Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Narrative

• Universal
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters
• Characters As Device
• Dialogue
• Motifs
• Narrative Devices
• Paratext
• Plots
• Settings
• Spectacle

Genre

• Action Adventure
• Comedy
• Commercials
• Crime And Punishment
• Drama
• Horror
• Love
• News
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• War

Media

• Animation (Western)
• Anime
• Comic Book
• Fan Fics
• Film
• Game
• Literature
• Music And Sound Effects
• New Media
• Print Media
• Radio
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Television
• Theater
• Videogame
• Webcomics

Topical Tropes

• Betrayal
• Censorship
• Combat
• Death
• Family
• Fate And Prophecy
• Food
• Holiday
• Memory
• Money
• Morality
• Politics
• Religion
• School

Other Categories

• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Creators
• Derivative Works
• Did Not Do The Research
• Language
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Stock Room
• Trope
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Weirdness Isolation

"What? Oh, those are pouches?! I thought they were wearing ballet skirts. I guess whatever they need to take with them into combat they need to take a whole lot of it in single-serving sizes."

-Something Awful, on utility belts

What is the purpose of the goggles?

— The Milkman Conspiracy, Psychonauts

An accessory characters never actually use but is noticeable enough they must consciously choose to wear it.

For example, a Discredited Trope from the Dark Age of American comic books was superhero costumes featuring a large number of pouch-covered belts and harnesses - which never actually seemed to be used.

Although originally a quote from The Simpsons, it's also a meme in Digimon fandom, where most lead characters were distinguished by wearing aviator goggles that they never used.

The quote comes from The Simpsons episode "Radioactive Man", where Rainier Wolfcastle is filming the movie Radioactive Man. During the filming, a large pool of real acid is used and because of this the director tells everyone to wear safety goggles. Of course, an accident happens and the acid completely submerges Wolfcastle, leading him to lament the famous line, "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!". The phrase has transformed; it now describes situations where you need something that really blocks your eyes.

Unused articles such as this often make up the Rummage Sale Reject. Goggles are popular, because they look cool. If you can actually get something out of them besides protection, then it's probably because your Goggles Do Something Unusual.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• During the Hades arc of Angel Sanctuary, Katou wears goggles around his neck for no good reason, other than Rule Of Cool.
• Parodied in Bobobobo Bobobo. Bubble-uba, a minor villain, wears three pairs of goggles on his forehead, and has an extra-large pair wrapped around his waist.
• In Digimon, it borders on a Running Gag that the lead character always wears goggles. It started with Taichi ("Tai") (Adventure), then Daisuke ("Davis") actually started wearing Taichi's original goggles (Adventure 02), then Takato wears them because he watched those last two TV series (Tamers). Then there's Takuya (Frontier), Tsurugi (Next), Hikaru (D-Cyber), and another guy named Taichi (V-Tamer 01).
  • Davis/Daisuke's Image Song is actually called "Goggle Boy," and he has an audio drama track called "Goggles."
  • In several instances the characters do actually use them. The problem is that nobody else seems to ever be bothered by whatever condition prompts the current goggle boy to wear them.
• Izumi from Kujibiki Unbalance.
• Yuuno's side-pouch in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which we never see him use. Some Fan Web Comics have made speculations on what he places in there◊.
• In the early design stages for Naruto, the titular character was also supposed to wear a pair of useless goggles. However, the artist found goggles too hard to draw, and so replaced it with a headband after the first few issues. Attention is called to it, as one of Naruto's mentors notes he's wearing the goggles as a replacement for the hachimaki actual ninja wear; it's taken as a sign of his immaturity.
  • Obito wore what appear to be orange ski-goggles, which he actually wore on his face (probably be he was also wearing a headband), but they didn't apparently do anything.
  • One chapter briefly features a character named Kosuke who wears goggles, which is weird since he's a toad (albeit a magic one).
  • Masashi Kishimoto once stated in an interview that he drew that red and white tie thingy on Naruto's left shoulder as a spur of the moment addition.
  • Subverted with the Mist Village ninja Ao: he has a pair of paper talismans on his ears which seem to just be decorative, but actually protect the Byakugan eye he has hidden behind his eyepatch.
• One Piece's Zoro lampshades this with a Double Subversion when, after wearing goggles for an entire arc without explanation, he's fighting someone who generates blinding flashes of light — "Of course! My goggles!" — only for his enemy to find out that they do, indeed, do nothing, because they're clear plain glass. Honorable mention for Zoro still, as it's the first time he tried bluffing. However, they do become useful when Zoro uses them to see clearly underwater.
• Gold in the Pokemon Special has these as the only real difference between him and the male PC for the second generation games.
• Rin-rin in Sister Princess habitually wears a pair of goggles pushed up on top of her head. Given that she's a maker of robots and other technotoys, they may be welding goggles or other similar eye protection, but she's never seen with them actually over her eyes.
• Kamina in Gurren Lagann always seems to wear a pair of orange sunglasses. Underground.
• In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Xiao Lang's goggles appear useless at first, but then he finds an underwater country and uses them for diving.
  • Speaking of Tsubasa, CLAMP seems to be developing a Nomura-like buckles-and-zipper fetish. Oh, and chains. Can't forget the chains.
• In early chapters of Chrono Crusade, Rosette wears a pair of goggles over her wimple. She uses them a grand total of once, while she and Chrono are on a plane and attempting to board an enemy's blimp. Chrono wears them, too, but it's the only time he's ever seen with goggles, and he takes his off once they make it in, but Rosette's stay on until she gets her militia outfit.
• Koga the Jerkass Noble Demon of Inuyasha wears a sheathed sword that he never uses during battle. Lampshaded when he finally draws the thing to whack his way free of a demon's giant clutching hand. When his pair of loyal minions express surprise that he's never used the sword before, Koga admits he doesn't even know how to fight with it—he just took the sword off a corpse to carry because he thought it would make him look cool.

