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Creepy Blue Eyes

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Eyes so blue you could swim and drown in them.

"Long exposure to Spice has given the tribe their characteristic blue eyes, the Eyes of Ibad."
Filmbook Narrator, Dune (2021)

This is the unsettling variety of blue eyes given to particularly degenerate and creepy characters. They tend to be either sort of light and watery, extremely pale, or the type that seems to be too open, to the point where one starts to hope they'll blink soon.

This may overlap with Icy Blue Eyes, for certain types of creeps, and even with Innocent Blue Eyes for especially sinister Fake Cuties, Psychopathic Manchildren, and the like. Compare Occult Blue Eyes and Red Eyes, Take Warning, contrast Innocent Blue Eyes.

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Examples

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    Advertising 

    Anime & Manga 

    Comedy 
  • In one comedy special, George Carlin talks about white people's penchant for imperialism and adopts a spooky voice as he describes blue eyes taking a predatory look on native cultures to conquer.

    Fan Fiction 
  • Tommy Elliot/Hush from Batman: Melody for a Mockingbird is a violent sociopath whose most prominent feature is his "soulless" light blue eyes, and not just because of his Bandaged Face. After his face transplant to look like Bruce Wayne heals, the eye colour is the easiest way to distinguish him as the real Bruce's eyes are a darker blue.
  • In Hellsister Trilogy, Satan Girl and her son Berserker are blue-eyed, blood-thirsty, psychopathic murderers whose eyes are described as completely bereft of conscience or compassion.
    The focus of the image came back to the lone warrior, or berserker, or... hell, just call him a murderer. His visage was less distinct than those of the Apokolips pair, probably because the computer didn’t have a model from which to work. Still... the eyes. She could make out enough of them to see something there, a fury, a lack of conscience, a lack of superego with which to restrain the id.
    Eyes that, in another face, could have belonged to Satan Girl.
  • Old West has as one of the antagonists a kingsnake mercenary named Henry. He has clear blue eyes and is based on Frank.
  • In Savior of Demons, we have Ratsura, a pale, blue-eyed, thoroughly deviant Arcosian scientist. His subordinates and colleagues are all unsettled by him, and for good reason.
  • In Something Always Remains, Gregory Mortman has a calculating look in his eyes that often allowed him to pick up on small details. This skill makes him formidable as The Smiling Man.
  • Tales of the Undiscovered Swords has Sasanoyuki, whose eyes are described as "unnatural" and "cold". He is characterized as an Emotionless Boy who speaks in Creepy Monotone and draws his sword every other second. The creepiness of his eyes is then taken to a new level with a pair of Scary Shiny Glasses after he comes back from kiwame.

