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Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it.

Sunglasses serve a range of purposes:

  1. To block out the sun or very bright lights from one's vision. (This is one of the reasons why Blind People Wear Sunglasses in Real Life; in many cases their eyes are still sensitive to light and feel pain from it.)
  2. To cover up disturbing, blacked and/or missing eyes. (Another reason why blind people wear sunglasses in Real Life.) Alternatively, to cover up eyes that are outright inhuman.
  3. To look totally cool.
  4. To hide where the gaze wanders when passing by. (Actually often combined with the #3 purpose. And most of them usually play poker.)
  5. To keep track of visions in one's eyes.
  6. To serve as a part of disguise (or even the whole of it).
  7. To ease the pain of a hangover or hide eyes bloodshot from illegal drug use.

Then there are times where a character wears glasses most of the time, if not all the time, even if it's impractical to do so. Sunglasses At Night is a trope where the glasses wearer is known for wearing their shades on even when it's nighttime, when they are fighting and in some occasions, when they are asleep. Most of these characters do it because of reason #2, but for others it is #3, or the whole thing is Hand Waved. Sometimes justified because the shades do something unusual. Other characters have enhanced senses, so they follow the first reason even at night. Many of the characters wouldn't be as recognizable without them.

A subtrope of Cool Shades and Useless Accessory. Compare to Sinister Shades. Named for, but mostly unrelated to, a song by Corey Hart.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Jamil Neate from After War Gundam X wears his signature shades while bedridden and recovering from a coma.
  • Black Lagoon. When Mr. Chang does it, it's badass. When Lotton the Wizard does it...not so much.
  • Bleach:
    • 7th squad lieutenant Iba Tetsuzaemon and the Vaizard Aikawa Love.
    • The blacksmith Nimaiya Ouetsu sports shades. He only removes them when he forges a sword, since he needs to be able to tell the color of the flames.
  • Umibozu from City Hunter. His first appearances in the manga occasionally showed him without sunglasses, but he later started wearing them all the time, even when disguised as a statue. Being almost blind, and later becoming completely blind, it doesn't affect him in the slightest, just adding to his scariness.
  • Yamaki in Digimon Tamers only has his sunglasses off for about a minute of his total screen time, if that, and is often literally wearing them at night (or indoors in a darkened room). They also function as Sinister Shades, even though he retains them after changing his mind and allying with the Tamers.
    • Satsuma (aka Samson) in Digimon Data Squad, on the other hand, is literally never seen not wearing his. He even drove at night still wearing them. It ended with a fiery car wreck of course, although the accident was not the fault of his shades.
  • Matt in Dramacon wears sunglasses for the second and third reason.
  • King Kai and Master Roshi in Dragon Ball always wear sunglasses, except when Roshi is disguised as Jackie Chun.
  • Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!! evidently sees no reason to take off his sunglasses when the sun goes down or he's off the job. Given that they're implied to be a gift from Tom, he probably just clings to them like he does his other Memento MacGuffins.
  • The three "Hunters" from Elfen Lied Bando, The Unknown Man, and The Agent. Bando's is partially justified, as he set up flash bombs on the beach, and he kept the glasses on, on the off chance he'd get into fight.
  • Scar of Fullmetal Alchemist wears them to conceal his red eyes, a sign of his Ishvalan heritage. For the same reason, Major Miles up at Briggs. That, and preventing snow-blindness.
  • Meijin Kawaguchi III from Gundam Build Fighters Try (himself an Expy of the above-mentioned Quattro) also wore his signature shades at night in one episode, moreso inside his mortorcycle helmet.
  • Bear Walken and Bunji Kugashira of Gungrave both perpetually wear sunglasses. Bear's eyes are seen just before his death in the anime, Bunji's never are.
  • Hellsing: Despite being a nocturnal vampire, Alucard is prone to his trademark shades. When we first meet him he wears those orange sunglasses of his. He also wears them in that dark basement back at Hellsing Manor.
  • Noriaki Kakyoin from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders starts wearing sunglasses 24/7 after The Geb seriously injures his eyes and he spends several arcs recovering. He still keeps them on during the final battle. Which happens naturally at night.
  • Rei-kun of Kodocha wears his sunglasses wherever he goes to show his devotion to Sana-chan, who picked him up off the street when he was homeless and made him her manager. She thinks it's cool, therefore that's what he wears.
  • Numata from The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. As it turns out, it's to honor his dowsing mentor, who told him that a man should always hide his tears. Numata tends to be overly emotional partly due to a rather crappy childhood.
  • Nanba-san of Living Game appears without her sunglasses for only two or three panels out of 100-odd chapters.
  • Michiko in Michiko & Hatchin. On one occasion, she's not only driving her scooter at night while wearing sunglasses, it's also raining to boot!
  • Prime Minister Wong in Mobile Fighter G Gundam sports a pair of these as well, and takes them off exactly once in the whole series.
  • Quattro Bajeena (Char Aznable) from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam wears his shades, even in space. In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, Char/Casval always wore sunglasses because he stole his identity from the original Char Aznable, an otherwise Identical Stranger with a different eye color. He pretends exposure to cosmic rays had damaged his eyes and left his sensitive to UV rays.
  • Shino Aburame of Naruto has never been without his sunglasses, nor has any other member of his clan. This has lead to a popular fan theory that the bugs in his body have eaten out his eyes, serve as his eyes, or have augmented them in some way.
    • Killer Bee is also always wearing sunglasses, even in his first appearance where he's coming out of a dark cave. In his earlier appearances this even led some fans to theorize that he was blind, though this was Jossed pretty quickly.
  • In Episode 11 of Neon Genesis Evangelion Gendo Ikari keeps his sunglasses on despite the fact that NERV is experiencing a station-wide blackout.
  • Tyger in Red Ash: Gearworld is always seen with his orange shades.
  • Harima from School Rumble is almost never without his shades.
    • Also, during the survival game (which takes place at night) Hanai shows up with a sunglasses, prompting several people to hang a lampshade on it. Granted, eye protection was required due to the nature of the game, but nobody said you can't just wear a visor.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
    • Kamina wore his famous orange sunglasses all the time even though he spent most of his life underground with no knowledge of the sun's existence. However, an orange-shaded visor can make it easier to see in the dark by increasing contrast, which actually makes them appropriate for wearing underground.
    • Simon sports an epic, red pair later on even though he's in outer space, in the core of a moon-sized mecha and not near any apparent natural light source.
    • Boota wears sunglasses, and he's a pig.
  • Although he's seen without them half the time, Mera from Tokyo Tribe 2 sometimes wears his sunglasses inside, outside, and at night. Sometimes he wears them so much, that his commander Buppa has to order him to take them off whenever inside.
  • Mamoru from Until Death Do Us Part; justified in that he's blind and they allow him to kind of see
  • Hom from Welcome to Room #305 never takes his sunglasses off. He wears them in bed as well.
  • Bandit Keith of Yu-Gi-Oh! doesn't take his sunglasses off even when navigating a dark cave in the Duelist Kingdom saga, something that gets made fun of in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.
  • Dark Glass of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds only takes his shades off twice, and neither of them are when he's riding his motorcycle in the dead of night.
  • Younger Togoro of YuYu Hakusho he only removes them when the fighting gets serious.

