X-ray Emoji

A medical X-ray showing bones through skin — most platforms display a human thorax (rib cage and shoulder blades), though Microsoft shows a skull and X (formerly Twitter) shows a hand. The bluish-white glow, the visible skeleton, the clinical vibe. It's the inside of you that you're never supposed to see.

The X-ray is one of those inventions that changed everything overnight. On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen was working with cathode ray tubes in his lab when he noticed a coated screen glowing across the room. He spent the next six weeks in secret, barely eating, studying what he'd found. When his wife Anna Bertha asked what he was doing, he said people would think he'd "gone mad". Six weeks later, he X-rayed her hand. She saw her own bones and her wedding ring floating in shadow and said: "I have seen my death."

🩻 is one of the newer emojis (Unicode 14.0, 2021) and gets used for medical situations, skeleton humor, Halloween content, the metaphor of "seeing through" someone, and radiology culture. It's clinical but meme-friendly — a rare combination.

🩻 operates in medical and metaphorical registers, sometimes at the same time.

The most common use is literal: hospital visits, broken bones, medical scans. "Got the X-ray results back 🩻" and "Fractured my wrist 🩻" are standard. Healthcare workers and radiology professionals use it in bios and posts as an identity marker, the way teachers use 📚 and coders use 💻.

The second use is skeleton humor and Halloween content. 🩻 overlaps with 💀 and 🦴 in the spooky aesthetic. "Spooky Scary Skeletons" and the "doot doot" trumpet skeleton meme (💀🎺) are part of a broader skeleton internet culture that peaks every October and never fully disappears.

The third use is metaphorical transparency. "I see right through you 🩻" and "Can't hide anything from me 🩻" lean on the X-ray's ability to reveal what's hidden. This connects to Superman's X-ray vision (first used in Action Comics #11, 1939) and the broader cultural idea that X-rays strip away pretense. The Victorians were terrified and fascinated by this — a technology that could see through clothing was deeply unsettling to an era obsessed with modesty.

X-rays weren't invented. They were accidentally discovered, and the world lost its mind.

On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was experimenting with cathode ray tubes at the University of Würzburg when he noticed a fluorescent screen glowing on the other side of the room. Something invisible was passing through solid objects. He called the unknown radiation "X-rays" — the X meant "unknown," and the name stuck even after scientists figured out exactly what they were.

Röntgen spent six weeks in his lab studying the rays before going public. On December 22, 1895, he X-rayed his wife's hand, producing "Hand mit Ringen" (Hand with Rings) — the ghostly image of bones and a wedding ring that became the most reproduced scientific image of the 19th century. Anna Bertha's reaction, "I have seen my death," captures the existential horror of seeing your own skeleton for the first time.

Röntgen won the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 and refused to patent his discovery, wanting the world to benefit freely. Then the world went completely irresponsible with it.

By the early 1900s, shoe stores installed fluoroscopes — X-ray machines that let customers see their foot bones inside new shoes. By the 1950s, there were 10,000 shoe-fitting fluoroscopes in the US alone. Customers stood on top of the X-ray tube with essentially no shielding. Shoe salespeople got chronic radiation exposure. At least one needed an amputation. Pennsylvania banned the machines in 1957, but some states didn't act until the 1960s.

Meanwhile, the Radium Girls — young women who painted glow-in-the-dark watch dials with radium paint in the 1920s — were dying of radiation poisoning. They'd been told to lick their brush tips to make fine points. Their jaws disintegrated. Their bones crumbled. By 1927, over 50 had died. Their lawsuits helped establish modern workplace safety regulations.

Marie Curie herself died in 1934 of aplastic anemia caused by decades of radiation exposure. Her body was so radioactive it was buried in a lead-lined coffin. Her notebooks, stored at France's Bibliothèque Nationale, are still radioactive and must be accessed in lead-lined boxes.

The emoji distills all of this into a clean medical image. But behind the ribcage on your screen is a 130-year history of discovery, horror, carelessness, and the slow, painful process of learning that seeing inside the body comes with a cost.