Card Games

• Chandra, a Planeswalker in Magic The Gathering, wears a pair of goggles on her brow.
  • As did Jaya Ballard, who Chandra is arguably an Expy of.
    • Since both of them derive great pleasure from killing things with fire and blowing stuff up, it's easy to see why they might be useful. Too bad we never see them actually being used!

Comic Books

• Zoe Jump from Warren Ellis' Black Summer limited series wears goggles. Justified because her eyes are actually artificial implants that give her superspeed (it's a quantum physics thing)
• Used on-and-off by Deadpool, whose pouches are almost never used. When they are used, they have contained action figures (of himself), wallet, keys, and (on one occasion) a pancreas. Then again, he's Deadpool. Logic doesn't work on him.
• The title character of Hellboy has horns, which he files down to look more human-like. The horns are about six inches in diameter, take up most of his forehead, and when filed down looks like he's wearing forehead goggles.
  • They resemble goggles so much that some fans didn't even realize they were horns until they grew out at one point.
• Retro Girl of Powers used aviator goggles when flying, for some reason, despite being a level nine "We as a species just pray to dear God they're good folks" power.
• Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot wears flippers all the time, in case he needs to swim.
• Will Feral in Kingdom wears an aviator's hat and matching goggles for no particular reason. Dingo Star's shoulder pads and pouches might also count.

Film

• In the recent masterpiece by F. Bondarchuk Inhabited island the gear of an alien guardsman includes fa-abulous pink (!) ski googles. They almost never put them on, even during shooting practice, obstacle courses (with fire barriers) and actual combat raids against insurgents.
• In Alien Vs Predator's director's commentary, the director said that originally only one character was to wear goggles on his head. The other cast members thought it looked cool, so they all wore goggles on their head... which meant they had to be fogged up so they wouldn't reflect the cameras.
• In Top Gun, the bad guys wore their visors at all times while flying, while the good guys never did.
• A character in Can't Hardly Wait wears goggles on his forehead. They are actual swimmer's goggles. He never goes swimming.

Live Action TV

• In the new version of Battlestar Galactica, the Colonial Marines wear goggles on the top of their helmets, but they're very rarely actually worn and their exact purpose is never explained.
• Doctor Who: The Doctor has rather Rummage Sale Reject costumes, but the fifth Doctor also wore a piece of celery in his lapel. One author did offer an explanation, but the celery never did anything.
• Toward the beginning of Serenity, River puts on a pair of oversized goggles during the crew's ride on the mule, but these are pretty quickly abandoned and obviously not that necessary later on when they are chased out of town.

Toys

• An example from toys (and the associated comic/cartoon/etc): The GIJoe enemy troops called Vipers◊ have a wraparound helmet with opaque facemask ... and goggles atop the helmet!