    Comic Books 
  • The Avengers: For a time, at least, Wonder Man was a case 2, wearing sunglasses so that the ionic energy constantly glowing in his eyes wouldn't freak people out. He eventually got over it.
  • Blade wears shades because his eyes are sensitive to light. He can also see in the dark, so wearing them at night is no big deal.
  • Boneyard: Ralph almost never takes off his sunglasses, even at night.
  • In Chassis, disfigured Aero-Run racer Covergirl never removes her sunglasses/visor, and is even shown to sleep in them. It is never explicitly stated, but they might have been permanently attached to her face in the extensive reconstructive surgeries she underwent following a near fatal crash.
  • Daredevil, in his civilian identity, for obvious reasons. His mentor Stick did the same, for the same reason.
  • In the Swedish comic Hälge we have Uffe. This trope gets discussed, deconstructed and lampshaded in one strip where we see him walk into trees and other stuff in the middle of the night. Apparently he wears them all the time cause he doesn't want people to see that he has friendly baby blue eyes.
  • Brains from Hunter's Hellcats wears his tinted shades at all times, even at night.
  • Justice Society of America: Charles McNider is legally blind and can only see in pitch blackness without the goggles he developed that allow him to use his infrared vision in any lighting. When he's not acting as Dr. Mid-Nite he always wears a pair of dark tinted glasses regardless of the time of day or night. The characters to take up the Dr. Mid-Nite identity after his death generally just always wear the goggles rather than switching out for sunglasses that don't let them "see" despite their blindness.
  • For no real reason, The DCU's Kid Eternity never takes off his sunglasses.
  • The epoymous character from Mr X always wears sunglasses, presumably to cover up the damage that years of drug-assisted sleep deprivation have done.
  • Pinkie briefly in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) #6, who even wears them on the moon. Rainbow is quick to tell her to take them off when she complains about not being able to see.
  • The vampire Cassidy from Preacher wears sunglasses 24/7, except during flashbacks to his human life. Towards the end of the comic's run, we find out why. He was mistakenly buried alive once, complete with his eyes being stitched shut. He had to rip those stitches out, and his eyes are permanently damaged (think discolored plus bloodshot times a hundred) as a result. Before this revelation, every time his sunglasses come off we never saw his face, but someone reacted by asking "My god, what happened to your eyes?!?"
  • The Corinthian from The Sandman (1989). Justified, in that he has tiny mouths with razor-sharp teeth where his eyes should be. We get several brief sequences from his POV in The Doll's House that include a blue tint to show this. In the second scene with him it becomes extra-clear that he's wearing sunglasses (rather than just standing in shadow) when a would-be mugger knocks them off and he has to put them back on a few panels later. Needless to say, you really shouldn't touch the shades.
  • Spider-Man's enemy Doctor Octopus. In the mini-series Spider-Man/Dr. Octopus Negative Exposure, he tells a photographer that there's a reason for this: the Freak Lab Accident that bonded his Combat Tentacles to him also made his eyes very sensitive to light. In the final issue of the mini-series, the photographer uses this knowledge to help Spider-Man defeat him. After the villain's glasses are knocked off, he aims a camera with a flash directly in his face, which blinds him long enough for the hero to clock him.
  • Spider-Man 2099: Miguel has no choice but to wear sunglasses at all hours of the day because after he obtained his powers his eyes turned red and his eyesight became extremely sensitive. While he has improved perception and reaction times that way, at times it completely backfires, as in one instance he gets temporarily blinded by fireworks.
  • Hex, from Tangent Comics, as part of his obsession with being, and being considered, cool.
  • A different Mr. X, a Wolverine villain and former member of the Thunderbolts, also wears sunglasses all day, every day. He's first encountered by his new T-Bolts teammates at a ballet performance; Paladin took care to notify him that he looked like an asshole wearing sunglasses indoors at night.
  • The Anarchist of X-Statix always wears his tinted sunglasses — always, even in a flashback to his childhood and when he's otherwise naked, like in the shower. It's implied that his eyes are overly sensitive to light, and that they're prescription.
  • Cyclops of the X-Men wears ruby-quartz sunglasses when he's in his street clothes to keep his eye beams at bay.

    Comic Strips 
  • Bloom County: It took aliens from space reversing his personality to finally get Steve Dallas to stop wearing his 24/7, and even THAT was only temporary.
  • Candorville: Clyde even wears his in bed.
  • Doonesbury:
    • Uncle Duke wears his all the time. His eyes would be pretty messed up if you saw them, for obvious reasons. This is confirmed in Duke's first appearance, where he's lying catatonic and shadesless in the guest bedroom of Zonker's parents. His eyes look pretty freaked.
    • Duke's relatively sane son Earl also wears sunglasses all the time.
  • Peanuts: Snoopy always wears a pair whenever he's in his "Joe Cool" disguise.
  • The Phantom never shows his eyes in most adaptions. If he's not in costume and wearing his mask, or in shadow, he's wearing sunglasses.
  • After his headgear and headphones were banned by the NCAA, Dave Hamper of Safe Havens started wearing sunglasses with headphones built in all the time.

