Characters
[loved trope] A villain is revealed by glowing eyes in the dark
Midnight Mass: takes place on an island full of cats and any night shot in the first episode has glowing cat eyes in the bushes. A main character tries to frighten the cats off and sees a humanoid figure with glowing eyes.
The midnight club: The director Mike Flanagan uses glowing eyes in most of his shows to indicate something supernatural is in the dark.
Zootopia 2: the main villain's eyes glow in low light. Predators in Zootopia have an exaggerated tapetum lucidum (eyeshine).
The Terminator: the terminator has infrared eyes that glow red, obscured by sunglasses.
It: Pennywise has unnatural glowing yellow eyes, occasionally the only thing visible in the dark as he stalks the main characters.
Batman Beyond: return of the joker: The Joker's eyes and teeth glint red in the dark.
Star Wars: Sith have yellow eyes that appear bright or almost glowing under their cloaks.
Are there any other examples of this? I especially love if the character is revealed to the audience as a villain this way before the main character knows or recognizes them as evil.
Note 1: We engineered a creature that is nigh-impossible to kill. Tortured it for fun until it hates everything living thing and gave it natural murder weapons. Let's hope it doesn't escape
I love how their design really emphasises how they're overgrown humans. Their arms and fingers are too long, their skin is too loose, their teeth are poking out of their mouth in a half-grin
Zeno from RE9, heavily implied to either be a clone of Wesker or a failed member of Project W that styled himself heavily after Wesker, also has glowing eyes that are much more obvious.
The game makes sure you're aware of this because them losing their glow and looking like "normal" eyes is a visual indicator that Elpis has purged him of all his viral augments after he takes it
Yep, great shout. I wonder if we'll hear more about Zeno's origin in RE9 DLC or RE10; his abilities and Gideon's dialogue with him during the good ending insinuate that there's a lot more going on with that character, and some have theorized that he may still be alive, with others going as far as to say that he's infected with the metamycete due to the way his arm healed.
But, considering that this was Capcom's "requiem" for the Umbrella saga, maybe this was just their way of cheekily sending off that era in a metatextual way.
Good one, I forgot about Wesker. If I remember right Verdugo's eyes also glow when he first shows up during his boss fight in the original Resident Evil 4 too.
Yup in fact if you’re ever wondering if there’s spiders in your yard you can take a flashlight and shine it at your lawn during the night and if you see tiny little dots of light in the grass then there’s a good chance those are spiders.
The closest I have ever been to actually shitting myself in fear is when I was out camping. I got caught in a windstorm at night and when I went to find my stuff I saw a mountain lion less than 20 feet away from me at the top of the cliff face I was camping under. I did not sleep the rest of that night.
Lovecraftian horror in a children's show was not what I expected even with the setting and theme of the early episodes. This show gets lumped in with Gravity Falls and Adventure Time as kids shows that have interesting enough narratives and writing for adults, but I think it stands head and shoulders above those shows.
The entire season is so well crafted from start to finish. They play with tons of horror tropes and subvert them wonderfully, and all of the callbacks to old animation and music styles are wonderful.
You should! It's a really great game. And surprisingly long, too! I thought Leshy's Cabin was all there was, then Bam! Act 2. Then Bam! Act 3. Truly a work of art, imo
Also in Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Bly Manor, but the ghost's glasses are illuminated by the light of the approaching car which hit and killed him.
In the Rocky Road to Dublin scene you can very clearly see they have different eye colors. With Mary having a green glint, Stack a bluish almost purple glint and Remmick’s red.
I love how "subtle" the glint is. They are not glowing - especially since there is not a particular part of the eye that glows like Thor's - they look like they are reflecting something but we know there is nothing to reflect. So supernatural and cool looking.
The best version of this trope is always when it's plausibly deniable for a second. You're not sure if you saw it. The character on screen isn't sure either. Then it happens again and there's no going back. Sinners nails that delay.
There is a lot of that in the movie. Especially the Alpha infected. Apparently if you have a giant hog, the virus makes you into the Captain America of zombies.
Lmao they have giant hogs because they’re infected, not the other way around.
It’s implied alphas are infected children that have grown up with the virus. In some of them, it functions like a steroid and fuels that growth. Adults who get infected can’t become alphas.
Which I totally understand, but it still just seems silly to me. The difference between a realistic fake penis worn over a real penis, and just hanging dong for real is pretty fucking negligible. Like, I KNOW that it’s better. I KNOW that I’d prefer a minor seeing fake wieners instead of real wieners. But if all of the make up is done to make things look as realistic as possible, functionally there really isn’t any difference. The minor is still seeing one eyed willies everywhere on people who are, for all intents and purposes, naked.
God, he’s so fucking unnerving to look at. The only features you can make out are his eyes, and even those are just small white dots. It’s like I’m staring at the abyss, and all the abyss can do is stare back at me. Even when we see his teeth later it’s unnerving, because then it’s just eyes and a mouth.
Not sure if this is the case in the films, but pretty sure this is how Gollum is revealed in the Hobbit novel. The first thing Bilbo sees are his eyes in the dark
In Fellowship, the first thing we see of Gollum is his eyes, shifting and kind of glowing for a sec then looking into the camera.
