"Staring contest! You lose!"
— Gag Sub of Mazinger Z
If looks could kill... these can!
A Stock Superpower (and also a classic Super Robot weapon) that allows characters to shoot blasts out of their eyes. Blasts of what, you ask? Sometimes the generic, all-encompassing term of "energy." Sometimes "heat," in which case it is (logically) known as Heat Vision. Sometimes "lasers," in which case it is known (again, with excessive logic) as Laser Vision. The point is, they hurt. These are the real Glowing Eyes of Doom.
This is the stock power of the Mecha Mook and those with powers beyond mortal men. Also, a stock joke about "laser eye surgery" fad.
Seldom is it explained how a beam which can burn or injure just about anything else is contained when trapped behind the character's eyelids, nor how the beam-producing mechanism within the eye avoids obstructing the vision of the actual seeing parts of the eye.
Compare X-Ray Vision, Deadly Gaze, Magical Eye, Breath Weapon, Head Blast, Hand Blast, and Psi Blast. Often The Glasses Come Off for this. A favorite attack for the Oculothorax. Not to be confused with I-beams, the architectural element, although those too can be used as weapons.
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Advertising
- In Metro Manners's "Aisle Blocking" PSA, Super Kind vaporizes Rude Dude's bike with her eyes.
Art
- Laser Kiwi flag: The most unique part of the flag is that the Kiwi is shooting a green laser beam from its eyes.
Asian Animation
- In BoBoiBoy, whenever BoBoiBoy Light isn't shooting light beams with his hands, he's doing it with his eyes instead.
Audio Plays
- Jan Tenner: Big Bad Seytania can shoot heat beams and lightning bolts from her eyes.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In their final form, Viv and San gain the ability to fire Gravity Beam-like Destroyed Thunder from their eyes, an ability which the original Toho incarnation of Monster X possessed.
- Advice and Trust: Zeruel's optic beams are extremely powerful. He used them to pierce nearly all defensive layers of the cast's underground base and nearly vaporized Rei with them.
- The Child of Love: In chapter 7 the cast fights an Angel is armed with a wide beam of yellow light it shoots at regular intervals.
- A Dip in the Inkwell: In the oneshot "Lemonade Pitcher", Estimation Eddie wears an Eyepatch of Power that covers up his eye, which can shoot beams that create and reheat hot dogs. When he tries to use his power for the former purpose to help his teammates, however, he ends up getting injured and fears that the energy in his eye can backfire and cause him severe brain damage.
- Farce of the Three Kingdoms: Xu Chu has these. Ma Chao complains that this is out of genre (he's wrong).
- A Force of Four: Three Kryptonian criminals use their heat vision wantonly to burn places down and punish or even fry enemies.
The three outlaws of Krypton were standing in a circle about Power Girl, sending six beams of heat from their eyes at her caped back. One Kryptonian could cause pain. Two could injure. Three could destroy.
- Haunted Mansion and the Hatbox Ghost: The One-Eyed Black Cat can project a laser-like red beam from his "missing" eye, which can destroy, reshape, mind-control, and a dozen other things.
- Hellsister Trilogy: Supergirl's heat vision is her best weapon, but Darkseid's Omega Effect eye beams can easily hurt or even kill a Kryptonian.
She'd tried to keep out of the way of his Omega Effect beams, but, finally, it just wasn’t possible. The terrible beams from his eyes lanced out, caught her in the eyes, and dealt out blindness and pain. Supergirl screamed.
- Inverted Fate: Undyne has a robotic left eye that can shoot lasers instead f an eyepatch, as she is the Royal Scientist instead of the Captain of the Royal Guard she was in canon.
- Last Child of Krypton: Shinji has heat vision thanks to his Kryptonian DNA. He uses it most memorably to burn Leliel down when it tries to Mind Rape Asuka in a scene which is a homage to For the Man Who Has Everything.
- The Last Daughter: Taylor discovers that she can shoot heat blasts from her eyes during her fight with Behemoth.
- Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!: Izuku is Kryptonian, with the Heat Vision to match. It's currently powerful enough to slice off the arm of a robot with ease and bore through the hide of a rotting Kaiju corpse, but his lack of practice has made his fine control poor, to the point that he can't cut in a straight line.
- Origin Story: Alex Harris (being a Kryptonian trapped in the '"Marvel Universe'') uses her heat vision multiple times, most notably to disable Carol Danvers.
- Project Ignition: Lux's optic beams hurt as bad a Procyon shots, so it's best to just not get hit.
- Showa & Vampire: Black 13 can fire lasers from his eyes.
- Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Asuka has heat eye-beams due to being half-Kryptonian. She discovers this when she is cooking and accidentally sets the eggs on fire.
Films — Animation
- One of Bolt's superpowers in his Show Within a Show, which he uses to blow up things like helicopters.
