"Staring contest! You lose!"
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, but let's not think about that....)
Compare X-Ray Vision, Deadly Gaze, Magical Eye, Breath Weapon, and Hand 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.
— Gag Sub of Mazinger Z
Example subpages:
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- Folklore
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Tabletop Games
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- Web Comics
- Web Original
- Western Animation
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Card Games
- At one point, the silver golem Karn in Magic: The Gathering vaporizes a Phyrexian who has latched onto his arm with,"A blinding light from his eyes".
- One of the powers in Super Munchkin. Users risk accidentally destroying their own headgear with it.
Fan Works
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- In Origin Story, Alex Harris (being a Kryptonian trapped in the '"Marvel Universe'') uses her heat vision multiple times, most notably to disable Captain Marvel.
- In Toroko Got Fingered, King is reconstructed into a cyborg and gains the ability to fire laser beams from his left eye.
- In the Haunted Mansion and the Hatbox Ghost Fan Verse, 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.
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.
- 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!"
Pinball
- Cyclops is shown using his in Stern Pinball's X-Men
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
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.
- 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.
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.
