Lennon Specs - Television Tropes & Idioms

Lennon Specs is a type of sunglasses with perfectly round lenses, preferably black or red. They are, not surprisingly, named after John Lennon. They are mostly commonly worn by beatniks, hippies and - since they are uncommon and noticeable - unconventional but notable characters. Thanks to John Lone in The Last Emperor, they're known as 'Pu Yi' glasses in Chinese-speaking countries *.

A subtrope of Cool Shades. See also Triangle Shades. Furthermore, please note that perfectly round but clear glasses, despite also having been worn by John Lennon, do not fall under this trope. Neither do oval sunglasses, square-ish sunglasses with rounded edges, or any other type of sunglasses with less than perfectly round lenses.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Enishi of Rurouni Kenshin wears these.
Trigun's Vash the Stampede wears a pair of yellow lensed Lennon glasses with a cool little zig-zag in the temples.
Alucard of Hellsing wears a pair of these.
Hikozaemon Otaki from Ah! My Goddess is never seen without his.
Though they're not actually sunglasses, Bautou from Ghost in the Shell has cybernetic eyes that provide a similar aesthetic.
Yuudai Yamato from The Prince Of Tennis.
Dryden Fassa of Escaflowne.
Black Cat's blood-weaponizing Charden Flamberg completes his long, blonde hair and sharp-clothes with a pair of cool, round shades.
The Squirtle Squad from Pokémon, with the exception of their leader (who joins Ash) that wears Triangle Shades.
Yoroi Akado of Naruto.
Jianliang of Digimon Tamers favours a pair with green lenses, used when he's entering the foggy fields generated by Realized wild Digimon or dealing with storms.

Comic Books

In one X-Men storyline, the X-Men are tracking down a group of hippies who have used Lady Mastermind's mind control powers to turn the Haight-Ashbury area back to the way it was in the sixties. Emma Frost mentally alters their clothing to fit in, and Cyclops's visor turns into ruby-quartz Lennon specs.
Black leather 90s Superboy wore these.
King Mob in The Invisibles wears them.

Film

John Lone in The Last Emperor, see the article.
Mickey, one of the leads in Natural Born Killers wears these, and they're an integral aspect of one of the film's posters.
The hitman protagonist of The Professional, Léon, wears these.
Camille Claudel in the 1988 Camille Claudel wears John Lennon specs in one scene.
In The Matrix sequels, Seraph wears a pair of these.
Mr.Orange briefly wears a blue pair in Reservoir Dogs.

Literature

Aldous Huxley◊.

Live Action TV

In the pilot episode of Firefly, Simon first appears wearing a red pair.

Music

John Lennon, duh◊.
Ozzy Osbourne seems◊ to◊ like◊ them◊.
Hiroshi Morie tends to wear these on occasion.

Video Games

In Mitsumete Knight, Sam Burston, one of the three local punks, wears black round sunglasses, at all times.
Doctor Eggman.
Wild Dog owns a dark blue pair (purple in TC 3).
Oshare Bones wears a small, orange-tinted pair.
In Dead Rising, You can obtain some with free DLC.
Rock Band includes these among the types of eyewear you can put on your characters, and like most of the other sunglasses, they can be any colour.

Web Animation

A red-lensed pair of these have been the trademark of Madness Combat's Hank from Depredation onward.

Web Original

Homestuck: Jade creates the Lennon-specsesque JUNIOR COMPU-SOOTH SPECTAGOGGLES by combining a pair of round glasses with a black and purple crystal ball and a lunchbox computer.

Western Animation

The Slappy Squirrel short "Woodstock Slappy" has Skippy wearing sporting these specs.
Slappy: On stage, Skippy. Look, see the band?
Skippy: No I don't.
Slappy: Get rid of those John Lennon glasses and look!
Carl in Jimmy Neutron wore these when he channeled John Lennon in the episode where Jimmy forms a band. He also adopts the Liverpudlian accent and travels with a generically-Asian-looking "assistant." (It's a kid's show.)
The Warden from Superjail! has them.

Last Place You Look

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