History EyeScream / LiveActionTV

Live, loud, and messy. Here are EyeScream examples from live action television.

* A brief one in ''Series/CosmosASpaceTimeOdyssey'' during an animated segment. Humphry Davy casually mentions how another scientist lost an eye and three fingers to the chemical Davy is now working with, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trichloride nitrogen trichloride]], while leaning rather too close. There's an explosion, a cloud of smoke, and next we see Davy clutching his face screaming "AAAH! MY--EYES!" with blood running through his fingers.

* ''Series/{{Arrow}}'': At the end of "The Promise," we see [[spoiler:Slade Wilson]] watching camera feeds without his [[EyepatchOfPower eye patch]] on. And his missing eye is not hidden in shadow.
** Also, in season six, Vincent Sobel/Vigilante. He was shot in the head 3 years prior to his introduction. Though he became a metahuman with near instant healing, that particular injury never fully healed, leaving his left visably damaged and blind. Also a large amount of skin around the damaged eye is red and scarred.

* Colonel Tigh in the 2000s ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' had one of his eyes pulled out by a Cylon during his time in prison on New Caprica. After his release he mentions "(they) ripped it right out onto the floor, picked it up [[AndShowItToYou and showed it to me.]] It looked like a hard boiled egg."

** In episode "The Double Death of the Dearly Departed", Cam sticks a needle in the corpse's eye. We get an extreme closeup; Booth has a more distant view, but is visibly squicked.
** Reversed in "The Gamer in the Grease". The corpse is submersed in beer to remove the flesh. We're treated to an eyeball coming out and floating up. Like the opening scene wasn't squicktastic enough...
* On ''Series/TheBorgias,'' Della Rovere stabs a potential assassin in the eye through the screen of a confessional.
* On ''Series/TheBoys2019'', turns out the NighInvulnerable Stormfront doesn't have indestructible eyes, after being stabbed in one with a knife.

* On ''Series/{{Brimstone}}'', the only way to return a damned soul to Hell is to put out both of his or her eyes.

*** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E18DirtyGirls Dirty Girls]]", when TheDragon Caleb first attacks the Scoobies, he gouges out [[spoiler:Xander's]] eye with his thumb.
*** The monster Der Kindestod from the episode "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E18KilledByDeath}} Killed By Death]]" has stalked mouths that come out of its eye sockets for easy access to the victim's peepers.
*** In "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E1Lessons}} Lessons]]" a manifest spirit stabs Dawn in the eye with a pencil. Fortunately, it disappears and she's unhurt.
*** In "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E2TheHarvest}} The Harvest]]", after his henchmen fail to capture Buffy and Xander, the Master pokes the lead henchman's eye out with his finger.
--->''"Sorry, you've got something in your eye."''
*** The Gnarl demon from "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E3SameTimeSamePlace Same Time, Same Place]]" is immune to magic and most injuries. To kill it one has to destroy his eyes. [[spoiler:Xander is especially disturbed by this, foreshadowing his own fate above.]]
*** In "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E2DeadMansParty}} Dead Man's Party]]", Buffy stops the wearer of the Ovu Mobani mask by shoving a garden spade through the zombie's eyes.
*** In "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E13Surprise}} Surprise]]", Drusilla threatens to gouge Dalton's eyes out for losing her "present", before Spike stops her.
*** The Harbingers of Death in Season 7, the First's assassins and priests, don't have eyes. Instead they have marks that look like fresh burn wounds on the skin covering the sockets.
*** Faith blinded Kakistos in the right eye prior to "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E3FaithHopeAndTrick}} Faith, Hope, and Trick]] ".

*** The Season 1 episode "[[{{Recap/AngelS01E10PartingGifts}} Parting Gifts]]", where demons attempt to remove Cordelia's eyes ''while she's still conscious''.
*** The Season 3 episode "[[{{Recap/AngelS03E18DoubleOrNothing}} Double or Nothing]]" featured a demon who sucked out people's souls by sticking his fingers in their eyes.