Approved in Unicode 14.0 (2021) as U+1FA7BU+1FA7B X-RAY and included in Emoji 14.0 (2021). It's one of the newer medical emojis, joining 🩺 (stethoscope) and 🩹 (adhesive bandage) in the healthcare set. Most platforms show a chest X-ray (rib cage and shoulders). Microsoft chose a skull. X (formerly Twitter) shows a hand — which is historically appropriate, since the first X-ray image ever taken was of Anna Bertha Röntgen's hand in 1895.

1. 1895Röntgen discovers X-rays. X-rays his wife's hand. She says 'I have seen my death'↗
2. 1896X-ray mania sweeps the world. Newspapers predict the end of privacy. Lead-lined underwear is marketed↗
3. 1901Röntgen wins the first Nobel Prize in Physics. Refuses to patent X-rays↗
4. 1920Radium Girls begin painting watch dials with radium paint. Over 50 die by 1927↗
5. 1930Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes appear in stores. 10,000 machines in the US by the 1950s↗
6. 1934Marie Curie dies of radiation-caused aplastic anemia. Buried in a lead-lined coffin↗
7. 1939Superman uses X-ray vision for the first time in Action Comics #11↗
8. 1957Pennsylvania bans shoe-fitting fluoroscopes. Other states follow through the 1960s↗
9. 2013TSA removes backscatter X-ray body scanners from airports after privacy and health concerns↗
10. 2021X-Ray emoji approved in Unicode 14.0↗

X-rays carry different associations depending on who you're talking to.

In medical culture, the X-ray is the workhorse of diagnostic imaging. The global medical imaging market is worth $43.5 billion in 2025, with CT scans growing fastest but X-rays remaining the most common and accessible imaging tool. For healthcare workers, 🩻 is as routine as 💊.

In pop culture, X-ray means Superman. His X-ray vision (Action Comics #11, 1939) became the template for superhero sensory powers. The concept — seeing through walls, through clothing, through deception — tapped into the same fascination and anxiety that X-rays provoked when Röntgen first demonstrated them. Superman's one limitation (lead blocks his X-ray vision) mirrors real X-ray physics.

In internet culture, skeletons are a meme genre. "Spooky Scary Skeletons" (a 1996 Halloween song by Andrew Gold) became a viral meme in 2013-2014. The "doot doot" trumpet skeleton (💀🎺) emerged from a 2011 YouTube clip. Every October, skeleton memes flood social media. The X-ray emoji plugs directly into this culture.

In nostalgia culture, the X-Ray Specs sold in the back of comic books (1950s-1960s) are a beloved example of overhyped novelty marketing. They were cheap cardboard glasses with feather lenses that created an optical illusion. Nobody actually saw through anything. But the dream of X-ray vision sold millions of pairs.

In art, Nick Veasey has built an entire career X-raying everyday objects (flowers, shoes, Boeing 777s) and displaying the images as gallery art. His work turns medical technology into aesthetic experience — "a statement against society's obsession with superficial appearance."

• •The X in "X-ray" means "unknown". Röntgen called them X-rays because he didn't know what they were. The name stuck even after scientists identified them as electromagnetic radiation. In German-speaking countries, they're still called "Röntgenstrahlen" (Röntgen rays).
• •Anna Bertha Röntgen's reaction to seeing her own skeleton — "I have seen my death" — captures the existential vertigo of early X-ray culture. Victorians found the technology both terrifying and fascinating. Within months of Röntgen's announcement, lead-lined underwear was being marketed to protect modesty.
• •There were 10,000 shoe-fitting fluoroscopes in the US by the 1950s. Parents regularly X-rayed their children's feet to check shoe fit. The machines delivered radiation doses hundreds of times higher than a modern chest X-ray. Pennsylvania banned them in 1957; some states waited until the 1960s.
• •The Radium Girls (1920s) were told radium paint was harmless. They licked their brush tips to make fine points. Their jaws disintegrated. Their bones crumbled. Over 50 died. Their lawsuits established that employers are responsible for employee safety — a principle that didn't exist before radiation killed enough people to prove it was necessary.
• •Superman's X-ray vision first appeared in Action Comics #11 (1939). The concept was created before Superman himself — Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first used it in a pre-Superman comic strip. The lead limitation (Superman can't see through lead) is based on real X-ray physics, which is a surprisingly nerdy detail for a 1930s comic.

