Red Eyes Take Warning / Live-Action TV

• Angel: Lorne's got red eyes because he's a demon, but he's a gentle soul who's pretty sweet and fun company.
• The second Vorlon Ambassador in Babylon 5 has a red light in the "head" of his encounter suit, compared to the original Kosh's green. He's a much, much nastier person.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): Cylons. The single red eye sweeping from side to side of their visor makes up a great deal of the Centurions' and Raiders' intimidation factor. Strangely, the only time we see a humanoid Cylon's eyes flash red, it's Sam Anders, one of the good ones.
• The Boys (2019): Homelander's eyes flash red when he's angry, and it's usually a cue that he's about to laser someone. He's also the main villain of the series.
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode "Space Vampire". The Vorvon's eyes glow red when it's using its Mind Control powers on a victim.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The Master has red eyes, even though vampires usually have yellow eyes.
  • After Tara is killed, Willow looks up, and her eyes are glowing red. It's even lampshaded/foreshadowed by the episode's title, "Seeing Red".
  • Red eyes are possessed by the First Evil's briefly-seen true form.
  • The comics show a new breed of vampires. They are much more powerful than the old breed because they are not only much stronger, but are also immune to sunlight. And while the breed of the old vampires, almost always have yellow eyes, the new vampires have red eyes.
• Charmed (1998): Used on Inspector Rodriguez to confirm him as an upper-level demon.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Robots of Death", the eponymous robots' eyes are filled with red static when they prepare to kill.
  • "The Curse of Fenric": Those possessed by Fenric gained blood-red eyes, but only after they had faded from their initial shade of dark green.
  • "The Unquiet Dead": When the Gelth reveal their true colours as being hostile, the one speaking through Gwyneth changes from blue to red, starting with the eyes.
  • When the usually-placid Ood get red eyes, it's a bad sign, though we later learn there's more to it than meets the, well, eye:
    • "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit": They've been possessed by an entity claiming to be Satan.
    • "Planet of the Ood": Random Ood at Ood Operations are getting "red-eye" and killing employees with their translator balls out of anger at the way they've been treated. The red eyes simply mean they're drawing on the telepathic field that connects them.
    • "The End of Time": Played with. This time, they're not getting violent, they're warning the Doctor that "The End of Time itself" is imminent. The elder Ood's eyes take on the red glow when showing the Doctor visions of the future. He's drawing on the Ood's psychic network to do it, which is in fact the true meaning of the red eyes. Before, it had been hijacked by the "devil", while later it let the occasional Ood overcome the slave programming and fight back against the real villains. We see the red-eye mode in its totally non-dangerous natural form in "The End of Time". Russell T. Davies, showrunner at the time, actually considered "glowing red eyes = evil" to be a played-out cliché, so it's no surprise he didn't play it straight..
    • "The Doctor's Wife" averts it: The House's Ood servant Nephew is possessed by it, and dangerous, but his eyes glow green instead.
  • Also from "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", the only human that "Satan" managed to possess also gained blood-red eyes while the Beast was in control.
  • The Siren from "The Curse of the Black Spot" turns not only her eyes, but the rest of her projected body from green to red when anyone gets between her and her victims.
  • "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror": Most of the Skithra have glowing red eyes, which is the main signifier of their alien nature for those disguised as humans.
  • "Revolution of the Daleks": The Defence Drone Daleks' eyes turn red once the army of mutants cloned from the Reconnasaince Scout Dalek are unleashed and take control of their new casings. Not only that but they also shoot red lasers instead of the traditional blue.
• On Farscape, if a Delvian's eyes turn red, be moving in the other direction. It means they're going insane.
• In The Flash (2014), Eobard Thawne a.k.a. the Reverse-Flash can make his eyes glow red, coupled with a menacing Voice of the Legion. Similarly, other speedster villains have coloured eyes as well, such as Zoom's black eyes or Savitar's light blue eyes.
• Game of Thrones: Euron Greyjoy's personal flag is the Greyjoy kraken sigil but with a red eye emblazoned across it.
• Gilligan's Island episode "The Pigeon". The castaways run into a Black Morning Spider. It's six feet long, weighs 500 lbs. and has red eyes.
• Grimm:
  • We've seen Monroe's eyes turn red when he's upset, but not ready to go full Game Face in that situation. On the other hand Blutbaden have this as a species trait as their eyes turn red with their Game Face.
