History Main / CollectorOfTheStrange

* In ''[[VideoGame/NancyDrew Legend of the Crystal Skull'', Nancy Drew must gather each of the novelty glass eyes formerly owned by the late Bruno Bolet. Bruno also collected exotic pets as well as prosthetic eyes.

* Cain and Abel from ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' are brothers and collectors. Cain collects mysteries, and Abel collects secrets.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos has a hobby of collecting specimens of alien fauna that he's encountered while visiting other planets, which are kept in terrariums inside the TrophyRoom of his CoolStarship. These include a feathered serpent from Venus, a nest of tiny red scorpions from Pluto, a slug from an unnamed RoguePlanet, and a spider-like critter from Amalthia.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos has a hobby of collecting alien critters that he's discovered while visiting other planets, which are kept in terrariums inside the TrophyRoom of his CoolStarship. These include a feathered serpent from Venus, a nest of tiny red scorpions from Pluto, a spider-like creature from Amalthia, and a slug from an unnamed RoguePlanet.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos has a hobby of collecting alien critters that he's discovered while visiting other planets, which are kept in terrariums inside the TrophyRoom of his CoolStarship. These include a feathered serpent from Venus, a nest of tiny red scorpions from Pluto, a spider-like creature from Amalthia, and a slug from a RoguePlanet.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos has a hobby of collecting alien critters that he's discovered while visiting other planets, which are kept in terrariums inside the TrophyRoom of his CoolStarship. These include a tarantula with more than eight legs from Amalthia, a feathered serpent from Venus, a slug from a RoguePlanet, and a nest of tiny red whip scorpions from Pluto.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos has a hobby of collecting alien critters that he's discovered while visiting other planets, which are kept in terrariums inside his {{Cool Starship}}'s TrophyRoom. These include a tarantula with more than eight legs from Amalthia, a feathered serpent from Venus, a slug from a RoguePlanet, and a nest of tiny red whip scorpions from Pluto.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos has a hobby of collecting alien critters that he's discovered while visiting other planets, which he then stores inside terrariums aboard his CoolStarship. These include a tarantula with more than eight legs, a slug from an extrasolar RoguePlanet, a Venusian feathered serpent, and a bed of Plutonian red whip scorpions.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos has a hobby of collecting specimens of alien fauna that he discovers while visiting planets outside the solar system. He then stores these specimens inside terrariums in the laboratory aboard his CoolStarship, presumably to study them later on. These include a spider with more than eight legs, a slug-like creature, a feathered serpent, and a nest of insects that resemble red whip scorpions.

* On ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim,'' Dib collects haunted Gummi bears, aside from his general assortment of paranormal stuff.

* Mrs. Twombly from ''WesternAnimation/LittlestPetShop2012'' has a large collection of rare doorknobs.
* Mayor Jeff from ''WesternAnimation/PBAndJOtter'' collects toilet seat covers. A little [[{{Squick}} too enthusiastically for comfort.]]
* Ren from ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'' collected used celebrity underwear, opera records, fossilized dinosaur droppings, and jars of rare incurable diseases; his cousin Sven collected used bandages and spit in a jar; and Stimpy collected ''boogers'', which he calls magic nose goblins.
* According to the "Those Meddling Kids" interviews, Shaggy from ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' has the largest collection of decorator belt buckles in the world. 653. In fact, he wears a different buckle for every mystery.

* The Collector from ''WesternAnimation/SushiPack'' originally appeared as a connoisseur of fine art who somehow figured out how to animate the figures in paintings, but in his later appearances became a collector of anything, from spoons to hotel soap, and information. In one episode, in fact, he attempts to [[TheCollector collects the Sushi Pack]].

* Buck Tuddrussel in ''WesternAnimation/TimeSquad'' loved to collect random objects from his travels through history. These objects include some minor things like a telescope and various war helmets, to strange or outrageous things like George Washington's wooden teeth, King David's slingshot, and the American Bill of Rights.

** The Autobot Pipes from ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'', who collects interesting human knick-knacks.
** [[BountyHunter Lockdown]] from ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'' collects the mods from his victims.
** Rattrap in ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'' mentions having a collection of Predacon parts, including a very impressive one of [[TheChewToy Waspinator]]. To clarify, he claims to almost have enough parts to build his ''own'' Waspinator.
* Jefferson Twilight from ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' collects the fangs from the blaculas he hunts and makes them into a necklace.
* Puffin from ''WesternAnimation/{{Wishfart}}'' collects chip bags from the potato chips he's eaten and keeps them in a scrapbook.

