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Authors seem to like giving characters funny-colored eyes. Hair too. Often the colors are pretty much never found in real life. Common ones include gold (not to be confused with the Amber Brown eyes that are, in fact, naturally occurring), red (as would exist in albinism only), purple (rare even among albinos), pale silver, mixed, and various other brilliant shades you're unlikely to see on anyone not wearing colored contacts and in some cases not even then.

Although unrealistic, this is done (along with hair of unnatural colors) to help differentiate characters from each other.

Supertrope is Exotic Eye Designs, which is for any thing about eyes being different.

See Color-Coded Eyes, when color symbolism in the eyes is used for characterization.

Sub-Tropes include:


Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Anime & Manga 
  • The main cast of Hyouka fits this trope. Oreki has green eyes, Chitanda has purple eyes, Fukube has orange eyes, and Ibara has pink eyes.
  • Nia in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has aquamarine eyes and, for bonus points, pink cross-shaped pupils. She's also part Anti-Spiral. Kamina's eyes are red, perhaps owing to his Hot-Blooded nature.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura's Yue is described as having "purplish silver" eyes in the manga. They're actually reflective, referencing his status as a moon spirit.
  • Samurai 7 's Ukyo has violet eyes.
  • In Eureka Seven, both Eureka (Corallian) and Anemone (altered human) have purple/pink irises. Eureka's also contain a circle parallel to the iris, while Anemone's eyes each have a single straight line etched across them. When Anemone starts to rebel and they go to that freakish factory-hospital where they're trying to get more artificial Corallians, all the girls have that line, and in one scene we see some of them being pumped full of drugs in a clearly painful and cruel test (that, incidentally, kills them); during the test, the lines stretch apart and eventually snap into circles. So whatever they're for, they're relevant.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, Ishbalans are immediately recognizable by their red eyes. The Elrics' golden eyes are also implied to be a rarity in the present time but rather common in Xerxes, a civilization of which their father is the only survivor.
  • Date A Live: Tohka Yatogami's eyes are purple with a small hint of gold. The novels call them "crystalline".
  • The Arbiters in Death Parade almost all have these - Nona’s are light purple, Ginti’s are gold, and Oculus has Black Eyes. The background characters are given unique eye colors as well. Even the Arbiters who have more realistic eye colors like blue or green have them in unrealistic shades. The human characters, in contrast, all have normal eye colors.
  • In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, it's extremely common:
    • The protagonists Tanjiro and Nezuko Kamado, have dark red and hot pink eyes respectively.
    • With the exception of Gyomei who has solid white eyes to represent to his blindness, all the Hashira have oddly colored eyes.
    • Ruka Rengoku has deep crimson eyes, despite being a normal human, an addend to the series folklore explains women of the Rengoku household will stare into flames for hours without end, consistently during pregnancy, so their children will grow into strong Flame Breathing demon slayers.
    • Fittingly, most of if not all the demons themselves have oddly colored eyes. Special mention goes to Upper Rank 2 Doma for having rainbow colored eyes.
  • Miyu from Vampire Princess Miyu originally has dark brown eyes, which turn golden when she becomes a vampire and the Guardian. She can still "disguise" her irises by turning them back to their original brown color.
  • The Claymores in Claymore have silver eyes that turn gold when they start to use their powers.
  • Almost every cursed member of the Sohma family in Fruits Basket has odd-coloured eyes that correspond with the zodiac animal they are. (Except some of them just have odd-coloured eyes. For example, Yuki is the rat, but he has purple eyes.)
    • In the manga, Yuki actually has gray eyes.
  • In My Hero Academia, Mina has yellow eyes with black sclera as part of her mutation.
  • Performing a Unison in Lyrical Nanoha includes a change in the eye color of a mage. Doing it with either Reinforce gives one solid blue eyes. Agito, on the other hand, can grant red eyes (in the case of Zest), or purple eyes with faded pupils (in the case of Signum).
  • In Code Geass, those using the eponymous power have one eye marked with a glowing red, bird-like sigil, while the rest of the iris gains a red tint. The creators have said that this is simply a visual cue for the audience, though it's implied Geass Users can see the symbol in each others' eyes.
    • Even without the Geass sigil, almost all named characters of the Britannian royal family seem to have some variation of purple or pink irises. Notable exceptions are Clovis (blue eyes) and Guinevere (green eyes).
