History Main / BlindWithoutEm

** Subverted when Hank's glasses are broken on a motorcycle trip and Peggy has to drive him home on the bike. While we get to see the world through his blurred vision, it's not bad enough to qualify as "blind" except in the not-legal-to-operate-motor-vehicles sense.
** Played straight in the episode "A Firefighting We Will Go." After Bill breaks Hank's glasses, Hank runs face-first into a wall while chasing him up a flight of stairs.

* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'': Connie Maheswaran has eyesight so bad she couldn't even make out Steven's face from a few feet away while he was trying on her glasses in "An Indirect Kiss". This gets fixed by the end of the same episode when Steven accidentally fixes her vision with his [[SuperSpit healing spit]] from [[IndirectKiss a shared juice box]], but she keeps the frames anyway so her parents don't find out. She does stop using the frames when she reveals to her mom that she can see without her glasses.

* ''Neverland'': In the first part of their pilot episode, the character Brian loses his glasses in the midst of an epic battle -- which he must bring an abrupt end to in order to find them... since they're only LARPing, the combat is fake, and the danger presented by losing his glasses circumvents the thrill of combat.

->''"[[Recap/SupernaturalS13E16ScoobyNatural I thought I was blind without my glasses.]] [[ExistentialHorror But I was just blind!]]"''

* Cyclops from ''ComicBook/XMen'' suffers from a variant of the trope in that without glasses, he ''has'' to keep his eyes shut and thus be literally blind, because he can't turn the EyeBeams off; without his visor or specialized specs, he's either blind or completely wrecking everything he's looking at.

* ''Film/Snake Eyes (1998) - Carla Gugino plays a witness to a murder who has her glasses knocked off and shattered in the confused aftermath. Later in the movie they have her squinting and some camera shots showing her blurred perspective.

* On ''Series/GilligansIsland'' in the episode with Ginger's double. The girl couldn't see anything without her glasses and was why she failed when she tried to impersonate Ginger in front of the other castaways. It may also explain why [[spoiler: we never heard from her again after she left the island with plans on going back to civilization and taking over Ginger's life.]]

* Without this trope, the famous ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]" would have lost some of its zing. It's almost reverse FridgeHorror, though, because you realize that eventually he'll think to stumble his way into an optometrist's and find a pair that works reasonably well. He could also have just found himself a magnifying glass.

* C. J. Cregg from ''Series/TheWestWing'' is [[PlayedForLaughs almost comically nearsighted]], as the {{flashback}} in the two-part Season 2 opening ''In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen'' shows – she could not drive herself home when she broke her glasses (and couldn't put in her contact lenses), was unable to identify her old friend Toby from less than five metres away without them, fell into the pool because of her poor eyesight and mistook the pool maintenance house for her actual house.
-->'''Toby''': C.J.?
-->'''C.J.''': Yeah?
-->'''Toby''': House is over ''there''.
-->'''C.J.''': Okay.

Note: because special lenses are needed to keep eyeglasses from flashing stage lights, and reflecting filming equipment, any time an actor wears glasses, it's a character choice, and the glasses are special stage glasses, which the actor may or may not need. If an actor needs corrective lenses, and it's deemed wrong for the character, the actor has to do without, or wear contacts.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'':
** Didi. Her eyes are shown as dots without the glasses, e.g. in the "Mirror Land" episode.
** Chuckie has an entire episode that revolves around this, when the others put on his glasses they see the same stuff he does without them.

** As shown in the episode "Crime and Punishment," Chuckie takes after his father.

* ''Literature/TheWitchOfKnightcharm'': Brynne, one of the rookies at Emily's new evil WizardSchool, is virtually blind without her glasses. This causes her problems because she breaks them during a failed attempt to complete the orientation course; the only place to get new glasses is the school store, but new students aren't allowed into the school store unless they first complete the orientation course, and Brynne [[Catch22Dilemma can't complete it without new glasses because she can't see what she's doing.]]

* When WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}} doesn't have his glasses on, his eyesight is quite blurry and poor. This also applies to the books, most notably ''Arthur's Eyes'', which was the title where Arthur gets his glasses (adapted into the first episode of the TV series as well.) One day, he gets sick of being called Four-Eyes, he hides the glasses in his lunchbox, and [[NotWhereTheyThought goes into]] ''[[WhichBathroomDilemma the girls' bathroom]]'' by mistake!

* When WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}} doesn't have his glasses on, his eyesight is quite blurry and poor. This also applies to the books, most notably ''Arthur's Eyes'', which was the title where Arthur gets his glasses (adapted into the first episode of the TV series as well.)

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}''. His eyes don't shrink to points when he removes his glasses -- ''he doesn't have eyes without them.'' Or eyelids and eyebrows, for that matter. Not only that, but they sit far down his face even normally, so you can see the blank stretch of forehead where they ''should'' be even when he's got the glasses on. Furthermore, as Cornfed [[LampshadeHanging suddenly notices and remarks on]], Duckman doesn't even have ears to keep his glasses in place. A particularly bizarre sight gag shows Duckman face down on the floor, his glasses knocked off, and his eyes ''within his glasses'' blink and shed tears. In one episode he actually removes the glasses/eyes, and turns them around to take a look at himself.

* Music/LisaLoeb. She's also apparently allergic to contact lenses.

* ''Fanfic/DateALiveAlteredTimeline'': [[Ligterature/DateALive Nia]]'s vision gets blurry if she isn't wearing her glasses.

* PlayedForDrama in ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse''. In "Watching and Dreaming", [[spoiler:while being overrun and bound to the wall by Belos's MeatMoss, Raine's glasses fall off their face. When Eda, King and Luz burst through the ceiling to come save them, their vision is so terrible that they don't recognize their best friend and her kids, and start freaking out as a blurry shape starts running towards them. They calm down as soon as Eda puts their glasses back onto their face.]]

* A TimeTravel episode of ''WesternAnimation/FairlyOddparents'' has Timmy meet a scrawny, nerdy King Arthur. When Timmy gives him a pair of glasses, he declares "I can see!" *voice drops to BadassBaritone* "I can fight!" and instantly muscles up and defeats a dragon.

In animation, when such a character's glasses are lost, their eyes usually shrink down to pinpoints, which indicates either that they are squinting to see, or to point out the jarring real life effect of seeing someone who has huge eyes when seen through heavily magnified glasses without their glasses. An anime variation on this is usually represented with the character's eyes being replaced by 3's or '''[[{{Emoticon}} 3_3]]''', which is another stylization of squinting.