Is Farnsworth Blind?

[on:]

Hello All,
Throughout the series we've never see Farnsworth's eyes. He's taken his glasses off twice that I can recall, once in Raging Bender, and one other time, but the ep eludes me. We saw Mom take his glasses off once in Mother's Day, when she remarked his eyes were a milky white.

Hmm...

Milky white eyes, and he almost never takes his glasses off...

Try this on for size:
Farnsworth is blind, and needs his glasses to enable him to see. They're some type of prosthesis, like a hearing aid for the eyes. If you'll forgive me for dragging another science-fiction story into this for comparison, not unlike Star Trek TNG's Geordi LaForge's VISOR.

What are your thoughts? Are there other (viable!) explainations that work?

I'd like to hear what you think. Meanwhile, I'll polish my 'viablility stick'...   
That sound you hear is my pillow calling my name... loudly!

[Reply #1 on:]

I think he justs has blurry vision and the glasses help. You see in Roswell That Ends Well that he needs to adjust them sometimes.

[Reply #2 on:]

Jupp and he needs even bigger glasses for reading. We see it in Raging Bender

[Reply #3 on:]

Interesting theory SpaceCase, but i dont think he's TOTALLY blind, just a bit. He does have trouble seeing things and recognizing people but he gets around ok most of the time.

[Reply #4 on:]

Professor: "...Any fool could see that Leela is a cyclops(I think this is right)"
Hermes: "Fry's over there mon" (Points in opposite direction at Fry).

He is incredibly near-sighted, but he did figure out that there was a person in front of it.

He also shot Bender because he thought he was Santa, even though he had seen him a thousand times before.

[Reply #5 on:]

Let's not confuse senility and insantity with blindness here. Some of the things he does (ie. shooting Bender) are more the result of these than of lack of vision. However, he obviously has very poor eyesight, and requires his glasses to function.   I doubt they are more than normal glasses, though (no matter how thick).

[Reply #6 on:]

Farnsworth: "Hmm, I could swear I've never seen that robot before."
Bender: "I'm Bender, you know, the lovable rascal?"
Farnsworth: "Oh, right. I remember now."
*Farnsworth looks at Hermes and shrugs*

-Brannigan, Begin Again
This also proves that he is blind (or at least partly blind).

[Reply #7 on:]

no, that cant be my dad says that to me all the time and his visions perfect 

but i think thats being senial not being blind

[Reply #8 on:]

If you were actually blind, even in the future, it would be hard to cure with just glasses. I think he is just an extremely short sighted old man.

[Reply #9 on:]

So he's blind....big whoop....go build a tree house....

[Reply #10 on:]

Maybe he wears contact lenses beneath the glasses, to help him see even better... and maybe these contact lenses where of white color, thus making sense of mom's comment on their milky whiteness...? I mean, it's not more of a long shot than he being blind, is it?

[Reply #11 on:]

Quote from one of the commentaries, probably Mother's Day:

DXC: Now you have a rule right, we're never supposed to see his eyes?
MG: Yes.

[Reply #12 on:]

*Sigh*

I don't appear to be getting through.
My question is whether or not Farnsworth' eyes allow him to see, or whether he needs a prosthesis.
I don't mean corrective lenses; For those to help one must be able to see something.
I mean some, presumably electronic, device that either replaces ot circumvents the eye's function of forming neural impulses that we perceive as sight.

For example;
Farnsworth's "glasses" are actually devices that somehow stimulate Farnsworth's visual cortex in a manner approximating normal vision.
This is a quantum jump beyond mere corrective lenses.
Still, I'm interested in other possibilities.

[Reply #13 on:]

I'm going for the lenses...

[Reply #14 on:]

no, his glasses are just normal glasses with really thick lenses. stop thinking of this futuristic crap. we all know that stuff like this would never work...even in the future.

[Reply #15 on:]

I don't think that's something that was addressed on the show, but if you were 160 years old, I don't think you'd see too well either.

[Reply #16 on:]

That's a good point but that can't be true. Because if he was blind he would have that cane thingy. And he had go aim to shoot Bender in ATOTS. So you're right and wrong.

[Reply #17 on:]

I think he's particially blind.  My guess is his eyes are really small and needs those glasses.

