A retroreflector is an
optical element which has the
property of reflecting any
light ray in the
direction where it comes from. That is, the
reflected ray is
parallel to the
incident ray.
There is two basic types of retroreflectors. Cat's eyes are composed of a converging lense followed by a mirror at its focal plane, perpendicular to the optical axis. If you carefully do the raytracing by hand, you'll see that this indeed a retroreflector. Rooftops (2D version) and cube corners (3D version) are simply plane mirrors that are perpendicular to each other. Again, if you care to do some raytracing, you'll see that those are retroreflectors, altough I didn't personally tried it in the case of a cube corner.
When you look into a retroreflector, you see only your face, your eyes, or pupils, depending on the distance from the retroreflector.