"Go to ssssleep."
"Okay, new rule: If the Ghost Wizard's eyes start to shimmer... DON'T LOOK INTO THEM. YOU ARE SO DENSE SOMETIMES."
— Mitzi McNinja (to her unconscious husband), The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
If the eyes are the windows to the soul, this person has a very... persuasive... compelling... even possessive soul. With little more than a few words intoned in their deep, Compelling Voice, any fool gazing into their eyes will be hopelessly hypnotized.
The mind control victim who has gazed too long into this abyss will likely develop Mind-Control Eyes. High power Hypnotic Eyes (or when broadcast) may function like a Hypno Ray and work on several onlookers at once.
If the hypnotist is using glasses, then it's likely a Mind-Control Device instead of this trope.
Examples:
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Advertising
- One commercial for Super Mario Land 2 - 6 Golden Coins, the debut of Wario as a villain, has him trying to use Hypnotic Eyes to brainwash people into obeying him.
Wario: Obey Wario, destroy Mario!
- This
Japanese commercial features a young caterpillar with hypnotic eyes.
Alternate Reality Games
- In Welcome Home (Clown Illustrations), there's a strong theming around spirals and eyes...particularly with the main character, Wally Darling. His eyes are sometimes drawn looking manic, or completely dilated, and even more unsettling, with a small white dot in the middle. And he rarely ever not stares at his favourite neighbor: you.
Anime and Manga
- In the hentai Alien from the Darkness, when the eponymous alien is in its human female form and begins seducing a crew-member, its eyes flash green before revealing its unexpected appendages. Once this happens, the alien's victims' eyes go blank, and they seemingly become unable (or unwilling) to resist.
- In Angel Beats!, Naoi plays these almost entirely for gags.
- Code Geass:
- Lelouch has something akin to this; his "Geass" (a power closely connected to eyes and sight) allows him to issue "absolute orders". If Lelouch geasses you to do something, you do it — no questions asked. Not fully this trope (there are enough differences to distance it), but certainly closely related. Especially when it becomes permanently active. It's worth noting it works more like some kind of light coming from the eye than actual eye contact itself as he's shown to be able to refract it via a complicated system of small mirrors to Geass someone from cover and in one memorable case Geassed himself via reflecting it back into his own eyes with a shard of glass.
- Rolo's Geass from R2 is more hypnotic in nature than Lelouch's (it freezes everyone's perception of time) and is centered on his eye, but it doesn't require eye contact to take effect (it works within a radius).
- Noroi, a white weasel in Ganba No Bouken. When his red eyes shine eerily, he can apply hypnotism. And he'd do a violent, cruel and villainous acts.
- Alucard from Hellsing has these, as befitting a powerful true vampire. Of particular note is the scene where he takes control of one of the S.W.A.T. Team at the hotel in Brazil, making him open the elevator doors keeping him from slaughtering them all.
- In Maid-Sama!, Soutaro Kanou has this. He attempts to hypnotize Usui by making him look into his eyes, but it doesn't work. It's implied that he uses the same technique on Yukimura and Misaki the second time.
- In Naruto, members of the Uchiha clan can manifest Sharingan eyes, which have hypnotic powers ranging from subtly throwing off the target's perception of reality to outright mind control. A common piece of advice when fighting Uchiha is to read their actions by watching their feet and hands, as even casual eye contact can be fatal. As first shown with Kakashi, the Sharingan's tomoes usually spin wildly around the pupil when this power is active.
- Rosario + Vampire: The succubus Kurumu seduces the main character Tsukune with these, though she calls the ability "Charm." She only really uses it once after her introduction, though, as she wants to catch Tsukune's heart with fair play and not with her powers, not only for her love for him but also her love for the rest of the girls in the harem. This leads to a Tear Jerker moment when she accidentally charms Tsukune and spends the rest of the day with him in her room, ending with her trying to make him saying that he likes her until it's instead her who breaks down to tears and says that she likes him.
- Trigun: Dominique the Cyclops. When she opens her eye shutter, her Demon's Eye can dazzle all five of a victim's senses, making it seem like she teleports from place to place. Once he figures out what she's doing, Vash defeats the hypnosis by using intense pain to keep his senses awake.
- Hiei from YuYu Hakusho. His Third Eye gives him a number of psychic abilities. Although sadly, they are rarely, to never used.
Comic Books
- Blade: Blade is resistant to vampire mesmerism, but cannot do it himself. However he was given said ability in the Ultimate Marvel universe.
- Diabolik:
- The title character has them, but isn't too good with it and people can realize what he'd doing and break eye contact. Hence why he once used a shining monocle as a help.