    Fan Works 
  • Elliot of Calvin & Hobbes: The Series wears sunglasses in his own house, which the Lemony Narrator lampshades.
  • The worshipers of the Signless in Cultstuck wear dark glasses at all times to hide the color of their eyes (which would give away the color of their blood, and thus their former position in the hemospectrum). The glasses serve no other purpose; besides being nocturnal, they live underground.
  • Sakura in The Eyes Have It wears sunglasses all the time because her new doujutsu has made her pupils much larger, and thus more photosensitive.
  • Justified in Objective. The main villain, Bellisair, needs direct eye contact to brainwash his victims. The First League heroes rely on sunglasses or similar obstructions to protect themselves while hunting down Bellisair and finding Kotetsu, who had been brainwashed to find and kill his partner Barnaby.
  • Resident Evil Abridged: Wesker is a literal example, as he's never seen without his shades, even in the dead of night. A fact which his subordinate, Chris, snarks about twice.
    Wesker: [during perimeter check] Alright team, I want an update from each of you.
    Chris: [over comlink] Here's your update, Wesker: It's easier to see at night without sunglasses.
    Wesker: [deadpan] Right then, so Chris's update is that he's an asshole.
  • In With Strings Attached, Ringo constantly wears his fake (solid obsidian) sunglasses to hide the fact that he's walking around with his eyes closed all the time. Mostly it's just an affectation, though. And he loses the glasses when they get turned into a living creature.
  • Ghost from Yet again, with a little extra help wears these due to being blind as reason three and they allow him to read as reason four
  • Paul London of Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily always wears his white rimmed sunglasses in whatever car he and the rest of the White Gestalt enters. He first appears in the 400 Rabbits Car where the sky is always a dark shade of purple.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Dark Fury, mercenary boss Junner is wearing sunglasses in a completely artificially lit spaceship. Justified in the case of Riddick, since he's blinded by any sources of light.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Phil Coulson wears these in the opening scene of The Avengers (2012), as befitting his G-man aesthetic.
  • Babylon A.D.: The small army of Noelite goons sent to take possession of Aurora in New York all wear sunglasses as part of their outfit despite the sky being pitch-black. However, given all the neon ads everywhere, they might actually have a point there.
  • The Batman (2022): Mob boss Carmine Falcone wears tinted vintage glasses even at night or inside his dimly-lit nightclub. According to Word of God, this is his version of the mask that Batman or the Riddler wear.
  • In The Beast Must Die, Tom's helicopter pilot always wears sunglasses, even while flying the chopper at night. Probably because 'day for night' shooting was used for all of the nighttime scenes.
  • Walter Sobchak of The Big Lebowski never takes off his yellow tinted shooting glasses day or night, inside or out.
  • Blade Trilogy: Blade has trademark wraparound sunglasses as part of his fighting kit even though he hunts vampires at night. In the director's commentary of Blade II, director Guillermo del Toro states that when Blade is wearing his sunglasses, it's a visual indication that he's unbeatable.
  • In Bloody Reunion, Sun-Hee wears her sunglasses constantly, even at night, to hide the stitches from a recent eye operation.
  • The Blues Brothers is the Trope Codifier here. Jake and Elwood spend the entire movie, day and night, waking and sleeping, wearing their trademark sunglasses. They each take their glasses off only once (Elwood in a deleted scene where he needs to wear safety glasses, and Jake to give his ex the full force of his Puppy-Dog Eyes). Lampshaded near the end of the film.
    Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses.
    Jake: Hit it.
  • In Body, Mel's father wears sunglasses all the time. Towards the end of the film, Holly asks Mel why that is. Mel replies that he is still smoking weed and thinks that wearing sunglasses will stop anyone noticing that he is stoned, but all it does is make him more conspicuous.
  • In Curse of the Crimson Altar, Basil, Professor Walsh's sinister and silent chauffeur, never removes his sunglasses (save one brief moment when they are knocked off by Robert during a struggle). This includes while driving at night.
  • The killer in Desolation (2017) has a pair of orange shades that he wears until Sam takes them off, breaks them, and throws them into the fire.
  • Brick from Dollman wears sunglasses in all situations. Da Chief yells at him, "Take off those sunglasses! It's night!"
  • Invoked in The Elite Squad when Renan is told to put on shades while indoors to hide his pink eye.
  • In Frankenstein Island, Sheila Frankenstein is carrying on the family tradition by turning shipwrecked sailors into pre-programmed bloodless, black-garbed zombies who must wear sunglasses at all times to protect their weird white eyes from light.
  • In The Immortals, Billy wears a pair of sunglasses at all times, including while driving at night.
  • Most films derived from The Invisible Man include sunglasses in the disguise.
  • In Joyful Noise, Walter Hill, who has Asperger syndrome, wears sunglasses at all hours due to his sensitive eyes.
  • In Life Blood, the Sheriff never removes his sunglasses; even indoors at night.
  • In The Lookout, Bone is never seen without his Sinister Shades, even in the basement of the farmhouse or during the back robbery which takes place at night.
  • Pretty much the entire cast of The Matrix wear sunglasses when they're in the Matrix, which helps convey their detachment from the Matrix's simulated world.
  • Shades are worn by the Men in Black soldiers in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, even in poorly lit laboratories and interrogation rooms.
  • The Men in Black films explain the presense of sunglasses in The Men in Black trope by giving them a specific function: keeping them from being affected by their Neuralizers.
  • Vince in My Science Project wears sunglasses all the time. When asked why he is wearing them at night, he answers "Because when you're cool, the sun shine on you 24 hours a day."
  • Nightcrawler: Louis often wears a pair of sunglasses even though he works nights. The poster is a close-up of his sunglasses-obscured face.
  • The Italian cab driver in Night on Earth gripes about the lack of street lighting in Rome. His passenger points out he's still wearing his sunglasses.
  • Roger Thornhill in North By Northwest wears sunglasses to try and hide his face while fleeing New York after being framed for murder, including inside Grand Central Terminal.
    Ticket Agent: Something wrong with your eyes?
    Thornhill: Yes, they're sensitive to questions.
  • In Only Lovers Left Alive, vampires tend to wear sunglasses when they're out and about, apparently because their eyes can turn red when they're hungry.
  • Ouija Mummy: There's a literal example in this movie. When Paul is being driven to his brother's and sister-in-law's housewarming party by his AA support guy, the latter is wearing sunglasses at the wheel, and it's visibly nighttime outside of the car.
  • Riddick from Pitch Black wears not just sunglasses, but welding goggles, because his eyes have been altered to be super-sensitive to any light, as recounted in Escape from Butcher Bay. As a consequence, his eyeballs see things in just-next-to-total darkness in high resolution, and anything overly bright burns them.
  • Pokémon Detective Pikachu: Roger Clifford, Ms. Norman, and Lucy Stevens all wear sunglasses at night and other dark environments. The last of these is lampshaded by Tim Goodman, who points out its not even that great a disguise as it draws attention at night. However, it's justified with the first two; they are Howard Clifford's ditto, who can copy other's appearances except for its Black Bead Eyes. It has to wear the sunglasses to hide this.
  • School For Scoundrels 2006 has Billy Bob Thornton's "sensei" have his loser students do as part of their "training"; wear sunglasses all the time, day or night, inside and outside. Eventually, the main character gives up once he realizes that his mentor is full of crap and tells his friends (who keep doing that) that they look stupid.
  • Spider-Man 2: Doc Ock wears sunglasses at night both here and in his MCU appearance. Justified example, as the novelization of the film reveals that his eyes are now very light-sensitive after the fusion reactor accident.
  • The Terminator, in all of his incarnations.
    • The first one uses sunglasses to hide his damaged eye (he only wears sunglasses after it's damaged). The second one is entirely Rule of Cool. The third film plays it for laughs by having the Terminator reach into the jacket pocket of the leathers that he's procured from a male stripper only to put on a pair of ridiculous star-shaped shades. Being a Cyborg definitely helps with the vision problems normally associated with this trope.
    • The T-1000 in T2 also wears sunglasses in its motorcycle cop outfit, including scenes at night.
  • In The Thing (1982), Windows wears sunglasses at all times, until he's assaulted by Blair offscreen, where they are presumably broken. It's even hinted at that he's called Windows because he never takes them off.
  • In Underworld U.S.A., Gus always puts his sunglasses on before he kills someone. This includes the hits he carries out at night, such as Gunther and Gela.
  • The Warriors takes place over the course of a single night, and Masai, the Scary Black Man who runs The Gramercy Riffs after Cyrus is killed, wears his Sinister Shades the whole time, whether he's indoors or outdoors.
  • X-Men Film Series:

