What the image represents varies between works. Sometimes censoring eyes is meant to invoke the original purpose of preserving anonymity, often making a statement about stripping away a character's individual identity and instead contextualizing them as representing anyone. Alternatively, the trope can invoke censorship and dehumanization, where the focus is on the erasure of someone's identity and reducing them to nothingness. Other concepts it can serve as a metaphor for include blindness, personal insecurity, reclusiveness, etc.
The censorship often takes the form of obscuring monochrome bars, but other visually-obscuring elements such as cross marks, pixellation, scratches, or glitch effects can fulfill the same purpose. See also Eyes Out of Sight, where a fictional character's eyes are never shown in person due to being physically hidden, as opposed to this trope which usually documents instances of superimposed censorship.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Choujin X: An ad
◊ for the first two volumes features Tokio and Ely with censor bars over their eyes, tying into the story's use of eyes as symbols for one's identity.
Art
- Artist and illustrator Alec Goss has several collage works in which the eyes of real people are crossed out or obscured by a white bar for artistic effect. His depictions of real people are usually garish, over-the-top, and feature light hints of Gorn, and combined with anonymizing his subjects, the intended effect is to serve as a twisted mirror of the real world.
Fan Works
- Cultstuck: In the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot, Blade Dancer's uncovered eyes and (in a flashback image) symbol are covered up with censor boxes because the members of the Cult of the Signless strive to hide all clues as to their blood colors (which include eye color and personal symbols).
Films — Live-Action
- The posters of Mickey 17 show thirteen of the title character's Expendable Clone predecessors with crossed-out eyes.
- The posters of Parasite (2019), designed by Kim Sang-man, feature members of the respective Kim and Park families are outside the Parks' residence. The eyes of the poor Kim family are obscured by black censor boxes, while the rich Park family's eyes are hidden by white ones. The meaning comes from how parasites like worms don't have eyes, but they can sense light — the Kims have black bars, which symbolize darkness and living underground (poverty) just like they do in the movie, whereas the Parks have white bars suggesting light and living above ground (wealth). Another interpretation is their overall blindness to their own personal evil. Additionally, in East Asia, 'black censors over eyes' are used for censoring mugshots of criminals... which they are.
- In the Spy Kids films, Devlin, the head of the spy organization portrayed by George Clooney, has a censor bar over his eyes. But he often removes them like they were sunglasses.
Literature
- No Country For Bad Boys: The nondescript boy on the book cover has his eyes covered by white cloth on which the novel's title can be read. Its meaning goes two ways. The first, and relatively straightforward one, is Lonnell's notoriety due to his association with a school shooter. He can never go back to the anonymity he enjoyed before his best friend decided to gun their bullies down. The second meaning is even more painful—said bullies revelled in abusing their status and their parents' wealth to get away with serial raping, thus rendering each of their victims just another ignored face in the crowd, carrying her trauma and suffering alone.
- The Stormlight Archive: "Deadeyes" are spirits that have been reduced to Empty Shells by a Knight Radiant forsaking their Oathbound Power. Their bodies in the Spirit World have scratched-out eyes, resembling a defaced illustration rather than an injury.
Live-Action TV
- Kamen Rider Ryuki: The opening sequence features several unidentified people whose eyes are censored, indicating that the participants of the Rider War can be anyone. Overlaps with Evolving Credits, as those people were gradually revealed once they appeared into the plot.
Music
- The cover for the international version of AC/DC's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album features a bunch of people with eyes censored superimposed over a motel, tying into the album's themes of societal discontent and highlighting the "ordinary" people in the scuffle.
- The album cover of good kid, m.A.A.d city is a photograph of several people whose eyes have been blackboxed, save for the child. Kendrick Lamar confirmed that the photograph features himself as a child along with his two uncles and grandfather — in addition to wanting to censor their faces for practical purposes, he purposefully allowed himself to remain unobscured to reflect on the album's concept, that being the story of his own childhood in Compton as told through his own eyes.
- Radiohead: the single release of "Fake Plastic Trees" depicts a grainy VHS shot of a woman whose eyes are whiteboxed out. The song is about the malaise of living in an exhaustingly artificial world, with the song's narrator describing his love for a partner as being "fake plastic love", so the image likely represents his inability to "see" or truly connect to the target of his affection.
- Rihanna's 2016 album Anti shows Rihanna as a child with her eyes concealed by a crown, designed by the artist Roy Nachum. The cover art alludes to power and success and how they blind people, and the crown was made deliberately oversized to cover what one is supposed to see, "the real values and important things in life."
- Thirty Seconds to Mars: The album cover for This Is War depicts a vertically mirrored photo of a snarling tiger's face, with the eyes covered by a white censor box bearing the band name and album title. Various Alternate Album Covers replace the tiger with headshots of the band's fans who also have the censor box atop their eyes.