* Yuri from ''VisualNovel/DokiDokiLiteratureClub'' is a knife collector. What makes her this trope is that Yuri is a ShrinkingViolet high-schooler with anxiety issues, heavily implied to be a NightmareFetishist who enjoys cutting herself with her collection. [[spoiler:She ends up shanking herself to death with a knife once Monika pushes her over the edge.]]

* Ross Scott of ''[[WebVideo/RosssGameDungeon Ross's Game Dungeon]]'' is very skilled at hunting down rare and absolutely bizarre games that nobody's ever heard of before. A good example of this is ''[[MindScrew Bip Bop II]]''. A better example is ''Bip Bop '''III''''', which basically had UnPerson status until he managed to track down a copy by contacting the original developer, who no longer had the source code to the game, but did have a few remaining retail copies on floppy disk, and wasn't sure if they even still worked or not (they did).

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' spend a lot of time cleaning up after collectors of occult or otherwise anomalous items who get their hands on something actually dangerous and find out what it does the hard way. This brings them into frequent conflict with commercial ArtifactCollectionAgency Marshall, Carter, and Dark, who are alarmingly relaxed about supplying potentially hazardous artefacts to people who should ''really'' not be entrusted with them [[OnlyInItForTheMoney for the right price]].

* TV Tropes. We collect records of storytelling conventions and how they are used in works of fiction.

* Nagisa from ''VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}'' has a habit of collecting Dango plushies, given that they are based off her favorite food. Of course, this makes her all the more endearing.

'''Egon:''' I collect spores, molds and fungus.

However, there are those people who, because of their unique occupation or lifestyle, collect items that are too dangerous, rare or gross for the average human being to even ''want'' to own. For those people who gather anything of the bizarre and strange, this trope page is for you.

* Luctiana, an elven researcher in ''LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero'', likes to collect human artifacts from Halkeginia. However, she tends to mistake the functions of those artifacts, leading her to use them in strange ways, such as hanging a bucket on a hat-stand or using an upturned umbrella as a container.

* Ruby, the penguin in ''Manga/RaveMaster''. What all he collects is unknown, but things he's at least attempted to add are Plue, a bell that becomes a sword, a man-like crab, and a [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs Bluun doll]].

** In a silly comic that may not have been canon, Gotham City has a museum of the villains' failed death-traps and other ridiculous props, and the Riddler is curator as part of his rehabilitation, where he figures out the flaws that allowed Batman to escape.

** Small-time villain Melvin Nickelby collected coins, but only ''first'' coins. This included first coins of a type minted, but also the first coin used for a coin toss, the first coin spent in a vending machine, the first coin dropped into a wishing well, and more of the similar. He tried to steal Scrooge's Nr. 1 Dime, because he figured the first coin earned by the world's richest duck would round out his collection nicely.

* ''ComicBook/TheFurtherAdventuresOfIndianaJones'' has a recurring villain named Ben Ali Ayoob. An extremely wealthy man, he collects valuable antiquities, with an especial interest in unique artifacts. As these are the kind of things Indiana Jones hunts, this often puts him at odds with Indy: as, unlike Indy who wants to place these items in a museum for the world to see, Ayoob wants them for his private collection.

* ''Fanfic/CatTales'': Per canon, Batman's trophy room in the Batcave is used for displaying mementos from his stranger or more memorable cases. Selina begins adding things to it as well, eventually, such as a souvenir glass from the Iceberg Lounge and a 40,000 carat fiberglass diamond that had been used as a display piece in Falconi Jewelers. "Trophies", story #63, has Batman telling her the stories behind some of the stranger pieces (such as the giant penny and the robotic ''T. rex'') while they rearrange things to make room for said fiberglass diamond.

* The Raptor Squad in ''Fanfic/ItsNotTheRaptorDNA'' have a curious habit of decorating their nests with various junk and toys, similar to modern birds. Delta uses bottle caps whilst Blue has a boot that she stole off of Owen a long time ago. [[{{Troll}} Blue also gloats and taunts Owen with this boot.]]

* Owen, Danny [=DeVito=]'s {{Manchild}} character in ''Film/ThrowMommaFromTheTrain'', collects coins. Not rare, valuable or mint-condition coins, just coins. The coins are meaningful to him because he acquired them during times he spent with his father as a kid.