    Literature 
  • In the first Artemis Fowl book, Butler questions Artemis about why they have to wear sunglasses during their fairy kidnapping attempts at night. It makes them immune to the fairies' hypnosis powers as the sunglasses have mirrored lenses and the Mesmer won't work on strong minds without eye contact.
  • Maciek from Ashes and Diamonds; his character in The Film of the Book is one of the iconic examples of this trope, arguably one of the Trope Codifiers. Unlike many later examples, he has an in-story reason for it: his eyesight was damaged fighting for La Résistance in the Warsaw Uprising.
  • In The Discworld Almanack, the description of an upcoming roll by A'Tuin to avoid a meteor includes the question "Will I need to wear dark glasses to watch the roll?" The answer is "Only if you feel the need to wear dark glasses at night. Many people do, especially in cooler areas."
  • In the Dale Brown novel Edge of Battle it is noted that "Comandante Veracruz" wears sunglasses almost all the time.
  • In Gaunt's Ghosts novels Ezrah ap Niht wears sunglasses given to him by Varl almost all the time, even indoors.
  • Deconstructed in Geronimo Stilton and the Great Statue Caper. It starts off with Geronimo wearing sunglasses all the time to cover an embarrassing eye injury, but it catches on with his coworkers and starts a fashion trend. Of course, since sunglasses make things look dark, this leads to higher electricity consumption to power lights, which leads to higher electricity bills and eventually kicks off the plot.
  • The Locked Tomb: Gideon the Ninth: Gideon wears her Iconic aviator shades constantly, even sleeping in them at times. Justified because she grew up in a dark underground colony on a dead planet, so even the darkest parts of Canaan House are brighter than what she's used to.
  • Crowley from Good Omens. As Hastur comments, "He wears sunglasses even when he don't need to. Flash bastard." When they melt off at one point, he's revealed to have snake-like eyes.
  • Joe Pike from the books of Robert Crais wears glasses all the time including literally at night. It was seven books before we found out his eye color. This is part of his extreme stoicism and when they do come off in L.A. Requiem it's symbolic.
  • Lampooned in The Last Adventure of Constance Verity. Connie manages to beat down a group of heavily-armed Men in Black. When Harrison asks how she managed not to get shot, she retorts that it was because they were wearing sunglasses in the dark and it compromised their aim.
  • Bruce Sterling wrote an essay "Mirrorshades" about the role and meaning of glasses with mirroring lenses.
  • Mrs. Smith's Spy School For Girls: Power Play: Abby, Izumi, Charlotte, and Veronica get a ride on a boat to the spy college piloted by a man who, as Abby lampshades, is wearing sunglasses despite the fact that it's night time.
  • The Scream: The Screamers wear them to disguise their lack of eyes.
  • In William Gibson's Sprawl stories, Molly Kolodny (aka Molly Millions, Sally Shears, etc.) in Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and the short story "Johnny Mnemonic" never takes her mirrorshades off because they're actually lenses implanted into her eye sockets. When Case sees through her eyes, he notes with surprise that they don't dampen the light.
  • The main protagonist of Ben Elton's Stark, one Colin 'CD' Dobson, is constantly wearing sunglasses, even at night and when taking shot at helicopter. In a complete fluke he actually succeeds in destroying it, which was very likely not his intention.
  • Sunglasses After Dark is the first book of Nancy A. Collins' series about Sonja Blue, a light-sensitive vampire who wears just those.
  • The 1980's pulp hero John Thomas Rourke in The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern. This is due to his sensitivity to light, and he is always seen wearing his ironic aviator sunglasses on the book covers.
  • In A Confederacy of Dunces, Burma Jones is always wearing sunglasses. It's implied that they hide his bloodshot eyes, due to being perpetually stoned.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003): Romo Lampkin wears his sunglasses constantly, even in the dark corridors of Galactica. He is however a kleptomaniac lawyer who wouldn't want people to see where he's looking. Not to mention the times he finds it useful to remove them for effect (e.g., when he's interviewing Caprica Six).
  • CSI: Miami: Horatio Caine, though the main purpose seems less to avoid glare and more to put them on or take them off dramatically.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Doctor does this briefly in "The Hungry Earth". Justified in that they're night vision sunglasses. It's also not actually nighttime thanks to an opaque forcefield sealing the area off.
    • He pulls it again in "The Woman Who Lived", wearing his sonic sunglasses on a robbery after dark rather than accept the offer of a domino mask.
    • The Doctor does it a third time in "Extremis" and "The Pyramid at the End of the World", to the point that his companion Bill asks him why. This time, however, it's for a far more serious reason — he's hiding the fact that he's still blind from the events of "Oxygen".
  • Good Omens (2019): Crowley, being a demon, quite literally has snake eyes, and always wears sunglasses to hide them. He still has a tendency to lose them, so keeps several backup pairs in his glove compartment for quick replacement.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • After his transition into a vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac always sports sunglasses during the evenings when he visits his family at the mansion to hide his vampiric green irises (his eyes used to be brown when he was human).
    • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Armand wears sunglasses at nighttime to conceal his orange vampire eyes.
  • The Magician: One of the bad guys in "The Man Who Lost Himself" constantly wears sunglasses, even while creeping around a darkened hospital at night. It becomes even more ridiculous when he and his partner start shooting out the lights so they can escape.
  • The Man Show suggested doing this when walking on the street to ogle women without getting noticed.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe Netflix series:
    • Matt Murdock from Daredevil (2015) is blind, and wears sunglasses whenever he's not in his Daredevil gear. This of course doesn't obstruct his nonexistent vision at all; it's to hide his eyes from the sighted, who might find his lack of focus disturbing.
    • Hernan "Shades" Alvarez from Luke Cage (2016) tends to wear his trademark sunglasses at all times. He takes them off when he means business.
  • Clifford of The Muppets, except in Muppets Tonight. It seems likely that "classic" Clifford doesn't have eyes under the shades, so taking them off would be a bit Nightmare Fuel.
    • Fozzie also wore them one episode, after the band declared him officially hip. He spent the rest of the episode bumping into things from wearing them indoors.
  • In the Murdoch Mysteries episode "Excitable Chap", the mysterious figure known as "the Lurker" wears "shaded spectacles" to compliment his cloak and broad-brimmed hat, even though he only appears at night. It turns out he's James Pendrick, who suffered a Jekyll & Hyde reaction to a brain-tonic he'd been working on. It's not clear if this also resulted in photosensitivity, unsettling eyes, or just an ahead-of-its-time sense of coolness.
  • Played for Laughs in an episode of My Hero (2000): The crew walk down the street at night in shades. George starts to veer off to the side, and is pulled back by Tyler. He then remarks "Can't see a thing!"
  • Parodied in a Saturday Night Live skit which featured various One-Hit Wonder stars from The '80s speaking at a congressional hearing on music piracy. One of the artists was Corey Hart, wheelchair bound and badly scarred.
    Senator: Good lord, what happened to you?
    Hart: I wore my sunglasses at night, and got into a pretty serious car accident.
  • Sledge Hammer! Even the identity photograph on Hammer's badge has him wearing sunglasses!
  • Star Trek: Picard: In "Stardust City Rag", it's nighttime when Cristóbal Rios beams down to Freecloud with his Cool Shades, and he still keeps them on when he enters Bjayzl's casino and orders an Umbrella Drink from the bartender. He doesn't remove his sunglasses until he meets Mr. Vup.
  • In the fifth season Supernatural episode "Changing Channels", the main characters are trapped inside various television shows. This trope is lampshaded in a thinly veiled CSI: Miami parody:
    Sam: You gotta calm down.
    Dean: Calm down? I'm wearing sunglasses at night. You know who does that? No-talent douchebags.
  • Cameron from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles did this, though as part of a Shout-Out to the T-800 of the above films.
  • That '70s Show, Hyde only takes off his glasses when he is at the dinner table, going to bed, or it's a funeral.
  • Jeremy Clarkson wears a pair of them during his review of the Nissan GT-R in Season 11 Episode 5 of Top Gear (UK) because he had gotten "a hideous eye-infection" and didn't think the viewers would want to see it.
  • The pilot episode of the short-lived 1987 series Werewolf (1987) has the protagonist driving at night while wearing sunglasses. It's before he gets the bite, so there's no supernaturally enhanced vision in play (though at least it's on a busy, well-lit city street). The scene is even accompanied on the soundtrack by "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades" by Timbuk3.

    Music 
  • The 69 Eyes song "Gothic Girl" says that the eponymous character "loves her sunglasses after dark".
  • The Cramps' "Sunglasses After Dark" claims it's a way "to be cool in one easy lesson" - even if you can't actually see anything.
    Uh, where am I, by the way?
  • The aptly titled Corey Hart's song "Sunglasses at Night". According to the song's co-producer Phil Chapman, Corey first wrote the song while he was recording his debut album, and he observed the control room personnel wearing sunglasses to shield their eyes from the air conditioning that was blowing directly into their faces, as the vents were situated above the mixing console.
  • Roy Orbison became famous for his shades when he lost his regular glasses on a airplane just before a concert and his only other pair of correctives were his dark lensed ones, so he had to perform with them. The image of him in his dark glasses subsequently stuck.
  • Ed Sheeran uses this in the song "New Man" as one of the reasons to mock the ex-girlfriend's douchey new boyfriend: "He wears sunglasses indoors, in winter, at nighttime".
  • Soul Asylum's "April Fool":
    Night driving without headlights,
    Wearin' sunglasses too.
    Lookin' good but sure don't feel right,
    Anything to be cool.
  • Tom Waits' "Burma Shave" from Foreign Affairs. It turns out to be a bad idea, at least when driving.