  • In the episode "Love Sick", after an enchanted Hank has sex with Adalind (a Hexenbiest), his sclera turns red, meaning that he's reached the point that only a drastic solution would save him.
• In House of Anubis, once someone becomes a sinner, they obtain red eyes when they are feeling particularly "evil". It's merely for a second.
• Darien Fawkes of The Invisible Man isn't evil, but he's prone to states of psychosis induced by the invisibility-causing gland in his brain; when he starts to flip out, his eyes go red. But when he gets to the point of no return, his eyes turn silver.
• Kamen Rider
  • Inverted with Kamen Rider Kuuga: Kuuga's Ultimate Form having red eyes is a good thing, since it shows that Yusuke is in full control. When they turn black, however, that's when you should start running.
  • In the Bonus Episode Kamen Rider Ryuki, the Evil Counterpart of Kamen Rider Agito appears identical to Agito's Burning Form only red eyes as opposed to the usual yellow.
  • Similar to black-eyed Kuuga, in Kamen Rider OOO, Eiji's eyes turning purple (whether he's transformed into OOO or not) is a sign that the Purple Core Medals have taken over and he's about to go berserk.
  • Kamen Rider Fourze's Big Bad was initially known as "The Red-Eyed Man", even in official in promotional materials, before they revealed his true identity: Mitsuaki Gamou, the chairman of the high school attended by all the heroes.
  • In Kamen Rider Wizard, Haruto enters his Underworld and meets his Inner Phantom, WizarDragon, who in the Underworld appears identical but with flashing red eyes, representing the danger of Haruto falling to despair, allowing Dragon to replace him, at least until Dragon does a Heel–Face Turn and becomes the Hope Bringer.
  • In Kamen Rider Gaim, a human's eyes will flash red as they transform into an Inves. This happens to Ryoji Hase as the Hekija Inves and eventually to Kouta himself due to the influence of the Kiwami Lockseed, only in this case this leads to him becoming the new Man of the Beginning.
  • Inverted in Kamen Rider Drive, where Shinnosuke's eyes flash red when his body is borrowed by Mr. Belt for Type Tridoron; this is first done once Shinnosuke is revived after being mortally wounded by the Freeze Roidmude.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Emu's eyes flash red when he shifts into his gamer self - M. Also, when a victim of Game Disease gets glowing red eyes, it means that the Bugster is taking over. Yes, these two things overlap.
  • Kamen Rider Build: Ryuga's eyes glow red when he is stressed over having to helplessly watch his teammates get beaten nearly to death. It's because his emotions react with the remnants of the Eldritch Abomination residing in him.
  • In Kamen Rider Zi-O, the katakana characters which make up Sougo's visor as Zi-O are pink or magenta. For Oma Zi-O, however, they are red.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One: Humagears' eyes go from blue to red when they're infected by the villainous MetsubouJinrai.NET's virus and go berserk. In Episode 9 it's explicitly pointed out by TV pundits discussing the crisis, but this gets thrown out the window due to A.I.M.S.' Yua Yaiba leaking footage of MetsubouJinrai's Assassin to the media; because he was built evil and not reprogrammed, he has blue eyes all the time. MetsubouJinrai's Horobi and Jin are also evil Humagears without red eyes.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Several Orcs have red eyes in contrast to their pale skin. They are also evil to the root.
• In Lucifer (2016), the titular character has the tendency to show his true eyes to threaten or warn humans to not to cross him, with responses falling between astonishment and panic.
• The Mandalorian:
  • In "Sanctuary", the title character has to take on an ex-Imperial AT-ST, and his first sight of it is the red light through its viewports shining through the darkness as it powers up. Bonus points for Shown Their Work as cockpit lighting in real aircraft is generally red to prevent it from interfering with the pilot's night vision.
  • In the Season 2 premiere, "The Marshal", the episode opens with Mando and the Child on a dark, urban planet walking under streetlights as small creatures with glowing red eyes watch them. After getting what information he needs from a guy who tries to kill him, Mando leaves the guy hanging upside-down from one of the lamps after promising that he wouldn't die by Mando's hand. He shoots out the streetlight and leaves as the informant screams for help and the red-eyed critters start closing in on him.