    Film 

    Literature 
  • The title character of the Beka Cooper trilogy is noticeable for her icy blue eyes. Beka, unlike many protagonists, is very aware of how uncomfortable her eyes make people, and will often use a long unblinking stare to break people down. It is briefly discussed that her eye color might have something to do with her ability to talk to ghosts, but it's never truly confirmed.
  • The Boys from Brazil: Mengele's experiments give blue eyes to people who shouldn't have them. His compound is filled with Paraguayans with unnatural blue eyes. His clones of Hitler also have creepy blue eyes.
  • Adolican Rhand, the Arc Villain from the second and third Brimstone Angels novels, is described as having bright, chilling blue eyes that tend to profoundly unsettle anyone who meets his gaze, even if they're otherwise unaware of his various proclivities.
  • The head of the titular Legion in Carrera's Legions has eyes that are described as an "eerie blue", and along with his ability to accurately predict what his Salafi Ikhwan enemies are going to do are part of why he's known to them as "the Blue Djinn".
  • Felix's right eye in Doctrine of Labyrinths is a pale, cloudy blue. Even the people who don't think it's of the occult variety think it's more than a little creepy. Though as it turns out, it's almost completely blind.
  • The last Kingpriest of Istar from the Dragonlance series of novels is a Knight Templar and is described as having watery blue eyes.
  • In Empire of the Petal Throne, blue eyes are considered this by definition, due to being highly uncommon and to being associated (at least in legend) with witchcraft. That said, Tlayesha in The Man of Gold subverts the trope.
  • In Dune, chronic use of the consciousness-expanding drug, Spice, gives the eyes a deep blue color. Heavy Spice users, such as the Fremen or the Guild Navigators, will have eyes that are so blue that they almost look black. What makes this creepy is that the Fremen would embark on a galaxy-spanning Jihad in Paul's name and rack up a 61,000,000,000 kill count while the Guild Navigators have been so horribly mutated by Spice that they don't even look human anymore.
  • In The Broken Earth Trilogy, "icewhite" eyes are widely seen as an ill omen. Played straight with Schaffa, a Mage Killer who's been hunting, enslaving, and often murdering magical children for tens of thousands of years. Zig-zagged with Hoa, who's an off-putting but Creepy Good Stone Eater trying to save humanity from extinction.
  • Go to Sleep (A Jeff the Killer Rewrite): Jeff's crystal blue eyes gradually veer into creepier territory when they tense up with anger, and when they shrink with madness after he succumbs to his insanity. After the burning incident, he Looks Like Cesare as his blue eyes are bordered with black on his white face.
  • In The Grace Year, sixteen-year-olds are sent out spend a year in isolation supposedly so they can be purged out of their inherent magic. Tierney, the protagonist, notes that Alpha Bitch Kiersten Jenkins has eyes like this, whether she is under the influence of the algae contaminating the water they drink that make her hallucinate they do have magic powers or is completely clear.
  • Mason Verger, the antagonist of Hannibal, is described as having intense, piercing, creepy blue eyes (which he inherited from his equally malevolent father).
  • Ollivander from Harry Potter has pale blue eyes that never seem to blink.
  • The Daemon from The Hearts We Sold looks like a handsome man with lovely blue eyes, but since he's so aloof and uninterested in getting too friendly with humans, they just make him seem even more otherworldly and unnerving. Dee thinks the fact that he's so good looking makes him even creepier.
  • Jonathan Teatime in Hogfather has one blue eye. With a pinpoint pupil. And he's completely Ax-Crazy.
  • I've Got You Under My Skin: After his father was killed, all Timmy could recall about the murderer was that he had intense blue eyes. As such, Blue Eyes became the name used to refer to killer due his identity being completely unknown. As it turns out, his eyes aren't naturally blue as he wore contacts, which adds to the uncanniness.
  • The eponymous character of Kane Series by Karl Edward Wagner is frequently described as being disturbing to look directly at. Because it reveals to witnesses Kane's true, murderous nature.
  • Matthew Swift, the primary protagonist of the Matthew Swift Mysteries and the secondary protagonist of the spin-off Magicals Anonymous series. His eyes — like the blue electric angels that share his body, mind and soul — are electric blue. They even glow in the dark. Most people have a hard time looking at Matthew's eyes for very long.
  • Ter Borcht in Maximum Ride has "pale, watery blue eyes" and repeatedly states that the flock are overdue to be terminated.
  • Professional Killer Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men has eyes that are described as the color of Lapis and are supposedly very unsettling.
  • Kennit of Robin Hobbs's Realm of the Elderlings has very pale blue eyes. He thinks they make him look weak; others find them unsettling.
  • In The Red Tent, Leah's eyes have this effect. Amplified by the fact that one is blue and the other is green, she has relatively short lashes and rarely blinks. The midwife who delivered her thought she was a demon child, and the men of her village dismiss her as a "freak." Because of this, Leah keeps her eyes downcast in public.
  • T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom features a Values Dissonance-induced example. Western media tends to portray Lawrence's striking blue eyes as rather attractive, but an old Arab woman who hadn't seen many northern Europeans found them eerie and off-putting.