* There's an episode of ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'', where a man cursed with blindness sends his son out to steal a pair of eyes for him. The eyes removed from the bodies are just... ew.
** In "Sight Unseen", Prue's stalker sneaks up behind her and rams her face-first into a tray of developing fluid which does some nasty damage to Prue's eyes and makes it harder for her to defend herself. Luckily the damage isn't permanent, and Prue had recently learned how to channel her telekinesis through her hands instead of her eyes.
* ''Series/ClassOf09'': Poet lost her eye in the attack on the FBI headquarters. Afterward, she's got a [[{{Cyborg}} cybernetic replacement]] in 2034 though.
* On ''Series/TheColbertReport'', Stephen recommends this as a method for Republicans to stop talking about rape. Specifically he recommends jabbing a pencil in your eyes, up into your brain cavity, and continually poking at it, until the thoughts of mentioning rape go away.

* An unsub in ''Series/CriminalMinds'' is an "Enucleator". It's common enough to have a category.

** A hotel maid is found stabbed in the eye with a swizzle stick. They think it's [[RippedFromTheHeadlines the chauvinistic foreign guest]] but it's actually [[spoiler: her fellow maid who was stealing from all the wealthy guests. The foreigner (a wealthy, extremely demanding Saudi prince) is so moved by "someone who had nothing" protecting his stuff despite his horrible attitude that [[PetTheDog he gives her struggling family a big check]].]]

** ''4x4'' with the bodybuilder, who got the coroner's finger into his eye. It semi-burst and oozed out thick black slime ..
** Very horrifying is a serial killer who not only dresses his victims up in 70's uniforms and kills them, but also puts hydrochloric acid in their eyes. The first victim was blinded post-mortim. The others...not so lucky.
** The episode involving Lady Heather's daughter, "Pirates of the Third Reich." Heather's daughter Zoe is found dead in the desert with her right hand missing. When the Asst. M.E. takes a look at Zoe's eyes during autopsy, her right eye detaches from the socket. Tests done on both eyes reveal that the detached eye does not belong to Zoe but to someone who is male. Eventually the audience learns that Zoe and others were held captive and experimented on by a Neo-Nazi. The Nazi follower thought Zoe was the perfect woman, except for the fact that she had mismatched eyes. So he sets out to correct this problem by extracting an eye from a male captive and placing the eye in Zoe's socket. (The male victim survived the procedure but was lobotomized in the process.)

** Never to be outdone in over-the-topness, it features a guy getting killed by injecting air into his bloodstream via the veins in his eye. Needless to say, the victim was subdued first. When the investigators figure this out, we get to see it in loving body-cam detail. Although ridiculous, at least it's established as being pragmatic as well... it made it very, very hard to figure out the cause of death.

** "Look Who's Taunting" has a killer that pulls out women's eyes and replaces them with glass ones.

** They used this in a Season 5 episode, when Stella and Mac go out to drink a cup of coffee. An eyeball drops from the sky (carried by some kind of vulture) right into Stella's cup, and leads them to the rest of the body.
** In Season 3, in "Hung Out To Dry," a man was found nailed to a tree through his eye sockets. With railroad stakes. Mac then finds the man's eyeballs in his front pants pocket.
** Serial killer Clay Dobson would cut off his victims' eyelids so they had to look at him as they died.

** In the opening of "Penny and Dime," hotheaded Irish mobster Finn Cooley kills an associate by stabbing him through the left eye with an icepick. Finn himself meets such a fate in the end when Frank Castle shoots him point-blank in the left side of his face with a shotgun, including the eye.
* In the Season 1 finale of ''Series/DarkAngel'' Lydecker knocks a man unconscious and spoons out his eyeball (into what looks like a pudding cup) to use for getting past security.
* In ''Series/TheDarkCrystalAgeOfResistance,'' we learn how the Skeksis Scientist got his cybernetic eye. He allowed a [[OurElvesAreDifferent Gelfling]] soldier to escape with news of their plans of genocide, so the Emperor sentenced him to have his right eye eaten by an insect called a "peeper beetle." While we get a GoryDiscretionShot, we also hear it munching for a few seconds after the screen cuts to black. It's also discussed, as the Chamberlain explains what the insect does and why it's kept around, as a threat to another Gelfling soldier who's asking too many questions-if they'll do that to an equal, what'll they do to someone they think is as far beneath them as something they have for dessert at parties?

