Black Eyes of Crazy

Who's crazy now?

"Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes."

— Quint, Jaws

Some characters just need a way to show off how undeniably evil they are. Unfortunately, pure black eyes just seem too monochrome and don't allow said character to show off an extra spark of insanity. Cue the Black Eyes of Crazy. In these cases, the sclerae (the whites of the eyes) are black, but the irises themselves retain their colour, which can vary. The pupils may vary in color as well, usually being black, white, or completely blending in with the iris. Generally an indication that the character is not above going on a rabid, murderous rampage, and, as such, usually coincides with Ax-Crazy, though this rule is not absolute. It also heavily overlaps with Black Eyes of Evil, due to Ax-Crazy being a subtrope of Obviously Evil.

Subtrope of "Uh-Oh" Eyes.

See also Glowing Eyelights of Undeath.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In .hack//G.U., characters who are possessed by AIDA will often gain these eyes, particularly during Ax-Crazy moments.
• Baccano!: Christopher Shouldered has red sclerae rather than black (as the result of an extreme and perpetual case of red eye), but nonetheless matches all the connotations of the trope.
• Bleach: The page image is Hollow Ichigo, from his fight with Byakuya. Hollows are souls who are lost to to their darkest instincts, which form a mask on their face and turn them into a monster. Shinigami can have the process of hollowification forcibly invoked on them, which, if stabilized, turns them into Visored, giving them a Superpowered Hollow Side. When they draw on their Hollow powers, their sclerae turn black and their Hollow takes control unless they've trained to suppress it, turning them into crazed berserkers.
• Code:Breaker: The five "Angels" (plus Sakura when she was a child), a five-bad-band of Power Nullifiers whose eyes go jet-black when they suck the life out of power-users, in this case just for fun. Fortunately the power-users' masters anticipated that and made one of them Magneto: an iron beam in of itself isn't a power.
• Digimon Ghost Game: GulusGammamon has black sclerae, with bright-purple Monochromatic Eyes to boot, and is a full-blown Knight of Cerebus when it appears.
• Dragon Ball Z: Majin Buu in his familiar fat form has normal-looking eyes when we actually see them, but his evil incarnations have eyes with black sclerae. Evil Buu (the gray form) has white irises (which, when wide enough, can be mistaken for normal eyes due to having distinct pupils), while the Super Buu and Kid Buu forms have red irises.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind has Risotto Nero, although he seems to be the sanest of his group.
• Kengan Ashura: While black sclerae are a shared family quirk of the Kure Clan, Raian Kure is the only member of said clan who represents this trope proper. He's always eager to fight someone, and won't hesitate to even kill them at a moment's notice.
• Love Hina: Keitaro's family own a cursed samurai sword that causes the wielder to take on black eyes and start killing or molesting anyone in sight. It took two of the world's greatest swordswomen to reseal it and even then it could still be unleashed if they're not careful.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Averted with the Big Good All Might, who is the The Cape through and through. His sclera probably aren't actually black, but his eyes are perpetually shadowed aside from his blue irises.
  • Mina Ashido is another aversion; despite actually having black sclera (as well as a generally alien-like body), she's not only a Hero, but a Genki Girl.
  • Chitose Kizuki of the Meta Liberation Army fits the bill. She's got black sclera, and is a terrorist masquerading as the CEO of a publishing company.
• In Naruto, using the second stage of Orochimaru's cursed seal turns the sclerae of your eyes black and the irises gold. Sasuke gets bonus points by using the Sharingan with the black sclera for bonus creepiness.
  • And Jugo by proxy.
  • Shukaku and Gaara, when transforming into his partial form, have black sclera and golden cross-shaped irises.
  • In the manga, Hanzo and the 3rd Raikage both inexplicably have black sclera (but they still have irises and pupils), though, in the anime, Hanzo's eyes are normal.
  • During Naruto's training with Killer Bee to control the Nine-Tails, he is made to fight his Enemy Without, a manifestation of his lingering resentment toward the Leaf Village for the ostracization he suffered as a jinchuuriki. It takes the form of Naruto, with black sclera and red (in place of Naruto's blue) irises, which return to their normal color when Naruto learns that the only way to win the fight is to accept his own feelings and move on. During his later Battle in the Center of the Mind with the Nine-Tails, one of Naruto's eyes starts to change to black and red when the Nine-Tails nearly takes over him through The Power of Hate, but meeting his late mother's spirit reverses this.
  • A specific variant of this color scheme, which also functions as Mind-Control Eyes, is seen in those brought back to life by Kabuto's version of Impure World Resurrection (which, oddly, includes the aforementioned two, who look exactly the same).
    • Kabuto himself has these when he uses his version of Sage Mode.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi uses this quite a lot, along with Black Eyes of Evil. Shinmeiryu users can tap into something that's basically the dark side for extra power. While this is not actually evil in itself, it does appear to cause a great deal of bloodlust along with turning the eyes completely black.
• Rurouni Kenshin brings us Jinei Udo. His eyes are black with golden irises and pinpoint pupils which are capable of paralyzing you if he so chooses.
• In Scrapped Princess episode 3 or 4, when everybody besides Pacifica gets put under mind control, this is expressed by turning all of their sclerae black (and their irises red). Whenever anybody is snapped out of it, their eyes return to normal.
• Sgt. Frog: the assassin Zoruru has this combined with red pupils, along with a half-cybernetic body covered in Spikes of Villainy and a Blade Below the Shoulder. Despite this, nobody can ever remember who he is...
• In Thou Shalt Not Die, the local sweet girl Mashiro can get these types of eyes mixed with slit pupils for extra effect whenever she receives sufficient physical trauma. This serves as a clear sign to anyone nearby get the hell out, since she is about to go postal on anything and anyone in the vicinity, Friend or Foe?.
• The ghouls of Tokyo Ghoul have eyes with black sclera and red pupils that show when they're in combat, excited or very hungry.
• Masane from Witchblade gets these when transformed. The Cloneblade users^note Reina, Shiori, and Nora and Dual Cloneblade users^note Maria, Aoi, and Asagi gets these when they transform as well.
• Haguro from Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest is perhaps THE scariest looking ninth grader because of his eyes.
• Because of a curse, Darcia of Wolf's Rain has one normal eye and one wolf eye. He hides it under a mask or eye patch. People who see it fall unconscious. By the series end, it is clear that he is more than a little Ax-Crazy.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, anyone who becomes a Dark Signer has their sclerae darken to black and goes rather insane.

