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Goggles Do Something Unusual
aka: Eyewear Does Something Unusual

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I spy with my little eye... something you can't see.

Den Mother: Enough! It's time for me to pluck out your eyes!
Razputin: Ha! You can't! That is the purpose of the goggles!

The more interesting twin to Goggles Do Nothing, this trope is for eyewear that does something other than what their mundane design purpose is. Eyewear falling under this trope may actually correct vision, or it may not. Such eyewear may protect one from sparks or chemicals. Such eyewear may, as a side-effect be intimidating or just plain frightening, but it certainly will do something useful and unusual besides that.

Among the powers conferred by such unusual eyewear:

As a bonus, they often come in Cool Shades variations. Careful, though; they're not always indestructible, and sometimes they're one of a kind.

Compare Shoe Phone and See-Thru Specs. Contrast Goggles Do Nothing. For other headgear doing unusual things, see Hat of Power. Not related to Junior Member Of The Marx Brothers Performs An Amusing Act Not Specified In The Script But Hilarious Anyway, neither does Beer Goggles.


Examples:

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    Advertising 

    Animation 
  • Agent Ali:
    • The I.R.I.S. (Infinite Retinal Intelligence System) is a gadget made by the agency M.A.T.A. which Ali accidentally uses and becomes synced to, which is how he becomes an agent. When activated, it becomes a pair of glasses which has X-ray vision, night vision, and AR display among its many abilities. Its primary function is to predict any possible situation to obtain the best outcome possible, effectively making its wielder a super agent. One mode it has, called "Override Mode", allows any technology (that's connected to Cyberaya's mainframe) to be controlled by the IRIS' user, but the mode proved to be dangerous, leading the IRIS project to be abandoned. The movie reveals that the reason the IRIS took over Ali whenever he goes into Override Mode is because his mother's data in the IRIS protects him. Deleting said data gives him full control of Override Mode.
    • In the movie, M.A.T.A. makes a new version of I.R.I.S. called IRIS NEO, which are orange instead of blue, and have the advantage of using Override Mode at will (instead of it unlocking only in dire situations) and without harming the user. Agent Fit is first seen using the goggles to telepathically control a nosediving airplane to fly again. In the final battle, Niki hacks into the IRIS NEOs and controls the agents that are wearing them, forcing Ali and the others to fight their fellow agents.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach: Lt. Renji Abarai has a stylized visor that doesn't seem to do anything but cover his tattoos and absurdly styled hairline, but from his POV, they check if Ichigo's power is Over Nine Thousand. The databooks explains this as him just really liking the brand. He gets very depressed when they break, because they take a few months of savings to buy each time. Of course, they therefore break every time they're seen.
  • In Case Closed, Conan's glasses have been given upgrades throughout the series. Initially they contained a screwed-in GPS bug that could be taken out and placed elsewhere while the glasses tracked the device's location with its own minimap. Agasa later replaced the glass with bulletproof glass and the bug was updated with listening functions and its own frequency. The listening device is also designed so it "stimulates the eardrum," thus only the wearer can hear it. The glasses have been further upgraded to include night vision and a digital zoom function, among other things, though their primary purpose is still Clark Kenting.
  • In Cipher Academy, a major role is played by "glasses weapons" — accessories with various abilities, usually related to code-solving. Most of them indeed take the form of glasses. Examples seen so far include:
    • Iroha (the protagonist's) unnamed weapon, possibly the most powerful. It makes it far easier to break ciphers, by highlighting the relevant parts of the codes Iroha is reading, and creating a floating AR display of the code characters which he can manipulate by hand.
    • Sunka's weapon, "Colored Glasses", which allows to instantly categorize objects by color.
    • Kakune's weapon, "Blindfold", which makes it harder to solve codes, for purposes of Imposed Handicap Training.
    • Shitsuke's weapon, "Black About", which can reveal hidden ciphers, although doesn't help in actually decoding them.
    • Anonymity's weapon, "Personal Package" (taking the form of a transparent face mask with a Censor Bar over the eyes), which obscures her identity from every method of detection and gives her a perfect poker face.
    • Iesuno's weapon (unnamed), a pair of contact lenses which simply allows her to see despite her damaged eyes.
  • In Code Geass, Lloyd Asplund has a pair of these. They have windscreen wipers, a heads up display and the ability to project shields. This is justified as Lloyd is a scientist who likes inventing, so it makes sense he'd tinker with his own gear.
  • In Cowboy Bebop, Ed has a pair of goggles that can be plugged into her computer and used as monitor screens. Spike and Jet have been seen in a couple episodes using goggles that detect body heat. They appear to be basic infrared goggles, making them close to Truth in Television (as in they're actually believable for the year 2070). Jet's goggles also provide magnification and facial recognition in one episode.
  • Anyone who fights a gadoll in Deca-Dence wears goggles. They are used to see fluctuations in the magnetic field created by a gadoll's, which allows the goggle wearer to move in and out of these fields to effectively fly. They also appear to allow seeing of Oxyone.
  • The entire premise of Den-noh Coil revolves around glasses/goggles that reveal and interact with a computerized space that co-exists with real space.
  • Digimon:
    • Unlike previous Goggle Boys, Takato from Digimon Tamers uses his goggles to protect his eyes when entering a digital field. Notably, the two other kids in the main trio of Tamers also use glasses exclusively to protect their eyes as they enter a digital field.
    • Taichi, from Digimon V-Tamer (predating Tamers), wears his to protect his eyes when flying on his partner's back.
    • The Taichi from Digimon Adventure (after giving his to Daisuke in Digimon Adventure 02) got a new pair in Digimon Adventure tri. from Koushirou that allowed him to see dimensional distortions, retroactively giving him useful goggles before Takato's.
    • Takuya from Digimon Frontier used his goggles once to protect his eyes from a sandstorm in the Digital World.
  • The Scouters from Dragon Ball Z, whose glasses can tell what their opponent's power level is. That is, provided that the readings are not off the charts.
  • In the OAV of Gatchaman, the bird visors had computer information show on the inside of them.
  • In the kiddie anime Kiteretsus Encyclopedia (from the people who brought you Doraemon), Kiteretsu's glasses also allow him to read the book in question, a secret trove of Bamboo Technology ancient Japanese inventions.
  • Yukino's glasses when she's using the powers of her Mon in My-HiME.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Jack Rakan (as well as others) have glasses that protect you from being recognized (because they're magically enchanted).
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Team Rocket have binoculars that enable them to hear conversations over a mile away.
    • Another girl who owns a Bagon had stylish icicle goggles that tell an opponent's health and fighting morale.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • In the Sailor Moon manga, Sailor Moon once had an eye mask that allowed her to see the Monster of the Week magic mirror-style. However, it startled her so much when she first used it that she threw away the mask and never used it again, throwing it away each time she transformed. It was only used once more, during the second arc to see what was wrong with people in town (And discover they were Droids). After that they are never seen again.
    • In the anime and manga, Sailor Mercury has a summonable (By pressing her Earring) "visor" which acts as a heads-up display for her computer, letting her scan monsters for weaknesses and suchlike and is often used on conjunction with her mini supercomputer. In the manga it was also responseable for an attack similar to the Shabon Spray move she uses in the anime.
  • Bossun's Poppman goggles in Sket Dance supposedly increases his concentration ability to godly levels, but it's more likely because he thinks he can be like his hero Poppman whenever he puts them on.
  • Space Pirate Mito: Not only do Mito's cutesy-looking oversized round glasses serve as head-up displays, they also conceal a powerful Eye Beams weapons system as well as a remote control for her spaceship.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's Simon has goggles that light up so he can see his way through tunnels he's digging.
  • In Until Death Do Us Part, the main character, Mamoru, is blind, but wears a pair of sunglasses that pick up bouncing sound waves and turn them into a crude image that gets transferred directly to his brain.
  • Waiting in the Summer: Ichika's glasses serve as a disguised head-up interface for her alien technology.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL had some scouter-like glasses with special functions, the D-Gazers. They allow the wearers to see the monsters, since this series switched from holograms (used in earlier entries in the franchise) to Augmented Reality.
  • Irvine from Zoids: Chaotic Century has an eyepatch that actually has three cameras in it, with different zoom levels. The eye behind it is completely healthy.