* In ''Chronicles of a Strange Kingdom'' king Shellar III of Ortan collects... his own coffins. No, he's not a vampire, [[spoiler:although later he gains the ability to [[AstralProjection manifests as a ghost while near death]]]]. A RunningGag in the series is whenever Shellar risks his life [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething for the sake of his kingdom]] or his loved ones, or generally is in trouble, at some moment he is falsely presumed dead and a new coffin is ordered for him. Eventually, his collection becomes so well-known he starts receiving new additions to it from other monarchs, as sincere birthday gifts. This actually has some plot importance: Shellar's bloodline was cursed to die out [[CurseEscapeClause unless one of them cheats death thrice]], which he did much more than that, and in later books the Archmage actually considers that Shellar's coffins became a sort of good luck charm for him and orders a new one on purpose when the king is in grave danger. [[spoiler:It seems to have worked - Shellar survived, although spent several weeks as a ghost with his body comatose. Interestingly, he does not plan to use any of his collection ever, instead going to remain as SpiritAdvisor to his descendants via the aforementioned manifestation.]]
* ''Literature/{{Clue}}'': Some of Boddy's items may be valuable, but they're also decidedly ''odd'', such as the antique rabbit's foot (with a solid-gold chain) from book #12, chapter 6 ("Bad Hare Day"), the piece of jade carved into the shape of a sparrow in book #14, chapter 1 ("You're So Jaded"), a solid gold peanut that's given away as a prize in book #15, chapter 3 ("A Nutty Day"), a jade ice cream cone also given away as a prize in book #16, chapter 5 ("Sundae School"), a necklace with every letter of the alphabet made from diamond, rubies and emeralds in book #17, chapter 7 ("Alphabet Clues"), and a silent music box used in old silent movies in book #18, chapter 7 ("Party Poopers").

** According to ''Literature/MakingMoney'' Lord Vetinari has, somewhere in the palace, the death masks of most of his predecessors as Patrician of Ankh-Morpork (those whose bodies were in any state to have a death mask made). When asked if he finds it creepy to have them all looking down on him, he replies that generally ''he'' looks down on ''them'' because they were fat, greedy, corrupt and incompetent, and he's [[MagnificentBastard awesome]].

* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': Harry Dresden has a collection of vampire fangs. And not the hinged plastic kind. Other odd spell ingredients he used to keep on hand include sunshine wrapped up in a handkerchief, mainly for use on vampires. And in ''{{Literature/Changes}}'', he has to remove stuff from his apartment in a hurry that the FBI might be interested in. The list of stuff he's bundling up includes two swords (one of which the police would call a murder weapon in a local case), depleted uranium and a human skull. (The skull isn't actually a souvenir, incidentally; [[DemBones he's called Bob and he's on Harry's payroll.]])

* In ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd'' and its sequels, David Wong has a garden shed (later an apartment room) full of things that people send to him. Some are objects with supernatural properties, others are mundane items that simply should not exist in this universe, such as an issue of the TIME magazine about the assassination of Bill Clinton.

* In ''Literature/BlackLegion'', a novel based in the universe of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', Abaddon has a staggering collection of trophies, weapons, and curiosities aboard ''Vengeful Spirit'', from the Talon of Horus to advanced biomechanical cogitators (computers) and the head of an enormous sea serpent. He has acquired them during centuries-long pilgrimage through the [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Eye]].

* In an episode of ''Series/MidsomerMurders'', the fact a suspect for the murder is somewhat mentally distressed is lampshaded by the fact he is an obsessive collector of and wargamer with Creator/GamesWorkshop fantasy armies. He is also a CannotTalkToWomen type whose obsessive love for a female character is condensed into his trying to paint a warrior woman miniature figure to look ''exactly'' like her. In TV dramas, nobody ''ever'' collects toy soldiers who is mentally balanced, psychologically normal and socially integrated. This is always a lazy TV shorthand for ''obsessive deranged loner''.

* Rumplestiltskin in ''Series/OnceUponATime'' collects magic artifacts, weapons and virtually everything else; many of his deals involve having the other party [[FetchQuest seek out objects for him.]] Fittingly, his Storybrooke counterpart is a pawnbroker.

** Rimmer also collects headlines about other people with the name Arnold, "No Smoking" signs, and old wires. He also went on a hiking tour of the ship's engine decks, and returned with photos of seemingly identical bits of machinery with only minor differences that only he can make out. It's a RunningGag that he's utterly clueless about the fact that nobody else on the ship is interested in them but him.

* Berry Weiss on ''Series/StorageWars'' bids on storage lockers looking mostly for weird and cool collectibles. He's found things like a really creepy wooden head sculpture, and metal work-helmets etched with oil-industry images.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'': Ghamalso is an alien being obsessed with collecting unique beings, machines, artifacts and phenomena to store aboard his spaceship, which through some creative use of spatial warping now contains so much stuff that someone who spent a mortal lifetime moving from room to room, studying each object for only one minute, would still only see one percent or so of it all. Ghamalso has no real standards for what he collects beyond some degree of interest, and his collection includes, among other things, mummified alien heads, immense war machines, paintings and other artwork, a human child in stasis, and an alien zoo with a greater surface area than the Earth.

