where after possession by an energy rider she is able to have flashes of the future, followed by blindness of increasing severity as the series wore on. The ability changed in Season 4 from future flashes to time slowing down, resulting in permanent blindness. In the miniseries, these were replaced with eyes that were probably bionic, which removed any prophetic abilities but gave her X-ray vision.
  • Game of Thrones: Wargs, when they take on their Bond Creature's skin.
  • The Haunting of Hill House (2018): The series makes liberal use of this, as when the many ghost and undead people open their eyes, they're nearly always glowing white and blank. Now, whether this is because they're dead or because they're supernatural (or both) is anyone's guess...
  • As the picture suggests, Isaac Mendez, along with Peter(who acquires Isaac's power through empathic mimicry), Sylar (who acquires it by killing Isaac), Usutu and Matt, in Heroes.
  • Sara Lance temporarily gains them in Season 5 of Legends of Tomorrow, when she becomes a Blind Seer upon seeing the true form of the Fate Atropos.
  • The Outpost: Ilyin's eyes go white when she has an insight on something.
  • Cassandra Carver, the Blind Seer in Smallville.
  • Geordi from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then in the movies, he gets bionic eyes that look more (or less) like regular ones. Before this, he used a VISOR which gave him a variety of visual abilities ranging from infra-red to seeing the "auras" of electromagnetic machines — but not the ability to see things such as sunsets, in any form except on their composite level. Apparently seeing a sunset as a series of infrared and ultraviolet rays really sucks the beauty out of it. The implants have the same visual range, but are more advanced and allow Geordi to control which parts of the electromagnetic spectrum he sees at any given time.

    Justified (though the writers probably didn't know it), inasmuch as perceived colors have relatively little to do with actual physical properties. There any many different ways a given color can be made with light, and Geordi might have trouble associating combinations of measured frequencies with colors. Also, the VISOR would not be able to duplicate the opponent's process of human color vision and still convey all the information Geordi can apparently see.
  • Supernatural:
  • The guys in Testees after being temporarily blinded by pineapple shampoo.
  • The various Black Lodge doppelgangers in Twin Peaks have white eyes to distinguish them from those they are imitating. This is used to highlight their supernatural natures and to be very freaky.

    Multiple Media 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The 3.5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide II introduces unique abilities for NPCs, among which is "Prophet", identified by solid white eyes with no pupils (yet still able to see).
    • Members of the Changeling race also have completely white eyes (and hair, and skin...) in their true form. Presumably serves as a kind of baseline state, like a blank piece of paper before anything is drawn on it.
  • Warhammer:
    • The beastmen of Khorne, known as Khorngor. Rather than being psychic or insightful in any way, they're Blood Knights and some of them are even Anti-Magic. These eyes are a trait they share with many of Khorne's Daemons as well.
    • Wizards of the Light Order often gain monochromatic white eyes as a Mark of the Supernatural from their use of the White Wind of Magic, which represents Light, enlightenment, and purity. The change doesn't impede their vision.

    Video Games 
  • When Eden is first unlocked in The Binding of Isaac; Isaac gets locked inside of the chest. A holy light leaks from the crevices of the chest. Eden bursts out, his eyes glowing white while his hairstyle is shifting constantly. Eden has normal eyes when you actually play as him.
  • Disgaea
    Fist Fighter: Hm? My eyes are white? It's because I don't want to look at you!
  • The Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins briefly gets these during the Joining. They come with a vision of the Big Bad.
  • In Elden Ring, as with Skyrim, the Player Character can be designed with this in one or both eyes, bonus points if they're actually in the Prophet class.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • An almost literal example of this trope in Fable II is Theresa. She is an interesting example: in the first Fable, which takes place 500 years earlier, she gets her eyes cut out by bandits as a child and so spends the rest of the game with a blindfold. She has the white eyes going on in Fable II, but that just adds to the enigma of her character. Oddly enough, in Fable 3 she has black eyes, and in the upcoming Fable: The Journey she is again blindfolded.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy VI: Kefka Palazzo's field sprite as well as one character artwork of him is depicted as having completely white eyes. And no, the red dots on the former are not his eyes, that's makeup. This is made especially clear in sprites where he winks.
    • Final Fantasy XIV has this happen to Y'Shtola. After the events of The Parting Glass, she had cast a forbidden teleportation spell, Flow, which while it got her away from the Brass Blades and Crystal Braves, it scattered her into the Lifestream. It took Kan-E-Senna and her siblings communing with the elements, as well as finding Y'Shtola's sister to be able to pull her out of the Lifestream. When she comes back out, her once-green eyes are now white for the rest of the series.
    • Final Fantasy XV: Ignis Scientia obtains these after the events in Altissia, though we only get a good look at them in Episode Ignis. In an effort to keep Noctis safe, he dons the Ring of the Lucii in order to acquire the strength to fend off Ardyn; the past Kings take his eyesight in exchange, and his eyes are burned white as a consequence.

    Web Comics 
  • Homestuck:
    • Dead people all have blank white eyes, whether as ghosts manifesting in the real world, or in the afterlife. For added symbolism, Aradia, the first ghost in the comic, also has foreknowledge of the future. Oddly, some of these ghosts are of a species whose sclera are normally yellow-orange.
    • Terezi is a different case; she's alive but had her eyes burned out into blank red. She is also a Blind Seer.
    • Sollux is yet another different case; he's alive, but he has one solid blue eye and one solid red eye as part of his "vision twofold". This seems to be a common (but not universal trait) amongst Gold-Blooded Trolls. He later goes blind and both eyes turn pitch black, followed by half-dying and gaining one white eye and one black eye.
  • The title character in Kurenai Mashin is an elven assassin who is blind. While he can't see physical things, he can see spells the other characters cast.
  • In Lucid Spring, there are sapient creatures and animalistic creatures. All animalistic creatures have blank white eyes.
  • Dark Mages (Mages who have cheated death and therefore must live as an animalistic creature that feeds on magical power) in The Noordegraaf Files have these. They mean no harm if you're a normal human, but if you're a mage you're basically screwed.
  • Unintentionally Pretentious:
    • Subverted: while Mia is blind, her eyes generally look normal when open.
    • Played straight when Sydney buys white Naruto-style contact lenses from Luthor's store to temporarily blind herself in order to relate to Mia better.
    • And later for Sydney's Toph cosplay.
  • Unsounded: When Bastion's ghost eyes are active, they go solid white and glow.

    Web Original 
  • Herobrine, the ghost said to haunt the game Minecraft, is described and depicted as looking like a normal player model, but with blank white eyes.

    Western Animation 

    Real Life 
  • Corneal opacity can indeed result from congenital/hereditary defects, some diseases (e.g. river blindness, trachoma), or injury (e.g. chemical burn), sometimes resembling this trope.
  • Some blind people have their eyes more or less permanently rolled up, which can give an impression of whiteness. Usually the eyes are half-closed, though, and/or there's a bit of iris showing at the top.
  • Particularly severe/special cases of cataracts look something like this, though, this is more the case if the person has light-colored (like blue or grey) eyes.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Milky White Eyes

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Aisha goes blind

Valtor casts a spell on Aisha's eyes, making her blind.

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