- The Incredibles:
- The first movie features an eye-blasting hero named GazerBeam. He's already been murdered by the villain Syndrome by the time the main plot of the movie begins. He uses the power to leave an important clue: the password to the computer in Syndrome's lair.
- Baby Jack-Jack starts manifesting these during his Day in the Limelight short film Jack-Jack Attack. The rest of the family learn he has this ability, among many others, during the sequel. During the climax Violet picks Jack-Jack up and basically uses him as a gun to shoot one of their enemies by shouting "Pew Pew" to get Jack-Jack to fire his beams.
- The Iron Giant: The titular character involuntarily deploys these if someone shoots at it, even if it's only with a toy gun.
- Megamind: Metro Man, a Superman Expy, naturally has laser vision as part of his powers. As a child, he's seen using them for the Mundane Utility of heating up popcorn. Later, after Hal gets Metro Man's powers and becomes Tighten, he uses these to write his alias across the city. He also uses them against a mannequin of Megamind.
- In the short Megamind: The Button of Doom, Megamind copies Metro Man's powers in his super suit, with the laser vision represented with a visor that can switch between laser vision and X-ray vision.
- Monsters, Inc.: A witness credits Boo with "laser vision" that she used to blast a car.
Films — Live-Action
- Brandon from Brightburn, in addition to the other powers of the Superman package, also has laser eyes. But given that this kid is a supervillain, and that this is a horror flick, he puts this power to very horrific use on his father after he tries to shoot him.
- Gort from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
- DC Extended Universe:
- In Man of Steel, Superman's heat vision blasts look more focused than Zod's, presumably because Superman has had more time to master it. Both of them seem to find the ability painful to switch on and off.
- In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Doomsday has eye beams, presumably because he was created from Zod's corpse. This allows him and Superman to have a brief but awesome Beam-O-War.
- In Zack Snyder's Justice League, Alfred Pennyworth reverse-engineered Kryptonian tech to make Batman's gauntlets plasma-proof, which ends up being very useful when an angry revived Superman targets the Dark Knight with his eye beams. In the Final Battle, Superman uses his eye beams to cut off one of Steppenwolf's horns. In the final scenes showing how the Bad Future started, Darkseid uses his Omega Beams to kill some Atlanteans.
- Also found in the world of daikaiju (giant monsters), such as Godzilla foes Battra, Mechagodzilla, and Gigan.
- Gigan is a special case as he never had eye beams in his first two appearances (He did have a laser weapon in his forehead that was never used) but the games give Gigan one despite that. Gigan's first film eye beam attack was in the Millennium era film Godzilla: Final Wars, where it was a short range attack called "Cluster Light Beam" and caused a explosion as the beams split apart, like a cluster bomb. In the Pipeworks ''Godzilla'' Trilogy, Gigan has both a long range beam and short range "shotgun blast".
- In Toho's fantasy adventure film Yamato Takeru eye beams are a powerful weapon used by both the titular hero and his foe the Physical God Tsukuyomi. When the latter is in his Scaled Up Orochi form he can even shoot lightning bolts from his (many) eyes.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Thor (2011), the Destroyer armor opens its mask to reveal an empty helmet, and you can see the inside of the empty suit glowing like a furnace. Whenever this happens, this means a massive beam of KABLOOEY is about to be unleashed. Though it does stretch the definition of the 'eye' portion of the trope a little.
- This is one of Ikaris' powers in Eternals, and he is considered by several of the other Eternals as the most powerful among them.
- In the scene where Skeletor becomes a god in Masters of the Universe, he forces He-Man to kneel before him by way of powerful Agony Beams fired from his eyes.
Skeletor: Now...you will...KNEEEEEEEEEEEL!
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. After Captain Kirk and Spock question the authenticity of "God", he fires beams of energy out of his eyes at them. He does it again while pursuing Kirk later on.
- Kryptonians have heat vision in the Superman:
- A minor plotpoint in Superman II was Non making multiple attempts to learn to control his heat vision.
- One of the most infamous cases of New Powers as the Plot Demands has Superman shooting beams from his eyes that repair the Great Wall Of China in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Word of God says he was supposed to fix it at Super-Speed but they were running out of money.
- The 1985 shot-in-the-Philippines post-apocalyptic film Warriors of the Apocalypse features a duel between two characters with this power.
- When the Grand High Witch destroys a fellow witch for daring to argue with her in The Witches (1990), this is the form her magical incineration attack takes.
- X-Men Film Series:
- When Cyclops' eyes are uncovered they shoot red beams uncontrollably. As mentioned in the comics, they shoot beams of pure concussive force and not heat, but this can be forgotten Depending on the Writer or Depending on the Artist. Specifically, X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaves the edges of whatever he just blasted his way through glowing red-hot.