    Sports 
  • Canadian figure skater Nicolas Nadeau evoked this trope by sporting sunglasses while he performed to Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" for his exhibition number during the 2019-2020 competitive season, and nighttime is suggested by the darkened arena. He jokingly posted on Instagram his character's motivation for covering his eyes when it's dark.
    Nicolas Nadeau: Boobs are like the sun. Ok to look, dangerous to stare. But that's what sunglasses are for.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Drow from the d20 Modern Urban Arcana setting have a habit of wearing sunglasses all the time, because they protect their dark adapted eyes from bright lights. While they don't protect against gaze attacks, light sources such as floodlights are much more common in the modern age.
  • The Drow from Dungeons & Dragons have created the Smoke Goggles, which are basically very effective sunglasses. They protect both from sunlight (as drow suffer from light blindness due to their dark adapted eyes) and gaze attacks (giving a +5 save bonus against them), but heavily penalize perception of non-drow.

    Theatre 
  • Phil from The Shape of Things wears sunglasses on the top of his head constantly. His fiancé, after having broken up with him, comments: "And Phil? You don't really need sunglasses at night."

    Video Games 
  • Alpha Protocol: Mike Thorton can wear opt to wear sunglasses on any mission, at any time of the day. Most of them take place during the daytime, but a few happen at night, notably the airfield during Desert Shield, the infiltration of Marburg's villa in Deus Vult, and just about every mission in Moscow save the train yard.
  • John Crawley and Mr. Big from Art of Fighting both go into battle with their sunglasses on. They would come off only when the opponent knocked them off their face.
    • In Mr. Big's The King of Fighters appearances, the glasses stay intact throughout the battle, as with Clark and Choi. In KOF: '98, Clark actually puts his glasses on before the match.
  • Rash from Battletoads, he even wears them in OUTER SPACE.
  • BUCK: Saturday Morning Cartoon Apocalypse: Buck always has his sunglasses on, even when it's dark and raining.
  • Captain Commando is always seen with sunglasses, always. He even transforms into superhero by putting on a pair of sunglasses over another pair.
  • Boss, the bartender from Catherine wears them to hide his unusual red eyes, which also are a mark of his true identity — Thomas Mutton, the man giving Vincent nightmares.
  • Clarence's Big Chance: If you get the promotion, Clarence changes into a swanky business suit, complete with sunglasses.
  • Default Dan: Player Character Dan is always seen with his shades.
  • Lampshaded in Deus Ex:
    Anna Navarre: My new partner, JC Denton. Don't tell me you're going to wear those sunglasses during a night operation.
    JC Denton: My vision is augmented.
    Gunther Hermann: Better to look good than to have distractions of another agent who needs backup.
    • They also hide his Glowing Eyes, which are the only visible sign of his augmentations.
    • Coincidentally, there's a very infamous "anti-walkthrough" (how to completely take apart the game in normal play) for Deus Ex called Sunglasses at Night.
    • Deus Ex: Human Revolution continues the tradition, going so far as to have sunglasses one of Adam Jensen's augmentations. One possible NPC response is "Nice sunglasses, but it's night time, you dig?"
      • The glasses actually provide his digetic heads-up display, while also providing things like flash compensation to prevent being blinded by flashbangs. Once they're activated at the beginning of the game, he only takes them off twice: once during The Missing Link DLC (when his augmentations are disabled by an EMP chair) and once when he meets Megan Reed towards the end of the game. Otherwise, they stay on the whole time, which makes sense since his CASIE social augmentation projects information on his glasses for non-combat situations, and combat information is available at all other times.
  • In Disco Elysium, the local pawnbroker Bird's Nest Roy wears sunglasses all the time he mans the counter in his dimly lit pawn shop. He turns out to have a practical reason for it, namely that his trying to hide his eyes, which are yellow and bloodshot from his addiction to the psychedelic drug pyrholidon.
  • Duke Nukem: the titular Duke.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Ryo is never apart from his sunglasses, donning and doffing them to punctuate his dramatics. Not even nighttime disqualifies their use.
  • Fallout 3: The sunglasses give your perception stat a bonus regardless of when they're worn, encouraging this trope. There is even a mod that gives the player a perk that causes all sunglasses to grant a massive charisma bonus, but only at night, with Rule of Cool serving as an in-game justification.
  • Not only does the Duck King from Fatal Fury wears his glasses in battle and at night, but he changes to a new pair for each new costume he wears. Cheng Sinzan also sports shades in battle after his initial game appearance.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Rude from Final Fantasy VII. In The Movie sequel, when his glasses are knocked off and cracked, he simply reaches into his jacket and pulls out another pair.
      • In the Remake in addition to Rude retaining this feature Barret is now shown to wear a pair of sunglasses in battle and the majority of situations which is a new addition he did not have the original game. This seems to be partially to give himself a "tougher" looking appearance as Barret is shown to have surprisingly kind and friendly looking eyes underneath in the few times he takes them off.
    • Auron from Final Fantasy X fits in the classes 2 and 3. Interesting in that they're merely spectacles instead of the common wraparounds. Doesn't detract from the cool factor, though.
    • Lightning from Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is wearing sunglasses in the opening mission in Yusnaan. It’s pitch black outside save for the red lightning storm going on.
    • Nero tol Scaeva of Final Fantasy XIV starts wearing sunglasses by the time of the Stormblood expansion. He is first shown wearing them at night, in the middle of a lightning storm, apparently for no other reason than to dramatically pull them off in front of his rival Cid.
  • Damnd/Thrasher from Final Fight.
  • Sissel (actually Yomiel) in Ghost Trick always wears sunglasses, even though the game takes place entirely during the night. Justified because he's a ghost (so they don't hinder his vision), and because he saw the body he thought was his wearing sunglasses — being a cat, he likely didn't know what those black things on the face were. With Yomiel, it's probably just because of Rule of Cool.
  • Ryder in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas never removes his trademark sunglasses regardless what time of day it is, and therefore his eyes are never revealed. Woozie on the other hand is a more justified example, as he is revealed to be blind.
