History Main / ScreensAreCameras

* In ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'', the earliest versions of the Spider-Slayer robots work this way. The robots would seem to have no technological ''need'' to project the face of whoever remotely controls them onto a TV screen mounted on the robot's "head", but that's exactly what they do.

[[folder:Film]]

* Starting early in TheNewTwenties, smartphones came out with cameras hidden under the screen. The first to get one is the ZTE Axon 20 5G in 2020. Samsung was second to market with the Galaxy Z [=Fold3=] 5G in 2021.

-->-- '''Farce Contact''', a ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' parody

Whenever a character talks to another over a VideoPhone, each is able to see the other party on his monitor but no camera of any sort is shown. Both parties will look directly at the screen showing their conversation partner on the other end, but neither party will appear to be breaking eye contact with their partner by doing so. This suggests that the actual screen one is looking at (or something directly behind it) is also recording one's own end of a conversation, which is viewable on their partner's monitor.

This trope can be [[ExaggeratedTrope exaggerated]] by displaying the characters actually holding the device he is using to chat (as seen in the image above). This would require a non-existent third person camera to be setup InUniverse.

[[folder: Anime ]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]
* In ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' comics, the earliest versions of the Spider-Slayer robots worked this way. The robots, piloted remotely by J. Jonah Jameson, would seem to have no technological ''need'' to project JJJ's face onto a TV screen mounted on the robot's "head," but that's exactly what they do.

[[folder: Literature ]]
* The Telescreens in ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' receive and transmit simultaneously, and are a big part of [[BigBrotherIsWatchingYou how Big Brother watches the people of Oceania]]. Even the Thought Police secretly recording the protagonists is done by a telescreen hidden behind a picture on the wall, rather than a smaller hidden camera.

[[folder: Film ]]
* ''Film/FourteenOhEight'' averts the trope; the cam is visible when the main character starts a video chat.
* ''Film/AustinPowers'': Dr. Evil tends to do this a lot. He has typical villain ultimatums with various world leaders through closed circuit televisions, yet there are no cameras that would allow him to see anything.
* ''Film/GhostInTheMachine'': The virtual killer is shown travelling through cyberspace, until he stops to observe his victims through a computer screen or similar interface as if it were a glass window.

[[folder: Live-Action TV ]]
* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': The Hexfield Viewscreen

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'''s viewscreens, in all the show's incarnations, seem to work this way.
** On ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', Ronald D. Moore hatched a plan to replace the tired old viewscreens with a "holocommunicator". This was eventually deemed a failure, as it was glaringly obvious that the 'effect' was two actors in a room. ''Trek'' holograms have always been cleaner than ''Star Wars'' holograms, so flickering or static wouldn't be keeping in canon. They even tried surrounding the holographic actor in blue light (so as to appear to be transmitting from a different room), but the actor confusingly looks like a ghost(!).
* This was strangely played both straight and averted nearly every time video communication was used on ''Series/{{Firefly}}''. Every other ship besides ''Serenity'' seems to have a dual camera/screen, but the heroes have to stare into a little camera lens when they speak. The effects department apparently thought the trope was being played straight because they had to be told, repeatedly, not to add a button beep/touch tone when Mal brushed dust off the camera lens with his thumb during one scene.
* Taken to somewhat silly extremes in ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', where everyone uses Skype. People on screen will turn their heads to look at the person they are addressing, which means on their end they would be looking at the wall.
* An episode of ''Surprise Sur Prise'' had this as one of their pranks. A television show was showing off new tech where they talk with random people through the television, although they flubbed the first two people because they used the same background. The third person was the prank's mark, catching her in the home. The TV show ended the call then cut to commercial, who noticed the mark was slightly distracted and told her to pay attention.

[[folder: Radio ]]
* ''Radio/JourneyIntoSpace'': In ''Journey to the Moon'' / ''Operation Luna'', this seems to be the case with the televiewer of the ''Luna''.

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'': Wheatley appears to be able to see through several of the video screens dotting various parts of the facility. In fact, there are a couple of parts where he reacts in pain to any of them being damaged. He later becomes jumpy whenever a flying cube almost hits them.
* The members of the Think Tank in the ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' DLC ''Old World Blues'' each have three mounted screens displaying their eyes and mouth separately, and are capable of seeing through their "eye screens".
* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys2'': You can brighten up rooms with your flashlight through your monitor.

[[folder: Visual Novels]]
* mIn just about about every video chat scene in ''VisualNovel/{{Melody}}'', both participants are making perfect eye contact.