- In the story "I Am Diabolik", Diabolik was at the receiving end of this, having been captured by Clerville's queen of the mob Natasha Morgan and resisted the Truth Serum only to find out her underling Victor was an hypnotist and spill out some of his secrets before recovering and beating the crap out of him. As Diabolik and Natasha later teamed up, it's likely he learned the trick from Victor.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Non-Paperinik New Adventures Paperinik villains Spectrus and Sapphire have this ability. Sapphire can also shoot lightnings, but Spectrus can't... And compensates with a power so big he can hypnotize his victims through video tapes (that's how Paperinik got him the first time: he taped him and then tricked him into watching the tape. He later started doing this to others to steal). They become partners in crime (and get a lot of Ship Tease) when they finally meet in Ultraheroes.
- Fantastic Four: Along with all the combined powers of the Fantastic Four, the Super Skrull has mesmerizing eyes.
- Herbie: Herbie's gaze has several different effects, depending on the person: as a bare minimum, it makes almost everyone uncomfortable or scared. If Herbie so desires, he can literally hypnotize others using a lollipop as a pendulum.
- Hoppy the Marvel Bunny: In the story "Hypnotizing Hi-Jinks" from issue #12, Professor Possum can make anybody think they are a different person by looking into his eyes. He doesn't stop mesmerizing people until he has hypnotized the entirety of Hoppy's hometown.
- Iznogoud: "Mesmer-Eyezed" sees Iznogoud contracting a stage hypnotist who can make anyone think they are anything (usually an animal) by looking into his eyes. However, clapping breaks the spell, so when the vizier tries to get the hypnotist to make the Caliph think he is a donkey, suddenly they are unable to get away from people making clapping noises. Frustrated that Iznogoud refuses to pay him, the hypnotist makes him think he is a rattlesnake — a deaf rattlesnake who cannot hear the clapping that would break the spell...
- Kid Colt: Bennington Brown is a skilled hypnotist who can use his power on anyone he can make eye contact with. He can use his abilities to create illusions, slow down the reactions of others so he can seem to outdraw them, and prevent his victims from pressing charges against him.
- Tintin: The fakir in the story Cigars of the Pharaoh; even Tintin is unable to resist the power of his eyes and weird gestures. More so in the Animated Adaptation The Adventures of Tintin (1991), where his eyes are enough to hypnotize someone, and his pupils light up.
- The Untold Story of Argo City: An alien named Zygor develops the power to project hypnotic beams from his single, enormous eye.
- Violine: The main character's (and presumably, her father's) eyes sometimes have this effect on people. In the climax, Marushka is revealed to have these, along with actual hypnotic powers.
- Wonder Woman (1942): The villain Hypnota's "Blue Hypnotic Ray" can be projected from her eyes and hands.
- X-Men:
- One of Gambit's most notable traits from his mutation are his red irises on black sclerae. One of his lesser known mutant powers is a hypnotic charm from eye contact that makes people more compliant to him. It's less effective if the target knows about it.
- The villain Sauron is a were-pterodactyl who's also an energy vampire, complete with hypnotic eye contact.
Fan Works
- Blood Flow: Jennifer gains hypnotic eyes as one of her supernatural powers after being murdered by Low Shoulder, possessed by a demon, and becoming a succubus/vampire hybrid. Near the end of the story, she hypnotizes the band into publicly confessing their crimes at their free concert on Halloween night.
- In Ginny Weasley: Double Life, the serpent Milikan has these abilities, which she uses to 'convince' her human companions that they are old friends; her latest 'victim' is Ginny Weasley, Milikan hypnotising Ginny to give her false memories that they met when Ginny was a little girl. Also features in the various one-shots in the spin-off Tales From The Hypnoverse.
- Vow of Nudity: When Countess Constella charms Kay'la, her internal narration describes the vampiress' eyes as glowing, and finding herself transfixed by them and unable to look away.
- In When Reason Fails, Yagi theorizes that Izuku's Charm requires the girl to look him in the eyes, so he gives Izuku a pair of sunglasses to avoid further accidental seduction.
Films — Animation
- Aladdin (1992, Disney): Jafar uses a cobra-headed cane to hypnotize the Sultan into obeying his orders.
- Catnapped!: When Princess Buburina uses these, her eyes change colors AND physically rotate around themselves rapidly. Whether it's hypnosis or it simply causes the victim to have a seizure is debatable.
- Kraigor in Dennis the Menace in Cruise Control, who sought to take over the island kingdom of Mimosa, has this ability to have others do his bidding, especially when they refuse to follow his commands. Dennis later turns his powers against him, setting free everyone else he hypnotized, including Princess Liana's guards, and getting him sent to the dungeon for high treason.
- Hotel Transylvania: Count Dracula can do this, as first seen at the end of the first movie when he compels a skeptic to hit himself in the head with a mug to prove that he's really Dracula. Mavis has the potential to do this, but it doesn't yet work on anyone except Donald.