- Vocaloid:
- "Bungaku Shoujo Insane" by Karasuyasabou features a girl whose eyes are covered by "匿名希望", a.k.a Anonymous, referencing a line in the song, "だから匿名希望で遊びましょう！" (dakara tokunaki kibou de asobimashou!) which can be translated as "So let's play while wishing to remain anonymous!"
- Vocaloid producer Pinocchio-P's song "Anonymous M" covers both ARuFa's and Ha— sorry, Anonymous M's— eyes with black censor boxes. For ARuFa, it's probably a plain Censor Box, as that's how he's normally depicted, but for Anonymous M, it's used for an aesthetic effect. It gets briefly removed near the end of the song as Anonymous M nearly says her real name, "Hatsune Miku," before getting put back on.
- Vocaloid artist Siinamota/Powapowa-P's "Young Girl A" depicts in cover art and the lyric video a girl with her eyes scribbled out or covered by a black box reading the song's title in kanji. The censors symbolize a feeling of anonymity, playing into the song's message of loneliness, confusion, and depression.
- The music video for Yuukisan's song "quiet room" has a boy with his mouth covered and a girl with her eyes covered throughout the song, through either a bandage floating around their heads or through objects partially blocking their faces, such as balloons or plants. One interpretation is that this represents how the girl can't see what's wrong with their relationship, while the boy knows but can't say it out loud.
- In the music video for YOASOBI's "Into the Night," the boy and girl have their eyes covered with squiggles at different parts. At some point, when the boy reaches out to touch the girl's eyes, the squiggles over her eyes get bigger.
- Frank Zappa: The cover art of We're Only in It for the Money is a collage cutouts of various individuals throughout history and pop culture as a very dark and cynical Sgt. Pepper's Shout-Out. Most of the eyes of the then-living celebrities are blackboxed, along with the eyes of Lyndon Johnson and the Statue of Liberty.
Video Games
- Devotion: Several gameplay sections have Li Fang and Mei Shin's eyes cut out of their pictures, with Feng Yu's face never being seen in-game at all.
- Lobotomy Corporation: For most of the game, Carmen's face is censored, owing to Ayin's/the Manager's complicated history with her.
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: The Wisemen's Committee, the leaders of the Patriots, all have their faces censored with hi-tech censor bars — fitting, given that they, and the Patriots as a whole, used electronics (artificial intelligence, computer viruses, internet censorship, and eventually a gigantic battleship meant to control all information) to manipulate mankind For the Greater Good, as they believed they would stop propaganda and bias from causing wars and other conflicts.
- Roblox has multiple items in the catalog that play this trope in different ways. Censor boxes, a big old X, a glitchy face, they have many variants. All of these are usually meant to be used in avatars that fit the accessory. A censor box on a seemingly normal person's eyes, an X on something unusual and possibly dead, and a glitchy face for glitchy characters are only a few of the possibilities.
- Sunless Skies: The last vestige of the Unseen Queen in the real world is an animate portrait with the face completely scratched out, due to being an erstwhile divinity whose birth was erased from history.
- In the final battle in the Pacifist Run of Undertale against Asriel Dreemur, the cast becomes Lost Souls that have forgotten all of their memories, and see you as their enemies. To symbolize this, a white, spasming, glitchy box is put on their face, their minds altered to a point where they might as well be a completely different person. It goes away once you remind the Lost Soul of who they once were.
Web Animation
- JaidenAnimations: In "Why I Don't Have a Face Reveal", Jaiden is constantly depicted with a black bar over her eyes, emphasizing her social anxiety and her desire to hide her face from others thanks to her eating disorder. She rips it off in the end, representing the fact that she's no longer afraid of showing her face.
Webcomics
- Gunnerkrigg Court: Zimmy is normally drawn with inky darkness obscuring her eyes, representing the Power Incontinence that plagues her with visions of a Dark World that can encroach on reality. Her eyes are drawn normally when those powers are temporarily neutralized. Word of God describes the darkness as a "visual metaphor" that isn't visible in-universe.
Web Videos
- Party Crashers: In "We made an unfair Mario Party Challenge", a flashback of Nick and Brent getting absolutely furious at Vernias for unintentionally throwing Bopping Spree while teamed up with them in "We played EVERY minigame in Super Mario Party" has the eyes of Nick's old Piplup avatar censored by a black bar to dissociate it from Nick's new appearance used since 2024.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons spoofs this in "Bart After Dark". Marge shows a slideshow of various Springfieldians who were photographed leaving the Maison Derrière burlesque house, all with black bars over their eyes; however, this does nothing to hide their identities and each of them are recognized and called out by a member of the audience who knows them. Except for Barney Gumble, whom only Moe recognizes, but it takes him about 30 seconds to do so.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: In Veritas, Ens. Tendi's testimony about her role as "The Cleaner" in a clandestine operation requires her to censor some sensitive information related to the mission, which results in everyone but her and Cmdr Ransom appearing in her flashback with censor bars over their eyes and their names bleeped out. Even though Clar, her interrogator protests that she can't omit details like that, she insists that she already did and that she's willing to face the punishment of being dropped in a tank of electric eels to keep that information classified.