Comic Books

• When Hunter Zolomon took over the mantle of The Flash's archenemy, the Reverse-Flash/Zoom, he was depicted as a combo of this and Red Eyes, Take Warning, sporting black sclera and red eyes. After he came back, Zolomon's predecessor Eobard Thawne was also depicted with these features.
• Gambit of the X-Men has these, and his irises exemplify Red Eyes, Take Warning, but he is neither evil nor crazy. Usually.
  • It should be noted that, despite the fact that he's usually a good guy, he did have a reputation in his hometown as "Le diable blanc" — people saw him as a demon because of his red-on-black eyes.
• Subverted in Legion of Super-Heroes, where two members of the Legion, Superman X and Timber Wolf, have eyes like this.
• The Red Skull, Depending on the Artist. Carried on to both X-Men: The Animated Series and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
• Doctor Robotnik/Eggman and Doctor Finitevus from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). Interestingly enough, Robotnik's crazy red-on-black-eyes were first revealed in issue #200, when he was defeated by Sonic one too many times. The Bride of the Conquering Storm also has black sclerae with visible circuits after being legionized, but she's not really crazy, just power-hungry.
  • Mimic the Octopus from Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) has a pair, with black sclerae and white irises. He can show them, along with some skeletal facial markings, while disguised as another person, resulting in a Nightmare Face. And not for no reason: this guy is B.S. psychotic.
• Another counterexample is Jericho of the Teen Titans. When he's about to possess someone, he makes eye contact with the victim and the whites of his eyes go black. (Mind you, he was crazy for a little while, but hey, that happens to everyone in comics at least once.)
  • Similarly, in Teen Titans Go!, the evil version of Aqualad is shown to have black eyes with red irises. Regular Aqualad just has solid black eyes.
• Wonder Woman: Dionysus, the god of wine, revelry and madness, has his sclerae periodically turn black, it's generally a sign for mortals to flee if they still can because he's no longer really tapping down on his power enough to keep from driving them insane.

Fan Works

• The Bridge uses this as a way to distinguish between Monster X and his Superpowered Evil Side, Kaizer Ghidorah. When turned into a human in the Equestria Girls realm, X has normal white eyes (albeit with a red iris), Kaizer Ghidorah has black sclerae. Similarly when Aria Blaze copies some of their powers and channels Kaizer Ghidorah's energy, her features shift to resemble Kaizer's. One of which is this trope.
• A Loud Among Demons has Lincoln gaining a pair of these after being heavily dosed with the D.H.O.R.K.'s truth gas, resulting in him slipping into a much more sadistic and unstable demonic mindset.
• The Power of the Equinox: Dimmed Star, Twilight Sparkle's Superpowered Evil Side, has black sclera, and her pupils are both formed out of three glowing teal dots that are situated in a triangular pattern.
• In this Warriors Multi-Animator Project based on Swiftpaw, all the Dobermann's have blacked out eyes to emphasise how "other" and inhuman they are to cats.