  • Christopher Shouldered from Baccano! is a somewhat unusual example: his eyes a perfectly normal pale blue, but are also so severely and permanently bloodshot that everything apart from the iris seems blood red.
  • All mist people in Kemono no Souja Erin apparently have emerald-green eyes and hair; it is a dominant genetic trait that makes both them and their descendants easy to identify.
  • Rurouni Kenshin's title character has purple eyes that go golden when in Battousai Mode.
  • Hokuto from the series Corpse Princess has a pink iris and black pupil in one eye, and a black iris and pink pupil in the other. She's as bat-shit crazy as you may think.
  • Lenalee from D.Gray-Man has purple eyes in the anime, the Noah have golden eyes, and Allen's Cursed with Awesome left eye turns black with neon red spirals inside when he senses Akuma.
  • A lot of characters in Kiddy GiRL-AND have oddly colored eyes, but they get outmatched by Letuchaia and Pauki, who have eyes with a very clear horizontal split, with the lower halves also consisting of differently-colored internal half-rings. Geacht'er has a slightly less conspicuous version of this, for some reason.
  • For the most part, Black Cat sticks to regular and stylized shades of perfectly normal hair colors. Eye colors, however, are all over the spectrum. In particular, Train's gold eyes are symbolic, and one of Sven's orange and green eyes can see a couple minutes into the future.
  • The Wandering Son anime is full of this thanks to Adaptation Dye-Job (the manga instead uses brown and black as a stylized dark brown). Gold eyes for Takatsuki and several other characters, red eyes for Yuki, black eyes for a few characters, violet eyes for Anna, and various other colors.
  • Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: Sakura has jade eyes, Syaoran has brown eyes, Fai has sapphire eyes, Kurogane has ruby eyes, and Makona has no eyes (usually).
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers stays within the natural hair color range, but it's got violet-eyed characters (Russia, Canada, and Austria, for starters) red-eyed characters (Prussia and Romania), and Asian characters with gold eyes.
  • The Grim Reapers of Black Butler are identified by their distinctive eye color, as well as being near-sighted. Their eyes are green with a vibrant chartreuse ring on the outside.
  • Komori's eyes in the anime adaption of Komori-san Can't Decline! are pink with a yellow highlight on the bottom. In the manga, they were amber-colored.
  • Tohru from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has red eyes with gold highlights and slitted pupils. It marks her nature as a dragon.
  • In Tokyo Ghoul, the titular Ghouls have their kakugan — their Game Face which features red irises and black sclera. Anti-ghoul laws authorize the killing on sight of anyone sporting kakugan. One-Eyed Ghouls are marked by only having one kakugan, while their other eye remains normal.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: Revolver's eyes are literally completely yellow. While Ryoken's eyes are a much more natural light-blue with him having normal sclera, his pupils are white and not black.
  • The Kinohata family in Asteroid in Love have purple-and-gold eyes, vaguely reminiscent of a sun in space.
  • Mei from The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You has rainbow-coloured eyes, although since her eyes are constantly closed, the only time we see them is when Rentarou tricks her into laughing at one of Hahari's mishaps, and she opens her eyes in shame at her actions.
  • In Heat Guy J, all the characters have more-or-less normal eye colors...except for Clair, whose eyes are amethyst purple. (And J, who has golden eyes, but he's an android.)
  • Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun: Sakura has purple eyes, Mikoshiba has red eyes, Kashima and Wakamatsu have blue-green eyes (virtually unheard of in Japan), and Seo's eye color varies depending on the colorist (they're a normal brown in the anime, but her eyes have also been green, red, or gold in the manga).
  • Great Teacher Onizuka: Urumi Kanzaki has one blue eye and one brown eye. This may be due to her being a Test Tube Baby with an American father and Japanese mother, though it's very rare in any ethnicity in real life.
  • My-HiME has a huge cast, so this trope comes into play. Natsuki Kuga has emerald green eyes, while her nemesis, Nao Yuki, has lime green. Shizuru Fujino has deep crimson eyes. Haruka Suzushiro has violet eyes. Mai Tokiha has lavender eyes. Nagi Homura, The Dragon of the series, has pink eyes. Miyu Greer has red eyes, but she is also an android. Mikoto Minagi and her brother, Reito Kanzaki both have yellow eyes.
  • Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus: Kathrus normally has blue eyes, but they turn purple when her "Renny" personality takes control.
  • The Toda sisters in Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says have black iris and white pupils.
  • The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!: Jahy's child form has orange eyes with yellow slit pupils, while her adult form has golden eyes with dark slit pupils.
  • Spy X Family: Yor and her brother Yuri have red irises.