    Comic Books 
  • Batman:
    • The Clan of the Cave Bat tend to have multipurpose lenses in their masks.
    • Mob hitman Philo Zeiss underwent elaborate surgery to augment his brain and reflexes, but as a result his eyes are permanently kept open, requiring him to wear special lenses to help him process all the information he's taking in.
  • Zoe Jump in Black Summer wears goggles that display equations the act of solving which makes her exempt from the laws of physics.
  • In the story "Zio Paperone e gli occhiali a effetti speciali" from the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, Uncle Scrooge sells Augmented Reality glasses which overlay various skins over the real world, including a western environment, Ancient Rome, etc.
  • Doctor Mid-Nite's goggles give him Stat-O-Vision. Including, because he's a doctor first and a superhero second, identifying health risks.
  • As a gimmick, the 2008 Final Crisis tie-in Superman Beyond 3D came with a set of "Overvoid Viewers" (read: cut-out 3D glasses) to allow the reader to see properly in the space outside The Multiverse (read: see the fancy 3D F/X).
  • The Droll from Funky Koval all wear black-lensed goggles. When Funky borrows a pair from one of them, it turns out that the goggles let him see through illusions.
  • The superheroine Geek Girl gets superpowers from a pair of glasses she won off a pair of nerds in a game of strip poker. They give her all the usual powers, plus an incredible new level of clumsiness.
  • Green Lantern (1941): Molly Mayne, the Harlequin, has cat-eye glasses that project illusions.
  • In the mini-series Iron Man: Fatal Frontier, Tony Stark uses a pair glasses called "Stark Datashades," which allow him to divide and perfectly operate three portions of his consciousness at the same time, being able to move, fight, talk and process information in three different bodies (his real body, an empty Iron Man armor, and a virtual body) at the same time.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's Black Dossier depicted the Blazing World in 3D color print. Everyone visiting or inhabiting is shown wearing 3D glasses, with the heterochrome lenses. Lenses that use the same colors as Spider Jerusalem's own glasses.
  • The DC villain The Monocle has his whole gimmick be monocles with special lenses that fire powerful lasers.
  • The earlier versions of Paperinik New Adventures (Italian Disney comics where Donald Duck has a superhero identity) often had him use a pair of goggles that lets him see in darkness, at great distances, through the mist his Cool Car can spout to thwart pursuers, etc. At one point, Donald explains that they work because they let him see in "infra-pink".
  • Chase Stein of Runaways swiped some x-ray goggles from his inventor parents.
  • Robin (1993): In addition to being Night-Vision Goggles and protecting his eyes from debris during flight Jaeger's orange goggles contain a Heads-Up Display.
  • Superboy (1994): Back when Superboy only had Tactile-Telekinesis, he briefly had a pair of sunglasses that doubled as X-ray vision goggles — though they were destroyed shortly after their introduction. They had a heat vision function too.
  • In Supergirl (Rebirth), Kara Danvers wears glasses with a hidden holographic projector to change her hair color and protect her Supergirl secret identity.
  • When Otto Octavius became the Superior Spider Man, he redesigned the lens of the Spider-Man mask to have varying functions instead of just acting as one-way mirrors.
  • From Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem's glasses. They look incredibly characteristic, but they also keep taking pictures. They even have a security function that automatically takes a series of pictures if he's being violently jostled (intended to record the identity of an attacker). This has an embarrassing side effect when one of his assistants downloads the pictures after he's had particularly boisterous sex while he and his partner were blackout drunk... said partner being his other assistant.
  • Ultimate X-Men: Nick Fury's glasses (in his first appearance, still doing the James Bond number) broadcast all he sees to the SHIELD satellite, and can release a flash to take down a room full of criminals.
  • One story in DC's Unexpected anthology series revolved around a man who picked up the wrong glasses from his optometrist. They allowed him to see the truth of the town he lived in. He was not better off for knowing. The Town Council wasn't pleased with him...
  • Watchmen Nite Owl has a pair of these.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): The Earth Two bank robber Pat Pending uses a pair of x-ray goggles in his heists to aid in getting into vaults.
  • X-Men:
    • Cyclops has a pair of ruby quartz sunglasses that prevent his optic blasts from firing uncontrollably.
    • Sage, had Swiss Army shades with multiple functions.
    • There's also Cannonball, whose goggles serve to protect his eyes while he flies at jet speed. Technically, this isn't the goggles doing something unusual, so much as them doing more of the usual: they're an aversion of Required Secondary Powers.
    • The Shi'Ar Empire has a class of fighters on their Imperial Guard known as Smashers. They're a pastiche on DC's Ultra Boy, having goggles called Exospex that allow them to download and use one superpower at a time.

    Fan Works 
  • In Between Minds, Gordon Freeman's iconic black glasses feature a heads-up display which literally shows him everything the player saw onscreen in the game.
  • i won't let you: Miu's goggles help her achieve Improbable Aiming Skills, as she also uses her robotic arms to wield four guns at once.
  • In the fifteenth chapter of Mary Mary? Quite Contrary!, Matt turns out to have goggles that deflect character derailment from a Raven Way expy Villain Sue. It was one of the author's wackier fan theories.
  • The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Paris Trip," Bolt's sightseeing enjoyment on Day One is badly compromised by his limited color vision. Fortunately, Penny remembers that she brought a prototype set of glasses that lets the dog see colors like humans do. This changes Bolt's trip radically for the better, allowing him to discover a hitherto unknown love of visual art and stained glass. He continues to use them in later stories ("The Ship," "The Cameo," "The Imaginary Letters," and "The Gift") for this purpose, sometimes sharing them with Mittens.
  • The Basilisk in The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, the Basilisk gets a magical pair that cancel her gaze's lethal power if she needs it to.
  • In Viridian: The Green Guide, Izuku finds a pair of tinted goggles at a costume shop that are Quirk-enhanced to not colour their wearer's vision, and chooses to buy them for his Vigilante costume because of that.
  • Psychedelic Epiphany Series: They're Tree Hugger's glasses, used to turn off her Aura Vision and they appear in Psychadelic: "Hearts Analyze Nebulous Destinies Pondering Attitudes Nextwave", and are mentioned in the description of its sequel Yearly Epiphany:
    Epiphany's mother is an easy-going mare in tune with the universe and the balance of magic, who needs magic glasses to see the world the way everyone else does.
  • Better Left Unsaid: While Naruto's goggles are initially just functional eyewear, he eventually gets good enough with seals during the Time Skip that he's able to use them to cover his Achilles' Heel. Namely, the lenses can block optical genjutsu. Unfortunately, Itachi gets around this by breaking them.
  • In Castle, Niji's goggles actually enhance and support his eyesight.
  • In Forewarned is Forearmed, Akira's Purely Aesthetic Glasses from Persona 5 are recontextualized as a pair of Teddie's glasses for seeing through the fog as it leaks from the TV World into Inaba. He continues to wear them even after the fact even though he doesn't need them, to the point that he doesn't realize that Shujin is being shrouded in fog until Haru and Makoto point it out to him.
  • Guys Being Dudes: Arlo's glasses seem to do just about everything but correcting vision, including having Augmented Reality capabilities, answering phone calls, obscuring his voice, and becoming Scary Shiny Glasses.
  • In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Smurfnip Madness", Handy creates a pair of glasses called the Hallucinator, which is supposed to simulate the visual effects of being under the influence of smurfnip (including a rainbow-colored haze). They were originally created as a tool for Smurfs to say no to smurfnip. By the end of the story, Vanity wears them because he likes looking at himself while wearing them. As an interesting Stealth Pun, Vanity is turning himself gay with the Hallucinator.
  • Invoked Trope in the Jethro and Monty Gunslinger Girl fancomic when Monty has to explain how she can see the Laser Hallway in the vault they're robbing, when the rest of the Caper Crew don't know she's a cyborg. So Monty produces some wraparound glasses that she claims have been specially modified to see the light frequency of the beams.
  • In Survivors, Kara Danvers wears glasses that let her change her hair color.
  • In Transformers Meta It's Personal, Hound wears a telescopic visor on his helm that he can flip down to see further distances.
  • In the sixth chapter of The Hangover and Other Misadventures, Gumi's orange goggles show the ability to display yuri intercourse when worn.

