Eyeballs.

“Ah, Vel’Koz, you made it!” Hermaeus Mora grinned menacingly as he opened the front door to the Halls of Forbidden Knowledge. “So glad to see my old student once more!”

Vel’Koz shuddered. He hated Apocrypha. So much knowledge so badly stored. “You seem happy. Is it because I brought a friend?” He floated to one side, revealing something more eyeball-y than himself and Hermaeus Mora combined.

“Oh, only partially. So, who is our new friend? Welcome!”

“Hermaeus, this is Monoculus. I, uh, salvaged him from a fight with a rather gender-amorphous wizard. He can’t talk very well, but he understands everything.”

Monoculus, who was a whole eye, complete with dangly attachments, ripped fresh from his former home, blinked. “RRRRRAAAAAAWRRRRRR?”

“I see… Come in, come in! Sauron is late again, but help yourself to the souls of the damned. Just got myself a nice new shipment this morning…” Hermaeus Mora faded from view. Monoculus blinked again, before following Vel’Koz down the hallway, towards the Living Room of Unknowable Data. Along the way, Vel’Koz would occasionally stop to tidy up some floating pile of books, tutting as he did so. Monoculus though seemed quite happy, finally free of that damned wizard.

Anyway, it’s odd that we’ve all kinda forgotten about Demoman’s missing eye. He got a Halloween event about it, then ghostlike versions of Monoculus appeared as super spells during the events of Helltower and Carnival of Doom, but poof, he disappeared. Did Monoculus free himself? Probably not.

Thing is though, Monoculus was a really, really cool boss fight. Simple but effective and actually somewhat balanced. Fighting the giant flying eyeball was basic enough – just shoot at it, but critical hits would enrage it and cause it to go on a rampage, and every time Monoculus teleported, he’d leave a portal to jump through. Surviving a quick jaunt to the underworld would give you Uber, Kritz and the Disciplinary Action at the same time. Damaging Monoculus under this everything-at-once effect would stun him. You’d have to defeat Monoculus in under 2 minutes though, otherwise he’d get bored and run away, taking the Bombinomicon with him.

Although Monoculus is probably the second best boss we’ve ever had, a real boss, not a threat that ran around chopping people’s heads off while the enemy captured, his whole existence kinds spits in the face of the Demoman. Good old Tavish has had his backstory messed around with a couple of times. At various times, he’d lived with his parents, with adopted parents and at an orphanage, and now he lives in a mansion with his mum. His eyeball was apparently destroyed in an explosive experiment gone wrong, but later on this was changed into him looking for a job and having his eye possessed by the Bombinomicon.

What I find most interesting though is that Demoman has never really tried to get his eye back. He’s very close to two smart people – Medic and Engineer, who could probably easily grow back his eye or replace it with a mechanical one yet he hasn’t seemed to ask them for help. And following the Bombinomicon comic, Demoman found out where Merasmus and his eyeball were. Heck, Merasmus in 2012 actually offers Demoman’s eye back if he can find him during the prop hunt phase of Merasmus’s boss fight. Of course, Demoman won’t get his eye back because him being a black, Scottish cyclops is part of his character, but does he really want Medic getting his hands on that eye?

As for Monoculus itself? I’m sure it’s quite happy. And probably unkillable, seeing as it constantly respawned every 3 or so minutes. But this is much easier to explain, via Merasmus’s Kill Me Come Back Stronger pills.