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • The titular characters in Rise of the Guardians all have eyes that correspond to their respective power sets and domains. While Jack, North, and Bunny have eye colors that would more or less appear naturally in humans, Tooth has opalescent pink eyes that look like faceted jewels (her domain being a giver of wealth), and Sandy has gold eyes. Pitch's eyes are a dull, blackish silver, with a small iris of gold around the pupil that looks like faint sunbursts radiating from a solar eclipse.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Cloud Atlas: The Abbess' eyes flash various colours while she is trying to learn the meaning of Zachry's dream in the film.
  • Individuals who have a strong connection to the Dark Side of The Force in Star Wars will often have glowing yellow eyes as well as other signs of their corruption. Of note in the films, Darth Maul, Darth Sidious, and Darth Vader (before he fell into an active volcano and required a life support suit) all had yellow eyes.

    Literature 
  • Codex Alera: Marat children, called by the gender-neutral term of "whelp," have iridescent eyes until they first bond with their chala. After that point, their eyes permanently change to the eye color of their chala. After Tavi unintentionally becomes the chala of Kitai in Furies of Calderon, the latter's eye color changes to the former's bright green.
  • Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei, one of the incarnations of the Eternal Champion from the fantasy novels by Michael Moorcock. Corum's race, the long-lived Vadhagh, have eyes described as "large almond eyes with yellow centers and purple surrounds". When Corum got angry, his iris would change to "burning gold" and the pupil to black.
  • Flauvic of Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel has gold eyes.
  • Invoked in Daemon, where Loki/Gragg wears special contact lenses to access the darknet, which has the side effect of giving him weird eye colours.
  • While not technically unrealistic, in The Dark Tower series, Roland's eyes are described by some characters as appearing "impossibly blue", to the point of being almost transparent it seems.
  • Detective Inspector Chen: This is common in characters with supernatural origins.
    • The demonic vice cop Zhu Irzh has gold eyes.
    • Inari, Chen's partially demonic wife, has red sclera and black pupils.
    • One of their friends has yellow eyes when in natural lighting but under fluorescent lights, they turn gold. (And she wasn't wearing contacts.)
  • Dragonlance: The wizard Raistlin Majere had golden eyes with hourglass-shaped pupils as part of a curse put on him; he was forced to see time as it affected all things, so all living things would wither and die and turn to dust in his eyes, even rocks and buildings would slowly erode and crumble if he looked at them long enough. No wonder he became rather gloomy.
  • Dragon Queen: Trava has one gold eye and one brown eye, and apparently her mother had two gold eyes.
  • Drenai: In Legend, Serbitar the albino has un-albino-like bright green eyes, a legacy of his mystical training; at one point in the novel, when he's at his lowest physical and spiritual ebb, they temporarily revert to their natural color.
  • The Dresden Files features the White Court of Vampires, who can become uber-strong and heal almost any injury by drawing on their "Hunger." When this happens, the eyes of the demon inside them will start to show, turning eyes first silver and then pure white as the Hunger takes control. (This also happens when they feed, or when they're Hungry, or any other time the demon takes some control.)
  • Dune: Consumption of large quantities of Melange stays the eyes blue, iris and sclera alike. This is universal among the Fremen.
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs was fond of this trope. Both John Carter and Tarzan have eyes usually described as "steel-grey," though grey is at least a possible eye color.
  • The Girl with the Silver Eyes: The eponymous silver-eyed girl is Katie, who has Psychic Powers due to a drug her mother was exposed to during the pregnancy.
  • Gormenghast: Titus, seventy-seventh Earl of Groan, has violet eyes. Notably, this example predates the others on this page by at least two decades.
  • Stewart of the Green Hills series has silver eyes, because he's an incarnation of an ancient dragon.
  • In Heralds of Valdemar, Vanyel has silver eyes, and so do some of his immediate descendants, though that trait doesn't persist for too many generations.
  • The Honor Harrington series has Eloise Pritchart, whose "topaz" eyes are made much of in the narration. David Weber later clarified that her eyes are the amber-orange-brown of Imperial topaz.
  • Hurog: In Dragon Bones, Oreg says that the dragon whose skeleton is buried under castle Hurog was beautiful and had silver eyes. The Hurog family's unusually violet eyes are more likely than not a hint at their dragon ancestry.
  • Ysandre de la Courcel in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy books is a violet-eyed blonde. Her daughter Alais inherits the eyes but not the hair.
  • Drizzt Do'Urden quite possibly originated the use of purple eyes for a self-insert powerhouse. His are lavender, even when viewed through infravision. Of course, in real life, this would mean his eyes are a very strange temperature indeed. Even if the color range didn't correspond to heat scopes today, it would mean that his irises are of a markedly different temperature than the rest of his body.
    • When he uses infravision, his eyes stay lavender instead of glowing red (as per usual). His eyeballs are probably normal temperature.
    • Drizzt is also a dark elf, and drow elves' most common eye color is red, with the occasional orange or gold. At the time of Drizzt's creation, purple eyes were highly unusual. As of 3rd Edition, they are described as having purple as a distinct possibility.
    • Violet eyes can actually exist in Real Life. They're rare, and happen when blue eyes aren't quite blue enough so some of the red shows through. This basically means that they are really just a somewhat off shade of blue, though. Any pictures of actual purple eyes are either digitally manipulated or made with contact lenses, they're not really distinguishable from normal blue eyes unless you look really closely.
