Where did this this thing in books, movies and television where having robots having red eyes means that they are evil or are turning evil come from?
Secondary question: What idiotic engineer keeps giving them red eyes??
TV Tropes’ earliest example of red eyes on a villainous character is Grendel in Beowulf, though his eyes are only described as flame-like. The earliest example they give for specifically red eyes is the title character in Dracula.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedEyesTakeWarning
There’s a separate page for robot eyes that glow red and otherwise:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GlowingMechanicalEyes
No, that’s good engineering. Without the red LEDs installed, we couldn’t tell when the robots are going evil.
They “go evil” in 0.02 seconds, and your “warning” is a laser in the back, or that soft squishy feeling when your inner ears meld together.
“Red Eyed Robots”
Band name.
If all you had to drink was 30-weight, your eyes would be red, too!
Well, there’s this guy from 1984:
Let\s see if we can find someone earlier.
From 1977:
By your command!
Man, this sounds like KITT slander.
Heh!
1957, Bevery Cleary, Henry and the Paper Route: tech-nerd kid avant la lettre is building a mechanical robot named Thorvo.
Red was considered a standard color for robot “eyes” long before it became an Evil-Robot characteristic specifically.
You can trust a car that can go over 300 mph, has full control of itself, comes with ejector seats and has a big red Cylon eye, but I sure as hell won’t.
Geeze.
It’s Robot Kong.
From that kaiju movie.
It is indeed. How Jim Henson got his hands on that prop, I have no idea.
Can’t be, Robot Kong is much bigger.
I bet the designer of HAL 9000 had to keep reassuring people over and over that, yes, he’s represented by a big, scary, red eye, but he’s definitely not going to do anything evil, like try to kill everyone on board the ship. And after he DID try to kill everyone on board the ship, the designer came up with the masterstroke of giving SAL 9000 a blue eye, because blue is always good.
That could be the reason why. The first LEDs to produce visible light were red.
The earliest one I could find was on Uncanny Tales, April 1942 cover by K. P. Ainsworth.
A good cover with evil eyes was on Amazing Stories, October 1958, cover by Ed Valigursky
Yes, I’ve always assumed the default robot eyes were red (and, perhaps, that the default science fiction robot was evil?).