    Films — Animated 
  • Professor Bomba from Epic (2013) has a self-made pair of goggles that allows him to see the Leafmne in slow motion.
  • Incredibles 2: Evelyn "Screenslaver" Deavor's Hypno Trinkets take the form of goggles broadcasting her mind-control pattern to the wearers.
  • In Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, members of Kerberos have their armor outfitted with goggles that have night-vision. All the better to shoot Little Red Riding Hoods in the dark with.
  • Pokémon:
    • In Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, Domino has a pair of binoculars that have night vision, magnification, resolution filters, body heat sensors, and can tell a normal Pokémon from a clone Pokémon.
    • In Pokémon Heroes, Annie and Oakley have sunglasses that allow them to not only see invisible Pokémon via their body heat, but even distinguish between a human and a Pokémon pretending to be a human. This does cause a bit of Fridge Logic, as Latias is the same size, but nobody bumps into the rest of her body.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: The goggles that arrive in the big pink box for Buckaroo Banzai allow him to see the hologram sent from the queen of the black Lectroids.
  • Doc Brown's rear-view visor in Back to the Future Part II.
  • In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Falcon wears a pair of goggles that protect his eyes while he's flying. He gets an upgraded pair in Ant-Man that now allow him to zoom in from great distances and track targets.
  • Furious 7 gives Nobody a pair of night-vision sunglasses.
  • The Paragoggles/Ecto-Visor as featured in Ghostbusters (1984).
  • The Baroness from GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra has a pair of Cool Shades that act as night-vision goggles.
  • Harry Potter: Luna Lovegood's Spectrespecs helps her find Harry when he is invisible, in contrast to the book, where it's not clear what they do.
  • Hellboy II: The Golden Army has Krauss bringing in a complex set of lenses designed to see through the glamour of trolls and other supernatural creatures.
  • In Ilang: The Wolf Brigade, members of Kerberos have their armor outfitted with goggles that have night-vision and are also used to scan someone's body to identify anything that stands out of place.
  • James Bond:
    • In The World Is Not Enough, James Bond has glasses that allow him to see through clothes, therefore spotting concealed weapons — and ladies' undergarments.
    • In A View to a Kill, he has sunglasses that allow him to see through polarised glass. It's the shades that are polarised — they just cut out reflections and allow him to see what's going on inside.
    • In The Living Daylights, he has binocular shades. They look a bit odd, though.
  • The night-vision goggles in Jurassic Park (1993) let Tim know that the T-Rex is loose.
  • In Kingsman: The Secret Service, the Kingsmen's glasses are one of their gadgets, doubling as heads-up displays and transmitting live-streams to HQ or Merlin's plane. As such, they never take them off, even in combat.
  • The sunglasses worn by J and K and, indeed, all of the Men in Black protect them from the Neuralyzer.
  • Mission: Impossible Film Series:
    • Mission: Impossible (1996): Ethan's team uses glasses that double as spy cameras, transmitting everything they're seeing to their leader. At least one of these sets of glasses can be tinted into sunglasses with a finger to the temple as well, and they come back in a big way in the climax to expose the traitor.
    • Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: Brant is outfitted with contact lenses that can focus on and copy documents to a discrete printer hidden in a briefcase so long as he gets a clear look at the pages.
  • Ben Franklin's "Optical Device" in National Treasure can see invisible ink and create multicolored 3D effects. Yes, that Ben Franklin, from the 1700s. Apparently he invented the world's first 3D glasses too, but decided not to patent that one. Or who knows, he might have! The US Patent and Trademark Office burned in 1836 and almost all patents from before that time were destroyed in the fire.
  • Spy Kids:
    • The first film has those glasses which gave you biographical information about someone just by looking at them.
    • Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over not only has Juni and Carmen wearing teched-up 3-D glasses, but when Gondor Calls for Aid, all the good guys end up with a pair. They're the only things that allow them to see the Toymaster's Humongous Mecha attacking the city.
  • They Live! is about a guy who finds a pair of strange sunglasses that allow him to see aliens through their human guises and the subliminal messages that they use to control the human populace, and the movie is about him trying to find the people who made the shades so he can join their fight against the aliens. Meanwhile, La Résistance has already moved on from shades to less conspicuous contacts that have the same effect.
  • In Thir13en Ghosts, the ghost-hunters use special glasses to allow them to see the title spirits. This was a reference to the original 1960 13 Ghosts using this gimmick on the audience — you wore the special glasses the theatre gave you, and if the ghosts got too scary, you could take them off and see nothing.
  • In Transformers (2007), the map-engraved spectacles that had belonged to Sam Witwicky's great-great grandfather show the location of the All Spark.
  • Quicksilver from X-Men: Days of Future Past, has a pair of goggles used to overcome anything that can impair his sight while in super speed.