- The Jungle Book (1967): Kaa the python has these type of eyes, visually represented by colorful circles in his eyes, which he uses to compel his victims to sleep.
- Kubo and the Two Strings: The guardian of the Breastplate Impenetrable is an enormous sea monster with many eyestalks. These eyes can put victims in a trance, revealing truths to the victim to keep them still while guiding them to its gaping mouth.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls 1: Sunset Shimmer gains a variant after stealing power from the Element of Magic.
- Robin Hood (1973): Sir Hiss, having a similar character design to Kaa, attempts to hypnotize Prince John to calm him down, but it just makes him mad. Hiss is also stated to have hypnotized King Richard into going off on crusade so that John can take power back in England.
- One of The Twelve Tasks of Asterix involves being able to resist Iris the Great Egyptian Magician's hypnotic spotlight-like gaze. Iris tries to hypnotize Asterix into believing he's a boar, but keeps getting distracted by the Gaul's comments about his Glowing Eyes like "Can you make them light up one at a time?" and "They must be handy for reading in bed." Eventually, Iris becomes so confused that he ends up hypnotizing himself.
Iris: By Osiris and by Apis, look in my eyes. You have turned into a wild boar. Yes! A wiiillld boooaaarrr...
Films — Live-Action
- In Avengers Grimm, Rumpelstiltskin sports these when he's putting a mind whammy on his enemies.
- Implied to be the case with Fuad in Blood Feast, as the movie does a tight close-up on his eyes whenever he tries to convince someone to do something. He combines it with Compelling Voice for extra effect.
- The Big Bad of Conan the Barbarian (1982), Thulsa Doom, has hypnotic eyes that can put anyone who stares at them long enough under a spell, winning that person to his side. He does so to Conan's mother, long enough to behead her once she dropped her guard. He does it again to Conan at the end of the film, but Conan is able to break the spell and behead him.
- The Angel in Date with an Angel can calm down anyone or anything with her radiant smile and doe eyes.
- In Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Count Dracula is able to hypnotise people by staring into their eyes.
- The eponymous Dr. Mabuse in Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler.
- In The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, the Evil Sorcerer Cagliostro can hypnotize people by staring into their eyes.
- One of the witches in Hansel vs. Gretel is able to control people's minds through eye contact. After Gretel consumes the witch, she gains the same power. The visual effect is dilated pupils on the controller.
- In Invisible Avenger, Cranston and Joegendra are able to hypontise people simply by staring into their eyes intently: no words need be spoken.
- In Looker, a company called Digital Matrix creates computer-generated actors that have hypnotic eyes which cause the viewers to fall into a trance, making them receptive to whatever message the producers want to communicate through the TV commercials.
- Played for Laughs in Love at First Bite; when Dracula and Jeffery attempt to do this to each other, a luckless waiter sticks his head between them and instantly keels over. Followed by the entire restaurant, other than the two in question and the love interest that they're busy fighting over.
- In Masters of the Universe (1987), Evil-Lyn bewitches Julie with her amazing mesmerising eyes. Contrary to common belief, these were not contact lenses but actress Meg Foster's spectacular real eyes.
- The Monster Maker: Dr. Markoff has some kind of mesmeric ability. He is able to influence Patricia just by staring into her eyes for a short time, and later persuades Maxine that she is tired and wants to go to bed by staring into her eyes and talking to her.
- Rasputin the Mad Monk: Rasputin puts a hypnotic whammy on women by staring at them intently and saying "Look into my eyes...". He hypnotizes both a lady-in-waiting and the Tsar's wife this way.
- The villain of The Thing That Couldn't Die is the undead head of devil-worshipper Gideon Drew, which is still able to instantly enslave anyone who looks at him without protection.
- In Thirteen Women, Ursula is able to hypnotize people by staring deeply into their eyes.
- Vamps: Vampires have these, and they can compel weak-willed people to obey their commands, including to forget things, by using them.
- The glowing eyes of the children in Village of the Damned (1960) and its 1995 remake.
- Montag of The Wizard of Gore is implied to have this, generally modeled by the camera going to an extreme closeup of his eyes as he stares for several seconds, following by a member of the audience doing what he wants.
Literature
- Artemis Fowl: All fairies can use a hypnotic power called mesmer by prolonged eye contact, which makes the victim happy, docile and compliant to the fairy's orders. Artemis figures out that it can be countered by wearing mirrored contact lenses, but pretends to be mesmerized in order to avoid the fairies finding his contingency plan against the Fake Memories they're going to implant.
- Children of the Red King: Manfred, the Headmaster's son, has these as his gift.
- The Demon Headmaster, although he uses his Catchphrase along with it:
"Funny you should be so sleepy so early in the day... Your eyelids are getting heavy... You... are... asleep."