• •Some people use 🩻 and 💀 interchangeably for skeleton humor, but they have different tones. 💀 is casual internet slang ("I'm dead" = laughing hard). 🩻 is more clinical — it implies medical imaging, diagnostic technology, and the literal act of seeing inside a body. The overlap exists in Halloween contexts, but the rest of the year they serve different purposes.
• •The emoji is new enough (2021) that it doesn't render on older devices and operating systems. If your audience might be on older hardware, 💀 or 🦴 are safer choices for skeleton-related content.

• •Superman's X-ray vision (1939-present) — The most famous fictional application of X-rays. Superman can see through any material except lead. The concept was created before Superman himself — Siegel and Shuster first used it in a pre-Superman strip. X-ray vision became the template for every superhero sensory power that followed. It's also the reason every villain builds their secret lair out of lead.
• •"I have seen my death" — Anna Bertha Röntgen (1895) — The first person to react to seeing their own skeleton on film. Her hand X-ray, "Hand mit Ringen," became the most reproduced scientific image of the 19th century. The image is simultaneously beautiful and unsettling — your bones are inside you right now, and you never have to think about them until an X-ray forces you to.
• •X-Ray Specs (1950s-1980s) — Comic book ads promising X-ray vision for $1. The cheap cardboard glasses with feather lenses created a mild optical illusion that resembled "seeing through" your hand. They were the original clickbait: massively overpromised, embarrassingly underdelivered, and sold millions of units. Harold von Braunhut (who also invented Sea-Monkeys) was the marketing genius behind them.
• •"Spooky Scary Skeletons" (1996/2013) — Andrew Gold's children's Halloween song became a viral meme two decades after release. Reddit's bait-and-switch posts in 2013 triggered the Skeleton War on Tumblr (2014), the doot doot trumpet skeleton, and an entire skeleton meme ecosystem that now peaks every October. 🩻 is the medical-grade version of this vibe.
• •The Radium Girls (1920s) — Young women hired to paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials with radium paint. Told the paint was harmless. Instructed to lick their brush tips. Their jaws fell apart. Over 50 died. Their lawsuits created modern workplace safety law. Their story has been adapted into plays, films, and the book The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (2017).
• •Marie Curie (1867-1934) — Two Nobel Prizes. Discovered polonium and radium. Died of radiation-caused aplastic anemia. Buried in a lead-lined coffin. Her notebooks are still radioactive and stored in lead boxes at France's national library. Curie is the origin story for both radiation medicine and radiation safety — she proved the technology works and proved it can kill you, with her own body.
• •Nick Veasey — X-ray art (2000s-present) — British photographer who X-rays everyday objects (flowers, suitcases, entire Boeing 777s) and displays the images as fine art. His work uses industrial X-ray machines and sometimes requires 10+ minutes of radiation exposure per image. He calls it "a statement against society's obsession with superficial appearance." The X-ray as art medium, not diagnostic tool.
• •Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes (1930s-1960s) — The wildest chapter in X-ray history. 10,000 machines in US shoe stores let customers see their foot bones inside new shoes. Kids loved it. Radiation safety experts hated it. Salespeople got chronic exposure. The machines were slowly banned, state by state, between 1957 and the late 1960s. A perfect example of technology deployed before anyone fully understood the risks.
• •TSA body scanners (2009-present) — After the 2009 "underwear bomber" incident, TSA deployed full-body X-ray scanners in airports. The backscatter machines generated detailed nude-like images, sparking massive privacy backlash. They were removed by 2013 and replaced with millimeter wave scanners that show a generic mannequin outline instead. The X-ray's power to see through clothing — the same thing that terrified Victorians in 1896 — was still controversial 117 years later.

• •The codepoint is U+1FA7BU+1FA7B. In JavaScript: '\u{1FA7B}''\u{1FA7B}'. No variation selector needed.
• •Approved in Unicode 14.0 (2021), so it won't render on older systems. Always have a fallback (💀 or text) for apps targeting broad device compatibility.
• •Platform designs vary significantly: Apple and Google show a chest X-ray, Microsoft shows a skull, X shows a hand. If the specific body part matters to your use case, test across platforms.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.