    Literature 
  • In Accelerando, Manfred's sunglasses contain a vast amount of smart computing power, permanently connected to his thought patterns. When he loses them, it's as if he's lost chunks of his memory, and the guy who finds them and puts them on starts thinking the way he does.
  • The Alcatraz Series has this as a central plot element. The Magic System involves glasses, users of which are known as Occulators. These include tracking glasses, glasses that shoot laser beams, glasses that generate whirlwinds, etc.
  • During the David Trilogy of Animorphs, the Animorphs attempt to infiltrate a resort where they know many Yeerks and Human-Controllers are gathering. They fly in as seagulls, but one security guard is wearing sunglasses that can painfully stun any bird from a distance.
  • Artemis Fowl:
    • Artemis and Butler are spared the effects of the fairies' magic hypnosis by using specially coated mirrored contact lenses, preventing them from forcing Artemis to give up his secret plans for getting his memory back when they are mind-wiped.
    • Butler has a hard hat with lenses cannibalised from Holly and a LEPRetrieval team's helmets with IR, UV, and anti-Shield settings. Holly's helmet has these, as well as heads-up displays with useful information from Foaly patched through, and it also aims automatically for her.
  • In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, magicians are given first glasses, then contact lenses, that allow them to see the first three planes, giving them a limited ability to see various supernatural defenses, disguises, etc.
  • The Sisters from A Certain Magical Index are not as powerful with their Electromaster abilities as their genetic template Mikoto Misaka is, so they can't see electrical currents. They wear special goggles to compensate for this.
  • In Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Max has special reservoirs in her goggles, needed for her half-Martian eyes.
  • Clockwork Century: One of the actual inspirations for Cherie Priest to write Boneshaker was the desire to create a Steampunk setting where the omnipresent brass goggles actually served a purpose. It turns out polarized lenses make a certain very, very nasty poison gas visible.
  • Inverted in The Demon Headmaster; the Headmaster takes off his glasses to hypnotise people.
  • In Digital Fortress, the deaf assassin's glasses are actually display for his pager (or some sort of messaging device) which allows him to send and receive messages from his employers (he "types" by tapping pads on his fingers together) wherever he happens to be (a Voice with an Internet Connection for someone who can't actually hear, if you will).
  • In A Diversity Of Dragons, Eppy's helmet lets him see dragons.
  • In The Extraordinaires, the Gadgeteer Genius Evadne Stephens constructed a series of special spectacles that give her a range of vision based abilities.
  • Harry Potter:
    • Mad Eye Moody's eye. It's large, round and electric blue and can see through things.
    • Also, the Omnioculars from the Goblet of Fire. Essentially, they are Binoculars that could actually put real life into slow motion, rewind it, or display what type of Quidditch play is being performed.
  • In The Hunger Games, Katniss finds a pair of sunglasses that seemingly don't block out the sun. According to Rue, they're night-vision goggles.
  • In John Dies at the End, Amy's Scooby-Doo glasses somehow allow her to see the sorts of things that Psycho Serum allows John and Dave to see.
  • Lockwood & Co. has a pair of goggles found by the heroes which appear to Do Nothing, but once they're given to Quill Kipps it turns out they allow people who've lost their Sight to see ghosts again.
  • In the Merkabah Rider series, The Rider's blue spectacles are inscribed with Solomonic sigils which allow him to see spirits, see through illusions, and protect him from magical and demonic Mind Control.
  • In The Mouse Watch, the titular heroes' "smart goggles" are wondrous devices that act as Everything Sensors, create holographic disguises, summon the S.W.I.S.S. train, and do pretty much anything else the story needs them to do.
  • A Practical Guide to Evil: Masego's glasses, crafted by his father, the Warlock. Not only do they correct his vision, they also have a variety of useful enchantments, such as allowing him to see (nascent) Names, gather more information about magic he sees, or even record events in his vicinity. When they shatter (in his eyes) in a battle against fae princess Sulia of the High Noon, he magically transforms them into glass eyes that allow him to see through his own head.
  • In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Zaphod Beeblebrox has two pairs of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses: "At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black, thus preventing you from seeing anything that might alarm you."
  • In the Revelation Space Series, goggles are used to generate augmented reality views for people that do not have cybernetics. Volyova of Revelation Space in particular always carries around a pair as she is terrified of cybernetics but works in an environment that requires their abilities. After Captain Brannigan melded with his ship, crewmembers use the goggles to see Brannigan's avatars.
  • Molly Millions (a.k.a. Rose Kolodny, Sally Shears etc.) from the Sprawl Trilogy and associated short stories has mirror-lenses surgically implanted over her eyes. They're fully sealed, so more like goggles than Cool Shades, and equipped with image-enhancers so she can see in the dark.
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles:
    • If one looks through a seeing stone, they can see The Fair Folk who are either invisible or glamoured to look like something else.
    • Getting hobgoblin spit in the eye turns normal eyes Sighted, which makes the viewer's own eyes the goggles that do something.
    • Looking through "a stone pierced by water" to see through The Fair Folk's glamour is an old legend.
  • Shino from Sword Art Online is a borderline case. She has better than normal vision, yet still wears glasses. In this case, her spectacles are made of bullet-proof glass, and help her deal with her crippling fear of guns.
  • In Virtual Light, a pair of seemingly ordinary glasses sport an augmented reality device that lets the user access all sorts of data.
  • The War Against the Chtorr: The EV-helmet used in A Matter for Men scans the spectrum from beyond ultraviolet to below infrared, then the image is digitized (with colour values assigned) and projected directly onto the retina. Used in conjunction with a frequency-hopping Laser Sight.
  • At one point in With a Tangled Skein, Gaia lends Lachesis a pince-nez that lets the wearer see through the glamour of Satan.
  • In A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs. Who gives Meg her glasses, and later on Camazotz Meg uses them to pass through a wall and into a column to rescue her father. They also allow her to see inside the column, as it's pitch black otherwise.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The title character of Chuck once gets an "update" to his brain's Omniscient Database through a pair of sunglasses. As we soon learn, said sunglasses also have the ability to ''remove'' the database from one's head, or even insert it onto an unsuspecting person.
  • Doctor Who:
    • In "The War Games", the villainous Human Aliens' glasses and monocles let them hypnotize humans.
    • The Doctor spends most of ""Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" wearing 3D specs since they let him see "void stuff".
    • In "The Hungry Earth", the Doctor wears sunglasses that provide thermal and night vision.
    • The bad guys in NewWho Series 6 all wear eyepatches. It's finally revealed in "The Wedding of River Song" that they continually download information about the Silence into your brain so you don't forget them when you're not looking at them.
    • In the Series 9 premiere two-parter "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar", the Twelfth Doctor's Cool Shades (first worn when he, in the midst of having The Last Dance, is performing a rock concert... in a castle in medieval Essex) turn out to double as the successor to his old sonic screwdriver in the climax, as he uses them to recall the seemingly destroyed TARDIS to him and Clara.
    • The sonic sunglasses return in Series 10, as the Doctor starts wearing them in "Extremis" to compensate for getting blinded in "Oxygen". They show him a wireframe view of the world, with, instead of people's appearances, statistics like their species, age, and heart rate.
    • The MI6 agent on the airplane at the beginning of "Spyfall" is wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera, which she uses to photograph a secret message shortly before she's attacked by an intangible alien.
  • In an episode of The Dresden Files, Harry uses a pair of glasses to see the footprints of the person he's following.
  • The Imagination Movers"Scott's got his goggles that help him see far!"
  • Leverage: Redemption: In "The Card Game Job", the Villain of the Week wears Purely Aesthetic Glasses with a comm link and camera to cheat at the Spirit's Ruse card game tournament.
  • In The Middle Man, there are a pair of sunglasses that allow the wearer to see ghosts.
  • Mission: Impossible:
    • In "Odds on Evil", the team use special contact lenses to enable them to read marked cards.
    • In "Bayou", Grant poses as a jazz musician and wears sunglasses let him see through the one-way mirror in the club.
  • In Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Cookie has glasses with a fully-functioning (and Internet-enabled, in a school that isn't likely to be a WiFi hot spot) computer built into them.
  • NCIS: Tony has worn Nerd Glasses with a hidden remote-transmitting video camera in at least three episodes. Most of the time, he has to be reminded to look at faces, not their rears. "Pop Life" has Tony and Kate go undercover in a nightclub to get images of the go-go dancers. One season later in "Under Covers", the glasses return when Tony and Ziva have to go undercover as married assassins. In the same episode, Ziva gets her special-order IR-spectrum sunglasses. "Driven" has Tony go on a special mission for Jenny as a guitar player on the street across the street looking into a restaurant.
    Jenny: [via earwig in Tony's ear] Keep your eyes on the prize, Tango Eight, and I may even let you keep the money you're making.
  • Power Rangers/Super Sentai:
  • In an episode of Reaper, the Devil gives Sam a pair of glasses that will reveal any demon's true nature — with an immediate and sincere warning that Sam really does not want to use those glasses on the Devil himself.
  • The Hyper-Reality Probe (a wireless ROV) in SeaQuest DSV is controlled by an operator wearing a pair of futuristic VR goggles, which allow her to see the surrounding environment in 3D.
  • Sherlock: Charles Augustus Magnussen has glasses with Stat-O-Vision, transmitted from his vault's records. Except he doesn't - the glasses are just glasses, and the Stat-O-Vision is all from memory.
  • Geordi LaForge's VISOR in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He can detect physiological changes to act as a lie detector, see stuff that's out of phase, tell you how hot something is, and so on. The VISOR also lets him see, when he's blind without it.
  • In Supergirl (2015), Kara's glasses suppress her hearing and vision. When she first arrived on Earth, she struggled with her enhanced vision and hearing, so her foster father gave her glasses lined with lead to help her control these abilities.
  • In Supernatural, any piece of glass burned with Holy Oil lets you see the normally-invisible Hellhounds.
  • Torchwood has video-recording contact lenses, also with heads-up capability- the HUD images are actually transmitting directly into the retinal cortex. In Miracle Day, they're also used to spoof a retina scanner.
  • Ultraseven: Dan Moroboshi's Ultra Eye is a Transformation Trinket.
  • Warehouse 13:
    • Volta's Lab Coat doesn't work until Claudia puts the goggles on properly.
    • In Season 2, Artie and Mrs. Frederic are only able to safely navigate the Escher Vault by wearing goggles that are apparently specifically designed to allow for safe travel within the Escher Vault.
    • The Artifact of Timothy Leary's Reading Glasses, which make the world so "not boring" that you never want to take them off. McPherson makes copies of Leary's glasses that feature a toned-down version of the trippy LSD-like effects and additionally allow the wearer to see hidden messages that would otherwise be hidden.