  • The alien children in The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned) have golden eyes. In the film, their eyes glow when they use their psychic abilities.
  • In The Migax Cycle, Eeksa has golden eyes.
  • Kvothe of The Name of the Wind has green eyes, but the precise shade varies with his mood; one character realises how scared he is when they notice that his eyes have paled. Curiously, Bast has similar eyes, but in blue.
  • Leland Gaunt, the main villain of Stephen King's novel Needful Things, can change the color of his eyes: they always appear as the exact shade that the observer finds most attractive.
  • In The Neverending Story, the godlike Childlike Empress has solid golden eyes.
  • Door, from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere has eyes that don't seem to have fixed color — they are described as being like fire opals.
  • The Saintess and the Villainess: Corvina has pink eyes.
  • There are several flavours of Technicolor Eyes in Septimus Heap, including green eyes for Wizards, blue eyes for Witches, and purple eyes for Queens and Princesses.
  • The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • In The Silence of the Lambs Thomas Harris for some reason didn't think Hannibal Lecter was spooky enough, so gave him maroon eyes.
  • Alanna of Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet has purple eyes. So does her cat. So does her twin brother.
    • Pierce later admitted that Alanna is her most blatantly Sueish protagonist.
    • It's not unusual for siblings to have the same eye color, and the cat is sent by the goddess specifically to guide and protect Alanna.
    • Liam Ironarm the Shang Dragon, one of Alanna's lovers, has magical Mood Ring-esque eyes.
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Ysanne Isard has one red eye - almost always described as "molten" (the other is blue, and almost always described as icy). Teneniel Djo's eyes are bronze. Grand Admiral Thrawn has glowing red eyes, and Timothy Zahn insists on mentioning them every time he appears. But then, he normally appears around Imperial officers, who generally are very uneasy around aliens in general, supremacist gits that they are; and he's never a point of view character, only ever seen from the point of view of people around him; and while he was alive his species (who so far universally have glowing red eyes) was unknown in the greater galaxy. And that's not counting the characters with prosthetics, of course.
    • And Leonia Tavira has purple eyes.
  • In The Stormlight Archive, the Alethi and closely related peoples are split into castes based on eye color. The "darkeyes" (commoners) have mostly ordinary eye colors, but the "lighteyed" aristocrats can have a much wider range, from ordinary colors like blue or green to more unusual ones like gold or violet.
  • A villain described throughout the second Sword of Truth book is stated to have pale blue eyes with dark violet flecks (her identity isn't revealed until close to the end of the book).
  • The Teenage Wastelands books feature unnatural eye colors as symptomatic of magical degeneration, and thus evil. The cannibal witches of Jackie and Craig have yellowed 'scurvy' eyes with red pupils, and the conjurors and nighthawks of Sky Valley have orange, pink or silver eyes.
  • The Twilight Saga:
    • Edward Cullen and his family are all vampires, and their eyes will actually change color depending on how long it's been since they've had blood. Black if it's been a while, and gold if they've just hunted.
    • Nomadic vampires in Twilight have dark burgundy/red eyes because they drink human blood.
  • In the Warrior Cats book The Sight, Heatherpaw is named for her eyes, which one character comments are the color of heather. While the authors did have purple eyes in mind, this was changed to blue in later books since cats can't actually have purple eyes (unless possibly albino, which Heatherpaw is not.) In Tallstar's Revenge, a similarly-named character, Heatherstar, is mentioned to have purple eyes in one scene.
  • Perrin Aybara of The Wheel of Time acquires gold eyes. Justified, however, by his close connection with wolves, for which Supernatural Gold Eyes are common.
  • In The Witches, the pupil of a witch's eye keeps changing colour, which is one way to tell she is a witch.
  • In the Wolves of Mercy Falls Series, Sam's eyes are naturally yellow.
  • In The Zodiac Series, Aquarian eyes span every shade of the sky. As such, the only "normal" eye colors are blue and gray—major character Pandora has dusky violet eyes, and Crompton has sunset-pink eyes, which carry over to his true identity.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Helix, Doctor Hiroshi Hatake hides glowing silver irises behind brown-tinted contacts, suggesting Professor Guinea Pig hobbyism apart from the unregulated viral research Arctic Biosystems is conducting.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • After being turned into a vampire, Claudia and Bruce have reddish-orange eyes.
    • Armand's vampiric irises are orange.
  • The title character from the 1-season series Lucan had eyes that glowed red when he was using his "wolf powers".
  • The Outer Limits (1995):
    • In "I Hear You Calling", the strange man is identified as an alien by his purple eyes.
    • In "Summit", the Dregocians have yellow eyes.
    • In "The Haven", George, the holographic concierge of the Haven, has purple eyes.
    • In "The Inheritors", there is a variation. Jacob Hardy, Kelly Risley, and Curtis Sawyer's eyes occasionally glow with blue energy.
    • In "The Beholder", Kyra has red eyes.
    • In "Alien Shop", the shopkeeper's eyes glow purple.
    • In "Lion's Den", the Lewisborough High School wrestling team develop eyes similar to those of a cat.
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", crew members Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner gain glowing silver eyes to indicate their increased telepathic powers.