[[folder: Web Video ]]
* ''Unbox Therapy'': Covered the world's first smartphone with under-screen camera, the ZTE Axon 20 5G, in a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Dbcw7QWRo video]] dated 21 September, 2020.
* ''WebVideo/LinusTechTips'': [[https://youtu.be/ZSowePnsWXI?t=227 "Is Samsung Trying To Impress Me?? -- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G Early Look"]] talks about the titular phone having a camera hidden under the folding screen. Instead of using a "notch" or a "hole punch" to get the screen around the camera, it covers the camera with more screen. The catch is the circle over the camera has a pixel density much lower than the rest of the screen, and the camera sees some grid-like light artifacting with lights in the frame.

[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'' videochats with Sam and Tucker with no visible webcam.
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'' named "Information Stupor Highway", Crocker uses a spyware program to see what's happening in Timmy Turner's room. How does the program do it? By filming the room ''through the monitor'' of Timmy's computer.
* The Comm Links in ''WesternAnimation/AtomicBetty''.
* The variation often occurs on ''WesternAnimation/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|1987}}''. Krang in the Technodrome is talking to Shredder, who has a small handheld Comm Link. Krang has a huge wall-sized screen in front of him, yet his face fills the entire screen on Shredder's Comm Links. Meanwhile, on Krang's screen, Shredder is shown '''holding the communicator in his hand!'''
* The variation also occurs in ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'', who is sometimes shown to use the [[CommLinks Kimmunicator]] to call Ron on a regular cell phone. However, the Kimmunicator will show Ron holding the phone up to his ear.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSaveUms'', the Adventure Screen acts like this between the Save-Ums and whomever is calling them.
** Interestingly, in [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the first episode]], Winston is shown using a telephone to talk to the Save-Ums. However, this does not occur in any subsequent episode.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' plays this straight quite frequently. The most obvious example is the two-way wrist communicator watches worn by the Ventures; they have nothing that looks like a camera, but at least they tend to display faces at a believable angle and distance.
* In "The Lepidopterists", the trope is [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] by The Monarch. He contacts Jonas Venture, Jr. by video screen to announce he is attacking in his flying cocoon. Jonas shoots the cocoon with a death ray, and it is destroyed on the screen. It turns out that The Monarch was actually sitting on a soundstage in front of a TV camera, and the destroyed cocoon was a miniature on a string. The Monarch had installed a backdoor into Jonas's communication system so that he could use the attempt on his life as a bureaucratic loophole.
* Zig-zagged in ''WesternAnimation/PAWPatrol'' (which provides the page image). On one hand, most of the characters communicate with each other via smartphones, which have cameras built into them. On the other hand, when any of the pups contact Ryder with their ''Franchise/StarTrek''-style pup tag, they ''should'' just be getting an audio link, but somehow still have two-way VideoPhone capability even though they should be staring at thin air.
* The main characters of ''WesternAnimation/TotallySpies'' communicate with their boss, Jerry, through a CommLinks device disguised as a make up compact. In the field, the compact [[HologramProjectionImperfection projects a tiny hologram of Jerry]] as a form of a 3D VideoPhone, even though Jerry has only a computer screen on his end which doesn't contain any device to capture a hologram of himself, much less a camera. He only sees a 2D image of the girls on his screen, but somehow in one instance the hologram of Jerry actually ducks down as one of the girls begins to close the lid of the compact on him at the end of a call.

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* During the 1980s a computer magazine published a program to turn the BBC Micro's screen into a camera. After manually entering the the hexadecimal code, readers who thought this trope was in play were likely to receive a [[AprilFoolsDay rapid reality check]].

* In 2006, Apple [[http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060007222%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20060007222&RS=DN/20060007222 patented]] a way to achieve this by embedding microscopic cameras between the display's pixels. However, this design has never been implemented by Apple so far. However, as noted below, ZTE actually beat Apple to the market with the world's first smartphone with an under-screen camera.

* In 2006, Apple [[http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060007222%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20060007222&RS=DN/20060007222 patented]] a way to achieve this by embedding microscopic cameras between the display's pixels. However, this design has never been implemented in hardware so far.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSaveUms'': The Adventure Screen.

* Zig-zagged in ''WesternAnimation/PAWPatrol''. On one hand, most of the characters communicate with each other via smartphones, which have cameras built into them. On the other hand, when any of the pups contact Ryder with their ''Franchise/StarTrek''-style pup tag, they ''should'' just be getting an audio link, but somehow still have two-way VideoPhone capability even though they should be staring at thin air.
* The main characters of ''WesternAnimation/TotallySpies communicate with their boss, Jerry, through a CommLinks device disguised as a make up compact. In the field, the compact [[HologramProjectionImperfection projects a tiny hologram of Jerry]] as a form of a 3D VideoPhone, even though Jerry has only a computer screen on his end which doesn't contain any device to capture a hologram of himself, much less a camera. He only sees a 2D image of the girls on his screen, but somehow in one instance the hologram of Jerry actually ducks down as one of the girls begins to close the lid of the compact on him at the end of a call.