- In X-Men: Days of Future Past, the Future Sentinel's entire face unfolds to fire a powerful beam.
Gamebooks
- In the Sorcery! series, Red-Eyes are a race of lanky humanoids whose eyes are constantly closed. That's because when they open them, they can shoot fiery beams that are quite deadly. Having such a lethal weapon at their disposal has made all of them conceited bullies.
Literature
- The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories: For some unknown reason, the 1978 Panther cover features an enormous six-limbed robot in water, blasting a damaged triangular plane with beams from the "head" of the robot, spaced so that they look like eyes.
- Chrysalis (RinoZ): Invidia the envy demon has a single eye laser (green, naturally), which makes sense, as he's a single floating eyeball. It's extremely destructive, but he needs time to recover afterward, and it's unsafe to use in enclosed spaces.
- Discharge!: Pyralis has heat vision.
- The Glove of Darth Vader: The novel Queen of the Empire has a human replica droid
(essentially a Robot Girl) who impersonates Leia Organa and actually kills a villain with laser beams from her eyes.
- Journey to the West has some of the oldest examples:
- When Wukong is born from the stone, he bows to the four cardinal directions and then accidentally shoots lasers out of his eyes that nearly hit the Jade Emperor himself.
- The One Hundred Eyed Demon Lord emits hot beams of light from the various eyes located on his body. Sun Wukong manages to escape this light trap by turning into a pangolin and digging his way out.
- The unnamed Culture terror weapon briefly followed at the end of Look to Windward, a Do-Anything Robot made from a nanomachine swarm, can form pretty much any weapon it wants from its body, but isn't anywhere near as limited as the T-1000. It adjusts its eyes to lase in order to blind an opponent, but only in order to kill him in a more unpleasant way; this being Culture super science, it could have easily formed a Wave-Motion Gun had the need arisen.
- In Lord of Light, the mutant power of at least two of the "gods" — Yama and Kali — focused through the eyes. It was described poetically as "drinking life" with their eyes ... and if you actually met the death-gaze with your own eyes, it was particularly powerful.
- Don't get into a staring contest with Alex from The Other Kind of Roommate. Although his beams are invisible, so long as he's made direct eye contact, he can kill from streets away.
- In Paradise Lost, the Son of God uses all of his eyes to glare lightning and fire at the demonic soldiers with such intensity that all their strength and life is lost to them.
- The Six Servants: One of the servants is a man who can fire destructive beams from his eyes, and thus must go around in a blindfold so he doesn't accidentally destroy everything he looks at.
- Skulduggery Pleasant: In Playing with Fire, Baron Vengeous has a glare which causes the recipient to explode.
- The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen: Baron von Munchausen gained the ability to shoot sparks out of his eyes when hit in the face... or so he claims.
- In the Thousand Sons trilogy, powerful sorcerers like Ahriman and Amon can emit white-hot beams of supernatural fire from their eyes.
- Tsar Gorokh's Detective Agency: In The Plot of the Black Mass, Baba Yaga (a witch-like good character) uses Heat Beams from her eyes to kill an evil Catholic priest, who was attempting to summon Beelzebub.
- What Fire Cannot Burn by John Ridley uses this trope mostly straight for a minor villain, but mocks a surprising aspect of it. According to the narration, eye beams that are powerful enough to hurt somebody should be at a frequency invisible to the human eye — so unlike in the comic books, you don't see the blast, you just see what it does to people.
- In the Zachary Nixon Johnson series, there is a psi named Liz Lazor who specializes in firing lasers from her eyes.
Live-Action TV
- Arrowverse:
- Jake Simmons (a.k.a. Deathbolt) shoots plasma laser beams from his eyes as his main power.
- Supergirl (2015) as usual keeps the heat vision as part of the standard Kryptonian superpowers, although in this series it appears more blue/cyan than the traditional red from the comics and most other incarnations. Also, the over-use of heat vision, which Clark terms a "solar-flare", can temporarily "burn-out" her or Clark's super-powers, temporarily causing them to revert to human.
- The Boys (2019):
- Billy Butcher finds a baby hooked up to an IV of Compound V being kept inside a laser-proof incubator, due to having been born with the ability to shoot blue beams from its eyes. Several mooks with automatic weapons then burst into the room, and in a classic Boys Black Comedy moment, Butcher picks up the baby and uses it to blast them in half.
- Homelander's red eye beams are his most common weapons, which he uses to kill a building full of terrorists and bring down a plane. The reason he uses them is because they require the least effort for him to use and because he is frankly lazy, which fits with his characterization as a truly villainous Smug Super.
- In Season 3, after taking Temp-V to take down Homelander, Butcher gains his own orange-colored eye beams which he uses in a Beam-O-War.
