The Face of the Sun

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A common depiction of the sun in more lighthearted fare, such as children's and animated media, is that of a large yellow disc with rays perpetually coming out and a human face, often wearing sunglasses, which leads to the question of why the sun would need protection from its own rays. (Well, what other glasses would the sun wear than SUNglasses?) Plus, if your head emitted as much light as the sun does, you would probably need something to protect yourself from the harmful rays of... yourself.[1]

The sun is typically depicted as having a smiling face, but if the scene is a Heat Wave, the sun will look mean. In all scenarios, the sun provides viewers with potential Nightmare Fuel.

This is Older Than They Think: Many classical and medieval works of art depict the sun, "Sol", in this manner, though obviously not in a cartoony fashion. This was codified in medieval heraldry, where the sun was a "sun radiant" if it had rays but no face. A sun with both rays and a face was "the sun in his splendor" (the modern flags of Argentina and Uruguay present a South American-influenced form of this, the Sun of May). The Philippine flag does too. This is common illustration in folklore; see for example, here.

Compare The Man in the Moon. See also Light Is Not Good, because as said before some of these examples are either evil or creepy.

Examples of The Face of the Sun include:


Advertising

  • The Raisin-Bran mascot
  • Coca-Cola has been using a stylized Sol chugging a Coke in its summer promotions for a few years now.
  • The now-defunct Sunblest Bread in the UK used a smiling sun logo, possibly with sunglasses.
  • An ad for Sprite used this, with a smiling sun-face on a bottle of juice coming to life and the mother and children running terror from it.
  • The D'onofrio ice creams. Yes, it's a sun that eats ice-cream.
  • Vitalite sunflower spread in the UK had a sun, in sunglasses, singing about the spread to the tune of The Israelites, with a sunflower backing group.


Anime and Manga

  • Soul Eater, although the Sun isn't always smiling—sometimes he's laughing manically.
    • And it's really more of a Slasher Smile than anything...
    • Recently (in the manga) he's been shown as furious, presumably, it was hot. In the evenings, he's been seen as extremely tired.
  • The first season closing credits of Tenchi Muyo! have the chibi Ryo-Oh-Ki guarding her precious growing carrot against the elements, including a snarling, ferociously hot sun.
  • Dr. Slump has this. The sun even rises from the ocean horizon with a snorkel.


Film


Folklore

  • According to one Chinese myth, looking at the sun hurts your eyes because the god of the sun is rather ugly and thus attempts to poke your eyes out should you stare at his face.
  • In Classical Mythology, Helios the sun god is depicted occasionally as this.


Literature

  • Referred to, at least, in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, in the poem "The Man In the Moon Stayed Up Too Late."

"The round Moon rolled behind the hill
As the Sun raised up her head.
She hardly believed her fiery eyes ;
For though it was day, to her surprise
They all went back to bed!"

    • The reason for the Moon being male and the Sun being female in Middle-earth folklore is that the ships of the sun and moon are pulled by a Maia (divine spirit) each, respectively female and male. Which follows Norse Mythology, BTW.
      • Better yet, the Maia in charge of the Sun is a female, non-evil Balrog.


Live Action TV

  • One of Ranger Gord's Marty Stu animation sequences from The Red Green Show featured a sun who shot death rays at people. Gord ended up wrestling it into submission.
  • Conan O'Brien once had a sketch about weather reports using graphics of angry suns to represent high temperatures. There were two from stations that took it too far: one was a Hitler sun, the other was a sun flipping the bird with both hands.
  • The above image is from The Teletubbies.
  • This is the logo for CBS News Sunday Morning; variations also appear at the end of stories on the program.
  • Ray in Bear in the Big Blue House.


Music

  • The cover of Primal Scream's Screamadelica is a blue-and-yellow "psychedelic sunburst" with childish eyes painted by Paul Cannell.


Other

Theatre

  • Avenue Q opens with a video of a Sesame Street-like sun shining and smiling ("The sun is shining, it's a lovely day") until clouds marked with various companies appear ("But you've got lots of bills to pay!")


Video Games

  • An angry sun appears as an enemy in one of the desert levels in Super Mario Bros. 3. ...and you can kill it.
    • Most likely, it's going to kill you.
  • This is used for the sun in the Big Board level in Wario Land 4. There's also a small sun like this in the original Paper Mario.
  • There's a face on the sun in the Wario Ware series of games, or at least in 9 Volt and 18 Volt's epilogue cut scene in Touched.
  • Mr. Shine, recurring baddie of the Kirby series, is an example of the not-so-happy version of this trope, who's partnered with Mr. Bright.
  • The Pokémon Solrock invokes this trope. It first appears in Ruby (and later Emerald) Versions; its counterpart in Sapphire is Lunatone.
  • Some of the Wacky World levels in Lode Runner 2 had a sun which would usually look sort of confused, and occasionally would laugh strangely for no apparent reason.
  • A sun in Loco Roco is one happy fellow who's always smiling when not sleeping.
  • The Sun of a Gun from Chrono Cross, anyone?
  • The sun in Ribbit has bulging eyes, a slightly downturned mouth, and clenched teeth, and appears to be in significant pain. This is never explained.
  • In the ending of Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, Pit's wings fall/rip off in front of a overly happy looking sun, presumably leaving Pit to plummet to his death. No wonder it's called Kid Icarus.


Western Animation


Web Comics


Web Original

  • Dorf Quest has Sunbeard, a shining sun with a manly dwarven beard. In addition, at night time, there is Moonears, a moon with pointy elven ears. Sunbeard has been known to swap places in the sky at times, to make things more dramatic.
  • In Madness Combat, the sun not only gets a face but descends to fight Hank, who kills it.
  • A commonly accepted way to get the obligatory Colin Mochrie reference into Animutations is to put his face in the sun, a reference to the one and only Hyakugojyuuichi!! - which in it itself was probably a reference to the Teletubbies sun.
  • Whenever the sun appears in Zero Punctuation, it has a big grin on its face. Sometimes it's a regular happy smile, other times (like in the LittleBigPlanet review, when he was blaming his difficulty thinking of analogies on the heat) it's more easily interpreted as a Cheshire Cat Grin.
  1. ↑ This is, of course, an example of Fridge Brilliance.
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