[Reply #18 on:]

 

Originally posted by zomit:
Farnsworth: "Hmm, I could swear I've never seen that robot before."
Bender: "I'm Bender, you know, the lovable rascal?"
Farnsworth: "Oh, right. I remember now."
*Farnsworth looks at Hermes and shrugs*

-Brannigan, Begin Again
This also proves that he is blind (or at least partly blind).

No, that shows that he's senile and has incredibly bad memory. If he was just blind then he would have recognised after Bender gave his name.

[Reply #19 on:]

Mmmm... I don't know, it doesn't seem like they were meant to be any more than corrective lenses (I mean, they look like regular glasses like we have today).    

Not only that, but like Wernstrum already said, a lot of the situtations you used to say Farnsworth was blind are only proof that he's senile, not blind. The only evidence that seems to support him being blind is that he mistook Fry for Hermes once, but he still saw a person in front of him (whether he could identify him or not) so this proves he's not blind. Also, I mean, if Farnsworth used a complex prosthesis for his vision, don't you think it would be mentioned at least once that they had this technology, because why would they neglect mentioning cool futuristic technology? 

It is a very interesting theory though, SpaceCase... I can honestly say I'm not intelligent enough to think of such a possibility.   

[Reply #20 on:]

I dont think hes blind. i think in mothers day, when mom said that his eyes were milky white i think she was talking about the white part of someones eyes, i forget what its called, just to add more mystery to what his eyes look like

[Reply #21 on:]

I think that he is as blind as you can get while still being able to see.

That makes Perfect sense.

[Reply #22 on:]

Well, in some eps Farnsworth APPEARS to be blind e.g. Xmas Story, but in others he can see people fine. I think that it's just a thing that happens once in a while.After all, he's 164.

[Reply #23 on:]

If his glasses were prostheses, then Farnsworth should be able to see properly. I vote for normal glasses, but not very effective ones.

[Reply #24 on:]

 

Originally posted by Guineapig Trick:
I think in mothers day, when Mom said that his eyes were milky white I think she was talking about the white part of someones eyes, I forget what its called, just to add more mystery to what his eyes look like

It's called the 'sclera' but everyone's eyes have those, so why would Mom mention that?

 

Originally posted by 3/4 of a Jesus:
... Also, I mean, if Farnsworth used a complex prosthesis for his vision, don't you think it would be mentioned at least once that they had this technology, because why would they neglect mentioning cool futuristic technology? 

The 'thing' on Leela's arm does a dozen different things, but doesn't even have a name: Why? That's the joke.
IIRC, in ATOTS, the crew is trying to escape, but Santa is holding the PE ship. When Fry asks what's wrong Leela (while manhandling the controls) says something like, "Usually when I do stuff like this the ship moves!" It's poking fun the science-fiction convention of 'explaining' the technology in the story.
Why should the writers of Futurama 'explain' the gadgetry in the show when they've already made jokes by not doing so?
My 2-cents worth.

 

Originally posted by 3/4 of a Jesus:
It is a very interesting theory though, SpaceCase... I can honestly say I'm not intelligent enough to think of such a possibility.   

Don't sell yourself short!

[Reply #25 on:]

I don't think he is blind.  MOM was talking about the white part of his eye because, if you haven't noticed, the caricters don't have irises, the colored part of the eye.  I disagree with the theory that the writers don't mention the tecnology of his glasses to make fun of it.  that only works if it's obvisly hi-tech, like Leela's wrist thing.  but Farnsworth's glasses just look like glasses.   

[Reply #26 on:]

I think that Mom was talking about the fact that the professor has cataracts. Granted, they'd have the technology to fix those by then, (they do now,... hell, even dogs get cataract surgery) but the point of the joke was to point out how old the professor is.

[Reply #27 on:]

 

Originally posted by Prof. Wernstrum:
 No, that shows that he's senile and has incredibly bad memory. If he was just blind then he would have recognised after Bender gave his name.

Yeah I mean member Xmas Story, he thought Hermes was Fry.

Hermes: Fry's over there mon.

[Reply #28 on:]

 

Originally posted by scooty puff snr:
I think that he is as blind as you can get while still being able to see.

That makes Perfect sense.

Agreed

[Reply #29 on:]

he's not blind just an old man with bad vision and thats all there is to it.