- In Dr. Greta Helsing, this is a common ability of the various strains of sanguivore, accompanied by regular dilation and contraction of the pupil. The vampire Lord Ruthven has a relatively mild version that works well to placate his blood donors and relieve migraines, whereas the vampyre Francis Varney's thralling hits like a warm fuzzy dump-truck.
- In Girls Kingdom, Friendly Neighborhood Vampire Angelica can use these, but she only does so once, to fuzzy up Matsuri's memories of her actions after dealing with a Vampire Hunter.
- In The Golgotha Series, chupacabras have glowing hypnotic eyes. However, they only seem to work on goats.
Jim: I think... it's trying to... hypnotize us, Mutt. I don't think it's working.
Mutt: It'd have a damn sight better chance if it wasn't so backside ugly. Now vampires, there are some hypnotisers, I'll tell you what. - In Greenmantle, the villain, Hilda von Einem, tries them on the hero, Hannay.
The eyes grew large and luminous, and I was conscious for just an instant of some will battling to subject mine.
- This is how hypnosis works in The Hypnotists.
- The Jungle Book: In "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", Darzee's wife must avoid looking into the cobra Nagaina's eyes, because doing so would leave her paralyzed with fear.
- One of the two arch-nemesises of Norwegian police inspector character Knut Gribb, Olga Barcova (also known as "The Green Terror"), can use her brilliant green eyes to hypnotize any man. A few men are immune — most notably Knut Gribb himself — and it heavily depends on the story whether the hypnotic powers work on women.
- Molly Moon has a hypnotic gaze as her main (and original) power.
- The eponymous goldfish in Mo O'hara's My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish series has this power.
- In the Night Huntress books, vampires can brainwash humans if they look at the vampire's eyes. A small percentage of the human population is immune to this ability.
- In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds, the Master hypnotizes a man into committing suicide to cover up his latest scheme. However the victim did sketching as a hobby, so before he kills himself he draws a sketch of the Master with eyes like this trope, tipping off the Doctor and Jo Grant as to who is responsible.
- Princess of the Void has the alien Taiikari, whose females can "flash" their eyes, inducing a temporary state of extreme obedience known as "compulsion" in sapient males, regardless of species. A flashed male will obey just about any verbal order from the compelling female, as long as they can actually understand the order. This is up to and including things like "Forget this conversation took place", or even "Shoot yourself in the head". However, human males are immune.
- In his political satire Rabbits and Boa Constrictors, Soviet writer Fazil Iskander plays with this. The titular boa constrictors have Hypnotic Eyes that completely incapacitate any rabbit who gazes into them, making them easy prey. Except there's actually no such thing as hypnosis — what actually paralyzes rabbits is their own fear of the serpents.
- In the Redwall series, snakes, primarily adders, have this ability. The only (known) non-snake example would be the pine marten Ublaz Mad Eyes. The name says all.
- In Scrapped Princess, anyone who gazes into the eyes of a Peacemaker immediately falls under their control (called Providence). Their influence is so strong that entire cities can be made to submit to their will. One of the reasons why they're after Pacifica is that she's immune to Providence and can pass this onto others (she twice invokes involuntary magical outbursts — anyone caught within gains her immunity).
- The Shadow is known for this in most of his incarnations.
- So I'm a Spider, So What?: Kumoko has the ability to hypnotize with her eyes, though she doesn't use it much because she either has better options or is so strong that's it's a waste of time. One of the few uses of her ability to influence people with her eyes is when one of the few people she actually cherishes starts having a panic attack and she uses them to calm her down while reassuring her.
- The snake in the Indiana Jones-styled section of Sonic the Hedgehog in Castle Robotnik attempts this unsuccessfully, eventually getting out a watch and trying to still no avail.
- In Tasakeru, N'Ktane and her "son" Stalker have these.
- The Thinking Machine: In "The Problem of Dressing Room A", Van Dusen claims you can tell a hypnotist through his eyes.
- In Tolkien's Legendarium, dragons have hypnotic eyes:
- The Hobbit: When Bilbo converses with Smaug under cover of invisibility, Bilbo is seized with an "unaccountable desire" to come out of his cover and tell Smaug everything he wants to know whenever "Smaug's roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him".
- The Silmarillion/The Children of Húrin: At the sack of Nargothrond, the hero Turin is hypnotized by the dragon Glaurung just as he is going to attack Glaurung and unwisely looks into the latter's "lidless eyes". As Glaurung holds him under a spell, Turin stands passive as the captives of Nargothrond are driven away, and only regains (part of) his senses when the dragon withdraws his gaze. Later Turin's sister Nienor is found by Glaurung and hypnotized so that she forgets her past and identity. She only regains her memory many years later at the death of Glaurung.