    Manhwa 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Mistress Belmot uses goggles as a weapon.
  • The Savage Gentleman Victor Benjamin has a pair of spiky goggles, which potentially makes them an even better weapon. But even discounting that, the goggles hold the various decorations he wears on his hat in place.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Joe 90: Joe McClaine's glasses don't help him to see better, but they contain the electrodes that transfer brain pattern recordings into his brain, allowing him to use the skills of whoever's pattern has been downloaded this week.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, a lot of sunglasses have HUD or targeting imagery displayed on the lenses. In fact, that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as what they can do. In Shadowrun, you can get goggles that provide automatic glare compensation to protect your vision from sudden bright lights (such as flashbangs), wirelessly hook up to your Smartgun System to allow you to keep track of your gun's ammo (and even switch between different ammo types automatically if you're using a revolver) or blindfire your gun without penalty, give you Augmented Reality, and a whole host of other things provided you're willing to spend the money to get them.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has mostly magical contact lenses (Eyes of Charming, Eyes of Minute Seeing, etc), but sometimes glasses are encountered as well.
    • Fourth Edition has the "Reading Spectacles," a pair of glasses that allow the user to understand any written language
    • In Dragonlance, the "Glasses of Arcanist" allow the wearer to read and understand arcane text, something that is normally an extremely difficult and time intensive process for anyone but the wizard who wrote the text.
    • In Eberron, Cannith Goggles give a bonus to checks involving the creation of magic items if you are a member of House Cannith.
    • Spelljammer has "goggles of darkness" — goggles enchanted with continual darkness spells for cases when simple black glass is not nearly enough.
    • Beholders have access to magic lenses that supercharge their eye rays. While technically single lenses, they'd count as goggles for a species with eleven separate eyes.
  • GURPS:
    • GURPS High-Tech has, for example, realistic anti-laser goggles to protect against weapons intended to blind the wearer.
    • Hyperspectral Goggles from GURPS Ultra-Tech show you the entire electromagnetic spectrum and have a zoom function. The same supplement may allow other technology to be built into goggles or their frames.
    • Related to that, in the GURPS SF setting Transhuman Space, many people wear glasses or goggles with miniature computers built into the frames, and heads-up displays in the lenses. (Indeed, given that the local medical technology must be well up to fixing most forms of poor vision, this may be the main reason that anyone wears glasses in the setting's year 2100.) It's also entirely possible for those computers to run low-end artificial intelligences. Hence, some PCs can and do treat their glasses or goggles as NPC Allies.
  • In the oWoD game Mage: The Ascension, the Mad Scientist faction of the magical "Traditions" often uses "ether goggles" as a focus for their workings. And on the other side of the fence, the Men In Black wear Sinister Shades with a variety of unexpected uses.
  • In Warhammer 40,000 besides goggles with different auspexes (what the Imperium of Man calls sensors), there are also contact lenses for making someone immune to blinding light including a direct hit from a photon-flash grenade

    Theme Parks 
  • The "Minion Goggles" given to guests at the Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem attraction at Universal Studios are said to be able to act as a flotation device.
  • Subverted in "It's Tough to be a Bug" at Disney's California Adventure; Flik claims that the "Bug Eyes" (3D glasses) that guests are given make them honorary bugs. Hopper's reaction to the Bug Eyes ranges from unimpressed to murderously angry (mostly that Flik would claim that any human could be an honorary bug).