    "She questioned me about the women of the tribe of Christians and their way of life, marvelling at my white skin, and the horrible blue eyes which looked, she said, like the sky shining through the eye-sockets of an empty skull."
  • Clairvoyant detective Mick has these in the short stories A Night in Electric Squidland and Impostors, from the compilation Somewhere Beneath Those Waves.
  • Roose and Ramsay Bolton in A Song of Ice and Fire are described as having blue eyes so pale, they barely have any colour to make out. The more about them you learn, the more you understand other characters' creeped-out reactions to those Bolton blue-greys.
  • In Warrior Cats, several villains have creepy blue eyes: Scourge and Hawkfrost have the icy blue variety, while Darktail's eyes are noted in Onestar's Confession to be a "vivid, unsettling blue", meeting Onewhisker's gaze with such intensity and anger that it makes Onewhisker shiver.
  • Peril from Wings of Fire's eyes are described as an unnatural and unnerving shade of blue that are not anything like what you'd normally see in a SkyWing. Ruby is quite creeped out by them.
  • Kell Tainer in the X-Wing Series is mentioned to have very pale blue eyes, very slightly too dark and narrow to make him look like a madman. If this actually meant anything, the author was fairly subtle about it, but it does seem odd. Hardly anyone in the series has eye colors mentioned.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who — one of the Doctor's most strange and alien incarnations — has very large and disturbingly intense bright blue eyes which rarely blink. Between the unusual colour and the Doctor's warmth, they can be very beautiful in an otherworldly, unsettling sort of way at times - Tom Baker had a career of playing charismatic creeps with Hypnotic Eyes at the time, a tradition in which his take on the Doctor follows - but not when he's boggling them out of his head, which he does far too often.
    • Spoofed contemporarily in mostly forgotten 70s sketch show End of Part One, which did a skit called "Doctor Eyes" in which the Fourth Doctor was represented by a cosplayer with two halves of a ping-pong ball glued to his face.
    • It's not difficult to find contemporary interviews with Baker in which he freaks out interviewers - such as the one to promote Season 15 in Australia. The interview with Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen on Swap Shop (included as a special feature on "The Hand of Fear" DVD) shows the usually unflappable Noel Edmunds becoming visibly unnerved by Tom Baker's eyes.
  • Game of Thrones
    • While Ramsay Snow / Bolton has been subject to Adaptational Attractiveness, the actor playing him has the requisite eerily pale blue eyes.
    • The White Walkers have terrifying eyes of an unnatural electric blue.
    • As do dead bodies touched by a White Walker (wights), regardless of their original eye colour. This is the easiest way to tell if someone is back from the dead.
    • Euron's insanity shows through his eyes, as blue as icy waters and often wild and unsettlingly wide.
  • The raub-condor from NBC's Grimm
  • Ben Linus from Lost. His unblinking, almost bug-like bright blue eyes are his most iconic physical trait, and they're often commented on both in the show and by fans.
    "The staring — I thought that Doctor Who stare was just an actor's tool, but you've been using it on me all the time... you do have an amazing pair of eyeballs."
  • 80's icon Max Headroom is normally seen in his tv and ad appearances wearing Cool Shades but beneath them are a pair of the "unnaturally blue" variety, as if his plastic body and mannerisms weren't enough to tip you off that he's not a traditional hero in any way. The sunglasses were used more frequently later on as the contacts used were painful for actor Matt Frewer to wear.
  • The Mentalist has the blind Rosalind, whose pale, almost unblinking blue eyes definitely fall into the creepy category.
  • Cillian Murphy's portrayal of Shell-Shocked Veteran mob boss Thomas Shelby in Peaky Blinders is enhanced greatly by his icy stare. You always get the sense that Thomas is just barely keeping it together — if he's keeping it together at all.
  • The angel Castiel from Supernatural has the pretty-but-scary variety of blue eyes. They also glow.
  • Tales from the Crypt: The Crypt Keeper sports a surprisingly pretty pair of ice-blue eyes. Somewhat of a subversion, as they're arguably his least creepy, most human feature.
  • In The Vampire Diaries, Damon Salvatore has startling blue eyes, which further adds to his creepiness.
  • The White Queen: Prince Edward of Lancaster's soulless blue irises are indicators that he's a budding psychopath. They become even more chilling when he rapes Anne Neville on their wedding night.
  • The X-Files: John Barnett from the episode "Young at Heart". His blue eyes are glassy and glazed over, and they appear dead. Even the pupils are blueish.
  • Teen Wolf: Married couple blond Chris and redhead Victoria Argent are werewolf hunters who emotionally abuse their daughter, freely use violence against werewolves who fit within their family's code, and eventually, one of them tries to kill a werewolf who fit within the code while the other helped kidnap and torture two other werewolves who also fit within said code. Both have steely blue eyes. Victoria's are more bug-eyed, and Chris' are more icy. It visually enhances the contrast between them and their more empathic, brown-eyed, brunette daughter, Allison.

