It's a well-established fact — in art and fiction, anyway — that corpses are guaranteed to attract crows, ravens, and vultures. Generally, the mere sight of these birds, even if there's no dead body present, is a sure sign that something really bad is about to happen.
Some writers take it a step further. One way to heighten the tension before or after a battle scene is to show these animals feasting on the corpses of the fallen. But there's one part of the human body that they will always pluck out first...
...eyeballs.
Why, would one ask? Well, eyeballs are squishy, nutritious, easy to rip out and thanks to their shape they can be easily animated in 3D for additional Squick factor. Not to mention the horror factor if they're plucked out from the eye-socket of a living person unable to get rid of the hungry bird. In this case, people who have their eyes eaten are usually dying, restrained, or otherwise incapacitated so they can't fight back against even a single scavenging bird. When this happens to a fully fit person, it's usually because there's a huge flock of singularly (possibly supernaturally) determined birds.
This is somewhat Truth in Television for some scavenging birds, most notably vultures. Vultures are not strong enough to tear apart a carcass on their own, so they start to eat some of the weakest/softest parts of the body first; the eyes are one of these softer parts, although the anal cavity is another.
Given their Real Life habitat range, examples involving crows and ravens will dominate in works set in an Medieval European Fantasy. Conversely, vultures and other feathery scavengers can play this trope straight in places (e.g. deserts) where corvids aren't found.
A sub-trope of Creepy Crows, Circling Vultures and a possible variant of Eye Scream.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Done by the falcon Pet Shop, from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders. When two large dogs attempt to attack him and inflitrate his master DIO's mansion, Pet Shop proceeds to decapitate both dogs with his Stand powers and pluck their eyes out for eating.
Comic Books
- Beasts of Burden: In "Hunters and Gatherers", the Wise Dogs manage to kill a huge reptilian monster known as a Windslither. As they examine the body, a flock of crows descends, picks out its remaining eye, and fly away with it. In this case, it's not because they want to eat it, but because the eye of a Windslither is a rare magical artifact. At the end of the story, the crows present the eye as an offering to the rat clan beneath the town, and they later use the eye to transform one of their own into a monstrous rat ogre.
- The Sandman (1989): Following a violent battle between supernatural entities, Matthew discusses with other ravens just why they always eat the eyeballs first.
Fairy Tales
- In the Grimm Brothers' version of Cinderella ("Aschenputtel"), the birds from Cinderella's tree pluck out her stepsisters' eyes. Obviously, this tends to be left out of modern adaptations.
Fan Works
- Child of the Storm: The talking ravens Huginn and Muninn are very fond of eating eyeballs... and marshmallows.
- Robb Returns: The first thing done when Ramsay is killed is a raven ripping his eye out with its beak.
- The Victors Project: When District One falls out of favor with President Snow, their tributes in the Forty-Seventh Games are targeted by the Gamemakers. One of them, Brilliance Rosencratz, has his eyes torn out by genetically engineered crows while trapped under a tree. He wins.
Film — Animation
- We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story: A variant. The main villain, Professor Screweyes, has a screw in the place of his left eye. In the end he is covered by crows who eat him and then disperse. Afterwards, we get a closeup of the screw as a final crow snaps it up and flies away.
Film — Live Action
- The Birds includes a scene of a victim having his eye pecked out by a flock of avians.
- Damien: Omen II: One death scene has a woman getting her eyes pecked out by a raven, which causes her to blindly stumble into the path of a truck.
- Hellboy (2019): The film begins with a close-up shot of a corpse's eye being plucked from its socket by a crow.
- I Spit on Your Grave: In the 2010 version, Jennifer ties one of her attackers to a tree, smears fish guts on his face, and forces his eyes open with fishhooks, leaving him helpless as crows eat his eyes out.
- Opera (1987): The murderer kills a few of the production's trained ravens early in the film. His identity is ultimately revealed when the surviving birds are let loose in the theater and recognize their attacker, complete with a close-up of one raven pecking out and eating the killer's eye.
- The Passion of the Christ: The impenitent thief laughs at the idea of being redeemed by Jesus while standing on a cross and being clearly close to death. A few seconds later, a raven lands on the beam supporting his right arm. As the thief slowly turns his head towards the raven, the bird immediately pecks his right eye several times, despite a Roman soldier's best efforts to shoo it away.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest starts at a Turkish prison where prisoners in cages are shown having their eyes pecked out by hungry crows. Naturally, Captain Jack Sparrow is escaping from that same prison, but luckily, he escapes with both his eyes, and a picture of the key to the titular MacGuffin.
- The Suicide Squad begins with one of the decoy Suicide Squad members killing a bird by crushing it. When the character dies much later, the same type of bird plucks his eye out and consumes it.
Literature
- American Gods: A group of vikings landing in America sacrifice a native to Odin, determining that the sacrifice is accepted when a pair of ravens pluck out the corpse's eyes.
- Discworld:
- Quoth the Raven, the Death of Rats' talking steed and companion, has a particularly obsession with eyeballs — according to him, access to the eyes of the recently deceased is the primary reason he's staying in this job. He also tends to become very interested in round, and especially round and shiny, things such as onions, olives, walnuts, and tree ornaments, on the off-chance that they might be eyeballs.
- Blind Io, one of the Disc's gods, used to keep a flock of ravens that brought him news of everything that happened in the world. He dispensed with them following certain unfortunate incidents with his other deific affectation, a cloud of disembodied eyes that float around him at all times (also the reason Quoth needed a new job).
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Mors "Crowfood" Umber earned his nickname when a crow mistook him for a corpse and pecked out and ate one of his eyes. Mors responded by biting off the bird's head.
- Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: In "The Crow and the Lamb", an Affably Evil crow flatters and jokes with a ewe who has just given birth. After chatting for a while, the crow encourages her to try meditation. It turns out that she was trying to distract the ewe this whole time, and once the ewe is deep in meditation, the crow plucks out the lamb's eyes, eating one and bringing the other to her young.
- Wild Man Island: Andy is stranded in the wilderness and eats some shellfish he finds. He blacks out and wakes up paralyzed with a seagull standing on him. He knows they go for the eyes first, and is helpless to move or even close his eyes. Fortunately for him, a dog arrives and scares the seagull away before it can do anything.
- In the book Wonky Donkey, the title donkey gets one of his eyeballs pecked out by a bird, resulting in him becoming a "winky, wonky donkey."
Live-Action TV
- CSI-verse: The franchise has at least two examples:
- CSI: In season 3's "Got Murder?", a case begins when birdwatchers observe a raven holding a human eyeball in its beak. Catherine, Nick & Sara later find the rest of the body in a landfill, where the bird had apparently been feasting.
- CSI: NY: In the Cold Open of season 5's "No Good Deed", Mac and Stella are having coffee at a street cafe, when something suddenly plops into her cup. They look up and see a vulture flying over, and Mac begins to snicker as Stella expresses disgust. His expression instantly changes when she shows him a human eyeball floating in her coffee. The team follow Circling Vultures to the rooftop of the man's apartment building and find most of his remains buried in a garden there, along with more vultures enjoying a free meal.
- Mist Sheepdog Tales: One episode involves a sheep who's fallen over and is surrounded by crows who are planning to peck her eyes out.
"It happened to my aunt, you know. You remember One-Eyed Betty?"
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A swallow named Royal owned by Pappy McPoyle pokes out Liam’s eye at his wedding. The same bird also gouges out the Lawyer's eye.
- Tales from the Crypt: "Carrion Death", like the EC Comics story that it's based on, focuses on a fugitive attempting to flee through a desert while handcuffed to a dead man. Both the television and comic versions of the story end with vultures descending on the corpse and the fugitive, who is still alive when they rip out his eyeball.
Poetry
- Balade des Pendus (written by Francois Villon as a successful plea for clemency as Villon himself was awaiting execution at the time) explicitly mentions birds eating the eyes of the dying and dead.
Tabletop Games
- Dinosaurs Attack!: A monumental variant. One card
shows pterodactyls swarming over Mount Rushmore, with one poking out George Washington's eyes.
- Nobilis: One sourcebook has a short story in which a character is horrifically wounded on the battlefield, including ravens eating her eyes.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Corax wereravens in corvid (raven) form can pluck out opponents' eyes. They can also do this to corpses to learn the last thing that the dead guy saw.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate III: Ravens and Dire Ravens have the Rend Vision attack, implying that they attack the eyeballs.
- Bloodborne: Implied Trope. Carrion Crows commonly drop items that are labeled "Pebbles", but whose graphic strongly resembles petrified eyeballs.
- Diablo: In the intro, a closeup shows a crow picking out the eye of a decaying body. While not looking too realistic by today's CGI standards, that was a pretty unpleasant scene at the time of release.
- Darksiders II: Just before meeting Lilith in the Black Stone fortress, Death is ambushed by a demon and effortlessly kills it with a single swing of Harvester. Shortly after, Death's crow Dust lands on the skull of the demon and plucks out one of its eyeballs, much to Death's annoyance ("Thanks for the warning!").
- God of War:
- In the first game, at the end of the cutscene when Kratos climbs up Pandora's temple, a vulture feasts on the fresh corpse of a Greek soldier and it plucks out an eyeball just before Kratos reaches the platform it's standing on.
- God of War III: The teaser trailer "Fear Nothing" begins with a raven scavenging the corpse of an unnamed human. Just before Kratos drives the bird off, it plucks out the remaining eyeball and eats it whole.
- Heavenly Sword: Close to the end of the game, the Raven God pecks out King Bohan's eyes out as a punishment for Bohan failing him.
- Infernax: A virtuous Alcedor will more than likely end up enacting punishment upon Mayor Edgar for being affiliated with the cultists threatening to destroy Upel. When the crows come, the first thing they eat from the offender is their eyes.
- Mystery Case Files: Implied in Return to Ravenhearst, one of the four eyes needed for a puzzle is found in a raven's nest.
- The Secret World: In the intro to the mission "The Korinto-Kai," crazed Yakuza boss Daimon Kiyota regales players with a bizarre story about a crow pecking at the face of a depressed corpse hanging from a gibbet, offering to change the dead man's outlook perspective in exchange for "sweet jelly." And because a broken neck can only nod, the crow eats "all of the sweet jelly out of the swinging stiff's skull-windows."
Webcomics
- Ozy and Millie: A seagull asks Millie if he can eat her eyeballs.
- Unsounded: The crows in Grenzlan are shown feasting on the contents of the eye sockets of those unfortunates stacked in the piles of corpses around town after the Aldish invasion.
Web Video
- True Facts About the Owl: ZeFrank tells a (non-existent) German fairy tale in which an owl rips a girl's face off and eats her eyeballs.
"... and then the owl hooted."
Western Animation
- The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Farm Hands", Ewalt gets his eyeball yanked out by a crow, but apparently he feels no pain.
- The Simpsons: In "Weekend at Burnsies'", Homer briefly becomes the leader of a flock of crows. However, when he orders them to drop Maggie (who they were trying to carry away), they turn on him and attack his eyes in particular, making an attempt to get his "sweet eye juices" according to Dr. Hibbert.
- South Park: In "Starvin' Marvin", one of the mutant turkeys pull out Kenny's eyeball after a flock of them kill him.