- The villain from the Charmed (1998) episode "The Truth is Out There... and It Hurts" has a Third Eye that sends out a beam of burning energy. It targets the same area that the victim's third eye would be.
- Doctor Who:
- The Silurians in "Doctor Who and the Silurians" have a Third Eye from which they can send a beam that can kill, stun, or operate machinery.
- "42" has the bad guy running around with these (beams of heat, in this case), with a visor that seems to be a direct Shout-Out to Cyclops.
- The villain in the Farscape episode "Crackers Don't Matter" is a blind Mad Scientist specializing in light, so naturally, he can shoot lasers out of his eyes.
- Although Heroes does not have any characters with eye beams (surprisingly, given the many different superpowers), in the season 3 episode "It's Coming", Elle shoots Sylar with so much lightning at one point that lightning actually comes out of his eyes while he's being electrocuted. Good Thing He Can Heal.
- In How I Met Your Mother, Lily has the "You're dead to me look", which causes her eyes to glow and the object of her glare to (appear to) vaporize. Given the look's similarity to Dark Willow eyes, this is possibly an Actor Allusion to actress Alyson Hannigan's former character.
- The short lived comedy show The Idiot Box featured a bit called "Damn These Eyes", about a scientist who, after a telescope mishap, was cursed with Eye Beams that he could not turn off. The beams — actually dotted lines — did not actually do anything, but they would let anyone know exactly where he was looking (such as at a woman's chest), destroying his life.
- Lab Rats has this as one of Adam's main bionic abilities. Usually it's the standard red laser beams, but there have been instances of him shooting actual fire out of his eyes, one of the most notable being in the first episode, when he uses it to ward off Mission Creek High's school mascot after it gets too clingy.
- The Mr. Potato Head Show: During the superhero episode, Mr. Potato Head's "Spudman" character has the ability to fire lightning-like purple rays from his eyes; he used them to create a Bullethole Door to enter the villain's lair. He showed this ability once backstage, too.
- Cindy Crawford was able to do this when she appeared on Muppets Tonight, and did it to vaporize two rather annoying Muppets, one a Loony Fan who asked if supermodels had super-powers, and during the last scene on a guy who kept introducing himself (over and over).
- Night Man's costume includes (among things like a bulletproof bodysuit, an Anti-Gravity belt, and an Invisibility Cloak) an eyepatch of sorts that grants him night vision and can fire a laser. He's not shy about using it to kill, though. At one point, he uses it to merely stun a bad guy, knowing the guy was going to take a two-story fall headfirst.
- Red Dwarf: Rimmer contracts a holovirus in the episode "Quarantine", it drives him mad(der), and he puts on a red and white checked gingham dress, army boots and a penguin puppet, Mr. Flibble. The holovirus gives Rimmer Hex-Vision, with which he can shoot beams from his eyes. He can also transfer the Hex-Vision to Mr. Flibble...
Rimmer: Mr. Flibble is very cross... you shouldn't have run away from him... what are we gonna do with them Mr. Flibble?
[Mr. Flibble, quivering with rage, whispers something in evil Rimmer's ear]
Rimmer: [shocked] We can't do that... who'd clean up the mess? [both their eyes glow red]- The first time our heroes get shot at with the Hex-Vision, the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy trope is lampshaded. Fridge Brilliance would suggest the reason the bad guys can't shoot straight while using Eye Beams is because their optic nerves are overloaded by the energy needed to destroy their target, so they can't see a thing.
- Olly, from The Sifl and Olly Show, has a pair of these installed at one point. They come with the ability to read minds. Side effects include extreme curiosity.
- In one of the later The Six Million Dollar Man made-for-TV movies, Steve Austin's long lost son suffers a tragic accident and gets a bionic eye — that can shoot lasers.
- Smallville: Clark Kent, obviously. He develops them in "Heat". Also Bizarro, Ultraman, and any of the dozens of Kryptonians that pop up during the show. Heat vision is invisible to the naked eye and the beam effects are only for the audience's benefit, allowing them to use it in public without anyone noticing. And for the Kryptonians, heat vision is heavily associated with sexual arousal, with some of them activating it by accident when becoming too aroused.
- The Thundermans: Nora's superpower is laser vision. The beam's intensity depends on what she wants it to do, from causing pain to her siblings for a slight, to cooking a roast chicken, to blowing holes in wood and metal. Nora can also bounce her lasers off of non-reflective surfaces (somehow), making where they'll land more unpredictable. Closing her eyes allows Nora to charge up her beams, setting off a more powerful laser that can completely vaporize a target.
- Countless Ultra Series kaiju possess beam attacks fired from their eyes.