Video Games

• City Of Heroes and City Of Villains have goggle appearances, including ones always stay on the forehead. Like every other cosmetic choices, there's no gameplay result.
• In the Wario Ware series, both Wario and Mona have goggles.
• Oddly enough, in Dragon Quest II both the Prince of Lauraisa and the Prince of Cannock wear goggles as part of their headgear. While this may be justified by the fact both live close to small patches of desert, they're never shown actually using them. (The Princess, meanwhile, doesn't get any goggles of her own.)
• None of the many goggles in Fallout 3 have a stat bonus other than armor class, and they're both harder to find replacement components and no better as armor than glasses that do have stat bonuses.
  • In addition, some of the costumes and headgear in the game feature goggles. This means that if a player wants he can have one pair on a helmet, one pair around his neck (as part of the costume) and at the same time wearing a pair.
• In Final Fantasy VI, there is an item called Goggles. Its purpose is to prevent blindness. Unfortunately, a glitch with the Evasion stat in the game made it so that blindness doesn't affect the accuracy of physical attacks, making blindness a worthless attack, and making the Goggles useless.
• In Final Fantasy VII, while Cid never uses his goggles in the intended manner, despite actually being a pilot, they do provide a nice place for him to stick his pack of cigarettes.
  • Reno also boasts a pair, except without cigarettes, or being a pilot.
• Baird from Gears Of War has goggles that seem to serve no apparent purpose... but being the squad's self-proclaimed Smart Guy and Mr Fixit, they would seem to have a potential use for him. Subverted in Gearsof War 2, as in the part where Delta Squad rides Reavers, he puts the googles over his eyes, since they are flying.
• Both titular characters (even though one is an otter-weasel hybrid) in the Jak And Daxter series wear goggles around their heads. These appear to be entirely pointless for the first two games; in the third, they suddenly start coming in handy during sandstorms. How on Earth did the Jak of the last two games know he'd find himself going out into deserts in the future? That's impressive foresight.
• In Kingdom Hearts, you really gotta wonder which or even if any of those zippers actually did anything. Zippers on hats? There's a reason many of the game's critics call it "Buckles and Zippers."
• In Lego Star Wars II, some of the NP Cs in the Mos Eisley Cantina and in the Tatooine levels are wearing what appear to be bucket hats with goggles around the crown. This hat can also be chosen in the character builder. These have no effect on gameplay, but boy, do they ever look cool.
• The protagonist of Persona 3 has an MP 3 player around his neck, with headphones hanging on his chest. Except for the opening cutscene, he never uses them.
• In Psychonauts, Raz lowers his goggles over his eyes before entering a person's mind... for no apparent purpose. In "The Milkman Conspiracy," this becomes Lampshaded by the interrogative MIB: "Who are you?" "Who is the Milkman?" "What is the purpose of the goggles?" It's then subverted when the boss threatens to pluck out his eyes:
  Razputin: Ha, you can't! That is the purpose of the goggles.
  • The boss responds by turning all the lights off, rendering the goggles decorative again.
• Lampshaded in Red Alert 3 where one of the allied units (who wear goggles) say when clicked on "The googles! Zey do nothink!".
• In Sonic Adventure, Ivo "Dr. Eggman" Robotnik wears not only goggles that never leave the top of his head, but also spectacles. So he couldn't wear his goggles even if he wanted to. The only time he actually wears his goggles in in one scene in Sonic Adventure 2, where he dons them for dramatic purposes. Of course, they're back on top of his head in all of the scenes immediately following.
• The Heroes in Sonic Riders wear goggles even before they know they're going to compete in a hoverboard competition, and once they start competing, they never put their goggles over their eyes. This isn't so for the antagonistic Babylon Rogues.
• Tales Of Hearts's Hisui has a pair of goggles that flip randomly between the top of his head and around his neck. He actually keeps them on in battle and off when out of it, but no particular significance is given for that.
• Rita, of Tales Of Vesperia, has a pair worn on her forehead that do absolutely nothing. She also apparently has a pair of glasses tucked into the collar of her shirt that are never used.
• Team Fortress 2. Aside from the the usual pouches, (Which could be argued as holding ammo) several of the classes have items that would seem appropriate for their individual jobs, but have no real use:
  • The Scout has a headset with microphone and a messenger bag.
  • Soldier and Pyro have grenades.
  • Demoman and Heavy have belts of ammo that are never used even when you run out of said ammo.
  • And the Engineer wears, well, goggles that do nothing.
• Don't forget the goggles Hwoarang from the Tekken series wears but never puts over his eyes.
  • Hwoarang is a biker, so he´ll probably put them on when riding. You know, that thing that happens outside of the game frame.
• The main character of The World Ends With You, Neku, wears headphones prominently, and is even referred to as "Phones" by several characters as a result. But...he doesn't listen to any music in the game. Of course, the phones are to signify his isolationism, and at the end of the game he takes them off, showing that he's opened up.
  • Actually every song on the soundtrack is supposedly heard through his headphones, so you hear every track.
• Super Robot Wars' Elzam V. Branstein Ratsel Feinschmecker wears enormous aviator goggles as a Paper Thin Disguise, in homage to Char Aznable's similar trick with Cool Shades. They're useless because the disguise fools absolutely no one.