- Villains by Necessity: Kaylana can mind control humans with difficulty through looking into their eyes, and animals more easily. It has to be simple orders however, and her control can't last for long.
- In A Wrinkle in Time, the Man with Red Eyes has powerful Hypnotic Eyes which he uses to bring Charles Wallace under the control of IT.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- "Buffy vs. Dracula" shows that the Count has hypnotic Occult Blue Eyes that can enthrall even Buffy.
- Drusilla uses them on Kendra to distract her long enough to slit her throat with her FREAKIN' FINGERNAIL. In the next episode, she uses them to hypnotize Giles into believing she's Jenny Calendar.
- In the canonical comics, Angel mentions that this is an inherent power of vampires but most of them never bother developing it much, and he himself has never got the hang of it.
- Doctor Who:
- The Master has a long history of hypnotizing people by staring into their eyes and telling them to obey him.
- The Fourth Doctor was the first Doctor with this trait — most other Doctors have to use a pendulum or physically touch people they hypnotise, but as Tom Baker naturally possessed very wide, pale blue eyes and a mesmerising stare, no other visual aids were necessary.
Fourth Doctor: Sarah, I want you to look into my eyes.
Sarah Jane: OH NO, NO THAT'S NOT F–- [falls into trance] - The Seventh Doctor used this on a couple of occasions, such as compelling two people to stop fighting and agree to be taken away from the situation by UNIT.
- First Kill: Elinor is unique in the legacies through having a Compelling Voice ability that's accompanied by this, her eyes glowing yellow as she commands them.
- Ryutaros in Kamen Rider Den-O. He is able to freely manipulate people while he's possessing Ryotaro by his purple eyes. While he's doing a hip-hop dance, the boys hypnotized to come from somewhere and dance with him.
- The Muppet Show: During one of Gonzo's segments, after practicing hypnosis on his chickens, he is unable to find a volunteer, and decides to hypnotize himself, using a mirror, to give himself super strength. It works, unfortunately, he is tricked by Statler and Waldorf into waking himself out of his self induced trance, causing him to loose his hypnotic strength, and be squished by the 5000ld he is supporting. Given its Gonzo, he's okay, and actually proud of his accomplishment.
- Pennyworth: Dr. Lucius Fox asks one of the Persons With Enhancements in his underground lab how her goggles are working. When she raises the lenses, her eyes change to funny colours and Dr. Fox gets a zoned-out look on his face until she snaps the lenses down again.
- Thunderbirds: The Hood combines this with Glowing Eyes of Doom. He uses his eyes to render anyone unconscious, or to gather information about International Rescue from his half-brother, Kyrano.
- All vampires in the series True Blood possess this power (assuming their maker taught it to them). It seems to get more powerful with age, like most vampire abilities in the True Blood universe: while most vampires can put you in a trance while looking into their eyes and affect your perception, older vampires (or possibly just Russell Edgington) seem to be able to be able to look into your eyes once and then subsequently leave you in a trance even after eye contact is broken.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Black Leather Jackets", Steve uses his eyes to hypnotize Stuart Tillman into thinking that he, Scott and Fred are nice young men, though the effect is short-lived.
- A constant on The Vampire Diaries and its spin-offs The Originals and Legacies in how the vampires use "compulsion" on people. A regular bit in all the shows is a close-up of the vampire's eyes and then a close-up of the victim's as they accept whatever they're told (unless they've been taking vervain, which counteracts compulsion). Also, vampires who've been feeding only on animals aren't able to do it.
- Wynonna Earp: In "Landslide", Cora and Jolene can make any men come under their control immediately just by staring into their eyes for a moment. They will then meekly let the sisters drain their blood.
- All vampires in Young Dracula but Vlad takes the cake. He's so good that he mind-wiped an entire crowd, including several slayers and Renfield, into forgetting about vampires. It was so strong that Renfield's memory was still being re-wiped every time he re-learned about vampires four years later.
Music
- Ilse DeLange's song "I'd Be Yours":
And if I were a snake I'd be a constrictor, slicker than oil
I'd entice you with my slither, wrap you in my coils
You could tie me in a thousand knots, and just watch me unfold
Hypnotize you with my stare, swallow you whole - This is part of Rezz's stage outfit in the form of LED glasses. The fictionalised version of herself also have these.
Podcasts
- Several characters in Sibylline Sounds have this ability; most of them are snakes.
Professional Wrestling
- Alexa Bliss gained the ability to do this in 2021, using it on Nia Jax and Reginald as well as on Shayna Baszler.
- The Undertaker used this on Mabel at the 1999 Royal Rumble. Shortly after doing so, Mabel became Viscera.
- Bray Wyatt used this on Xavier Woods on an episode of Raw, as seen here....