  • Johnny of the Guilty Gear series wears sunglasses even when he fights.
  • Heavy Rain: Norman Jayden wears his high-tech, crime-scene-analyzing sunglasses indoors and at night.
  • Speaking of Wesker, there's Goldman from House of the Dead.
  • Ian's Eyes: Ian wears sunglasses due to his being blind.
  • Cole's best friend Zeke from inFAMOUS always wears sunglasses as part of his static model. This actually undergoes Gameplay and Story Integration in the second game, as he's hiding his face so Cole can't work out Zeke has caught the plague.
  • Karen Sees: Bob is revealed to be wearing these in the end-game cutscene, despite the fact he's a night guard.
  • The Final Boss of Kirby's Adventure, Nightmare, wears a pair of purple Cool Shades, and his battle takes place on the moon.
  • Mega Man (Classic): Proto Man has never removed his sunglasses/visor, in-game or out. The same applies to his Ruby-Spears and .EXE counterparts. (If one piece of art from 8 is to be believed, he even wears shades under his helmet's visor.)
    • Which is lampshaded by various webcomics like Bob and George all the time.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Kazuhira Miller from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker wears his aviator sunglasses every day, even during a thunderstorm. In addition, Miller wore them in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake's rereleases, and in Metal Gear Solid (although that was actually Liquid Snake disguised as Miller). In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, during the night, when Snake reaches Kaz after he's been tortured and amputated, Snake hands Kaz his sunglasses, which he then proceeds to wear.
    • In Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Marionette Owl wore sunglasses even in places not appropriate (such as indoors during a blackout). It's justified in his case, however, as he was born with a mutant gene that allows him to see in the dark on par with an owl, and its hinted that his eyes as a result of the mutation shine in the dark, thus necessitating eyewear that masks the eyes.
  • Miscreated: You can put sunglasses on your character.
  • The Boy with Sunglasses from Mitadake High always wears them. Technically it's always night, but the lights inside the school are on unless someone cuts the power...
  • Sam Burston, one of the punks of Mitsumete Knight, wears a pair of sunglasses at all times. The only time you can see him without them is when you beat him in a one-on-one duel: he'll be shown all battered and with his sunglasses broken.
  • Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat, was always known for his $500 sunglasses, but starting with MK Trilogy, he stopped taking them off before a battle.
  • The point-and-click adventure game Nightlong Union City Conspiracy takes place entirely at night, and the protagonist Joshua Reev wears sunglasses the whole time. He takes them off at the end of the game, just as the sun is rising (though we don't get to see his eyes).
  • Night Trap has Tony playing this trope straight. At least one character puts a Lampshade Hanging on it by mentioning how strange it is that he wears sunglasses at night. Tony wears them to cover up the fact that his eyes glow green - which is something that vampires in this game have.
  • Lampshaded in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door with regards to underground Koopas.
  • Guido Kandori from Persona 2. He has reasons.
    • Another Persona 2 example is Baofu. Another justified example because he's trying to avoid detection by the Chinese mafia
  • Pokémon:
    • Blake Hall from Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia wears them in the middle of the night...on the roof of a several-hundred-foot-tall building while standing close to the edge. Smart guy.
    • Played almost literally in Pokémon Gold and Silver when you meet a man wearing sunglasses in the middle of Dark Cave (which requires using Flash to navigate through).
  • Johnny Smiles from Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney does this for reason #3. Apparently the cool factor overrides the safety issues that may arise from wearing shades while patrolling a dark ship at night.
    Phoenix: W-wait a minute! You were wearing sunglasses?
    Smiles: Yeah! What's a security guard without a pair of shades? These babies are a part of me.
  • Sasha Nein of Psychonauts. This serves to cement his "cool secret agent" look and emphasize his emotional separation from everybody. Fandom has speculated that he's photosensitive.
  • Resident Evil:
    • Wesker in all of his appearances, but from Resident Evil – Code: Veronica onward, he has a reason.note  Perhaps the most ridiculous use is when flashbacks and pictures shows him wearing them in the lab—perhaps as a form of eye protection? Even before he injects his virus, he chooses to wear shades in a foggy nighttime forest and rather dark mansion.
    • In Resident Evil 5, this ends up helping Sheva and Chris defeat him, as they simply turn the lights in the arena off and shoot him when he starts having trouble seeing them.
    • Ada in the Resident Evil 2 (Remake) wears sunglasses even though the entirety of the game takes place over night. She's trying to conceal her identity since she's a spy.
  • Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog always wears those little blue glasses that hide his eyes for no apparent reason... even on dimly lit space colonies. Maybe they're for protection, right? No, he sometimes covers them up with big black safety goggles — he apparently builds his robots by hand sometimes. In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), at least, Eggman's glasses serve as micro-computer screens for the Doctor.
  • Enemy Octolings from Splatoon 2 sport a suspicious pair of shades in all encounters, even when sanitized. Bisk, the owner of Shella Fresh, is also constantly wearing sunglasses.
  • Roy Koopa from Super Mario Bros. was actually named for his ever present sunglasses ("Roy" as in "Roy Orbison").
  • In Team Fortress 2, the Sniper always wears his amber colored tinted shades everywhere, the Engineer always wears welding goggles, the Pyro always wears a gas mask with tinted eye sockets, and other classes have cosmetics that include sunglasses, including the infamous shuttered shades called "Dangeresque, Too?", which are part of the so-called "Demopan" setup.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines:
    • Bail bondsman Arthur Kilpatrick wears sunglasses indoors at night, possibly as part of his effort to hang on to some residual coolness from his days as a Bounty Hunter. He's a little bit too far gone to seed to pull it off.
    • Beckett the Badass Bookworm vampire wears dark sunglasses at night. Justified since he has animalistic red eyes, which he needs to hide in order to protect the Masquerade.