Music
- Ok Go song "Invincible" have this in lyrics:
When they finally come to destroy the Earth
They'll have to deal with you first
And now, my money says they won't know about
The thousand Fahrenheit hot metal lights behind your eyes - "CNR" by "Weird Al" Yankovic includes the lyric:
Ninja warrior, master of disguise
He could melt your brain with his laser beam eyes
Oh yeah
Oh yeah- Weird Al also offers "Slime Creatures from Outer Space:"
They'll zap you with their death ray eyes/and blow you up real good
- Weird Al also offers "Slime Creatures from Outer Space:"
- This was one of Paul Stanley's powers in their TV movie, KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park.
- Afterwards, the band spent $250,000 trying to come up with a way for Paul to appear to shoot laser beams from his eye during their concerts.
- Ace Frehley is shown with these on the cover of Rock And Roll Over.
- In the music video for "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons has the teddy bear, after defeating the champion vaporize two of the boss's Mooks with its eyes.
- In They Might Be Giants "The Lady and the Tiger", the Lady from Frank Stockton's "The Lady, or the Tiger?" claims to have laser eyes that she plans to use to escape, but the Tiger doesn't think that's such a good idea:
The Lady said "I'm busting out of this prison,
I got laser vision
And I'm burning a hole in the wall!"
The Tiger said "Wait, you'll start a fire
Destroy the entire
Lady and the Tiger hall!" - The surreal music video for Hot Chip's single "I Feel Better" - which already features an angelic figure with a Breath Weapon - also ends with the floating head of a black man who can fire lasers from his eyes, who uses this power to kill off the parody boy band Hot Chip's portrayed as, the actual members of Hot Chip, and a few audience members before destroying the stage itself.
Myths & Religion
- Buddha (yes, the founder of Buddhism himself) was said, after being denied access to the scrolls at a temple, to have sat down and stared at the wall until a hole was burned into it. The monks caved in and gave him full access after that. Considering the realism in most of Buddha's stories, this stands out quite a bit, although it's nothing compared to most of too-Anime-for-Goku higher mythology.
- Older Than Print: Before the Tuatha De Danaan moved into Ireland in Celtic Mythology, the giant Fomor were led by Balor of the One Eye, whose deadly gaze could burn men "like leaves cast into a forge." When Balor was slain by his grandson Lugh, he fell face first to the ground with his eye still open, and burned a hole into the ground. It's still there today, as a lake.
- Another version of the above myth has Balor's eye bashed out the back of his head, casting its deadly gaze on his own army. Needless to say, they didn't win.
- Shiva got an extra eye when gods tried to make him stop mourning for Sati and marry Parvati (he didn't know she was the reincarnation of his ex-wife, and no one thought to tell him). He opened his two eyes, noticed her, the god of lust Kama shot Shiva with a bow to stir up passion in him (sounds familiar?)... and then the plan backfired: to everyone's surprise he opened a third eye and incinerated Kama with an eyebeam (Parvati found another way to become his wife and asked him to resurrect Kama). Scorching gaze of annoyed ascetics is a recurring motif for Hinduism, but mortals' anatomy doesn't change.
- From Guarani mythology, Teju Jagua, a mix of a dog and a lizard with seven heads that guards caverns and fruits that's feared for his "Fiery Gaze". Essentially, a kind of South-American dragon. Fortunately, Teju Jagua is pretty friendly and tame compared to his siblings thanks to Tupã.
- The basilisk was held to have eye beams of pure death, causing instantaneous death to any caught in its gaze. Another take on the myth is that the victim is betrayed by their own vision, and dies when they behold the creature. Still others hold a combination of the two, and eye contact between monster and victim is required.
- In Classical Mythology the gaze of a witch could cause some harm or bad luck, but Medea, as granddaughter of Helios, could turn it up to Agony Beam level, driving the unkillable bronze giant Talos to suicide for his unprovoked attack on the Argonauts and herself (at least in one version. In the other she simply hypnotized him into suicide). One wonders why Jason, knowing her unstable character, thought he could get away with breaking up and trying to keep her away from their children...
- Medjed, a very obscure deity in the Egyptian Mythology (he's only mentioned twice in the Book of Dead), is said to be able to shoot rays of light from his eye.
- The Talmud: When Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son Rabbi Elazar finally leave the cave they've been hiding in for twelve years, he's enraged to see people doing farm labor rather than studying Torah all day. Shimon and Elazar's glares of disapproval set fire to anything they stare at. God gives them a What the Hell, Hero? rebuke and tells them to go back in the cave for another year and think about what they've done.
Pinballs
- Cyclops is shown using his in Stern Pinball's X-Men.
Tabletop Games
- Arduin: A number of Greater Demons can do this.
- Iphang, the Lord of the Yellow Horde, can fire a brilliant green ray of intense heat from his eye that does 3-60 Hit Points of damage to anything it hits. It has a range of 100 yards and can be fired up once per melee round up to 13 times in a row. After that it can only be fired once per minute until he doesn't use it (allowing it to rest) for 30 minutes.