    Music 
  • A Flock of Seagulls "I Ran". The girl in the lyrics has tawny (an unnatural bright orangey-brown) eyes. Depending on one's definition, "tawny" could mean anything from burnt orange to a pale brown color. Taking that into account, it's very possible that "tawny" in the song simply describes amber or light brown, both of which are naturally occurring eye colors.
  • The Lennon/McCartney song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" references a "girl with kaleidoscope eyes"

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Exalted, the Sidereal Exalted gain this as part of their exaltation, with flecks of color corresponding to their caste appearing in their eyes.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • The tabletop roleplaying game offers enough races with oddly colored eyes to fill a Monster Manual just with them, especially in 3rd edition. Basically, any color you can think of, even metallic gold and silver, can be yours, just pick the right fantasy race: goblinoids, half-dragons, various elven subraces like sea elves, moon elves, gold elves, and the evil drow elves, the planetouched races descended from angels, demons or elemental creatures, the list is endless. Throw shapeshifters into the mix, and you can even justify Eye Color Change, such as the Changeling race from Eberron (humanoid descendants of human/doppelganger mating who are able to modify their outward appearance at a whim and change internal organs sufficiently that they can functionally change their gender)!
    • Metallic dragons are born with eyes the colour of their metal that slowly go molten as they age
    • And ever since 4th edition the Eladrin have been a mainstream core race, a group of elves better than those other elves who are so fine-tuned and connected to the feywilds and magic that they can teleport and they come complete with eyes that come in solid gem stone-ish colours.
  • Maid RPG: lovely colour such as transparent and rainbow are available. And not just as eye colours.