    Web Animation 
  • Cortez from The Leet World. During a challenge battle set at night, Ahmad asks the nearly-blind terrorist why he doesn't take his sunglasses off. His response? "I do not need my eyes to kill a man."
  • In the Strong Bad Email "the bet", Homestar Runner manages to win the eponymous bet and prove to Strong Bad that he can "be's cool" by putting on sunglasses at night and saying "'Sup?" Strong Bad is impressed enough that he reluctantly admits Homestar won.
  • Video Game Championship Wrestling:
    • Johnny Cage and Duke Nukem are part of the roster, and keep their shades firmly in place at all times. VGCW airs each week at 11 PM GMT, and broadcasts out of the UK.
    • Proto Man's visor never comes off, either.
    • Guile wears his shades as well, except when actually wrestling.

    Webcomics 
  • A variation in Air Force Blues: Barbie is revealed to have been wearing his aviator shades under his helmet visor. Thus, he manages to invoke this trope in broad daylight. It's a shame that he couldn't see that parked generator cart on the flightline.
  • Shadehawk of Antihero for Hire. His Mission Control Gadgeteer Genius had to make him light-amplificating shades. He insisted, because they look cool.
  • Axe Cop, as well as Flute Cop (and all his incarnations), Ralph Wrinkles, Wexter, and Telescope Gun Cop.
  • Just like Proto Man, Bob from Bob and George wears shades all the time, with or without his helmet.
    • Proto Man did show his eyes once, in "The Aftermath of X". His mind had been switched with Mega Man's due to Mega Man X's wireless router, so he took his sunglasses back from Mega Man until they could be switched back (so it's actually Mega Man, in Proto Man's body, that's not wearing them, except for one panel immediately after they switch back).
    • Bob, being a Proto Man recolor, is never seen without his shades in sprite form, and is usually partially or completely on fire in the hand-drawn comics (except for the 7th anniversary party, though fire was still involved).
  • Cosmic Dash: Marken only takes off his shaded goggles when it's both dark and indoors. Other astro-moles are hardly seen without shades either, since as a species they're highly sensitive to light. Indoor lighting is enough to dazzle Mark.
  • Komi from Darken is a Drow, so his eyes are very sensitive to light. But when asked why he doesn't take his shades off at night, he confesses they are prescription.
  • Black Monday Blues of Dead Winter is almost never seen without his iconic red shades. In one moment his shades are knocked off and crushed but he simply reaches into his coat and takes out another pair.
  • Freefall: Practically everyone in the science outpost wears sunglasses indoors, mostly because one of the occupants actually can't help beating up anyone making eye contact.
  • Liliane in Frivolesque is never seen without a pair of sunglasses on. They kinda fit seeing as she's the head of some secret agency, but she also keeps them on when she's casually hanging out with her sister and friends.
  • In A Girl and Her Fed all those who have brain implants wear sunglasses all the time, since said implants make them very sensitive to light.
  • Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer! of Girl Genius.
    • He has taken them off on one occasion, though that story may not likely be canon.
    • That one may not be canon, but this one is.
  • In Grrl Power, Deus calls out a Homeland Security agent for doing this.
  • Dave Strider in Homestuck, as well as his brother, his post-Scratch version, his post-Scratch player counterpart Dirk, and his troll maybe-girlfriend Terezi all wear shades constantly. Terezi at least has the excuse that she's blind.
    • There is an explanation for the Striders, too. Their puppet L'il Cal is a Soul Jar for Lord English. Anyone who looks into its eyes is possessed by him.
  • As literal Men in Black, Agent Ben and Agent Jerry in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! are never without their shades. This does have the regrettable effect of making them look like the Blues Brothers.
  • Rudy Dewclaw, Kevin & Kell. After being told of a night hunting competition in total darkness, Rudy's teammates all wonder why he is wearing sunglasses (To be fair, though, it's implied that even Rudy's teammates are unable to see anything).
  • Johnny Danger of Legostar Galactica.
  • Mac Hall: Ian wears prescription sunglasses, albeit green-lensed ones. It sure makes finding the male toilets in a darkened cinema an interesting experience.
  • Erik the Long-Haired Pretty Boy in Ménage à 3 and Sticky Dilly Buns rarely takes his shades off, even at night or during sex.
  • Kazu Ito in Mitadake Saga wears sunglasses (his alias is The Boy With Sunglasses) despite being trapped in a high school. Although it -is- night outside, it's sort of irrelevant.
  • Paranatural: Mr. Spender, a teacher who wears sunglasses in class. And while driving at night. And when going to sleep. In fact, he has never been shown without them on. Justified: they're his tool and the source of his light powers. Furthermore, the spirit inside the glasses is the only thing keeping the shadow spirit in Spender's body contained. And even further, it hides the fact that his eyes have become pools of a strange black liquid.
  • Brent Sienna from PvP. When he gets a head injury in one story, the bandages get put on over his sunglasses. He finally takes them off, for one panel, at the altar when he married Jade. He puts them back on afterward, saying he hadn't seen unfiltered daylight in a decade.
    • Apparently they were perscription since he's recently started wearing regular glasses.
  • Shilo from Rhapsodies
  • Cammi the limo driver in Sandra on the Rocks appears to have her shades permanently attached, again even during sex. She does take them off to shower, but then she just wears an equally dark pair of swimming goggles instead.
  • Slick from Sinfest never takes his off, even at the request of the girl he's pursued for the entire life of the comic.
    • He finally does take them off, but by then she had already stormed off when his back was turned.
  • Riff from Sluggy Freelance never takes his off.
  • Tom Mustaine from Soul Symphony wears shades all the time, even in school. It's mostly to make him feel more cool and intimidating.
  • In Undead Friend Wylie is almost never seen without his iconic sunglasses. He puts them on first thing in the morning and even wears them at night.
  • Mia from Unintentionally Pretentious is blind but has relatively normal-looking eyes, and tends to wear sunglasses only when she's out and about by herself because she simply doesn't look blind enough without a cane or guide dog at hand.

    Web Original 
  • Agent Henry, from the Web Serial Novel Curveball, wears sunglasses at all times. That's more of a courtesy to others, though, as his gaze removes the ability to lie in any way.
  • Not Always Right has this story, about a woman who goes into a restaurant at night wearing pink sunglasses. And then she orders chicken.

    Web Videos 
  • The eponymous Boris of Life of Boris is always seen wearing large aviator or wraparound shades to conceal his eyes, as part of his gimmick as The Faceless even though he's visibly on camera most of the time.
  • Lucy in lonelygirl15 wears sunglasses even when it's dark and when she's fighting.
  • SaG, the weirdly named host and reviewer of Movie Rehab, never seems to take off his sunglasses and you can even see that in some of his videos he's wearing those sunglasses at night.
  • The Necro Critic is a Caustic Critic who is characterized by his sunglasses. When he read a viewer comment in his Sleepwalkers review, he put on a pair of reading glasses over his sunglasses.
  • Kitboga is a scambaiter who wears sunglasses almost all the time during his streams in order to conceal his identity. Since some of the streams take place at night, this applies here, as well as more generally the fact that he is pretty much always shown wearing them.

    Western Animation 
  • The Batman: Worse-than-he-thinks-he-is Detective Cash Tankinson wears sunglasses at night. And speaks in third person. Detective Yin at one point starts hanging lampshades all over the place. The Joker even nicknames the guy "Detective Shades".
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Nothing to Fear", Bruce Wayne goes to visit his parents' graves at night, and apparently just for the extra added Film Noir factor he's wearing a pair of round dark glasses when he does so.
  • Danny Dingo's biggest trademark in Blinky Bill are his sunglasses which he wears most of the time.
  • Numbuh One from Codename: Kids Next Door. In one episode, Lizzie took his glasses so she could lead the team. When she realized she was in over her head, he was about to take over, but it just didn't seem right... Then she gave him back the glasses and then everything was right.
  • Judy Funnie from Doug is rarely seen without her shades on. She does take them off sometimes, but not often.
  • In Futurama: Bender's Big Score, Bender goes back in time to terminate Fry. When he puts on sunglasses before leaving, his reasoning is "It's really bright in the past."
  • Agent Six of Generator Rex, as part of his The Men in Black-esque outfit. They've come off maybe once or twice (and probably just the once) over the course of the entire series, and by the point where they do, it's far enough into the series that it's almost shocking to see him remove them, even though his eyes are perfectly fine underneath them.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
    • The three main Dreadnoks Torch, Buzzer, and Ripper are never seen without their sunglasses for no real reason.
    • General Hawk is always seen wearing sunglasses in the second season of the DiC Entertainment continuation.
  • Gravity Falls: Sheriff Blubs keeps his sunglasses on even during a late-night raid.
  • Chow in Jackie Chan Adventures. It's believed they're prescription glasses.
  • Johnny Bravo. His eyes have never been seen on the show, unless you count when he had Velma's glasses on. In one old "coming up next" message, the narrator joked that it was to hide his case of pink eye from the ladies.
  • Alexander Cabot from Josie and the Pussycats was seldom seen without sunglasses.
  • Dale Gribble from King of the Hill practically wears his sunglasses as frequently as he wears his orange hat.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: One of Dr. Caballeron's mooks always wears sunglasses.
  • PAW Patrol: In "Pups in a Fog", Captain Turbot dons a pair of sunglasses. Justified because he was preparing to turn on a lighthouse beacon.
  • In The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show, a group of tiny villains are pursued by Plastic Man's team and they have rendered a Majah Raja unconscious. To hide that, they manipulate their victim like a puppet to tell Plas and his friends that everything is alright and are forced to cover his closed eyes with sunglasses to hide them. They are fooled for a few seconds until Plas remembers a few seconds after leaving that he noticed the sunglasses being worn at night in that dimly lit room.
  • In The Simpsons, Disco Stu always wears disco glasses.
  • Officer Barbrady in South Park.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Garnet maintains her mirrored glasses in any lighting, only removing them in a few circumstances. They cover up a Third Eye, making the few moments when she does lose her glasses much more surprising.
    • Buck Dewey always wears sunglasses regardless of the time of day, and practically the only time we saw him without it was because they fell of when a monster beat him into submission.
    • Peridot's green visor isn't dark-shaded, but she still wears it at all times (which one piece of staff art pointed out should make it hard for her to see colors). It's worn so tight to her face, it's possible she formed it around her head in such a way that she can't take it off, since Peridot can't shapeshift without regenerating her whole body. Her second form replaces the visor with Triangular Shades, and though she wears those at all times, she does take them off once.
  • While monitoring the Autobots in Transformers: Cybertron, Colonel Franklin and his goons wear sunglasses. At night. While looking through the tinted windows of their car.
  • We Bare Bears: In "Hot Sauce", part of Ice Bear's disguise for the raid is a pair of sunglasses. He complains "Ice Bear can't see anything."
  • Mr. Rotter and Enzo in Wheel Squad.
  • In the first episode of X-Men: Evolution, Duncan invokes this trope by name on the aforementioned Cyclops.