** In the second episode ("Viking versus Samurai"), the samurai put arrows through test dummy eyes. And then they show it in slow motion, showing the arrows wiggling as they come to a stop. More precisely, the testers set up a gel head with eyeballs and a Viking helmet. The samurai promptly puts one arrow through each eye, leaving the test dummy with twin two-foot arrow hafts sticking out from where his eyes should be. Made worse by the fact that the doctor said that you would still be feeling it, still remember it, and would hemorrhage to death in so much agony.
** In Episode 3, "Spartan versus Ninja", the ninja demonstrate Black Eggs, which would put crushed glass into the eye.
** In Episode 7, "Shaolin Monk versus Maori Warrior", the Shaolin representative shish-kababs and yanks out the eyeballs of the dummy with the Emei Daggers before [[NoKillLikeOverkill continuing to slash and stab at the dummy for a full half a minute]]. This even caused one of the hosts to remark: "So, um, what happened to being pacifists?"

* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'': It's the favourite murder method of the Ukrainian mafia boss in Season 7. He kills one guy thrusting a screwdriver into his eye, and threatens Louis Greene, a Miami Metro Homicide ex-intern and pain in Dexter's neck, with a hand drill. [[spoiler:Subverted in the latter case, as he promises to let him go. But he shoots him anyway.]]

* Episode 1 of ''Series/Dracula2020'' has a lovely close-up of a blowfly landing on Harker's unblinking eye, crawling under the eyelid and ''behind the eye'' while the two nuns interviewing him watch in horrified disgust. [[spoiler:It foreshadows the - frankly unnecessary, given his ghoulish appearance - [[TheReveal Reveal]] that Harker is no longer a living human]].

* ''Series/{{Elementary}}'': The murder victim of the week in "You Do It To Yourself" died after being shot in the eyes by his assailant. Holmes and Watson's investigation reveals that this was deliberately invoked by the victim. He'd been diagnosed with eye cancer, an example of this by itself, and hired the killer to shoot him specifically to cover up the diagnosis.
* "Heathen", the reviewer for ''Series/{{ER}}'' on [[http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/er/ Television Without Pity]] refused to describe or even think about eye injuries on the show. Instead, the patient had something in his... toe.
* In ''Series/FallingSkies'' "Shall We Gather at the River", Anne finds a small parasite in Tom's left eye. She's forced to remove it... while Tom is still fully conscious.

* Comedic example: an episode of ''{{Series/Friends}}'' involving Rachel with an eye infection reveals Rachel freaks out every time someone gets close to touching an eye.
** In "The One With Chandler in a Box," Monica gets ice directly in her eye, forcing her to wear an eye patch for the rest of the episode.

** Episode "The Same Old Story", Walter Bishop takes the EyeRemember trope one step further by taking a murder victim's eye out of the socket in order to scan the retina for it's last image.
** Walter despairs of his seemingly going insane and attempts a self-lobotomy by hammering a long metal stick through his eye. Thankfully he numbed it first, and Olivia stops him before much damage is done.
* ''[[Franchise/ASongOfIceAndFire Game of Thrones]]'' universe:
** ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
*** The death of [[spoiler:Jory]] has him get a dagger in the eye courtesy of Jaime in a confrontation outside a brothel, followed by a close-up of his face as he takes a good few seconds to die. Adding insult to the injury, this happens an episode after he tells Jaime about that one battle where he ''almost'' got stabbed in an eye, to the point where you think that Jaime does this ''deliberately''.
*** [[spoiler:Oberyn Martell]] has his eyes gouged out and is killed by the hand of Gregor "the Mountain" Clegane.
*** Arya begins her execution of Meryn Trant by stabbing him in the eye, causing him to fall to the ground in pain. Then she stabs him in his other eye. And several times in the chest [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown for good measure]]. She's using a very short dagger for this which is both easier to conceal and also makes sure none of his injuries are immediately fatal until she slits his throat.
*** Jaime is threatened with this when Locke takes offense to his EveryManHasHisPrice attitude.
*** Beric Dondarrion wears an EyepatchOfPower because he was stabbed in the eye.
*** During his BarBrawl in "Two Swords," the Hound slams one opponent onto his own knife multiple times, using CGI to make it a single shot.
*** Ramsay kills Wun Wun with an arrow to the eye.
*** This seems to be a favourite method of punishment of Cersei's -- Tyrion recounts she had a servant girl beaten until she lost an eye when she was ''nine'', and in 'The Wars To Come', she threatens to have Maggy's eyes gouged out if Maggy wouldn't tell Cersei her future.
*** By the time of the Season 7 finale ''Gregor's eyes have begun to rot''.
*** At some point, Prince Aemond Targaryen lost his left eye and replaced it with a sapphire. Daemon stabbed him in his other eye.
*** During their final fight, [[spoiler:Gregor attempts to gouge his brother Sandor's eyes. He destroys Sandor's left eye before Sandor is able to force him back by stabbing Gregor's left eye with a dagger. Despite the dagger going all the way through his head, it doesn't kill him because he's turned into an undead abomination.]]
** ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'': After managing to ride Vhagar, the young Aemond Targaryen gets into a fight against Jacaerys, Lucerys, Baela and Rhaena. His attempt to kill Jacaerys with a stone ends up costing him an eye when Lucerys defends his brother with a dagger, slashing Aemond's face. Aemond's mother Alicent is quick to demand for an eye of Lucerys to be removed as "payment", a folly that her husband Viserys and stepdaughter Rhaenyra are quick to put to rest when she attempts it herself.
* ''Series/{{Glee}}'': has a moment, when Blaine's eye gets scratched after being slushied by Sebastian [[spoiler: because it was full of rock salt.]]

