Animal Eyes

"It's, like, such a bummer that 'Snake Eyes' was already taken. Dude doesn't even have real snake eyes!"

This character doesn't have normal human eyes; for any of various reasons his eyes are like those of an animal. He may have slit cat eyes, compound insect eyes, glossy and bulging fish eyes or piercing bird's eyes, among a menagerie of possibilities.

These eyes may be just for show, a mere cosmetic difference brought about through a Partial Transformation, genetic alterations or a spell. Frequently, and especially for bird's eyes, they carry Super Senses related to sight.

The Beast Man and some Kemonomimi will have eyes matching their particular choice of animal. In Sci Fi settings, characters who are Human Aliens (including some Rubber Forehead Aliens) may also have unusual eyes. In these two cases, this is to silently remind the audience that the character in question is not actually human.

See also Hellish Pupils, which may be shaped like those of a cat, goat or reptile. See also Eyes of Gold, when golden eyes show a supernatural connection. Not to be confused with Fish Eyes, Puppy Dog Eyes or Animal Eye Spy. The inverse of this would be Cartoony Eyes, in which animals have eyes that are human-like (although very exaggerated or simplified).

Examples of Animal Eyes include:

Anime and Manga

• Hawkeye Mihawk from One Piece.
• Naruto whenever he taps the Kyuubi's power.
• Snake from Black Butler has yellow snake eyes with vertical pupils. His skin is also covered with small, white scales.

Comic Books

• Timmain and her half-wolf son Timmorn Yellow-Eyes in Elf Quest.
• Storm traditionally has blue eyes that are catlike, but many artists forget this.

Film

• Bolt has the Show Within a Show villain Doctor Calico, who has a single cat eye and a normal human eye.
• Jafar actually gains the eyes of a snake for a split-second at the end of Aladdin when he is turning into a um, guess.

Literature

• Madame Hooch in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone has "yellow eyes like a hawk".
• Mercy Thompson: The werewolves have human eyes that become more wolflike if they're stressed, or if they're close to a full moon.
  • Wolf from the Shadowrun Wolf And Raven stories gets "killer rings" in his increasingly-lupine eyes when he's about to transform, or when he draws on the Old One's power.
• The Joe Ledger Series book The Demon Factory has one of the Creepy Twins having genetically augmented herself to have cat eyes—along with other animalistic traits.
• Big Al in The Hollows has goat eyes in his human forms.
• An'desha from the later Valdemar books retained the cat eyes he'd received when Mornelithe magically modded his body.
• Magnus Bane of The Mortal Instruments is often described as having eyes like a cat.
• The titular character of Susan Gates' "Dusk" has hawk eyes instead of human ones.
• The Seroster of Robert Westall's The Cats of Seroster gets gold cat-eyes whenever he touches his magical weapons.
• Sauron in The Lord of the Rings has cat-like eyes.

Live Action TV

• In his last appearance on the old series of Doctor Who, The Master has glowing eyes with appearance of a catlike creature.
• The Visitors in the V remake are shown a few times with reptile eyes instead of human ones; in the original series, this would only happen if they flat out removed their human disguises.

Tabletop Games

• The Gangrel clan weakness in Vampire: The Masquerade is that every time they give in to Frenzy, they gain some permanent animalistic aspect to their appearance. Animal Eyes are a popular option.

Video Games

• Albert Wesker from Resident Evil's eyes look like a cat's eyes, resulting from his use of a virus to fake his death.
• In the video game adaptations of The Witcher series of books, the protagonist Geralt of Rivia's eyes are snake-shaped. In the novels all Witchers have snake- or catlike eyes, but for some reason the first game only gives them to Geralt. The second game rectifies the matter, showing Letho with similar Hellish Pupils.

Web Comics

• Most of the demons in Elijah and Azuu have slitted pupils like a cat. There is also another character with big yellow eyes like an eagle.
• Eerie Cuties has vertical pupils (though not always noticeably so) on vampires, as well as cat-, lizard- and snake- folk. When the latter "snakes out", this is used to a hilariously cute effect, combined with big dark eyes.

Western Animation

• Thundercats 2011 employs this with the various Beast Folk and Petting Zoo People that comprise Third Earth's many Animals. The titular Cats, being the most humanoid, have visible white sclera surrounding irises with slitted pupils that dilate in dark settings, (in contrast with Team Pet Snarf's fully animal eyes). Enemies the Lizards often have slitted fully yellow eyes, Fishmen fish eyes, and so on.
• Queen La from The Legend of Tarzan, being an evil leopard queen, has eyes like a leopard.
  • And like in the books, La's also Atlantean as well.
  • Atlanteans have leopard eyes?!
    • Anything drawn by Disney animator Randy Haycock will look like a cat.
• Batman Beyond provides the trope picture from the episode "Splicers," when Chelsea Cunningham is revealed to have literal cateyes due to undergoing a splicer treatment, even when such treatments are in fact illegal.