    Video Games 
  • Meta Knight from the Kirby series has yellow eyes, but only when seen through his mask; when it falls off, his face is revealed to be similar to Kirby's, with white eyes. In the anime adaption, they change depending on his mood.
  • In Final Fantasy X, the Al Bhed tribe all have green eyes with a spiral pattern on them. This is a clue that Yuna is half-Al Bhed.
  • While strange eye colors are a norm in Final Fantasy XIV, the Au Ra race stands out for sometimes having limbal rings of exotic color as well. The hue varies but is often of one much brighter than iris, which can lend their eyes a mystical air.
  • Juli Kidman from The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2 has purple eyes despite not having any supernatural powers.
  • Princess Rozalin from Disgaea 2 has red eyes like most other demons, but deviates in that her pupils are white. According to Yukimaru, it's a trait that usually pops up in members of the Snow Clan.
    • Sapphire Rhodonite from the third game takes the cake, though: neon green eyes with white, star-shaped pupils.
    • Almaz starts with normal blue eyes, but because he's slowly turning into a demon, they're starting to turn red. As a result, his eyes are a blue-red gradient for most of the game.
  • The G-man, of Half-Life, looks like he has green eyes, but if one looks closely enough you can see that they are actually part yellow, part blue, and in his appearance in Half-Life 2: Episode One, they're much brighter. In the first game, however, they're just blue.
  • Persona 2 averts this trope. Everyone in the game has realistic eyes, save for Maya Amano but all of them are rare colors.
    • Persona 3 Portable has the female protagonist, who, in contrast to the sharp blue eyes of the male protagonist, has really vivid red eyes.
  • The Legend of Zelda has the Sheikah, who seem to have red eyes, and the Gerudo, who have yellow or amber eyes. Many other characters, bosses, and mooks have at least some red in their eye too, especially when Go for the Eye is invoked.
    • There's also the Twili in Twilight Princess. Normal Twili seem to have fully red eyes, and there's also Midna who has striking red irises with yellow sclera and Zant who has more orange eyes.
  • In the Oblivion mod Nehrim the Aeterna race are distinguishable by their technicolor eyes, with colors including gold, purple, and turquoise.
  • Most Puyo Puyo characters have standard eyes despite having all sorts of unnatural hair colors, although a few have technicolor eyes. Satan has red eyes, Sig has heterochromia with one eye being red, and Dapper Bones has one eye with a pink iris and yellow sclera whereas his other eye is a glowing undead pupil.
  • Guilty Gear plays with this a bit. Having red eyes is a telltale sign that a person is a Gear... but there are other non-Gear characters who sport that eye color such as Chipp (human), Izuna (youkai), and Valentine (Backyarder). There also exists Gears who lack red eyes entirely (gold is the likeliest bet, though Ky's part-Gear son Sin has an emerald-colored eye); due to stylistic differences between artists, this includes Gears like Sol and Justice at times, although red is the preferred color in most depictions. Meanwhile, I-No has color-changing eyes that, as displayed in Xrd, commonly shift between different hues of green, blue, and yellow—sometimes even having the eyes be different colors.
  • Star Breaker from sora sports rainbow-coloured eyes in her design.

    Visual Novels 
  • The protagonist's eyes in Dra+Koi are purple and the dragon's are turquoise. They glow when she's being particularly dragon-y.

    Web Animation 
  • Strong Bad and Stinkoman from Homestar Runner have green eyes. Coach Z's eyes are completely white, one of Bubs' is blue, Marzipan has pink eyes, and Senor Cardgage also has green eyes.
  • RWBY has eyes in every color of the rainbow. Among the main characters, Ruby has silver eyes, Blake's are yellow, Ren's are pink, and Yang has purple eyes that turn red whenever she activates her Semblance or gets angry. Among the villains, Emerald has red eyes, Cinder has golden eyes, Neo has pink and brown heterochromia iridum, and Tyrian has golden eyes that turn purple when he strikes to kill. None of these eye colours are considered strange, except for Ruby's. Silver eyes are incredibly rare and commented on by Professor Ozpin in the pilot episode. Having silver eyes means a character has an innate ability to destroy the Grimm with the power of Light, for which they're hunted by the Big Bad. Oscar Pine has green eyes with amber patches that glow with golden light whenever he switches control with Professor Ozpin, who ends up sharing his body after Volume 3.