** Khorne, the Chaos God of war and bloodshed, collects blood and skulls, which form a ''lake'' and a ''mountain'', respectively.[[note]]Not a normal lake and mountain of course. It was said that just one of Khorne's servants collected enough skulls to form a small planetoid. Said servant was powerful, but mostly an ordinary daemon, overshadowed by monsters like Anngrath, Doombreed or Angron.[[/note]]

** In ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'': One of the [[MadHatter Malkavian]] character templates is named "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Collector]]" who collects obsessively out of a desire to understand the world. To that end, he'll collect, examine and catalogue every single variation of a certain item for months at a time; eventually, he'll exhaust all the insights the item has to give, put the collection in storage and move onto another series of object- no matter how bizarre or macabre: insects, oak leaves, human hands, anything.

* Over the course of the ''Franchise/BaldursGate'' series, you can collect quite a few interesting items. A vampire's hand, golden, silver and bronze pantaloons, a couple of heads, hearts from demons, sharks and humans, a brain, a soul and weapons of all kinds. Fortunately, you also get a HammerSpace bag.

** In each game in the series since the [[VideoGame3DLeap 3D Leap]], as well as in its ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' sister series, you can easily turn [[AHomeOwnerIsYou your home]] into a SuperheroTrophyShelf with all of the questing treasures you acquire. There are far more in each game than you can possibly put to use, so most will go toward decorating your home. Many {{Game Mod}}s exist which aid in this process.

* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' Add-On ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIVTheBalladOfGayTony The Ballad of Gay Tony]]'' has Yusuf Amir. The son of a rich Arabian businessman says himself that he wants things that he couldn't buy, so he pays you for illegally getting him a chopper with miniguns and rockets (later he plated with gold), a subway car and a S.W.A.T. Tank. He never uses anything for himself, he is lucky enough for having the stuff.

* In ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDeadSeasonFour'', [[PlayerCharacter Clementine]] can find different items to decorate her room at the Ericson's Boarding School. Some of them are fairly standard, like fake flowers, a crystal or drawings of some of the kids who live in the school, but she can also find and display skulls of different animals (a deer, a boar, a cat and a ''human''). She can also decorate her room with a venus flytrap and a potted mushroom.

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' spend a lot of time cleaning up after collectors of occult or otherwise anomalous items who get their hands on something actually dangerous and find out what it does the hard way. This brings them into frequent conflict with commercial ArtifactCollectionAgency Marshall, Carter and Dark, who are alarmingly relaxed about supplying potentially hazardous artefacts to people who should ''really'' not be entrusted with them [[OnlyInItForTheMoney for the right price]].

** Prince Lion-O searches the BlackMarket of his [[FriendInTheBlackMarket friend]] Jorma in search of fairy-tale objects called [[LostTechnology "technology"]], collecting, tinkering with and ratholing {{Black Box}}es that most people in his [[MedievalStasis medieval kingdom]] dismiss as WorthlessYellowRocks.

* ''Games'' magazine once did an article on people with odd collections such as nuts (the edible kind), Mack trucks, doorknobs and maps of Transylvania.

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* In Creator/HPLovecraft's "The Hound", the jaded protagonists turn to GraveRobbing to find new goodies. They live just long enough to [[ArtifactOfDeath regret it.]]

* The Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse has one in the Collector, a recurring character who collects strange and powerful artifacts (and creatures) from around the universe. This includes multiple Infinity Stones, Cosmo the Space Dog, ComicBook/HowardTheDuck, a cocoon that was believed to belong to [[ComicBook/{{Warlock}} Adam Warlock]] (until the real cocoon was shown in ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2''), and, most bizarrely, [[Series/ArrestedDevelopment Tobias Funke]].

* In a darker take, Noah in the ''Manga/SoulEater'' manga uses the Book of Eibon to "collect" various artifacts he finds interesting. He's not too picky: people, swords, {{Eldritch Abomination}}s...it's all the same.[[spoiler:He even gets Death the Kid at one point.]] Oh, and [[spoiler:it turns out he's actually just a personification of the Book's will. He's nothing but the madness of obsessive collecting given form.]]

* Katherine in the LetsPlay/EmpiresSMP collects heads, as the server has a mod installed that lets all mobs drop their head when they die, including other players.