    Music 
  • Eminem's Slim Shady character frequently mentions his blue eyes (actually hazel, but appear blue under certain lighting conditions). Since Slim is a Psychopathic Manchild, they make him look more innocent, making it funnier when he speaks in intricately-rhymed depraved filth. The blue eyes, along with the blond hair and the cheerful, nasally, white-Midwestern voice that Eminem uses for the character, also serve to exaggerate Slim's whiteness, letting him satirise white trailer park depravity while also giving him the sinister ability to sell to a white mainstream.
    Look at these eyes, baby blue, baby, just like yourself.
    If they were brown, Shady'd lose, Shady sits on the shelf.

    Theme Parks 

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE has Pridak, whose set eyes are blue and in the books they are frequently described as "dead" to further enhance his Ax-Crazy and sociopathic nature.

    Video Games 
  • In BlazBlue, the eyes of Robot Girl Mu-12. Especially in contrast to the red eyes of Nu-13 (who is an Emotionless Girl but becomes a Yandere if Ragna is about) and the hidden eyes of their predecessor, Lambda-11 (who is treated as an Empty Shell), but most of all, compared to Noel's green eyes, until she was Mind Raped and forcefully converted (or finished being built by some arguments) into Mu-12.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • Ser Otto Alrik has blue eyes so pale they're practically glowing and embodies everything wrong with the Kirkwall Templars. He's a torturer and rapist who makes mages Tranquil on a whim, and his one scene consists of him threatening an (underage) mage girl with this fate.
    • Ironically, his archenemy, party member Anders, develops creepy glowing blue eyes (as well as glowing blue Volcanic Veins) whenever his demonic possessor, Vengeance, takes full control over him.
  • In Enigmatis: The Mists of Ravenwood, all that can be seen of the underground prisoner for most of the game are his bright, soft blue eyes. The creepy factor comes in when the player knows who the prisoner is. It's the Big Bad of the previous game - the detective is unwittingly working with the very man she's hunting.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV introduces a Psychopathic Man Child Serial Killer named Eddie Low. His eyes are a piercing blue and creepy.
  • The "G Man" from Half-Life, once the games were advanced enough to actually show his eye color. He has icy blue eyes that look strangely out of place with the rest of his face, are way too piercing, and seem to get creepier and creepier with every game as the graphics have gotten more advanced. The character is designed to look like something pretending to be a human... but not putting a lot of effort into it.
  • The ending of Judgment reveals that those killed by AD-9 will be left with unnatural blue pigmentation in their eyes, which explains why the supposed murder victims (actually failed test subjects) have their eyes gouged out.
  • The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable games have Stern the Destructor, who possesses Icy Blue Eyes with Hellish Pupils, making them seem unnaturally bright when she gives her seemingly emotionless stares.
  • Both Saren Arterius and The Illusive Man of the Mass Effect series have these. The Illusive Man's are Electronic Eyes he gained from a run-in with Reaper tech in his backstory. Saren's might be natural, at least until he let Sovereign implant him. Both of them turn out to be indoctrinated Reaper agents convinced they're doing the right thing.
  • Metal Gear:
    • While Big Boss is noted a couple of times for having beautiful blue eyes (well, eye) in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Venom Snake in Metal Gear Solid V gives his eye a blue glow in certain lighting that makes it look demonic. This applies especially if the player has killed enough people to make his face permanently covered in blood.
    • Kaz's eyes are always hidden behind sunglasses in his earlier appearances due to his life-long sensitivity to light and, while their blue colour contributes to his complicated feelings about his race, they're considered fairly attractive in-universe. In Metal Gear Solid V, a combination of trauma and something that might have happened during his torture has transformed them into terrifying, blank, white-blue eyes that look inhuman. They look so inhuman that fans argue over whether they're supposed to be diagetic or not - if Kaz's eyes are supposed to actually look like that, or if it was just to give the right cool effect behind his sunglasses.
  • Misogynistic serial killer Eddie Gluskin of Outlast has pale blue eyes.
  • N from Pokémon Black and White has dull blue eyes that also double as Reflectionless Useless Eyes. He's also the King of Team Plasma and is rather creepy and unsettling himself.
  • Alex Mercer from [PROTOTYPE] has very pale, very creepy blue eyes. They're his most noticeable characteristic. Indeed, early teasers and concept art indicate that piercing, creepy blue eyes were part of Alex's design from the very beginning. A trailer depicts his irises glinting from beneath his hood's shadow and his shapeshift sequence changing every aspect of his body, leaving his eyes until last.
  • In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Marguerite Baker and her son Lucas have blue eyes that appear almost luminously pale in closeups.
  • Captain Martin Walker of Spec Ops: The Line starts with Icy Blue Eyes, but they turn into this as the game progresses. Visually, they get creepy when he suffers a burn injury to a large portion of his face, coinciding with the situation getting even worse than it already was. Symbolically, they get creepy after the horrors in Dubai cause him to lose it and start hallucinating. It's even mentioned in-game; if Walker survives to the epilogue, one of the soldiers sent to pick him up comments, "Look at his eyes."
  • In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Eredin Bréacc Glas, the King of the Wild Hunt fittingly combines this with Icy Blue Eyes. It serves to make his already ominous character even more unnerving when you finally see his face...

    Web Original 
  • In The Crawlspace, the malevolent creature from the crawlspace is said to have disturbing bluish eyes, once the narrator gets a better look at it.
  • The titular character of Happy Appy has cyan eyes whenever he does his death smile.

    Western Animation 
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: The Delightful Children From Down The Lane all have pale blue eyes. In a series where most of the characters have Black Bead Eyes, it serves to make them even creepier than they already were.
  • Emperor Belos/ Philip Wittebane, the main antagonist of The Owl House, has blue eyes. They're slightly off-putting even in his "mundane" form, because they lack the white reflection all other characters have in the show's art-style, creating a subtle Uncanny Valley effect. When his curse is active/he shifts into his true, monstrous form, his irises glow eerily, being the only things visible through the eyeholes of his mask.
  • Blue Eye Samurai: Played with; Mizu's blue eyes mark her out as mixed-race, with in the Edo Period makes her an outcast and seen as less than human, with characters routinely comparing her to a demon or an evil spirit. Racism aside, she is a legitimately cold and stoic person, who has absolutely no problem killing enemies without emotion. Of course, she mostly became that way because of how people see her and her eyes.

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