• In Merlin (2008), Gaius realises that two visiting nobles are actually evil enchanters as he sees one's eyes flash red in a fit of anger. He really does take warning at the red eyes.
• In The Messengers, an unidentified man has eyes that glow red. He is revealed to be Satan.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Goldar's eyes are red and kinda glowy, Lord Zedd's visor is red, and the occasional monster has had red eyes.
• In an episode of the second Mission: Impossible series (1988), Mr. Phelps uses contact lenses that can glow red on command as part of a plan to convince his mark that he is the Devil.
• Night Gallery episode "Pickman's Model". The extremely evil ghouls are "more foul and loathsome than the putrid slime that clings to the walls of Hell". They eat human flesh, kidnap human women for procreation and have red eyes.
• Nowhere Boys: The dogs under Demonic Possession. People the demon possesses also show this, but only at first, for a couple of seconds.
• The Orville, Some of the Kaylon have red eyes. The trope becomes justified when it's revealed that many members of the species that built them had naturally red eyes. Possibly, their society saw nothing sinister in such a common eye color.
• Red Dwarf: Victims of the holo-virus in "Quarantine", such as Dr.Hildegard Lanstrom and Rimmer, gain these when they are about to fire their hex vision.
• Scholar Who Walks the Night: Gwi's eyes turn red when he's about to kill someone.
• Russell T Davies thought this was a clichéd trope, so specifically avoided it when writing The Second Coming, where one of the characters is possessed by the Devil, but has silver eyes instead. However RTD found the trope was so prevalent the SFX people had automatically given the character red eyes, and they had to be changed to silver.
• Smallville:
  • Davis Bloome gets these when he's transforming into Doomsday.
  • Warrior Angel/Stephan Swift when a curse turns him into Devilicus.
• Randall Flagg in The Stand (1994) miniseries.
• Star Trek:
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Imaginary Friend", the titular girl, Isabella, gets red glowing eyes when she is upset when Clara leaves her at Troi's suggestion.
  • Jake Sisko and, later, Dukat temporarily develop glowing red eyes while possessed by the Pagh Wraiths in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  • In Star Trek: Enterprise, the Na'kuhl (or, as they are better known, the "Red Eye Aliens" or "Evil Alien Nazis") all have red eyes, clinching them as candidates for the most evil-looking aliens in the history of fiction.
• In Supergirl (2015), the audience sees the D.E.O. boss, Hank Henshaw, with glowing red eyes. Combined with hints of him hiding something and his name belonging to a supervillain in the comics, do you want to bet he's up to no good? Subverted: he's actually Martian Manhunter, having stolen the real Hank Henshaw's identity. As noted on the comic books page, when she or her cousin gets red eyes, then they're really pissed.
• Supernatural:
  • Crossroads Demons. Other demons have similarly evil shades of white, yellow, or black.
  • As of Season 11, Lucifer occasionally flashes red eyes as well. This is actually unusual, since he is an archangel, not a demon. Any time an angel's true form has appeared, it was simply a blinding white light.
• Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters: Enter's right eye glows red and gains circuitry as of Mission 33. In 40 it's revealed that this happened because Enter himself holds one of the Messiah cards, #04. When he takes the #07 Card at the end of Mission 44, his left eye turns red as well. Hiromu's eyes flash red as a result of being implanted with Messiah Card #13, linking him to Enter.
• Teen Wolf: Alpha werewolves' eyes turn red when they feel angry or predatory, even in human form. Once they shift, their eyes may glow outright. Also, Scott's yellow/gold eyes whenever he transforms.
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "I of Newton", the demon reveals his red eyes to Sam when he removes his sunglasses.
  • In "Gramma", the title character, an extremely powerful witch, has glowing red eyes. Her grandson Georgie is even more terrified of her than he was before when he sees them. After Gramma takes over Georgie's body, he exhibits the same red eyes.
• Two Sentence Horror Stories: In "Teeth" after changing into her vampire form, Olivia has red eyes.
• In the original V (1983) series, the Visitors' true reptilian forms had red eyes.
• The X-Files: The monsters of the week in the episode "Detour" have glowing red eyes. Very scary.
• Continuing from the Film folder above, Wanda has red eyes when using her powers in WandaVision. One case is particularly notable in that they glow red in a black and white monitor.

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