Webcomics

• The character of Jyrras Gianna from Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures gains goggles in his new outfit, which are never used. Doubly unnecessary, in that he also wears glasses (which he doesn't need but wears for image's sake). He did use goggles during the non-canon spy spoof arc, but their only purpose was to hide his eyes, as villains are not allowed to be 'cute'.
• The title of this Darths And Droids strip reference to this phenomenon (though there's no link to this page).
• Used every which way in Girl Genius, as befits its mad science milieu.
• Parodied (maybe) in Penny Arcade with the character of Charles. Ever since his redesign, he has kept a pair of goggles on his forehead.

Web Original

• Mad Scientist Dr. Horrible wears goggles on his forehead; he does no more than adjust them until the end, when he becomes a true villain.
• The trope is referenced on The Spoony Experiment by Doctor Insano, on seeing a Bruce Lee Clone in a speedo.
• http://www.southperry.net has a goggle smiley inspired in part by one of Maplestory's bosses, Rellik, and in part by the Simpsons quote above. The goggles became wildly popular, and people began editing their avatars to include them. Nexon (Maplestory's publisher in North America) saw this and created Gachapon (egg-machine that requires real money in exchange for random items) only goggles equippable by players. There is an inscription on them stating "Who says the goggles do nothing?"

Western Animation

• Gadget of Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers slightly averts this. While the goggles she constantly wears mostly Do Nothing, as both a mechanic and a pilot they're reasonable headgear - and on very, very rare occasions she'll actually pull them down over her eyes while building or flying.
• Frida from El Tigre. In one episode, after her goggles fall off and break, Frida shrieks, "Those are prescription!" However, she never actually wears them over her eyes.
• Kim Possible: Kim and Ron's commando mission suits in "A Sitch In Time".
• Oban Star Racers has Molly, who, being a Star Racer pilot (basically a podracer pilot) always wears her goggles on her forehead and has even been seen sleeping in them. However, since inside her vehicle she is safely concealed behind a plastic dome, she doesn't really need to protect her eyes. Since her mother also wore a pair, which are constantly seen in flashbacks on top of her head, chances are very high that Molly initially got hers because they looked like her mother's.
• Transformers Animated is fond of this:
  • Blitzwing◊ has goggles built into the helmet of his robot mode head. Not only does he A) Not wear them, B) Not need them, what with being a robot and all, C) Could not pull them down over his eyes even if he did, but D) his "angry" face already has a red visor over its eyes and his "calm" face has a monocle, which means that he is essentially wearing two pairs of equally-useless goggles! Blitzwing is the KING of Goggles Do Nothing.
  • Prometheus Black still wears his visor thing even after turning into a sentient mass of acid. Maybe it's so we don't have to see his eyes.
  • And once again Jetfire has aviator goggles that are apparently part of his head.
• Hay Lin in WITCH likes to wear a pair of goggles just above her forehead.
• Bender and many other robots in Futurama have antenna that serve no apparent purpose, which gets a Lampshade Hanging several times. First when the thing turned out to be interfering with the satellite transmission in his new apartment, and Fry says he should just cut it off since it doesn't do anything, after which it's treated as a robot equivalent of his penis. Again when it's suggested he has a toilet somewhere in his body and pushing down on it flushes. Subverted again when Mom says most people think she puts antenna on her robots just to make them "more sci-fiction looking" but they really let her take control of everything with a remote control.

Fan Fiction

• Adelleh in the Tales series of Looking For Group fanfiction is a crazy zombie priestess who wears green goggles for no apparent reason (then again much of what Adelleh does has no apparent reason), despite them being somewhat out of place in a medieval fantasy setting. Nobody knows why she wears them, but they've become her signature costume item.

Real Life

• For some time, Drew Carey's glasses were only a prop and did not actually correct his vision; he had eye surgery and didn't need glasses. They're bifocals now, though.

• Erwin Rommel, the German commander famous for his early victories in North Africa in early WWII wore a distinctive pair of (British) goggles.

---