Films — Animated

• Bruce the Shark from Finding Nemo, after he gets a whiff of Dory's blood.
• Shan Yu from Mulan displays these. Add the yellow irises and it's clear they were looking for a falcon look. It ends up being just about looks, even though according to extended material this is more important, as he manages through some mystical means to literally see through his falcon's eyes.
  The Nostalgia Chick: Is he suffering from jaundice or something?
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, One-Winged Angel Sunset Shimmer has these with green irises.

Films — Live-Action

• Santi from Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone has black sclerae and pale bluish irises.
• People turned into vampires by the eponymous Count in Dracula (1979) have black eyes with hellish red pupils.
• Quint from Jaws describes sharks as having this feature, until they bite you "when those black eyes roll over white." The titular shark indeed has menacing black eyes as it moves through the water.
• In the film version of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo gets them after being corrupted by the cursed Nazgûl blade.

Literature

• In the H.I.V.E. Series, this is the mark of someone who has been infected with Animus. They also have black blood.
• The One Who Eats Monsters: Ryn has matte black sclerae and glowing blue irises that terrify whoever looks into her eyes, befitting a predatory primordial goddess whose inability to blend in with humans saw her branded a monster. Her aggressive behaviour leads to several characters speculating that she has a developmental disorder at best and is flat-out insane at worst.
• Small Gods has Vorbis, who comes from a desert tribe with black sclerae (it's mentioned he looks like he's wearing his sunglasses on the inside). On the Disk, where eyes are very much the window to the soul, he's bad news indeed, though of The Fundamentalist kind of crazy rather than the loud, multiple-exclamation-points type.

Professional Wrestling

• Boogeyman's eyes inexplicably turned black during his feud with Big Daddy V. Of course, Boogeyman is crazy.

Tabletop Games

• In Magic: The Gathering, vampires hailing from the Gothic Horror plane of Innistrad such as Sorin Markov have black sclerae◊, in addition to either Supernatural Gold Eyes or Red Eyes, Take Warning depending on the vampire clan. The blackening of the sclera, in this case, is a direct result of the vampirization; pre-vampire humans have normal eyes. Compared to the rest of entries in this trope however, Innistrad vampires are not necessarily Ax-Crazy; rather, they see themselves as classy aristocrats superior to Puny Humans, only turning savage when hungry.