    Video Games 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • The main purpose of Godot's mask is to aid his poison-damaged vision. A side effect of their red lenses is that he cannot see red on a white background. A joke manga also has the visor act as a coffee machine.
    • Ema Skye turns up sporting some pretty cool-looking red-tinted shades that she'll pull down whenever she wants to say something smart. They're actually UV goggles used in conjunction with Luminol. They turn up again in Ace Attorney Investigations, too. They're also used in conjunction with a footprint identification spray.
    • Ted Tonate wears a pair of goggles that can extend to about five feet in length and act as a pair of binoculars. They're also good for disarming bombs, and for eviscerating one's eyeballs.
  • ANNO: Mutationem: One Shop Fodder item are the AR Lenses, a peripheral device used to enchanted the wearer's vision for those without sight modifications. By examining external visual data, it can give warnings about possible hazards to the user.
  • Azure Striker Gunvolt normally wears glasses, but wears contact lens during missions. They're equippable items in-game, one for each eye, and provide a variety of bonuses.
  • In Backyard Skateboarding, Dmitri's goggles stop him from hurting his eyes when he falls.
  • Played with in the first Bayonetta game, Umbra Witches wear glasses and Lumen Sages wear monocles, and at first it seems that they do that so they can see angels and demons in Purgatorio... however, later in the game Cereza enchants her own glasses to give to Luka so he can see the angels, but says the glasses themselves aren't magical and she can still see the angels (or 'monsters' as she calls them) just fine without them. Played straight in Bayonetta 2 when Luka gets his hands on a pair of permanently enchanted specs from the Fallen Angel Rodin so he can see the angels (and Bayonetta) in Purgatorio whenever he wants.
  • Blue Dragon: The Nothing Glasses allow the wearer to see nothings.
  • In Chrono Trigger, Lucca's goggles show how many Hit Points a monster has left in battle. Although thanks to Informed Equipment, if you remove them on the equipment screen she's still drawn with them, turning it into Goggles Do Nothing.
  • Circus Electrique: All STEEM Mecaniques are connected to a pair of Control Specs, enabling the wearer to operate the machinery however they see fit. These range from personal STEEMwheels and extra arms to things like precision hedgeclippers and fancy parasols.
  • In Crysis 2, the characters wear the super-powered Nanosuit, and it comes with the most sophisticated Visor ever. Get this: When you activate Visor, the Nanosuit releases tiny (infinitesimal) semi-organic squid monsters into your eyeballs to latch on to your rods and cones. They shoot electricity-looking beams to stimulate the light receptors that send information to the brain, and they make you see things like health and ammunition capacity, as well as the super-useful ability to mark enemies and locations of strategic importance. Forget not-being-able-to-see because your screen is cracked (But there is the small downside of you being totally freaked out if this was actually explained in the user's manual).
  • A monster called Peeping Eye in the Castlevania games Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia drops either a soul (AOS/DOS) or an item (POR/OOE) that allows you to see breakable walls.
  • The first two Dark Fall games feature special goggles that allow the wearer to see ghosts and supernatural phenomena. In Dark Fall: The Journal, they'll let you see into the past in certain of the haunted hotel rooms, while in Dark Fall: Lights Out, they allow your character to jump between times when you gaze at specific locations or objects.
  • Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (and its Gaiden Game Hacker's Memory): The goggles the Player Character wears are actually their DigiVice.
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The lenses of Adam Jensen's implanted Cool Shades are made of industrial sapphire, and thus serve as protective goggles.
  • Duke Nukem's Cool Shades serve as night-vision goggles.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Platinum's goggles actually do serve more functions than cosmetic. She's used them to chemically analyze the secret weapon Sharkungo brought to combat Mensouma (...detergent) and generally whips them up for analytics and detection.
  • Fallout:
    • In the Fallout 3 expansion Point Lookout, there is a quest that requires the player to equip a special pair of glasses in order to see the symbols on four pillars, which, when activated in the proper order, open a secret bunker. Without the glasses, the pillars cannot be interacted with.
    • Fallout: New Vegas' final DLC adds an upgraded version of the Ranger Helmet which gives you night vision while crouching. The basic versions sadly only give you a bit of armor.
    • And in a far-less-useful example, the "Cappy Specs" from the Fallout 4 DLC Nuka-World allows the player to view "hidden Cappys" in order to decode a secret message.
  • In Far Cry, it's actually a set of binoculars; they not only incorporate a shotgun mike to pick up conversations, but also isolate the frequency of the transmitter on the mooks so that you can track them on the radar.
  • Those strange, completely opaque blinders that Rider in Fate/stay night wears? They're not just to make her mysterious and cool. They both hide her identity and keep from from uncontrollably turning everyone around her into stone.
  • In Flashback, the main character builds a monocular that allows him to see the molecular density of objects. It allows him to unveil an alien infiltration.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Cid's goggles in Final Fantasy IV allow him to analyze the statistics and current condition of whatever monsters your party is currently fighting.
    • Goggles in Final Fantasy VI don't allow any special visual tricks, but do protect against blind status.
      • But since Evasion and Accuracy are bugged in the original release (meaning that the Blind status has no actual effect), these Goggles Do Nothing.
      • If blinded, Strago was unable to learn Blue Magic, so the Goggles did do something. (Although a Ribbon did the same thing, but with more status effects.) The accuracy bug was fixed in the Game Boy Advance edition of the game, so the goggles are useful in that version of the game as well.
    • In Final Fantasy XIV, many of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn are outfitted with special goggles which allows them to see aetherial trails and usage in the land. They become Goggles Do Nothing when the Player Character dons a character's outfit with them on them.
  • First Encounter Assault Recon: In Project Origin, Beckett wears a set of high-durability glasses that also connect to small computers and sensors in his gear that monitor his health, armor, ammunition, and display squad member names, status, and communications. The same glasses can also be used to read technical data recovered from disks or PDAs, feature a mounted light, and after he receives the activation treatment, Armacham apparently upgraded the glasses to display his reflex meter.
    • Also, the Point Man's head-up display shows the same thing, and he is also wearing a similar set of eyeglasses/goggles. In addition, all of the Armacham soldiers (both security guards and black ops units) wear sunglasses that provide a similar function (including the unarmored commandos in the first mission of Origin, who have one eye covered) and all Replica troops save the unmasked ones in Origin wear vision-enhancing goggles or helmets. Really, everyone in the FEAR games except the Delta troopers and F.E.A.R. agents packs some kind of vision enhancement.
  • In Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, Montgomery Gator's star-shaped sunglasses prevent him from being stunned by the FazBlaster or FazCam.
  • The Cavefish gang in Full Throttle wear special goggles to shield their sensitive, cave-dwelling eyes from sunlight, making them effectively blind. To make navigation possible, however, the goggles also pick up yellow dots in the road, along with some distinct landmarks and large buildings. They can also reveal the entrance to the Cavefish hideout, and the player needs to steal a pair of such goggles to find it. The dots are also an integral part of a puzzle involving the Cavefish, where Ben has to forcibly remove some of the dots to make the Cavefish lose track of the road and crash to their deaths.
  • The facebook game Garden of Time has a goggle cursor that allows he player to search for hard-to-find items by making any item currently on your search list glow wherever it's placed.
  • In Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, your Badass Crew wears shades that provide the augmented reality Diegetic Interface.
  • Half-Life: Adrian Shephard's gas mask includes night vision and his heads-up display.
  • In Heavy Rain, FBI agent Norman Jayden has the ARI (Augmented Reality Interface) that shows a virtual environment that helps the wearer solve mysteries. It also doubles as a recording device, allowing him to log all his thoughts and information, can project a simulated reality that can make his closet office seem much more spacious and relaxing, and carries a strong risk of neural damage and even death from prolonged use.
  • In the The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel games, Aurelia Leguin's vision is unusually keen, to the degree that she can see everything in excruciating detail. She sometimes finds herself getting annoyed by specks of dust floating in the air and thus commissioned special glasses to suppress her vision.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Link can obtain a mask which allows him to see how much health enemies have.
  • Mass Effect:
    • An example that borders on Fridge Brilliance: Garrus is always seen wearing a holographic monocle that covers his left eye, but it's never commented on. In Mass Effect 2, you can buy a nearly identical headset that is designed for human use. Equipping this headset causes you to inflict an additional 10% of weapon damage on enemies every time you fire a headshot. Garrus is a renowned sniper, both as a C-Sec officer and vigilante. Who knew? According to the Shadow Broker's dossier, it also provides a variety of spectrographic enhancements, alternate vision modes, lets him monitor his teammates' status, keeps track of everyone's relative kill ratios, and plays music.
    • In Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC, during the casino infiltration, Shepard gets a pair of cool glowy contact lenses which let him/her see the wiring in the walls and floor for the cameras s/he needs to disable.
  • Mega Man Star Force: Geo has a pair of glasses that lets him see electromagnetic waves, while Rogue's visor can trace the movement of EM energy in his opponents, allowing him to see them preparing attacks.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has the Solid Eye, which has as a HUD, a radar, infrared/nightvision mode and zooming function. More mundanely, the Solid Eye also serves as a corrective lens for Snake's farsighted vision. You can also watch baseball games on it.
  • Samus' HMD (helmet-mounted display) in the Metroid Prime series allows you to switch between several visor views, including but not limited to: visible spectrum (Combat), infrared (Thermal), backscatter X-ray (X-Ray), dark energy (Dark), and ultrasound (Echo). Another specialized visor mode (Command) allows her to remote-control her ship to bomb, hoist or land on whatever she's looking at.
    • Not to mention the Scan Visor, which allows her to analyze just about anything in the game, and, presumably, allows her to hack computers just by looking at them.
  • The D'ni civilization in Myst developed goggles that functioned either as light filters (shades), light amplifiers, or binoculars, as well as providing basic eye protection. These were needed because they often explored worlds with harsh environments, and because, dwelling Beneath the Earth, their eyes were not suited to full sunlight.
  • Lenses in NetHack protect you from being blinded by certain attacks, increase the effectiveness of your searching, and decrease the chance of failure and time needed to study a spellbook. Monks can get a special, unique set of lenses called the Eyes of the Overworld which can be invoked to give you "enlightenment" (insight into the various effects applicable to your character) and provide the wearer with X-ray vision, immunity to blindness, and immunity to certain enemy attacks. They also confer resistance to magic just by being carried around in the inventory.
  • Soldier: 76 of Overwatch has a "Tactical Visor" that allows him to auto-aim at targets within his field of vision for about 10 seconds as his Ultimate Ability. They also double as helping him disguise his identity as ex-Overwatch Commander Jack Morrison, although that's likely just a bonus.
  • The Scary Shiny Glasses in Persona 4 allow the wearer to see through the fog on the Midnight Channel.
  • Phantom Thief Silver Cat: Silver Cat's green goggles and cat-eared headset give her numerous perks, such as night vision and biometric readings.
  • In Planescape: Torment, Nordom can equip a number of different eyepieces that give different bonuses like improved accuracy, defense, or damage. The Nameless One has a removable eyeball that can be replaced with different magical items, such as an enchanted gem that provides resistance to most damage.
  • Pokémon doesn't believe in Goggles Do Nothing.
    • In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, your rival gives you a pair of Go-Goggles after beating Flannery, the fourth Gym Leader. They protect your eyes from the sandstorm that previously had blocked you from entering the desert area of the Hoenn region, Route 111.
    • In the remakes of the above, Magma Leader Maxie's redesign includes a pair of glasses. It's unclear whether the lenses are prescription, but he does have a Key Stone in the right arm.
    • Among held items for the Pokémon themselves, there are the Black Glasses (boosts Dark-type moves by 20%), the Wise Glasses (boosts all special moves by 10%), the Choice Specs (forces the 'Mon to use only one move, but boosts it by 50% if it's a special move), and the Safety Goggles (become immune to sandstorm, hail, and powder-based moves).
    • The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series is full of goggles with strange effects. There's goggles for revealing hidden objects, showing the location of all items and enemies on the floor, preventing sleep-related status effects, raising accuracy, raising the chances of a critical hit... That's not even counting the ones with negative effects.
    • Pokémon Colosseum had a girl named Rui who had the power to identify Shadow Pokémon by sight. For the sequel, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, new protagonist Michael gets an eyepiece that artificially senses the same.
  • The eponymous Prismata visor allows the user to control swarms of military robots and is considered a deadly weapon.
  • An interesting case with Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. When ascending a tower to confront his evil future self, the Professor finds a strange pair of goggles that allow him to see a puzzle lock in the door. Weird, but they still don't qualify...yet. As it turns out, the goggles are actually a memory-scanning device that Future Layton used to obtain the Professor's memories in order to activate his time machine and save Claire.
  • Ada Wong in Resident Evil owns a pair of nifty shades which double as a flash/smoke screen device.
  • The eyepiece you wear in The Room game series is crucial to solving certain puzzles. At other times it's useful for letting you know when you've entered a Room Full of Crazy. Or the occasional dimensional rift.
  • In the old platform game Secret Agent, several levels involve goggles which allow you to "see invisible platforms". In practice, what they really do is to make some Floating Platforms materialize.
  • In Secret Agent Barbie, one of Barbie’s gadgets is her Pink Vision Goggles, which help her to see coded messages within her environment.
  • Very important in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. The Visors not only allow you to scout the proximity of demons, find hidden doors, scan hidden enemies, look for items and even sense far off sources of energy. A kind of lampshade hanging because without it, you literally CAN'T SEE SHIT in the world because the visor lets you interpret the world.
  • Vyse's goggle (singular; it looks like an eyepatch) in Skies of Arcadia grants him the power to zoom in on distant objects like a telescope, which we see him use twice in cutscenes and is referenced a third time in dialogue. Also, in the Gamecube's Updated Re-release you obtain a special lens that allows you to see invisible "Moonfish" while in first-person mode; collecting these gives you items and, eventually, an entire subplot.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Dr. Robotnik's glasses give a heads-up display and link to his information database. Makes sense as he's a Mad Scientist and a roboticist. Seen in action here (Spoiler Warning, though.) The goggles he wears on his head also turn out to be safety goggles for when he's doing mechanical work.
    • There's also an earlier occurrence of goggles being useful. In Sonic Adventure 2: Battle both Knuckles and Rouge can get a goggle-like item which allows them to see invisible objects (although granted, Knuckles' one is a pair of sunglasses, and Rouge's is more like an eyepiece).
    • In Pokecapn's Let's Play of Sonic Unleashed, several of the early videos mention some chili Kung-Fu Jesus is making for dinner later. As KFJ attempts to sort out the issue of onion fumes, we get this memorable line: "Hey guys, check out my swank onion-proof goggles."
    • Both played straight and averted in the Sonic Riders series. While most of the characters who have eyewear don't actually use it, the Babylon Rouges are almost never seen using Extreme Gear without them, presumably to shield their eyes from the wind at high speeds.
    • As far back as the first game, there was going to be a goggles powerup. Considering its placement, fans hypothesize that it was supposed to allow Sonic to breathe underwater.
  • Splatoon: Inklings can be equipped with goggles on their foreheads. Not really gonna do much up there, even though extreme paintball would be one of the times where goggles would be most useful. There are some that cover the eyes, but won't necessarily protect them. Made even sillier with the addition of Night-Vision Goggles which, despite being worn on the Inkling's face, make no changes to their vision whatsoever.
  • Sam Fisher's goggles in Splinter Cell can display night, thermal, x-ray, and electromagnetic visions, plus control the sticky cameras launched from his gun. In Splinter Cell: Conviction, he steals an upgrade and gets sonar goggles, which allow him to see through walls and specifically identify threats. They also get horribly, horribly garbled the more you move, meaning that you have to stay still for them to work properly (which makes sense, given the nature of sonar).
  • In A Study in Steampunk the Nigel-Trevelyan glass captures and visualizes the irregular electromagnetic waves emitted by light-eaters, which makes them appear shrouded in red while everybody else (even the sun-touched) appear white-gold.
  • Super Robot Wars: Latooni Subota's (or however we're romanizing it this week) glasses let her see enemies' combat data. They eventually get her to take them off, and at some point, Princess Shine gives her a new, transparent pair sans the Scary Shiny Glasses Shrinking Violet impression.
  • In the System Shock franchise, the player characters see the world through goggle-like "neural interfaces" that provide the in-game HUD and targeting reticule.
  • Jade's glasses in Tales of the Abyss have no vision correction. He did something with his eyes to make them powerful catalysts for magic, which in turn made them unstable. The glasses act as a Power Limiter, keeping the magical energy from destroying whatever Jade happens to be near. The only time he takes them off is for the final battle.
  • Team Fortress 2 has the Pyrovision Goggles, which allow the wearer to see the Sugar Bowl land the Pyro sees in Meet the Pyro. Oddly enough, people playing Pyro cannot see this unless they are actually wearing the goggles or one of the other Pyroland cosmetics or weapons.
  • In The Wonderful 101, Luka Alan Smithee's otherwise purely asthetic aviator goggles become his laser-firing superpower as...you guessed it: Wonder Goggles.
  • In Tsukihime, the protagonist's special glasses actually prevent him from seeing something supernatural: The black lines of death that lie across everything, and which can be used to destroy anything. If he were forced to look at that his whole life, he might have gone insane, likely before dying from the amount of constant strain it puts on his brain.
  • In World of Warcraft, characters who take up the Engineering profession can make goggles as their Epic Helm, with schematics that cater to every class and play style (ie, healing goggles can be made in all 4 armor classes). Their components and looks are about the same across the board, and yet the goggles for warriors and paladins are somehow considered plate armor.
    • An interesting new variation was introduced in Brewfest 2007; when donned they render every other humanoid character, PC or NPC, into a female orc. Often wearing interesting leather garments. There is also a "male-gnome" version. "Beer Goggles" is the name of the buff the character gets while wearing them.
      • In Wrath of the Lich King, an updated master engineer only version has been made, They are called X-Ray Specs and allow the player to see all characters without clothing on (bar underwear). It's scary.
  • Yume 2kki: The Glasses effect can make invisible things visible and show the "true form" of certain NPCs.