* In the ''Series/{{Grimm}}'' episode "Mr. Sandman", the titular Wesen targets his victims' eyes, infecting them with small worm-like parasites that will eventually consume the eye so that he can 'eat' them later; when [[spoiler:Nick]] is infected, the others determine that the only way to stop the worms is a potion that requires them to take one of the eyes from his attacker..

* ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'': "Entree" has Dr. Gideon Abel, one of the prime suspects for the Chesapeake Ripper, go to town on a nurse, starting by gouging out her eyes with his thumbs. Thanks to Will's ability to put himself in the mind of the killer, we get to witness this.
** "Takiawase" likewise features a killer who turns her victims into living beehives. The first step of this is to anesthetize them during acupuncture sessions, then induce a lobotomy, the old-fashioned "ice pick to the eye socket" way.

** The episode where [[spoiler: HRG]] gets shot in the eye. Not only that, but you get the main squick at the end of the episode where [[spoiler: he's hooked up to numerous medical equipment, and is brought back to life by his daughter's blood. Usually, it's not quite as squick when someone heals, but you get to gradually see it grow back, along with the rest of his face, and smoke coming out of the socket.]]
** [[spoiler:Furious with Sylar for killing her father, Nathan, Claire]] stabs [[spoiler:Sylar]] in the eye with a pencil. The effect is made partially funny with the pathetically whiny noise he made.

* ''Series/{{Hightown}}'': Osito is shot in the left eye with a GanglandDriveBy attempt on his life during Season 3.

* In ''Series/{{Humans}}'', to prove she can't feel pain Anita (who is an android) inserts a toothpick into her eye. Laura (who is an actual human) is horrified even though Anita doesn't feel it.
* ''Series/ICarly'': In "iGet Pranky", before he gets back into doing it, Spencer confesses that he gave up pranking after he pulled one in school and unwittingly blinded his classmates with garlic powder.

* In ''Series/TheInvisibleMan'' episode "Beholder", the Agency are hunting an assassin who not only kills his targets, but also prevents any witnesses from identifying him with a special gun that burns out their eyes; Darien Fawkes (the titular 'invisible man') only escapes being permanently blinded from the same weapon because he instinctively triggered the quicksilver when he was attacked and it shielded his eyes from the worst of the damage, and he was still unable to see normally for the next few days.
* In the ''Series/JonathanCreek'' episode ''The Reconstituted Corpse'' a man looks through the peephole on his front door, whilst a revolver is put up against the other side, and then fired into his eye.

* In the ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' episode, "See Me", an optometrist repeatedly operated on several schizophrenic patients too frequently and often in bizarre ways (only operating on one eye or making an incision on the edge of the iris). [[spoiler:As it turns out, he believed that he could treat the visual hallucinations suffered by removing part of the lens. It also turned out that the doctor suffered from schizophrenia as well.]]
* In the third episode of the sci-fi series ''Series/{{Lexx}}'' the crew is stranded on a planet where the inhabitants make "Pattern" out of human body parts. The do this by playing a lottery; one of the participants already lost an eye and has to give his other one.

* In an episode of the BBC series, ''Life'', a time-lapse video shows nemertean worms and sea stars decomposing a seal pup. How do the worms get in? [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG17TsgV_qI Guess...]]

* In the cold opening of a ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'' episode, Malcolm uses this to get Hal away from the TV - he pretends to watch a documentary on eye surgery, when he's really watching a lingerie calendar shoot.