Scripts
- Skar from Night Skies has the ability to hypnotize livestock by staring into their eyes. This makes it easy for him to mutilate them without alerting the other animals. When Skar is cornered inside one of the stables, he hypnotizes one of the horses to kick Ed in the face while he escapes.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Swamp landwyrms can hypnotize anyone who looks into their glowing yellow eyes.
- Necromunda: Some of the Adepts who lead Genestealer Cult gangs in the 3rd Edition of the rulesnote share the hypnotic gaze exhibited by their Purestrain Genestealers progenitors, and are able to dominate the mind of weak-willed enemies with nothing more than a piercing stare. This is represented in-game by the 'Hypnosis' Adept Ability that allows the Adept to stop an attack by an opponent before they can make it.
- Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution: Psychokinetics can Push people into seeing things (or not seeing things) and following commands, but they have to make eye contact with them first.
- The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG: The Enrapture spell causes a target to fall into a trance, unable to move or act for as long as the caster maintains eye contact.
- The World of Darkness:
- In Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem, this is any vampire with the Dominate discipline, which generally requires that the user make eye contact with the target to implant suggestions.
- Setites with Serpentis 1, Eyes of the Serpent, can freeze someone in place by making eye contact.
Toys
- Novi Stars: This is Mimi Merize's ability. She has a side effect of hypnotizing herself when looking in mirrors.
Video Games
- Dare to Dream: The second and third episodes both have an obstacle where Tyler's paralyzed by a statue with hypnotic eyes he can't pass until he finds a way of neutralizing its gaze.
- The Tiki Tak tribe from Donkey Kong Country Returns aren't much of body, so they invoke this trope into hypnotizing various animals into doing their labor for them. Beings of higher thought capacity are proofed against this power, but since this is an animals-only universe, that limits it to the Kongs. The first level literally starts with Donkey Kong demonstrating this fact to one of them the only way he knows how.
- Dragon Quest: Lullab-Eye, which first appears from Dragon Quest VI onwards, sends one enemy to sleep with a gaze from the user's eyes, be it Aamon,note Murdaw, his master Mortamor, Orgodemir, Dhoulmagus note , Rhapthorne, Corvusnote and other villains such as Maldragora, or normal enemy monsters from Dragon Quest VII onwards, starting with Eyesaurs and Testudogres. It's usually non-resistant and the sleep status cannot be cured until the victim awakens either after some turns have passed or is attacked during the battle, though from Dragon Quest IX onwards, it can be resisted when the would've been victim is in Super High Tension, and by Dragon Quest X onwards, it can also be cured with sleep healing items and spells.
- In Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, Agent Superball does this through his Secret Service shades if Sam insists in believing in Time Travel. In the future. With the time travel machine only 4 meters away.
- Titan Quest: The Immortal Throne Downloadable Content's Dream Mastery's Hypnotic Gaze skill.
Visual Novels
- In Mice Tea, Sylvia gains these as a result of her half-snake transformation. Notably, she's extremely aware of what kind of damage she could do if she were more selfish or careless, and takes great pains to avoid using them on people without their consent.
Webcomics
- Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater has on two occasions used Hypnovision on his allies. Both occasions did little to no good, as the first target (Fighter) was too dumb to be affected by it (even though he actually kinda was), and the second (Red Mage) was wearing mirrored shades for "no apparent reason".
- Ball and Chain's Silver has this ability, but so far it's only been shown to work on animals.
- In Captus Cinematic Universe, Tizer gets the attention of his victims so they can look into his eye and fall under his spell.
- Debugging Destiny has Ignacia, who gleefully uses this ability all the time. At the time the story begins, she's hypnotized all Red characters except three, and she is actively trying to complete her "collection". Her almost-sultry attitude when trying to bait people into eye contact adds shades of Femme Fatale to this.
Ignacia: Hello, stranger. Tell me, do you think that I have pretty eyes?
- In Homestuck, staring into the eyes of Lil' Cal puts a person under the trance of Lord English himself and do his bidding, be that murder your friends or rip out your own eyes and replace them with the dummy's, thereby becoming one of English's avatars. It's explained that Lil' Cal is a Soul Jar for English, so staring into its eyes is effectively the same as staring into English's soul. And you wonder why the Striders wear Sunglasses at Night!
- The Kingfisher features vampires with the Hypnotic Eyes, to varying degrees. Vitus early on puts Marc to sleep with the look, but goes to Helen for help rewriting his memories.
- In Lucid Spring, Pacem and Viktor deal with a bear that sends them into an intense hallucination through eye contact.
- Minion: Count Antonie the vampire tries this on Meryl. She of course sees right through it and clobbers him.
Meryl: I'm a dark witch, you moron! Did you honestly think I wouldn't know about that stupid 'Hypno-Eye' of yours?!