    Real Life 
  • The director's commentary track for The Matrix notes that sunglasses are often used in action movies to hide the fact that most actors often are not actually experienced gunfighters and tend to blink frequently when shooting firearms due to the muzzle flash.
  • Bono from U2, but his are prescription. He once said in an interview that the glasses are partly because camera flashes hurt his eyes, partly for privacy and partly Rule of Cool. In 2014, he went further and said that he suffers from glaucoma and the glasses are to reduce further damage.
  • Johnny Depp wears frames with blue-tinted lenses even at night and inside. This is because he has severe vision problems and the lenses are specially tuned to help him use the sight he has in his right eye while being more or less blind in his left.
  • Ray Charles's and Stevie Wonder's are both because some blind people have eyes that are disturbing to sighted people.
  • John Kay from Steppenwolf is legally blind. Bright light hurts his eyes/what's left of his vision, so they have a practical use.
  • There are differing stories around Roy Orbison wearing sunglasses at all hours:
    • One is that he'd lost his regular frames and only had his prescription sunglasses to fall back on and decided to stick with it after seeing people liked how he looked.
    • Another is that he had very bad stage fright and the tinted lenses helped his nerves as he couldn't see the audience.
    • Another is that he simply didn't like being seen wearing his glasses in public so he took to wearing prescription sunglasses all the time instead. He must have really hated contacts.
  • Rocky Sharpe of Rocky Sharpe and the Replays likes to begin his routine by taking off a pair of sunglasses, revealing another pair of sunglasses.
  • Canadian DJ Chris Sheppard. Put it this way - you actually have a better chance of catching Bono without his shades.
  • Tommy Wiseau. He wears shades all the time in all the presentations of The Room (2003) (presumably he also watches the movie with them on), and to all the interviews.
  • When amber sunglasses became commonplace for the second time in the 1980s, one aspect of their marketing was to suggest that they could be beneficial for night driving, as, rather than darkening the wearer's field of view, they worked by reducing glare and improving contrast, which might prove helpful when driving under the irregular lighting conditions of city lights. Amber lenses distort color far more than other kinds, which would be less noticeable and problematic under mostly-monochromatic nighttime conditions.
  • Trope Namer Corey Hart wears his sunglasses at night, so he can keep track of the visions in his eyes. Later subverted: he started avoiding being seen wearing sunglasses under any conditions, because he wanted to be known for more than that one song (seemingly the only song of his anyone outside his native Canada knows).
  • Keiji Haino; there are few, if any, photos of him without the ubiquitous shades.
  • The former NFL quarterback Jim McMahon is never seen without sunglasses. Even during games he wore a tinted visor on his helmet — perhaps the first quarterback to do so — leading to the nickname "Darth Vader". His right eye is sensitive to light due a childhood accident when he tried to remove a rubber band from a toy gun with a fork.
  • Former Miami Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano also wears sunglasses all the time due to getting fryer grease splashed in his eyes while he was a cook during his teens. It left him totally blind for a month.
  • Keiji Fujiwara has become somewhat infamous for being able to read his lines in the dark while wearing shades. Never mind that he looks absolutely sharp.
  • Many people with albinism, due to their increased sensitivity to light.
  • Another medical example is photophobia; despite its suffix it's not a psychological fear of light, but a condition of increased physical sensitivity to light which can make standard light levels painful. It can result in wearing sunglasses all the time, when symptoms are especially bad. This affects people like David Spade and Kara Swisher, especially when they need to be on set and under stage lights.
    • Similarly, migraine sufferers may elect to wear sunglasses all the time (including indoors) to help mitigate their light sensitivity.
  • Cataract surgery can induce a temporary version of this, as the cataract blocks a large percentage of light entering the eye. When the cataract is removed, the increase in light input causes some discomfort in sun and bright indoor light until the eye adjusts. Eye doctors commonly issue massive, wrap-around sunglasses to post-op cataract patients to protect their eyes until this adjustment occurs.
  • Quite a few poker players take to wearing sunglasses so that other people can't see where they're looking, as that could be a tell at what they have. One of the more interesting pairs of sunglasses is Greg Raymer's "Monster Eye" shades, famously worn during his 2004 WSOP World Championship win.
  • While his aren't ubiquitous (the picture on his trope page shows him without them), Shin-ichiro Miki seems to wear them whenever he's around his Weiß Kreuz cast mates. This includes both inside during their interviews for the DVD extras and during their nighttime concerts.
  • French rapper and singer Gims is always seen with his sunglasses. This is done deliberately to stay anonymous enough to not be bothered when walking outside.
  • The late Stan Lee used to wear sunglasses all the damn time. Why? Apparently, he saw it in a movie when he was younger and it looked cool.
  • Dwayne Johnson, better known as "The Rock", does this from time to time.
  • Filipino celebrity Randy Santiago wears shades all the time 'cause he has an eye defect. Or rather, because of a classmate poking a pencil in his eye that made the defect worse.
  • The United States Secret Service goes for the Sinister Shades look on purpose, to discourage anyone from messing with their "protectees". They also do it so they can stare at someone without being noticed, i.e. no one knows where they are looking.
  • Toshi, vocalist of X Japan, never, ever takes his off nowadays.
  • Since the 90s, Ringo Starr wears sunglasses all the time.
  • The late Joey Ramone. There are around four pictures of him without them and absolutely no video footage. They appeared to be perscription glasses, though, as they were quite thick and you could see his eyes reflected onto them from some angles, so it's likely he had poor eyesight but just didn't want regular glasses.
  • Animator Yoshinori Kanada was known to wear a pair at all times even while animating.
  • Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople fame wears sunglasses while performing at indoor venues.
  • Pro Wrestler Sting usually wears sunglasses in public when he's not painted-up.
  • The late Richard Belzer always wore either sunglasses or strongly tinted eyeglasses to the point of seeing his own eyes were rare.
  • A rather funny case with Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada. Originally, he was asked to do this in order to promote Street Fighter X Tekken, by serving as the "villain" to then-producer of Street Fighter Yoshinori Ono. After all was said and done, he became so heavily associated with his Cool Shades that he started doing it for real, to the point where they have now reached Iconic Item status for him.
  • Synthwave musician LAU, AKA Laura Fares, is rarely seen without her signature "Coke bottle" sunglasses.
  • Professional bowling legend Pete Weber is known for wearing sunglasses during all television appearances, as all the extra lighting needed for the cameras hurts his eyes and causes headaches.
  • Wearing glasses with reactive lenses can sometimes cause this effect when the light level changes suddenly. It's unlikely but not impossible that sufficiently powerful artificial lights could cause a literal version under the right circumstances, albeit only for a few seconds.
  • Aside from some early proto-appearances, Andy Kaufman's Alter-Ego Acting persona Tony Clifton always wore large dark sunglasses in all settings by way of concealing his true identity...which became particularly useful when Kaufman had to hand off the persona to other people (such as his brother or partner-in-pranks Bob Zmuda). For those not in the know about Tony's true identity, the glasses just came off as typical of a Lounge Lizard.
  • The late Mitch Hedberg usually wore sunglasses and his hair in his face while performing to combat his well-known stage fright.


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