    Webcomics 
  • Miamaska: Otherworlders are recognized by their red and purple eyes, as pictured above.
  • Tales of the Questor: Quentyn has eyes that are a startling shade of blue, Nessie has violet eyes, Sam the halfling has bright green ones... In fact, it's a general rule of thumb that the more important a character is, the more prominent or vivid the eye color....
  • The Witch's Throne: The Witches have a black and purple eye.
  • The Wisecracker: The titular character has purple eyes.
  • Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name:
    • Galahad/Hanna's partner has glowing orange eyes. Literally glowing. Though that could be because he's a zombie.
    • All the vampires have red eyes, except for Adelaide, the only female, who has hot pink eyes.
  • Gender Swapped has Eddy, he has pink eyes. No, not the disease pink eye; his eyes are literally pink.
  • Agents of the Realm:
    • Paige has bright orange eyes, although this may be just how the comic's color palette represents Supernatural Gold Eyes.
    • Filoni's one natural eye is pretty clearly pink.
  • Gold Coin Comics: One race has purple eyes, characters in Berserk mode have red eyes.
  • Homestuck:
    • Although this is only visible in the more detailed shots, the kids' text colors match their eye colors. This means blue for John and Jane, red for Dave, purple for Rose, green for Jade and Jake, orange for Dirk, and pink for Roxy.
    • The trolls' eyes shift to match their blood color as the become adults, which can mean anything from rust red through orange and yellow, every shade of green and blue, and purple and maroon.
    • Terezi's eyes are entirely red due to being blinded by the sun.
    • Sollux, being as Gemini-themed as a single character can get, has eyes a la 3D glasses: one entirely red and one entirely blue. The colours can even switch back and forth, until Eridan blinds him via magic/science and they turn solid black. After he half-dies, he has one all-white eyeball while the other is still solid black, and things "look 2D."
    • Dead characters have entirely white eyes, no pupil and no iris.
    • Prospitians and Dersites have black and white eyes, respectively.
    • Lord English has rapidly flashing pool balls for eyes.
    • Some common frogs have eyes in exotic shades, such as azure, indigo, purple and red. The frog needed to complete the Genesis Frog has flashing red-blue-green-purple eyes with yellow swirls around the pupils.
  • Moon Crest 24: Lucy has these, not in regard to her actual eye color but her heat signature vision - that being black (coldest), orange (warm), and white (hottest).
  • The Noordegraaf Files: Akila has blue eyes — as in, the whites of her eyes are blue. They also have three vertical blue stripes going down the middle.
  • Tower of God: With all kinds of different races and species hanging around, this tends to be seen everywhere. Four rather important characters (Bam, Rachel, Yu Hansung, Lero-Ro) have gold eyes, Prince has purple eyes, Yuri, Quant, Hwaryun, Nobic, Quant, and Rak have red eyes and so forth.
  • The Far Side Of Utopia from the start had a broad range of eye colors being common, but still managed to achieve this with the introduction of Mir whose eyes take the usual-unusually colored eyes a step further.
  • The Glass Scientists has Dr. Jekyll with red eyes. Mr. Hyde's eyes may also count, as while they are green, they are an unnatural mint green.
  • Younger Days has Max, a boy who is 9 years old but looks more like a 4-year-old and has violet eyes.
  • Sleepless Domain:
    • Unusual eye and hair colors are common among Magical Girls. Indeed, Power Dyes Your Hair and it's typical to see the Curtains Match the Window, or to at least complement the window. This makes Heartful Punch's eyes stand out, as they are a bright blue in stark contrast to her otherwise pink color scheme. She's also had her eye color since infancy, where magical girls don't usually get their eye and hair colors until after they get their powers. This is all noted by HP as the result of being born while her mother was still an active Magical Girl, as the blue was her color.
    • After Tessa gives up her powers to heal Undine in Chapter 2, Undine has blue eyes with pink pupils when she transforms (they're just blue when not). It's hinted that it's because some of Tessa's powers passed on to Undine, as she later does a variant of one of Tessa's attacks.
  • Freaking Romance: The eyes are beautifully colored. Verose has blue and pink eyes, while Zelan's are vivid shades of green.

    Web Original 
  • In the Whateley Universe, distinctive eye colors are explicitly common among mutants; something in the process of their powers starting to kick in causes their eye color to change, and pretty often the end result is something considered rare in the normal human population.
  • The Woman in the Mountain from The Wanderer's Library has eyes with the coloration reversed. The pupils are white, with black irises and green sclera.

