Right after Samus acquires the Morphing Ball, two Eye security cameras in the first room of Brinstar turn on that are implied to alert the Space Pirates that Samus has arrived on Zebes. As Samus travels further into Brinstar, the rest of the planet "awakens" and becomes swarmed with enemies, causing the Eyes to disappear for the rest of the game. The Eyes shine a yellow light that tracks Samus around their immediate area when she is near them, and they shut when she walks far enough away. Once Samus searches back around into a corridor in Crateria's central rocky cave, a small Item room featuring a Chozo statue holding a Missile Tank can be found on the left side. This Item room can only be accessed using Bombs, and under normal circumstances, there is nothing of note about the statue.

However, should this room be entered early through hacking or the "Spacetime Beam" glitch that resets item and boss placements in the current save file, the room will be dark and the Chozo statue will have nothing in its hands. When Samus walks close enough to it, the statue will shine the same yellow tracking light to that of the two Eyes and the room will brighten, suggesting that there is an Eye hidden in the statue. This Eye appears to behave the same way as the other two and disappears for the rest of the game once the planet awakens. While the X-Ray Scope does not reveal anything underneath the statue, through the use of a glitch technique that replicates the effects of the Spacetime Beam while creating numerous graphical glitches (most notably in this case causing Chozo statues to become transparent), returning to the Item room will reveal the hidden third Eye. This Eye has some different properties compared to the other two, such as having a blue eyeball rather than red, and will turn around and close when Samus walks far enough away rather than just closing where it is.

This Eye is likely an earlier version of the Eye found in the final game that was originally intended to be found in normal play at the start of the game and eventually scrapped, but was left intact, possibly because all three Eyes eventually disappear anyway, and was not intended to be found by players.