    Webcomics 
  • Shadehawk's Cool Shades in Antihero for Hire. Light amplificating shades. This is, however, a case where the Cool Shades can become a Weaksauce Weakness. His glasses are useful because he's typically out all night, and needs them to, well, see. In one case, though, he was being heroic in the daytime, and, well... he probably wished the Goggles Do Nothing.
  • The experimental googles in Archipelago that Pan, a quillotian guard, is introduced testing. They exist, and make their wearer exist, in physical and spiritual world at the same time, allowing the wearer to see auras and spirits. Later, Raven, who has no physical form, borrows them to temporarily give himself one. This has... interesting consequences.
  • Apparently, Bob (of Bob and George) has a visor that lets him see invisible holograms. "Hello, Megaman."
  • Bob the Angry Flower: Monster Glasses.
  • In Dominic Deegan, Barnet has a pair of goggles that let her see invisible spell wards.
  • In Erfworld, everyone has stats and everyone can naturally see everyone else's stats by looking at them — except Parson, who cannot see stats and has no stats anyone else can see. Partway through the series, though, he obtains a pair of old-fashioned 3-D glasses that allow him to see unit stats.
  • In Girl Genius Judy/Lilith has special glasses to make her eyes look the same size, to hide the fact that she's a not-quite-perfect construct.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Tedd's glasses have a variety of functions, and they also make him look less girly.
  • Homestuck has them in spades.
    • Fist, John combined his glasses with his dad's PDA to create a set of glasses, which would (somehow...?) allow him to communicate with his friends via Pesterchum without having to interrupt anything else he was doing.
    • Dave did the same with his Cool Shades and an iPhone, making the iShades.
    • Then Jade tops them both with the Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles, which allow her to view anywhere in Incipisphere space (thematically, as she's the Witch of Space.)
    • The Trolls also get in on the action, where at least Equius and Terezi have alchemized computers into their glasses to chat on the fly. Of particular note is that Terezi is blind, although she is capable of seeing her environment through her sense of smell and taste.
    • Dirk gets onto that early, having computerised glasses before even getting into the game. He also added an AI into them, copied from his personality, although after a couple years the Auto-Responder evolved into a divergent entity.
  • In The KAMics Obbie S. Myth's glasses allow him to see electrical & magical ability as well as compensate for a missing eye, Ms. Terial's goggles allow her to see in the dark & see far away.
  • The Last Human In A Crowded Galaxy: Sarya's goggles provide augmented reality, for example showing her colored holograms covering otherwise colorless toy blocks.
  • In Last Res0rt, Daisy's glasses include a heads-up display that, among other things, negates her (social) symptoms of Autism.
    • Mostly they negate her hypersensitivity to light and sound, also they have functionality similar to an iPhone, and give social cues similar to one of the proposed apps for Google Glass.
  • Blind assassin Carver Stucco of Lovesyck wears a pair of dark goggles over her missing eyes. Although their exact effect is unknown they seem to give her a significant amount of vision and are describe as displaying some sort of virtual reality.
  • Magick Chicks: Callista wears a visor as part of her Archery Club uniform, which is designed to help improve her accuracy and even has an infrared setting for tracking targets through smokescreens.
  • In Milhamah: Fighting Words Etgar Toär has glasses that activate shoresh roots to give him speech act powers as seen in this comic.
  • Kevyn of Schlock Mercenary has glasses that let him see outside the normal visible spectrum, discussed in this comic, as well as the ability to record and play back events.
  • Mathis Quigley's spectacles in Unsounded let him view the lines of the Khert, the Background Magic Field that governs the Functional Magic system of pymary.
  • Smoke's glasses in WTF Comics let him see in the dark and see things rendered magically invisible.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • Abby Hatcher uses special "Zoomer View Specs" built into her glasses to find where the Fuzzlies are hiding, see in the dark, and even see through objects.
  • AJ from Blaze and the Monster Machines has a "Visor View" built into his helmet to see things no one else can't. As the show progressed, this became rarely used.
  • Dexter's Laboratory: In "A Failed Lab Experiment", Dexter invents visual specs that lets him examine through objects. However, upon taking them out for a test run, Dexter gets freaked out after seeing the specs are showing everyone around him naked.
  • During the "Thronecoming" special for Ever After High, Cedar Wood gains a pair of glasses that can expose falsehoods and find hidden things as her father's legacy gift. Thanks to them, she finds out that the Storybook of Legends is a fake. Later, Briar borrows them to locate the trapdoor in her room that hides the real Storybook.
  • In an Ewoks episode The Tree of Light, Umwak the Dulok shaman claims that his goggles will help him and his cousin out of the Arbo Maze. Turns out, they don't do anything.
  • Sashi's glassess in Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, called the SPECS by the team, reveals their missions in hologram form.
  • Family Guy: In "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", Peter attends a Star Trek convention and tries on LeVar Burton's VISOR, which makes him see everyone as torch-wielding Klansmen.
    Peter: Why would he wear these?! Who would invent these for him?!
  • The Jetsons had an episode that had a whole slew of them. One let the wearer see the future. One had past-vision. One had X-ray vision and one had far future vision, seeing the other people as old people.
  • The titular character from Generator Rex started out with a pair of normal goggles (used when flying/riding various builds), but they got an upgrade in season 3 with infrared vision, X-ray vision, microscopic vision, and more.
  • In Milo Murphy's Law Cavendish's goggles appear to be Purely Aesthetic Glasses, as he wears them over the brim of his hat. However, when the lights go out in School Dance, we learn that they function as night vision goggles.
  • Fearless Fly, a 1965 character from Hal Seeger's Milton The Monster show, gets his superpowers from a special pair of glasses.
  • An episode of The Simpsons has a brief clip from a bad sci-fi film called The Planet From Outer Space, which has a group of astronauts about to suffocate from "space air" leaking in to a ship, until they put on goggles and resume breathing normally.
  • The titular smurf-colored glasses from The Smurfs (1981) episode of the same name makes the Smurfs who wear them see all kinds of creatures, even dangerous ones, to be cute, handsome, and harmless. When Bigmouth wears them, though, it gives him Meat-O-Vision.
  • Work It Out Wombats!: In "The Treeborhood Harvest Day," Mr. E sells fog goggles that enable the wearer to see through fog.
  • Young Justice featured one with Kid Flash's goggles, which could see in the infrared as well as protect his eyes from the wind.