- Karong the Lord of Slime has three large glowing eyes colored red, yellow and green. Once each melee round each eye can send out a beam of its color that is 40 yards long and 5 feet wide. The red ray causes 17-36 Hit Points of burning damage, the yellow ray causes 15-24 Hit Points of immediate rotting damage and 3 Hit Points of continuing rotting damage each melee round thereafter, and the green ray causes paralysis for 1-20 minutes.
- Champions has a villain named Occulon who has several eye-based powers.
- Chaosium: The supplement All the Worlds' Monsters Volume III includes two creatures that can do this:
- The Shock Troll has two eyes. The grey eye can fire a death ray and the light green eye can fire a Dungeons & Dragons Feeblemind spell.
- The Windwalker's gaze causes any creature it looks at to become confused.
- deadEarth features a variant of this among its (many, many) "Radiation Manipulations", "441: Halogen", which gives the character "the ability to project a variably bright light from [their] eyes", or in other words, flashlight eyes.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The beholder is a living embodiment of this trope with its eleven eyes armed with magic rays, each of which acts as a different magical spell, a trait shared with the various beholder-kin creatures. There are also lots of creatures with gaze attacks affecting those meeting their eye, such as basilisks (petrification), catoblepas (death) and vampires (charm).
- Gibbering orbs can produce beams that, in a similar manner to beholders, emulate the effect of a high-level spell. Because gibbering orbs have hundreds of eyes, these beams aren't mapped to a specific eye; rather, the orb can essentially pick and choose which beams it wants to use from a set list of two dozen effects, with the only limitation being that it can only fire off one of each kind per round.
- In lieu of a conventional Breath Weapon like other dragons, a jabberwock can shoot a long line of fire from its bulging eyes unless it has been blinded by something.
- A handful of arcane spells like eyebite (a gaze attacks with minor enchantments like charm or fear) and dead man's eyes (the caster's eyeballs turn black with white skull-shaped pupils and kills people by looking in their eyes).
- Later sourcebooks provide a metamagic feat that allows player characters to store ray spells in each eye for convenient simultaneous blasting for a later date.
- In the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition supplement Fiend Folio, the retriever has four eyes that can fire rays up to sixty feet away. Three of them inflict fire, cold and lightning damage (respectively) equal to the retriever's current Hit Points, with a saving throw vs. dragon breath for half damage. The fourth eye can transmute the target into mud, stone, gold or lead (determined randomly).
- The spell lantern light from the 3E Book of Exalted Deeds supplement gives clerics and paladins the ability to shoot eye beams.
- The obscenely powerful epic spell vengeful gaze of god from the 3E Epic Level Handbook deals anywhere from 305 to 1850 points of damage, the latter value being easily sufficient to kill most deities in one shot, and it has a range just less than two and a half miles. Of course, the massive backlash will likely kill you too. And by the time you're high enough level that you could conceivably cast it, you've got easier and safer ways to accomplish the same effect.
- Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting: The Cinderslag Elemental has a form of heat vision that not only burns whoever it gazes it at, but also causes one of their possessions to either melt away or turn to ash.
- In the Dragon magazine #46 adventure "The Temple of Poseidon", once per minute, the Dark King Ythog-Nthlei can fire four scintillating beams of energy from his eyes that drain Strength from the victim.
- Forgotten Realms:
- Dwarves Deep has the dwarven priestly spell fire eyes. Seven Sisters adds its arcane counterpart — higher-level more powerful, but short-ranged and with bonus heat protection — and basilisk glare.
- The 3.5E supplement Lost Empires of Faerûn gives the sunmaster Prestige Class the ability to shoot beams of light out of their eyes at 2nd level.
- Ravenloft: The "Realm of Terror" booklet, from the 2nd Edition boxed set, has it so that when someone fails a Ravenloft Powers check, one possible benefit is being able to fire a ray of enfeeblement spell from their eyes three times per day.
- Exalted: Shards of the Exalted Dream has the Empyreal Chaos Charm known as Apocalypse Comet Gaze. This allows Infern— er, Titanic Exalts to, surprise surprise, fire death rays with a glare.
- GURPS: "Lightning Stare" from GURPS: Magic, which probably isn't a cool as it sounds since you have to make "certain facial motions" in order to cast the spell.
- Magic: The Gathering:
- At one point, the silver golem Karn vaporizes a Phyrexian who has latched onto his arm with "A blinding light from his eyes".
- "Eyes of the Beholder" depicts a beholder from Dungeons & Dragons in the act of vaporizing a luckless adventurer with beams of destructive energy projected from both its central eyes and its eyestalks.
- Munchkin: One of the powers in Super Munchkin. Users risk accidentally destroying their own headgear with it.