* There are ''at least'' two counts of this in the TV series of movie shorts ''Series/MastersOfHorror'':
** In the episode/movie "Incident on and off of a Mountain Road", where the killer (dubbed Moonface) uses a drill press to drill neat holes through victims' skulls -- entry point being the eyeballs.
** In the episode/movie "Cigarette Burns", where the Chinese butler of a wealthy film enthusiast gouges his eyes out with a knife after being driven insane by the cursed film ''La Fin Absolue Du Monde''.
* ''Series/TheMick'': In one episode, Sabrina throws her high heel shoe when she fights with another girl. She misses, and instead its stiletto heel stabs Mickey's first boyfriend in one of his eyes. Then Ben, [[HarmfulToMinors while watching movies that aren't child-friendly]] (such as ''Film/AClockworkOrange'', ''Film/TheShining'', etc.) [[NauseaFuel pulls the high heel out of her boyfriend's eye and blood bursts out of the eye.]]

--> "It happened to my aunt, you know. You remember One-Eyed Betty?

** An episode ends with Ziva and Tony in a bar, and Tony receives a gin and tonic from an unknown patron- later thought be the currently re-ocurring [[spoiler: Port-to-Port killer]]- and picks up the glass to drink from it, only to see an eyeball encased in one of the ice cubes. The episodes closes with him yelping and dropping the glass which shatters on the counter

* ''Series/OrphanBlack'': In the Season 2 finale, Sarah shoots a pencil into Rachel's eye. In the Season 3 premiere, the camera lingers on a doctor slowly pulling the pencil out. Then in Season 5, [[spoiler: Rachel gouges out her own artificial eye Odin-style when she realizes there's a camera inside it]].

** When a former rival gang member turned prison guard annoys the boss of El Norte, he orders Miguel Alvarez to make an example of him. We don't see the attack, just a scene where the staff are having a meeting and suddenly hear this terrible continuous scream. Suddenly the guard bursts into the room having been stabbed in both eyes. But [[SarcasmMode luckily]] we do get to see close-ups of his empty, bloody eyesockets. Several times.
** There's Schillinger getting some glass shards thrown into his eye courtesy of a drugged up Beecher. He eventually gets better, but for a while he has to wear a cool eyepatch.

* ''Series/ThePeripheral2022'': [[spoiler: When Flynne puts on the headset for the second time, Peripheral!Burton is sedated and StrappedToAnOperatingTable. Aelita, looking on, calmly informs her that [[FalseReassurance that she's not a sadist]]... But all the same, she will test the very limits of pain "Easy Ice" is willing to endure by cutting out one of the peripheral's eyes and replacing it with Mariel's [[SkipTheAnaesthetic while its operator is still conscious]]. And there's most pointedly ''no'' GoryDiscretionShot, either. Yeuch.]]

* ''Series/ThePurge'': Penelope stabs [[spoiler:Joe]] in the eye during her escape. He has to remove the implement by hand afterward.

* ''Series/{{Reign}}'' killed King Henry II of France this way -- a jousting mishap with a broken lance splinter stabbing into his brain through his eye socket -- which was for once on this fanciful show an actual TruthInTelevision, as the real King Henry actually did die that way.

** In "24/7" John Dee uses the Ruby to inflict a mass-MindRape on the diner inhabitants, forcing them into a frenzy of self-loathing and self-destruction that results in their grisly deaths. In the finale, Bette the waitress demands to know how this could add up to the "better world" that John wanted; he retorts that Bette is still seeing it with her eyes and tells her to close them, whereupon Bette takes up two screwdrivers, puts them to her eyes - and at that moment, the power goes out, [[ShadowDiscretionShot rendering the fatal mutilation entirely in shadow]].
* At the beginning of the ''Series/{{Shoestring}}'' episode "The Dangerous Game," a boy receives an electric racing game as an early Christmas present. When he tries to play with it, it explodes, propelling a piece of plastic into his left eye and almost blinding it.

