- How are ya doin', you wonderful nerds?
Scott here, and yeah, I know that Deathstroke
isn't really a pirate, but this is
the only eyepatch I could find on short notice.
Guess I didn't really need the earring.
That part was just for me.
Anyway, I'm sure we all are pretty familiar
with the DC Comics assassin, Slade Wilson,
AKA Deathstroke, an incredibly capable fighter
despite him having only one eye.
But just how much of an effect would this cyclopian vision
have on his ability to fight Batman or Green Arrow?
Could Deathstroke realistically go toe-to-toe
against the Dark Knight or the Emerald Archer?
Or would his limited vision provide challenges
that not even he could overcome?
That is the question that Scott
will attempt to answer today, and no,
I'm not talking in the third person.
I'm talking about a different Scott,
from the channel Friggin Boom Toys.
He makes incredible cosplay parkour videos
and has firsthand experience with what it's like
to maneuver in Deathstroke's costume, eyepatch and all.
Take it away, Scott.
- Oh, hi, Slade Wilson here, mercenary.
Just kidding, I'm actually Scott
from the YouTube channel, Friggin Boom Toys, and I've come
to NerdSync today to talk about having one eye.
Now, I don't really have one eye.
This eyepatch is just a prop, a part
of my Deathstroke costume, and it's the part
that I most look forward to taking off
because having one eye really screws with my vision.
But in the DC Universe, Slade Wilson really
does have one eye, and he's one
of the most formidable fighters there is.
In fact, when Slade Wilson got put into a younger body
of someone with two eyes, he found that he could
no longer fight that well at all.
He'd become so accustomed to one eye
that two eyes actually made him worse.
But is that possible?
Can someone with one eye become
a better fighter than someone with two?
Well, Deathstroke has different abilities
and super abilities depending on the exact
version of him that you're talking about,
so, to begin with, let's ground
this question in the real world.
What actually happens to you when you lose an eye?
The first thing that probably popped
into your head is that you lose
all your depth perception, but that isn't really true.
You do lose something called binocular disparity.
Now, binocular disparity is when your brain
takes the slightly different images from both your eyes
and combines them into one new three-dimensional image.
You know when you put your finger in front of your face
and you blink both eyes and your finger moves?
It's that thing.
Now, you obviously can't do that with one eye,
but there are lots of other cues your brain can search for
to figure out how far away things are.
For example, if you see a car and it appears to be that big,
well, you know cars aren't that big, so it must be far away.
Duh!
It seems stupidly simple, but these stupidly-simple cues
are what your brain uses everyday to help perceive depth.
Take a look at this crappy image I made on Microsoft Paint.
Take a look at the red person's limbs.
They're in front of the blue person,
so the red person must be closer.
These two people are much smaller,
so they must be further away.
These two lines are parallel, but in one direction,
they appear to be getting closer, so in that direction,
they must also be getting further away.
There's also motion parallax, where things that are
further away appear to be moving slower
than things that are close to us.
There are tons of clues like this
that you still can use with one eye.
But there's good news and there's bad news.
The bad news is binocular disparity
is probably the strongest tool we have for measuring depth,
though you won't lose your depth perception altogether,
but it's gonna take a pretty strong blow.
The good news is binocular disparity
is really only helpful for when stuff is kinda close up.
If Deathstroke was doing any mid-to-long-range shooting
or sniping, well, having one eye
wouldn't be that much of a problem.
It's the closeup combat where a lack of depth perception
is gonna start to cause you real challenges.
Having to strike or, more importantly, block
unidentified shapes coming at you with speed?
You're in trouble.
I've done a bunch of videos on my channel
where I test the Deathsroke sword
against various objects, and getting an accurate hit
with only one eye is very difficult.
It is something that you can get better at, though.
You can train your brain to more intuitively read those cues
that you can only use with one eye, and you can
get back to functioning at relatively normal levels.
There is another thing you lose, though,
when you have one eye, and in my opinion,
it's gonna affect your closeup combat even more.