    Real Life 
  • Google Glasses were an attempt to pull this off in Real Life. However, it failed for a number of reasons: people turned out to be afraid of using a device with a radio transmitter right in the head, its built-in camera raised privacy concerns (people feared someone with Google Glasses could be secretly filming or taking pictures, and Google Glass users themselves feared Google could be recording everything they saw), they were ugly, their functionality felt unpolished and beta-like, they received very little updates after its launch, it didn't seem to serve any actual purpose beyond the novelty of having smart glasses, and its earliest release cost $1500 US dollars.
  • Night-Vision goggles and thermal imaging equipment, naturally.
  • Glasses which have mirrors built in, and allow you to see behind you without turning your head.
    • Glasses with mirrors that flip down at 45 degrees are sometimes used for climbing, so someone belaying from the bottom of a cliff and see what a climber is doing above them without straining their neck.
  • Astronomy has a bunch of these, including goggles/lenses that cut out certain frequencies of light, and glasses that let you safely view a solar eclipse.
  • Rear-view and side-view mirrors are basically this for cars and are credited for preventing countless car accidents. In addition, a new type of mirror is being developed to help eliminate blind spots
  • Water goggles help prevent the swimmer's sight from being obscured by water.
  • Lab goggles are very important in labs, particularly when volatile chemicals are involved.
  • Similar to the lab goggles, people who deal with guns or things that otherwise go boom often wear (or are required to wear) glasses which provide ballistics protection from bits of debris that get sent flying around. It's very possible to get regular glasses that can pull double-duty as this, such as the US military's infamous standard-issue "Birth Control Glasses".
  • 3D Glasses, of the various types that have existed throughout history.
  • Polarized lenses allow certain waves of light to pass, making it possible to see certain things through polarized glasses that are otherwise invisible—such as a rainbow.
  • EnChroma glasses can apparently allow some red-green colour blind people to see those colours normally.
  • Special custom-designed goggles were used in a series of experiments about visual processing in the brain. Using mirrors, they flipped the wearer's normal field-of-view from right to left and upside-down. Volunteers who wore them continuously for two weeks discovered that after a while, they saw things right-side-up and in their proper orientation side-to-side, because their brains had caught on and stopped correcting for the natural inversion of images that occurs when the eyes capture light. Once they took the goggles off, these volunteers saw the world flip-flopped and reversed without the eyewear for a few more days, until their visual centers caught on again.
  • iVUE makes sunglasses with a tiny camera in the middle (it can record sound, too). One of the models has Wi-Fi connectivity, so it can be operated through a mobile device and stream the video feed to it.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Spy Glasses, Goggles Do Something, Glasses Do Something Unusual, Eyewear Does Something Unusual

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Abby Hatcher's Zoomer View Specs

Abby Hatcher uses the "Zoomer View Specs" built into her glasses to find things hard to be seen.

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