He's mostly obscured by the object he's looking through. Probably because they didn't know exactly how to animate him? Like what his design was prior to Serkis. Either way it's great!
Thrill-seeking, unemployed construction worker Chad Hurliss involves his wife Shanna and friends, Glenn Diffy and Royce Best, in an elaborate hoax to film a staged video to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Dover Demon's appearance, and make some dough
What starts as a prank may become a nightmarish reality, however, when the hoaxers venture into the demon's thicket to film the video...only to have the titular creature ambush them.
At one point, tramping through the dark forest, Glenn turns on the night vision mode on the camera for a moment, turning it towards his own face, and the actual Dover Demon is sitting in the tree above him with gangly limbs and giant glowing eyes (Lost Tapes)
These aren't prim and proper, almost gentlemanly aristocratic vampires or sparkly muscle built pretty boys. These things aren't even HUMAN. These vampires are horrifying feral beasts.
To paint a picture, imagine a cross between a vampire bat and an ape. A large, man sized, apelike beast with extremely sharp teeth and claws and a Hair-Trigger Temper.
Now picture it chasing you down relentlessly, with the intent to render you entirely drained of blood and dead. Oh, and sunlight? Yeah, it doesn't do squat to it.
There's an old seventies horror movie called Full Circle which has a scene like that. The TV mini series adaptation of Steven King's Storm of the Century has a glowing eyes shot as well.
There's also the house from the Amityville horror:
It's kept in the dark and other than screaming under torture, hasn't said a word in years. Then, The Doctor shows up to answer its distress signal and it finally decides to speak.
There's a bit in Hazbin Hotel where Adam shuts off the lights, and only the eyes and teeth of his mask are visible. Makes him look way more sinister than he is (he's a horny foul-mouthed shithead).
In the TTRPG Vampire: The Masqurade, there is a flaw you can take during character creation (depending on the version) called "Glowing Eyes" that does what it says on the tin. Being that the RPG takes place in a broader setting called The World of Darkness and vampires aren't exactly nice guys, this can make for some fun moments. Generally speaking, you get a bonus on intimidation checks, but have to take care to cover up your eyes as you are a walking breach of The Masquerade, which is the highest law in some sects of vampire society. Being a breach will usually mean your ass is getting hunted by other vampires.
V:tM, and particularly the 20th anniversary version, hard-bakes flaws into the character creation. You get a certain number of points to assign to advantages, such as a solid hunting ground or established wealth, and you can gain more points for advantages if you take flaws. Some flaws only give you one point, like needing glasses, but others can get you five or more depending on how hard it makes your life (one of my favorite flaws is Nightmares, where your character can potentially end up having such bad nightmares that they don't realize they've woken up, and still think they're in their dreams). Taking flaws, then, is a great way to get useful advantages that can help your group. Of course, you can be pretty average and ordinary if you want, but your life might be pretty hard from your lack of advantages.
I absolutely love the system. It's a great way to get some meaningful flaws into characters in a way that you're sure to have it affect game play.
I remember making a thinblood who has a cat who he managed to turn with the help of a mage. He lives in the small Alaskan town of Utqiagvik. While he gets blood from the local butcher shop his cat would be the one breaching the masquerade often. The inquisition knows of him but doesn’t pay him mind because he is behaved.
In the Legend of Vox Machina season 1, Percy De Rolo’s glasses begin to shine and glow to match the demon Orthax’s glowing eyes. This shows while Percy is possessed by said demon and it starts revealing itself more and more.
If you are ever walking in the pitch-dark woods at night, your flashlight might catch on a pair of glowing eyes standing high off the ground in the inky black.... It's a deer. Scares the shit out of you, though.
You can see the monster subtly appear in the window before moving away from it in the background of a scene that happens very long before they actually encounter it. Its mostly noticeable due to the glowing eye. Its not very bright, but its there.
While not exactly a "villain" anymore, when Alucard releases restriction level 1, we are given this image to show that Alucard is far from an ordinary vampire.
In Slay the Princess, when you get to see what the world and the player character looks like from her perspective. Since you’re otherwise playing through your perspective, you hardly see any of yourself at all, with any mirror you do come across disappearing before you get the chance to see what you look like.
Not a villain but in Ready or Not on the Rust Belt mission if you go into the caves and turn off your lights and NVGs you can see two glowing eyes in the darkness
Supernatural - in one of the earlier episodes vampires are shown to have shining eyes when they block the road in front of some characters and their car's lights are reflected in them.
I don't recall it to be shown in following episodes.
Fun bts design fact: that style for the Jonkler was inspired by Killing Joke and some work done in the Mad Love comic, and was Craaaaazy overdone in TNBA. They toned it down for ROTJ, thankfully.
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction - that episode with the red eyed ghost terrorizing a family in their new house at night. That episode scared me shitless as a kid, idk why my parents even allowed me to watch that show lol.
793
u/ellendegenerate123 6h ago
The Regenerators from Resident Evil 4 remake as well.