- In Nixvir, Old Harry Flowerpot has this ability. It was given to him by the goddess of the rainbows herself.
- The Order of the Stick: As in Dungeons & Dragons, vampires can Mind Control humanoids by making eye contact. The High Priest of Hel uses this to take control of a bunch of enemy Mooks, and later to defeat the entire Order by dominating half the protagonists.
- In Rusty and Co., the vampire, while dominating.
- In Sluggy Freelance, a stick-figure Filler Strip has Torg accidentally get mind-control eyes when his swirly eyes caused by sudden exposure to light get combined with a top hat and a chocolate milk moustache, making him look like a sinister hypnotist.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: Spirits corrupted by the Rash are able to lure those who can see and hear them into a trap via a Compelling Voice that requires intial eye contact with the target to work. Onni hints that a strong enough mages can shield themselves from it, but weaker mages (Reynir) and non-mages Sharing a Body with a mage (Emil in later chapters) need to avoid eye contact with Rash-corrupted spirits at all costs.
- In Think Before You Think, Julia imagines Becky with eyes like this.
- Vampire Girl: Paul uses this on Levana as a way to apprehend her after he and Saul sneak into the hospital costume ball to do just that; it's particularly effective because he does this through a bathroom mirror, in which he casts no reflection.
Websites
- SCP Foundation: When SCP-1529 ("King of the Mountain") makes eye contact with a human being it exerts hypnotic control over the victim. This causes the victim to feel the effects of freezing to death (feeling warm and comfortable, sitting down and relaxing).
Western Animation
- ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks: In "For Whom the Bell Tolls", Alvin attempts to reverse Simon's idiocy-induced hypnosis by using hypnotic eyes on him...followed by suddenly slapping a hand across his face. It doesn't work.
- The Amazing World of Gumball: Darwin once used these to hypnotize Gumball into remembering a repressed memory. While this succeeds, Gumball starts flashing back to past lives, culminating in him becoming a hypnotist, and he uses these to start hypnotizing Darwin. Before they're snapped of it, Gumball has made Darwin allergic to the word cheese and fluent in French.
- Ben 10: Omniverse: Vladats like Lord Transyl and Whampire have this power if they don't feel like using their Corrupturas.
- Big City Greens: Tilly Green can hypnotize others by staring into their eyes long enough. She tries this on a woman in "Sellouts", and it works... until the two touch eyeballs, snapping her out of it.
- In the 2006 revival of Biker Mice from Mars, the one-off villain Eyemore uses this on Charlie to brainwash her into rebelling against the mice.
- A completely out-of-left-field example from The Critic, when Duke Phillips is running for President:
Reporter: What is your response to critics who say that this marriage is just an outrageous publicity stunt to help your campaign?
Duke: I say, gaze into the hypnotic power of my Evil Eye!
[He leans forward...] - The Changewings from Dragons: Riders of Berk are stated to possess this ability, but they have not yet demonstrated this.
- The Fairly OddParents!:
- Super Bike has a pair that he uses on Timmy. It works... until he tries to imply that his father doesn't love him.
- The Gigglepies from "So Totally Spaced Out" use these on Cosmo and Wanda. It stops working when their rhyming habit begins to falter.
- The eponymous "Fair Bears" use these on Timmy, Cosmo, Wanda and Chloe to lull them into a nap so they can mind control the first and third mentioned.
- Futurama has the Hypnotoad, whose penetrating gaze lulls you into a mindless catatonic state until all you care about is praising the creature's glory.
- The Godzilla Power Hour features a bipedal cobra-monster named "Axor", one of his superpowers is to hypnotize its victims by firing a grey laser from his eyes at the victim's eyes as well. He uses this on the Calico Crew (minus Godzooky) and multiple humans to serve him, having already forced them to build him his own castle. Strangely enough, not only does his hypnosis not work on those who are sick, but it also winds up being his own undoing.
- Growing Up Creepie: The wasp in "Attack of the Wasp Zombies" has these, which are used to entrance his victims before stinging them, turning them into his mindless slaves.
- Hazbin Hotel:
- Sir Pentious can use the eyes all over his body to control others, though the effect is very short-lived, so he can at best make them do something that takes a few seconds to do. For example, when Angel Dust tackles him to the ground and starts punching him:
Sir Pentious: Get your aggressively average body off of me.
Angel Dust: [reels back with Mind-Control Eyes] Fuck! - Vox is much better at this, having a hypnotic left eye whose effect he can project onto any screen under his control for mass hypnosis. As a much more powerful demon than Pentious, he's shown to be much better at it, comparing Sir Pentious being able to issue a brief command to Angel while Vox turned him into a Manchurian Agent.
