Eye Take - Television Tropes & Idioms

Occurs in a Reaction Shot. The character reacting to the outrageous whatever says nothing, but their eyes widen in a "these people are crazy" kind of way.

Compare Aside Glance when directed at the fourth wall, Fascinating Eyebrow when directed at the characters in question and Eye Pop for surprised cartoon character's eyes. May make use of Eyedscreen. Sometimes related to Oh Crap.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

Serial Experiments Lain: Quite a bit of the Reaction Shots are like this.
Mahou Sensei Negima! contains quite a few of these.
Fushigi Yuugi features a lot of these.

Comics

This is the third-greatest standby of political cartoons, next to illuminating the topic with convenient newspapers and labeling every available surface whether it needs it or not. Strawman Political will give a proposal while an average Joe, or a member of the affected group (e.g. a child for school policy) looks on in goggle-eyed horror.

Film

Lord of the Rings: Elijah Wood seems to have made a career out of this.
Withnail and I: has a positively heart-wrenching Eye Take, showing the precise moment where Withnail and Marwood's friendship breaks down forever:
"Congratulations..."
GoldenEye: General Ourumov gets one of these after witnessing Xenia gunning down the staff of the Severnaya bunker and having a bit too much fun in the process.
Hot Fuzz: Nick Angel's reaction◊ to the town's version of Romeo and Juliet, specifically the upbeat song and dance number following Juliet's suicide.
Alpha and Omega: Eve's tends to get this reaction. Not so much the fact she's threatening someone with death, it's she does it with a happy, cheery voice. The third time, however, she's totally serious and everyone takes her as such.
In the Loop features a positively epic Eye Take as Malcolm figures out a way to avert his impending Villainous Breakdown.
The Three Stooges theatrical shorts were full of these, especially when other characters were confounded by the stooges' antics.
The Producers: The reaction shot of the audience after the opening number of "Springtime for Hitler". (They paid to see a Broadway musical titled "Springtime for Hitler"! What did they expect?)

Live Action Television

NewsRadio: Often demonstrated by Dave Foley's character.
The X-Files: Gillian Anderson's eyebrows got a regular workout.
The Office: Jim Halpert (as played by John Krasinski) has elevated this into an art form on the U.S. version, as did his counterpart, Tim Canterbury in the original.
Hugh Laurie could be king of this trope. He basically eats the scenery with his eyes:
- Bertie from Jeeves and Wooster
- Doctors are meant to be unshockable, but House, M.D. still finds plenty of excuses to be at the centre of an Eye Take.
The Thick of It: Peter Capaldi is a sufferer of ocular Chewing the Scenery. His character Malcolm Tucker gets several Eye Takes per episode, but the longest is probably the one of his eyes scanning the headline "MALCOLM TUCKER RESIGNS".
Battlestar Galactica's Saul Tigh does this an awful lot, especially after losing one of his eyes in the third season.
Eddie.Cantor. Rumor has it that he used stunt eyes.
The Apprentice (UK): Nick and Margaret make fantastic use of Eye Takes, along with Aside Glances, Fascinating Eyebrows and Deadpan Snarks, to punctuate the more... questionable antics of the contestants.
The X Factor is punctuated with Eye Takes. Most of Simon Cowell's expressions say more than words ever could. In this clip Simon didn't even need to describe "the worst guitar solo I have ever heard in my life" as his eyes did it for him.
Nathan Barley was known for its liberal use of reaction shots.
LOST: In one hilarious scene, this is Ben's only reaction when Hurley attacks him... with a hot pocket.
Ben: Hello Hugo.
Hugo: AAAHHH! [hurls hot pocket at him]
Ben's eyes: ...did that just happen?
Bones: Cam Saroyan does this a lot. It's all a part of being the Only Sane Employee...
Yes Minister: Sir Humphrey Appleby would do this when Jim Hacker introduced something that threatened his interests.
In Babylon 5, Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari announces in council that under his people's new laws for the recently conquered Narn, the penalty for the murder of any Centauri by any Narn will be the execution of 500 Narns. The pak'ma'ra Ambassador features in an Eye Take, managing to pull off the look of shock despite the pak'ma'ra being Cthulhumanoid.

Web Comics

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja : Dr McNinja heavily relies on this to show emotion — but then his eyes and eyebrows are all you can see when he's wearing his mask, which is all the time. You know... ninja and all.
Homestuck
- Kanaya's reaction on this page.
- Same expression, different character.
- This seems to be a running gag.
- It started with John in the previous arc. Every character except maybe Dave has done it at least once, and several (Jade especially) have pulled it multiple times.

Web Original

In the emission ''Kids React to'', Morgan, 7 years old, does this during the "le Internet Medley" video. She was laughing, and suddenly went "O_O wtf ?!" when the ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US part barges in.
Doug Walker is very talented at this, putting it to great use for The Nostalgia Critic, Ask That Guy With The Glasses and even with Chester.

Western Animation

Transformers Animated: Done memorably in the premiere, when Optimus Prime learns◊ where little organics come from.
Total Drama Island:
- Characters tend to this in response to Chris mentioning something particularly dangerous about a challenge.
- During the Aftermath segments of Total Drama Action after a particularly odd or unexpected moment (Eg- when a clip shows Trent sobbing hysterically and singing depressing heartbreak songs backstage) the camera would pan over to Noah and Cody either exchanging, '...Did we just see that?' glances or doing Eye Takes.