- Pathfinder has the yai-mimic spell metamagic feat, which allows a caster to cast any ray spell — that is, a spell which fires a magical beam from the hand or fingers — from the center of their forehead, where their Third Eye would be.
- Sentinels of the Multiverse: This is Young Legacy's contribution to the Legacy superpowers, as seen on the Legacy card "Next Evolution". As a character card, it's her base power, "Atomic Glare".
- Shadowrun: Cybereyes with built in lasers (or projectile weapons) are available. But, it is made very clear that they are very ineffective, especially in combat. In fact, the only effective use is low end tool uses. One alternative, however, is single-use flashbulbs - it won't kill the victims, but rendering them temporarily blind is just as useful.
- Warhammer:
- Certain magic missiles manifest as this, such as the Gaze of Gork, the Gaze of Mork, the Gaze of Nagash and Shem's Burning Gaze, which are often projected from the user's eyes.
- The local version of a Gorgeous Gorgon has a deadly gaze attack that forces the victim's blood out from their skin.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Commissar Sebastian Yarrick got a laser-firing bionic implant for his left eye to build on the stories fearful Orks told of him being able to kill with a glare.
- Prince Yriel has a similar item. No such cool backstory behind it, unfortunately.
- Lords of Change, the greater daemons of Tzeentch, use their gaze as their ranged attack.
- One of the psychic powers available to the Ork Weirdboy is an eye beam attack, with a strength comparable to the anti-armor melta weaponry used by the Imperium.
- The Gaze of Mork is a supercharged laser mounted in the eye of ork Gargants.
- World of Synnibarr is notorious for having bears that attack with these. And it is not even in the top thirty weirdest things about World of Synnibarr.
Theme Parks
- The lava pit chamber in Indiana Jones Adventure at the Disney Theme Parks features a giant stone skull that fires green rays out of one of its eyes.
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- Heat Vision and Laser Vision are two of the forty-two Makuta powers. Other users include Rahkshi of Heat Vision and Tahu.
- Most Skakdi, including the Piraka, have some variant of this as well. Noticeably, not all of them had offensive-based versions. Three of the Piraka had telescopic/x-ray vision, infrared vision, and spellbinder (basically inducing confusion and vertigo) vision respectively alone.
Web Animation
- Burnt Face Man from the flash animation series by the same name, attempts to use "his laser eyes" to catch a falling baby. He does not have said power. Baby go splat.
- DSBT InsaniT:
- Robo-Wolf can fire powerful red laser beams from its eyes.
- Robo has eye beams, but they are really weak.
- Portica has 'eye laser rings', as Boo calls them.
- Rodney has eye beams strong enough to destroy boulders.
- FreedomToons:
- Ben Shapiro (and his family) use these to obliterate their debate opponents.
- Marianne Williamson uses this at the end of "Dem Debate 2: Electoral Boogaloo".
- Happy Tree Friends: Splendid, being a Superman Expy, has this superpower, which he can amplify using glasses and binoculars.
- Red vs. Blue:
- In a Halo 3: ODST online ad from , Church tells a few legends about Sergeant Johnson. One of them that his friend's cousin's neighbor told him, was that he has laser eyes. He does.
- Church gets a powerful laser eye in Recreation when he's transported into a spherical body.
Church: I am not a thing! My name is Leonard Church AND YOU WILL FEAR MY LASERFACE!
- Thrilling Intent One of Markus' attacks involves shooting thin beams of fire from his eyes.
- X-Ray & Vav has this as X-Ray's main weapon, a pair of glasses that also give him X-Ray Vision. However, X-Ray is such a horrible shot, he'll end up destroying the city before he hits his target.
Webcomics
- 8-Bit Theater:
- When a demon destroys the city of Prontera, it uses laser beams from its eyes as part of its rampage. A Pronteran protests that lasers haven't been invented yet; the demon responds that demons have that figured out fine and then blasts him.
Pronteran 1: He's using laser eye beams!
Pronteran 2: But we haven't invented lasers yet!
Demon: WE HAVE. - Black Mage uses them later, when Fighter shows him his "Brilliant Idea" that he's written down. Black Mage offers to "lend those notes my critical eye... BEAMS!" and incinerates the page.
- Black Mage later used these to set ablaze a dwarf city. Red Mage lampshades it: "Now you're just doing it to annoy me. You don't even HAVE heat vision."
- BEHOLD MY HUMAN LASER!
- When a demon destroys
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja:
- Dracula's Draculabot features, among other things, eye lasers.
- In a variant, Dan McNinja can squirt poison from his eyes.
- Ansem Retort: Andrew Jackson's special ability. That and liberal Cluster F Bombs.
- College Roomies from Hell!!!: Dave got eye lasers as a result of a dip in a nuclear waste-laden lake.
- Cyanide and Happiness: Parodied.