* There was a ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode once with a Meteor Freak who had the ability to control glass. In one scene, [[spoiler: he has been arrested for trying to kidnap his daughter and is in an elevator with a bespectacled policeman. He compliments the man's eyewear and the next time we see him, he's stepping out of the elevator alone and the cop is on the ground with his face covered in blood.]]
* During a second season episode "Smite", Otto, an incarcerated member of the motorcycle gang Series/SonsOfAnarchy [[spoiler: has his eye stabbed with a broken mop handle by members of a rival gang. To add insult to injury, it's his good eye that gets stabbed - the other was already mangled by an ugly scar.]]
* In ''Franchise/StarTrek'', while it's never quite as explicit in the various television series as it is in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', there are often several reminders that [[TheAssimilator Borg assimilation]] usually leaves the victim missing an eyeball. In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E23IBorg I Borg]]", Hugh casually removes his cybernetic eyepiece and hands it to Doctor Crusher, exposing the circuitry where his eye ''should'' be -- Crusher and La Forge appear appropriately disturbed.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E1SpearheadFromSpace "Spearhead From Space"]] features a scene of factory workers manufacturing toy dolls which includes prominent shots focusing on drilling out the eye sockets and pushing the false eyes into them. Even though it doesn't feature any actual characters or things being hurt, it is still one of the most disturbing moments from a ParanoiaFuel episode (and exists for pure RuleOfScary).
** It must have been difficult for the children who grew up with Creator/JonPertwee's take on the Doctor to endure the moment in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E1Robot "Robot"]] where Creator/TomBaker fixes his CreepyBlueEyes on Harry Sullivan and [[EyePop boggles them out]] for the first time.
** Two Fourth Doctor companions got temporarily blinded by flashes of light -- Sarah Jane in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius "The Brain of Morbius"]] and Leela in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E1HorrorOfFangRock "Horror of Fang Rock"]].
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy "The Invisible Enemy"]] gives us the Swarm, a brain parasite that is transported by witnessing a special pulse of light, causing the creature to start growing in your optic nerve.
** Series 6 introduces us to the Silence, a race of aliens who are instantly forgotten as soon as you look away from them. Their mistress, [[BigBad Madame Kovarian]] wears a special badge on her eye called an eye drive which lets the wearer can remember the Silence even when not looking at them. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong "The Wedding of River Song"]], [[spoiler: the Silence turn on her, electrocuting her through the eye drive.]]

** In the Season 1 episode "DNA Mad Scientist", the crew voluntarily gives samples from their eyes to an alien scientist called [=NamTar=] -- which involves a probing machine sticking a needle fully into the eye. Aeryn initially refuses, but when she later agrees to it, the alien gives her an eyeful of LegoGenetics, causing her eye to immediately turn purple for a few seconds. After a bit of BodyHorror, the antidote that will return Aeryn Sun's body to normal must be delivered to the eye. With no time to set up the machine, she is forced to put her trust in John's steady hand as he has to delicately stab her in the eye.

** Near the end of Season 2 ("Plan B"), Natira, a creepy blue alien with spider legs on her head states a penchant for using said legs to remove eyeballs, and then (it is implied) eat them. It happens to one character, and almost happens to John, though we don't see it in either case.
** But by far the worst one involves a machine that ''pulls the eyeball out of the socket, exposing [[RuleOfScary several inches of optic nerve]], puts a chip on the exposed nerve, and then puts the eye back in'' ("A Clockwork Nebari").
** In a flashback sequence, [[MagnificentBastard Scorpius]], as part of his ExtremeMeleeRevenge against Tauza, his Scarran caretaker, stabs her in the eyes with the sharpened ends of a broken coolant rod. Horrifically, it doesn't kill her; seconds later, she rises from the floor, her punctured eyeballs dribbling from around the rods in her sockets. ("Incubator")

** River Tam had this happen to her with needles at one point during her time at the Academy, though we only see flashes of this from a nightmare in "The Train Job". Later in "Safe", she rails at Mal during one of her crazy fits that "You can't just stick needles in my eyes and ask me what I see!"
** Dobson suffers a nasty gunshot wound to the eye at the end of the series' pilot. He survives and comes back in the tie-in comic ''Those Left Behind'', where he gets a [[EyePatchOfPower cybernetic replacement]] for it. [[spoiler: Mal shoots him in his other eye, and then shoots him in the head a few more times, just to make sure he gets the message.]]
** In "Jaynestown", Jayne's former partner Stitch who was imprisoned in the town had lost an eye in the (in)famous incident when Jayne threw him out of their plane.
** "Jaynestown": When Stitch is looking for Jayne to get his revenge, he finds Simon in the local pub. Simon is not as cooperative as Stitch would like him to be, and threatens that it will cost him his eyeball. With a really big knife in his hand.