* Starting early in TheNewTwenties, smartphones came out with cameras hidden under the screen. The first to get one is the ZTE Axon 20 5G in 2020. Samsung was second to market with the Galaxy Z Fold3 5G in 2021.

* WebVideo/LinusTechTips: [[https://youtu.be/ZSowePnsWXI?t=227 "Is Samsung Trying To Impress Me?? -- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G Early Look"]] talks about the titular phone having a camera hidden under the folding screen. Instead of using a "notch" or a "hole punch" to get the screen around the camera, it covers the camera with more screen. The catch is the circle over the camera has a pixel density much lower than the rest of the screen, and the camera sees some grid-like light artifacting with lights in the frame.

[[folder:Radio]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' plays this straight quite frequently. The most obvious example is the two-way wrist communicator watches worn by the Ventures; they have nothing that looks like a camera, but at least they tend to display faces at a believable angle and distance.\\
\\

* The trope might be influenced by the real life fact that early TV cameras used [=CRTs=] (in the same way that a microphone and a loudspeaker are essentially the same thing used differently), something that the audience at large probably didn't know, but people in the industry probably would.

* Averted ''and'' exaggerated in ''WesternAnimation/PAWPatrol''. On one hand, people are communicating with each other via smartphones, which will likely have cameras built into them. On the other hand, when one of the pups contacts Ryder via their ''Franchise/StarTrek''-style combadge pup tag they ''should'' just be getting an audio link, but somehow still have two-way VideoPhone capability even though they should be staring at thin air.

Whenever a character talks to another over a video link, often a VideoPhone, each is able to see the other party on his monitor but no camera of any sort is shown. Both parties will look directly at the screen showing their conversation partner on the other end, but neither party will appear to be breaking eye contact with their partner by doing so. This suggests that the actual screen one is looking at (or something directly behind it) is also recording one's own end of a conversation, which is viewable on their partner's monitor.

A variation also exists where one of the parties may see the other party actually holding the device he is using to chat. This would require a camera crew following the characters around to set up cameras for their conversations, but of course [[MagicalSecurityCam no such crew exists and the camera is never seen]].

Closely related to ComputerEqualsMonitor. SubTrope of HollywoodWebcam. With both tropes, ShootTheTelevision might solve many problems.

This might become a DiscreditedTrope in the near future, as we are staring to see technology where the camera is installed beneath the screen. (Previously, this wasn't possible since the screen would block too much light and render the camera useless.)

May save yourself some teeth grinding to assume the camera is closely adjacent to the screen, as in a laptop's webcam or a smartphone's front-facing camera.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/untitled_3_88.png]]

* Taken to somewhat silly extremes in Series/TheBigBangTheory, where everyone uses Skype. People on screen will turn their heads to look at the person they are addressing, which means on their end they would be looking at the wall.

* any of the screens in the ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' universe seem capable of this, particularly the Combine screens of ''VideoGame/HalfLife2''.

In "The Lepidopterists", the trope is [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] by The Monarch. He contacts Jonas Venture, Jr. by video screen to announce he is attacking in his flying cocoon. Jonas shoots the cocoon with a death ray, and it is destroyed on the screen. It turns out that The Monarch was actually sitting on a soundstage in front of a TV camera, and the destroyed cocoon was a miniature on a string. The Monarch had installed a backdoor into Jonas's communication system so that he could use the attempt on his life as a bureaucratic loophole.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Spider-Man}}'' comics, the earliest versions of the Spider-Slayer robots worked this way. The robots, piloted remotely by J. Jonah Jameson, would seem to have no technological ''need'' to project JJJ's face onto a TV screen mounted on the robot's "head," but that's exactly what they do.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' plays this straight quite frequently. The most obvious example is the two-way wrist communicator watches worn by the Ventures; they have nothing that looks like a camera, but at least they tend to display faces at a believable angle and distance. In "The Lepidopterists", the trope is [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] by The Monarch. He contacts Jonas Venture, Jr. by video screen to announce he is attacking in his flying cocoon. Jonas shoots it with a death ray, and it is destroyed on the screen. It turns out that The Monarch was actually sitting on a soundstage in front of a TV camera, and the destroyed cocoon was a miniature on a string. He had installed a backdoor into Jonas's communication system so that he could use the attempt on his life as a bureaucratic loophole.

* The Telescreens in ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' receive and transmit simultaneously, and are a big part of [[BigBrotherIsWatchingYou how Big Brother watches the people of Oceania]].