    Western Animation 
  • Arcane: Jayce and Viktor have golden irises. Silco's bad eye is black where it should be white with an orange iris. Jinx's blue eyes become the same neon purple shade of Shimmer after being pumped full of it to save her life.
  • Jimmy Two-Shoes: While Jimmy is usually portrayed with generic black eyes, "The Masked Jackhammer" reveals that he has dark orange irises with even darker pupils.
  • In any of Butch Hartman's works (Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom, T.U.F.F. Puppy), there are characters with pink or purple eyes, and pretty much nobody (including non-white characters) with brown eyes. The only one with brown eyes was the principal in Danny Phantom.
  • In Over the Garden Wall, the Beast encountered in the first episode has glowing eyes with cyan sclera, two-tone yellow irises, and reddish pupils. The real Beast normally appears with white Glowing Eyes of Doom, but in a closeup in the last episode is drawn to have eyes identical to the above.
    Greg: You have beautiful eyes!
  • In Steven Universe most characters just have either black eyes or colored eyes with no distinction between pupil/iris. Garnet, however, has a blue eye, a red eye, and a purple eye complete with pupil and iris, while Jasper has piercing yellow Tsurime Eyes that the animators seem to like zooming in on.
  • Imp from She-Ra: Princess of Power has yellow sclera in his eyes.
  • In each of his incarnations across Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic Underground, resident Big Bad Dr. Robotnik had black sclera with red irises. While the effect was slightly mitigated by his buffoonish behavior in Adventures, the SU version's was quite creepy. And then there was Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)'s... which he could make glow in the dark when he wanted. <Shudder>
  • Miraculous Ladybug: As Adrien Agreste, Cat Noir has normal human green eyes. When he transforms, however, the sclerae become green, while the irises turn a slightly lighter shade of green and the iris becomes slitted, like a cat's.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Discord has red pupils on yellow sclera, with each pupil being differently sized, fitting his strange nature.
    • Shining Armor has typical blue pony eyes on top of light blue sclera. Though this is just an art style example, otherwise it would be harder to see his eyes against his nearly pure white coat.
    • Queen Chrysalis has green unique eye shading not seen with any other character, or any of the other changelings who all have eyes that are completely blue. note 
    • Lord Tirek has glowing yellow eyes on black sclera, and we can assume for other centaurs like his father.
    • Grogar, the villain in the final season, has red pupils on yellow sclera, hinting at how he's actually a disguised Discord, who also has red and yellow eyes.
  • The first three specials for My Little Pony (G3) gave Rainbow Dash rainbow eyes. The Newborn Cuties shorts right at the end of that generation’s run brought that trait back.

    Real Life 
  • A rare example is a medical condition called heterochromia. It comes in two flavors: Complete (each eye is a totally different color; see also Christopher Walken, Dan Aykroyd, Virginia Madsen) and Sectoral (one or both eyes have off-colored sections; see also Kate Bosworth, Logan Lerman, and Simon Pegg).
    • Central Heterochromia is a variant of Sectoral whereby the iris forms two distinct rings of different colours, Catherine Tate has this.
    • David Bowie is a famous example for non-genetic heterochromia, except it wasn't actually heterochromia. Bowie's condition, the result of a schoolyard fight from his childhood, was anisocoria, a condition where one pupil is permanently larger/smaller than the other. Because the aforementioned fight left Bowie's left iris paralyzed, the larger pupil made his left eye merely appear to be a different color than the right one.
  • People with gray eyes frequently have amber flecks on the iris, and their eyes can take on the colour of their surroundings due to the low amount of natural colour present. See, for instance, actor Jeff Hephner, who does indeed have gray eyes with amber flecks.
  • The Afghan Girl. It's probably why her eyes are so damn piercing. She has a textbook case of central heterochromia, mentioned above.
  • One of the signature traits of Elizabeth Taylor was her violet eyes (complete with two rows of eyelashes).
  • People with OCA1 albinism (the most profound type) can have pink, red, or violet eyes. The eyes will often alternate between these colors, depending on the lighting. (The majority of albinos have OCA2, with blue or gray eyes.)
  • A symptom of Waardenburg Syndrome includes blue eyes of an unnatural-looking bright or pale shade. Sometimes the sufferer will have complete or sectoral heterochromia, with one or part of the eyes this brilliant blue.

Alternative Title(s): Technicolour Eyes

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