Video Games

• In .hack//G.U. this happens to players that get completely overtaken by AIDA.
• In Azure Striker Gunvolt series, all Adept bosses sport such eyes after transforming into their battle forms. So far, the only exceptions are Nova, whose gigantic One-Winged Angel form comes with a face-concealing helmet, and Asimov, who sports Prophet Eyes in his human form and a complete Black Eyes of Evil in his lightning elemental form.
• Card City Nights 2: Lemonic Diva's eyes turn into tiny yellow dot pupils and black scalera when talking about Superstar, in contast to her regular, larger black pupils and white scalera:
  Lemonic Diva: Let's make one thing clear - Superstar has nothing on me. Not the fans, not the smarts, not the looks. NOTHING, you hear me?
• Undead in Dark Souls nearly always have sunken, black eye sockets when they go Hollow, and with the exception of the Player Character, when they look like that, they've gone irrevocably, murderously insane.
• Dirge of Cerberus has these with Azul the Cerulean, a huge Stone Wall of a villain, whose black-and-yellow eyes show he's not one to be trifled with.
• Disgaea:
  • In Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, the Real Overlord, Zenon Rozalin, has them, and, like the Berserkers from Makai Kingdom, is legitimately Ax-Crazy.
  • In Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Super Hero Aurum's One-Winged Angel form has them, and he's definitely messed up in the head.
• In DragonFable, recent class revamps for Necromancer and Death Knight included new artwork which gives both classes these eyes, with green and red irises, respectively. As well, Icebound Revenant is a new armor that can only be obtained with Dragon Coins; it's essentially an ice-themed variant on Death Knight, with blue irises, appropriately enough.
• The Harpy from Dragon's Dogma have these as their default eye colours.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion:
  • The more reclusive vampires have these, usually indicating that they do not care about trying to blend in with normal society.
  • As well as Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. Can't get much crazier than that.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Berserkers are prone to black sclerae, particularly those who are incoherent or nonverbal due to Madness Enhancement: Heracles, Caligula, Darius, and Lu Bu. Subverted with Asterios the Minotaur, who is fully talkative and childish more than insane.
  • Eric Bloodaxe and Penthesilea only show black sclerae during their Phantasm animations or when the latter's Berserk Button is pressed.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, male Au Ra of the Xaela clan have dark sclera, which coupled with their dark scales, horns, and sharp facial features lends them an unavoidably sinister look. They're not actually evil, though the clan's culture is noted as being violent, consisting of several nomadic tribes that are constantly warring with one another over territory.
• King Dynal in Fossil Fighters has these, and despite being an alien, he's the only one, even among the other aliens. He's the Big Bad... until a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere pops in and he does an abrupt Heel–Face Turn.
• Daddy Dearest and Mommy Mearest from Friday Night Funkin' have black sclera with red glowing irises. It is implied that Girlfriend has these too, but chooses to appear more human out of love for Boyfriend.
• Overlord Pram from Makai Kingdom has them, though she's more manipulative than crazy. In the same game, the legitimately Ax-Crazy Berserker class has them as well, even carrying over into Disgaea 3.
• Subverted with most asari in Mass Effect, whose eyes turn black when they meld their minds with another, an action done to not only share information with others, but for lovemaking and procreating as well. If the asari is an Ardat-Yakshi, though, it's played straight.
• In Miitopia, Miis that are turned (thankfully temporarily) evil by enemies get black eyes with red sclera.
• Both subverted and played straight in Pokémon: black scleras are rather common, but they don't necessarily mean anything about the owner's behavior. While some bearers of them are described in the Pokedex as being violent and dangerous (Most notably Hydreigon), it's never shown to be a consistent trait among their species (if it's even shown at all).
• The Kelari race in Rift have black sclerae, but they're a case of Dark Is Not Evil.
• In Sonic.exe, Sonic himself gains these, with red pupils and "hyper-realistic" bloody tears to go with it.
• The game-breaking Gideon class from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters have them, minus Heroman.
• Akuma/Goki from Street Fighter sometimes has these Depending on the Artist, when not being depicted with fully red eyes.
• The Thwomps from the Super Mario Bros. series originally had these, before shifting over to Red Eyes, Take Warning in Super Mario 64.
  • Partners in Time's Shroobs have black sclerae and red eyes.
• The Sabbat in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines combine this with Red Eyes, Take Warning by having completely black eyes except for the blood-red irises.

Visual Novels

• Astaroth from Marco & the Galaxy Dragon has blue eyes with black sclera. He’s the game’s Big Bad, and is a remorseless Galactic Conqueror who regularly exterminates the populations of entire worlds when he isn’t destroying those worlds outright.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape:
  • Keela gets these in her Superpowered Evil Side.
  • Kaila's eyes are black with white pupils, and she is a bit unhinged for what Keela did to her master.
• Foxy Gets Hooked: Zigzagged. Instead of the plastic eyeballs that the animatronics have in Five Nights at Freddy's, Harvey Rothman gives them digital, black screens for eyes, with brightly colored pupils. Foxy's pupils are yellow, Chica and Bonnie's are blue, and Freddy's are reddish-orange. However, Freddy is basically the Token Evil Teammate of the animatronics. Bonnie is rude, but not as antagonistic as Freddy, while Foxy and Chica are much nicer in comparison.
• RWBY has Salem, the series' Greater-Scope Villain, who combines the trope with Red Eyes, Take Warning and Tainted Veins to make for an extremely sinister, eldritch appearance.

Webcomics

• In Drowtales, Asira'malika Val'Jaal'darya has darkened Sclerae (believed to be the result of a failed medical experiment). It's not clear if she's this trope played straight, averted, or subverted, but she does have an evil laugh.
• In Girl Genius, the very minor and not-particularly-crazy (but still likely Sparky) character Dr. Vg had red eyes with black sclera. Tinted glasses were used to hide this.
• Heart Core: Some of the more powerful demons in the series have this permanently and most other demons get this during fits of rage or when they go Ax-Crazy.
• Lies Within: The Wraith's hosts gain black sclerae with gold irises, along with other transformations that scale in proportion with its level of control over them. Lys is mostly unaffected but is stuck with the eyes until he trains to control the Wraith's power — and often manifests them for show anyway.
• Asia Ellis in morphE gets these when Hizrim, an Abyssal Puppeteer Parasite, pulls a Grand Theft Me.
• Sidekicks: The villain Phantom, who is a mind controller, has black sclera and purple glowing irises. When Iblis gets his superpower her eyes take on the same colouration.
• Dr. Schtein from String Theory (2009) gets prosthetic eyes after an accident. They're black with red iris apertures.
• In Tower of God, Season 2, a character named Rapdevil appears. Though not evil per se, he is strongly associated with demonic powers and his entire color scheme from his clothing to his shortly trimmed hair is black-yellow. So why shouldn't his eyes be that way, too?
  • Then there's Season 1 character Rak Wraithraiser, a humanoid alligator with black sclerae and red irises.
• Two Keys: Colin, the protagonist, gets these as opposed to his normal, Creepy Shadowed Undereyes look. He didn't go crazy, just got really pissed off after a guy he's fighting starts to touch on his Dark and Troubled Past
• Wayward Sons: Kronos got these after the star core incident, along with his powers.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Mao gets scary black sclerae with red irises at the start of his fight with Yokoka.
• Played straight and subverted in The Zombie Hunters. All classes of The Undead have black sclerae with Glowing Irises Of Undeath, though the Basilisk, a class with a paralyzing gaze, has red irises. Charlie, a partially revived zombie restored to sentience, is a subversion, sporting one human eye and one undead eye, which he hides with a contact lens.