- Sir Pentious can use the eyes all over his body to control others, though the effect is very short-lived, so he can at best make them do something that takes a few seconds to do. For example, when Angel Dust tackles him to the ground and starts punching him:
- I ♡ Arlo: The Bog Lady from the first season finale has these, which she uses on Arlo during her Villain Song when he's ensnared in her vine trap so he doesn't leave the swamp.
- Invader Zim: Tak seems to possess these in the form of some sort of device in or near her eyes. While in disguise, a flash of her eyes allows her to erase short-term memories of her victims (unless their mind is too strong, like Dib's and Gaz's were) and, in one case, impose her will over others.
Girl: Looks like Zim has a girlfriend!
Tak: It's not NICE... to embarrass people! You should apologize... and... [eyes flash] eat your eraser!
Girl: [with Mind-Control Eyes] Yes, Tak! I'm sorry, Zim. [takes a bite out of her eraser] - Jellystone!: This version of Spooky can apparently hypnotize people, and when she does, her eyes fill with static. She used this in one episode to get someone to buy expired fish sticks.
- Sunil from Littlest Pet Shop (2012) has these. He uses them on the Biskit Twins in the episode "Gailbreak!".
- Looney Tunes:
- In "Mexican Boarders", Slowpoke Rodriguez, the Slowest Mouse in all Mexico, uses Hypnotic Eyes to zap Sylvester into becoming his obedient slave, thus showing how he's been able to survive.
Slowpoke: Slowpoke may be pretty slow downstairs in the feets but is pretty fast upstairs in the cabeza.
- In "The Hare-Brained Hypnotist", Elmer Fudd learns how to hypnotize people and animals. The hypnosis power manifests as lightning shot from his eyes.
- In "Mexican Boarders", Slowpoke Rodriguez, the Slowest Mouse in all Mexico, uses Hypnotic Eyes to zap Sylvester into becoming his obedient slave, thus showing how he's been able to survive.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Fluttershy's "the stare" is compelling enough to put a cockatrice, a brood of chickens, or an entire colony of vampire fruit bats into a suggestible trance.
- Discord, in his initial appearance as a major villain, showcases this ability, which he uses to invert the personalities of most of the main characters (except Twilight). He uses this as the finishing touch after having worn down his victims the "fun" way first, but when Fluttershy proves immune to this kind of persuasion, he skips straight to the magic out of exasperation.
- In "Bridle Gossip", Pinkie Pie claims that Zecora the Zebra has this ability, and shows the swirling eyes herself when she sings a song about it, but she is just imagining things/making things up.
- The Hypnobrai Tribe from Ninjago lure their victims into being hypnotised by rattling their tails and staring their victims straight in the eye. They can also plant post-hypnotic commands in which the victim acts as a sleeper agent, seeing through their eyes and enforcing their control. Cole unfortunately had to find this out the hard way.
- Rupert: The eponymous Great Mephisto has this ability.
- Skull Island (2023): Or rather, Hypnotic Crystalline Underside. Rock Bug's underside is coated in bright, dazzling crystalline material, which appears to serve the purpose of mesmerizing its prey, if Cap's reaction to it in the second episode is any indication.
- Skysurfer Strike Force: The villain Dr. Five Eyes has this power, but oddly for just the eye in the center of his forehead.
- In the ThunderCats (1985) episode "The Doom Gaze", this is the power the evil Ta-She possesses. Tiny problem: It only works on men.
- Tabaluga : In the show, Bilingua originally required a Hypno Pendulum to hypnotize people. However, her skill in hypnosis eventually grew to the point that she unlocked the ability to hypnotize people via eye contact, which also enabled her to perform Mass Hypnosis.
- Winx Club: This is one of Darcy's powers.
Real Life
- In hypnosis, particularly in stage hypnosis and instant inductions, eye contact is essential. If you stare at someone without blinking long enough, many people naturally fall into a light trance attempting to keep eye contact with you. In stage hypnosis, the term is literally called the "hypnotic gaze".
- An interesting natural world variant — cuttlefish can use special pigment cells called chromatophores to cycle their entire bodies through multiple colors, hypnotizing their prey in a manner very similar to this trope.
- According to some scientists, cephalopods actually see color with their skin, essentially making the entire cuttlefish a giant Hypnotic Eye.
- Since olden times, folklore across many cultures has attributed snakes with many preternatural abilities, with a hypnotic gaze being a common one. This particular myth often points to the snake's unblinking stare as it approaches its prey, the prey itself remaining frozen in place despite the impending threat, and how the snake occasionally moves its head from side to side or back and forth in what seems like the manner of a hypnotist. That is not the only explanation for these phenomena, however. While the snake may have a hypnotic gaze in folklore, they probably don't elsewhere. In truth, moving their heads side to side may help with depth perception, while prey remaining motionless may be a defensive mechanism to avoid being seen.