It's peripheral vision.
Now, peripheral vision, for those that don't know,
is basically the stuff you see in the corner of your eye.
Try this.
Stare straight ahead and stretch out your arms.
You can still see your fingers wiggling around, right?
Now, if someone were to write something on my hand,
well, I couldn't read it, but that's not
what peripheral vision is for.
The point of peripheral vision
is to catch motion and react to it,
but that's a lot harder with one eye
when you lose up to 20% of it.
Try this, put only one hand out this time
and close the eye that's closest to it.
Experiment with where it disappears.
For me, it's about here, which means
anything in this area is a dead zone.
What if this was Batman's fist flying at my face?
He could catch me off-guard and probably
knock my head straight off of my body.
Now, losing peripheral vision is really hard to adapt to.
With depth perception, losing your binocular disparity sucks
but there are other cues that you can
learn to use more intuitively.
It's not the same, though, with peripheral vision.
There's not much you can do to this eye
to make it miraculously be able to see
through the bridge of your nose and catch all the things
in the dead zone caused by your missing eye.
In another video on my channel,
I wore my Deathstroke suit of armor
to an obstacle course training gym,
and for me, a lack of peripheral vision
caused way more problems than a lack of depth perception.
When it comes to parkour, you're constantly using
your peripheral vision to monitor
the obstacles that are coming up,
and with one eye, that was really tricky.
Take this wall, for example.
I've cleared it dozens of times without the armor,
with relative ease, but with only one eye,
I found it much harder to keep an eye on my foothold
and the upcoming handhold at the same time.
I could only really focus on my feet,
and by the time I shifted my head to where it needed to be,
I saw that I was not as close to the handhold
as I originally thought, and I fell over a lot.
You can watch that full video at my channel,
crush promotion, ah.
Anyway, there are some ways
around a loss of peripheral vision.
In one interview I read, a woman with one eye
talked about this kind of constant, slow head-sweep
that she does that allows her to see things on both sides.
Now, we never actually see Deathstroke do this,
although it would be a hard motion to kind of show
in the panels of a comic, so maybe he is constantly doing it
and no one mentions it for fear of getting shot.
There are other weird things your brain can do
to try and compensate for a missing eye.
One study described a man whose brain would
stretch the vision he did have to try and fill in the vision
he didn't have, so things that were square
would appear as a rectangle to him.
Other people with one eye talk about
a kind of phantom limb situation,
where they begin to get a very strong feeling
that their good eye is actually in the middle of their head,
which of course causes them to misjudge their clearances
and constantly bump into things.
And despite all these differences,
people with one eye live relatively normal lives.
But Deathstroke doesn't really live a normal life, does he?
He travels the world with a sword,
fighting superheroes and killing people.
With all the disadvantages of having one eye,
could Deathstroke really become
that good of a martial artist?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, obviously, he is 'cause we see it
time and time again, but is that realistic or believable?
Would Deathstroke's super reflexes and super strength
really be enough to cancel out
all the disadvantages of having one eye?
Let me know in the comments.
Hey, big thanks to NerdSync for having
me on to talk about Deathstroke.
Wanna know a little secret?
I didn't bother to put on the bottom half of the costume.
I'm just wearing shorts down here.
If you like this video, consider heading over to my channel.
I'm kinda like NerdSync with slightly less science
and slightly more cosplay.
Anyway, thanks for watching.
- Thanks so much, Scott.
I think I speak for all of us when I say,
go put some pants on, dude!
Go check out his channel, Friggin Boom Toys,
for more awesome cosplay videos.
If you didn't know, YouTube is kinda cracking down
on smaller channels' ability to make money,
and Scott's videos are too good
to fall victim to YouTube's dumb changes,
so you can find his channel linked
in the description down below or just click
or tap right here to see him attempt
a parkour obstacle course in the full Deathstroke costume.
It is endlessly entertaining.
I will see you wonderful nerds next week
for another video that explores the history,
science, philosophy, and hidden meanings
of your favorite comic books and superheroes.
My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.