Web Original

• The moon blog features an Alternative Character Interpretation of Princess Luna from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic who has gone insane from her 1000 years of isolation on the moon and now sports these kinds of eyes, along with the occasional black Tears of... something.
  • The many Zalgo-fied Pinkie Pie/Pinkamena images◊, some of which were used in the Luna Game creepypasta.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-040 ("Evolution's Child") is a subversion, having only one eye with a black sclera and defying the traditional roles of evil and insanity.

Western Animation

• In both Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Sonic Underground, Dr. Robotnik is shown with black eyes and red pupils.
• In Allegro Non Troppo 1, all the animals are brightly colored and cartoony except for those jerkass apes with red eyes and black sclera, who are the only ones seen killing other animals on purpose and not for food. They eventually ruin the planet after creating religion, war, and civilization for, despite evolving into humans, they're still vicious, greedy animals.
• The redesigned Joker for The New Batman Adventures had black eyes with white pupils.
• Older Than They Think: the 1949 Looney Tunes short Bee-Deviled Bruin has Papa Bear develop these (white irises on black) after finding out all of his (very painful) attempts to get honey were for naught as Mama had a cupboard full. Actually pretty scary.
• In Ben 10, Whenever Ghostfreak (real name Zs'Skayr ) takes over the body of someone as a host, that person's eyes become black with purple pupils (and pitch black nerve-like extensions around the eyes), very similar to his eyes in his normal form. You do remember who Zs'Skayr is exactly for Ben, right? ( The Dreaded )
• Black Wolf, the villain of the Christmas Special The Flight Before Christmas, has black sclerae and an insatiable appetite for flying reindeer.
• In Gargoyles, Coldstone has one mechanical eye with this effect, comprising of a red iris and black sclera.
• Played for Laughs in the Kaeloo episode "Let's Play the Quest for the Wholly Gruel", where Kaeloo puts in fully black contact lenses and can't see a thing because of them.
  • Played completely straight when she undergoes Sanity Slippage in Episode 100.
• The Legend of Vox Machina: In Episode 6, as Percy delves into his pursuit of vengeance against Captain Stonefell (one of the people who betrayed and murdered his family), he shows this (along with swirling black smoke emanating from him) as he prepares to execute him. It's a sign of the influence of the demon Orthax on him.
  I wanted you to know it was me.
• In the Season 4 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Tirek has black sclerae and glowing yellow pupils.
• Misery of Ruby Gloom has black sclerae with white pupils, although she's not evil...just depressing, pessimistic, incredibly unlucky, and with G-rated shades of Nightmare Fetishist. She enjoys poison herself but is unlikely to offer it to others.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • The Son is the Anthropomorphic Personification of The Dark Side, and he has glowing, red pupils, surrounded by pitch-black sclerae, without irises, and he has a spectacular Sanity Slippage through-out the Mortis-arc.
  • Mother Talzin of the Nightsisters is a Lady of Black Magic with a Voice of the Legion and black sclerae with iridescent irises.
  • General Grievous, one of the shows' primary antagonists, sports black sclerae and yellow irises, and his obsession with killing Jedi should make it clear he's a bit messed up in the head.
• In Thunder Cats 2011 this is Downplayed with Rascally Rabbit the Drifter, who has white iris-pupils on black sclerae. He's merely a frustratingly opaque and eccentric Trickster Mentor.
• In Young Justice (2010), Match, who is a flawed, insane clone of Superman, has black sclerae and blue irises. Apart from the black sclerae, he looks exactly like Superboy, the second clone of Superman.

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