- Ennui GO!: Meatclops has eyes that are portals to a dimension filled with meat, allowing him to shoot blasts of meat at bad guys. Nobody wants to get caught by him.
- Everyday Heroes: Summer has to wear a special mask, 24/7 as a result of Cyclops-style Power Incontinence since her powers kicked in.
- Girl Genius: Count Wolkerstorfer, using his mech's cyclopean eye, rakes Baron Oomfumf's tuba trombone battle wagon thing with a beam killing him.
- Grrl Power:
- The magical villain Sciona realizes the flaw in this trope as she'd given herself a set with a blood cocktail.
Sciona: [thought bubble] This... this power is idiotic! It's so hard to see anything!
- One of the villains during the super-brawl fires off a pair of these, so it may be a case of Required Secondary Powers.
- The magical villain Sciona realizes the flaw in this trope as she'd given herself a set with a blood cocktail.
- Gunnerkrigg Court: Given to robot cows. Just like real cows, only with lasers.
- Handsome Fungus: Esa, but no one believes it until they've been shot.
- Head Trip: Any Rabbi does this regularly. Just don't tell them we told you.
- Homestuck:
- Nannasprite can use hers to levitate objects, heal people and write, as well as zapping imps.
- Sollux' Psychic Powers include the ability to fire energy beams from his eyes, a blue one from the left and a red one from the right. If he eats mind honey, he risks losing control of them and firing them wildly and involuntarily. Later on, he uses them purposely as weapons in his two duels with Eridan, who responds with beams of his own from a Magic Wand.
- The Intrepid Girlbot:
- Raccoon #1 has these, but she can't quite control them.
- Mousebot has also demonstrated this ability, but strangely, not Girlbot herself, except in one small instance.
- Apparently, Ananth from Johnny Wander has this ability when not wearing his hat.
- This guy from Karate Bears has eye beams.
- Killroy And Tina both share this power. Unfortunately, Tina sometimes forgets to take out her contact lenses and melts them to her eyes; luckily, she's also Nigh Invulnerable...
- Lackadaisy: Invoked. Old gangster Viktor Vaskow can just shy of actually kill someone with his one-eyed Death Glare; the sensation of which is described as feeling like "he's searing a hole through your face," so it's at least felt in the same way that an Active Denial System is. Rocky thinks it has to do with Viktor's sheer hatred of almost everything undergoing "a kind of stimulated emission" by having to pass through only one eye.
- Laser Pony from the League of Super Redundant Heroes can shoot energy beams from behind his eyes, which blinded him on their first use.
- Luke Surl's approach to the problem here. Check your local laser eye surgery providers for the list of services. See the result. Also, ray deer and this (reference to Daredevil).
- The Pelican Cello in Mountain Time has eye lasers, as well as at least 49 other powers (including "good at long division," "can identify cheeses at 20 yards," and, yes, "can make cello music").
- Nixvir: This is one of Ragnar's powers. It helps that he's a Flying Brick even without his Clockwork Creature army to maim people on his behalf.
- The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Wonderella got these once, but apparently, it's just an allergic reaction to shellfish.
- The Perry Bible Fellowship has◊ two◊ cases.
- Planescape Survival Guide: Tchick the beholder has these. Though his powers tend to be rather unusual. His most commonly used fires a red delicious apple.
- Schlock Mercenary: Massey has these in an Imagine Spot over blowing up an annoying coworker's head. Apparently "StinkEye™ brand ocular implants will allow the fulfillment of this particular fantasy."
Massey: Shh. I'm trying to kill you with my eyes.
- Superbitch has the ability to burn/melt and cure vision problems with her eyebeams.
- Weesh: Tate wishes he had laser eyes.
Web Originals
- Discussed in Deviant, though no one's been shown with the power yet.
- Uncyclopedia articles judged to be "bat fuck insane" feature a photomanipulated image◊ of Pope John Paul II shooting eye beams while shouting "Eye Beams!"
- World Domination in Retrospect:
- Amplitude applies his Sizeshifter powers via eye beam.
- Captain Lightning has the more traditionally destructive type.
- Gecko installs a laser eye for himself, though it will fry his brain if left on for too long.
Web Videos
- The Funniest Minecraft Videos Ever: The Laser Eye Mod allows the players to have this ability. The Ender Dragon didn't stand a chance against them, and Wilbur discovers that they could even break bedrock with laser vision.
- The Nostalgia Critic: Santa Christ "shoots lasers from his eyes", according to his theme song.
Real Life
- The Horned Lizard, or at least some species of same, has a defense mechanism whereby it can, to quote The Other Wiki, "squirt an aimed stream of blood from the corners of the eyes for a distance of up to 5 feet." The blood is caustic, foul-tasting, and a bit of a surprise for a would-be predator.