History Main / MishmashMuseum

* Averted in the ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' series: Museum d'Alfonsino from [[VideoGame/Splatoon1 the first game]] is strictly an art museum, and is quite focused on abstract art at that. Shellendorf Institute in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon 2}}'' is a completely separate structure in a different location and is strictly about natural history and the equipment and vehicles used to research it. They're also very different in look and feel: Museum d'Alfonsino has a modern urban look made of concrete, steel, and glass, and has a large courtyard in the center; meanwhile, Shellendorf Institute has a more traditional academic look with the building having Gothic-influenced architecture and built with warm tans and browns.

TV museums tend to be very badly organized. It is not unusual to find suits of medieval plate armor, Egyptian sarcophagi, stuffed grizzly bears, priceless cut jewels, giant cutaway models of the human body, and Tyrannosaurus skeletons all in the same room... which has, in addition, a few dozen Old Masters hanging on the walls and modern abstract sculpture in the corners. Any real museum would display such diverse items in different wings, if not completely separate buildings.

* Can happen in ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} V'' amd ''VI'' if a player has a museum open whose items on display don't have a coherent theme going, for example three separate art paintings that are not created from the same time period or three artifacts that aren't from the same era and different cultures. This results in a museum that misses out on additional bonuses to tourism for having an incoherent theme.

* While the [[AllTheWorldsAreAStage Treacherous Mansion]] of ''VideoGame/LuigisMansionDarkMoon'' generally has its museum exhibits delineated in ways that make sense and reference the themes seen in all previous locations, the first floor northwest room based on the [[SlippySlideyIceWorld Secret Mine]] has an igloo and a woolly mammoth together apparently only because they're both associated with ice. Justified in-universe: according to Professor E. Gadd, the guy who built the place was rather kooky.

* Averted in the Splatoon series: Museum d'Alfonsino in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' is strictly an art museum, and is quite focused on abstract art at that. Shellendorf Institute in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon 2}}'' is a completely separate structure in a different location and is strictly about natural history and the equipment and vehicles used to research it. They're also very different in look and feel: Museum d'Alfonsino has a modern urban look made of concrete, steel, and glass; and Shellendorf Institute has a more traditional academic look with the building having Gothic-influenced architecture and built with warm tans and browns.

* In ''Webcomic/OzzyAndMillie'', when the characters are asked what they learned on a school museum trip, Ozy's answer is that "the museum here has no particularly coherent theme".

Note that this trope can have a [[TruthInTelevision little basis in reality]]: the very first museums were created to display whatever odd objects that their patrons owned, so they placed different objects together because they were from the same owner. They were often called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities "cabinets of curiosities"]], and their intent was often to show the diversity and oddity of the whole world. There are also still small museums that embrace the mishmash because they don't have enough space or they don't know better. In addition, some museums may appear this way at first but follow a less noticeable theme, such as the history of the museum's location. Compare the MuseumOfTheStrangeAndUnusual, which may be this if it has a ''lot'' of strange and unusual things and isn't just, say, the World's Largest Ball of String.

* The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts down the road is a marginal example. In most ways, a fine art museum as the name describes, but also has an extensive collection of archaeological finds and antiquities from around the world.

* While the [[AllTheWorldsAreAStage Treacherous Mansion]] of ''VideoGame/LuigisMansionDarkMoon'' generally has its museum exhibits delineated in ways that make sense, the 1st floor northwest room based on the [[SlippySlideyIceWorld Secret Mine]] has an igloo and a woolly mammoth together apparently only because they're both associated with ice. Justified in-universe: according to Professor E. Gadd, the guy who built the place was rather kooky.

** The first movie avoided this, as the layout is based on the actual New York Museum of Natural History. (It is a replica, however, because they wouldn't let them shoot it in the actual museum.)

* In ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'', the Smithsonian's Captain America exhibit is set in the National Air & Space Museum, which is normally exclusively for aviation-related artifacts. Then again, the Museum of American History was undergoing renovation at the time, and the Air and Space Museum is very large, making it good for at least a temporary placement. And it's entirely possible that ''the flying wing Cap was found in'' had recently been added to the NASM's collection, thus justifying an accompanying exhibit about its last pilot.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E5TheSeedsOfDeath The Seeds of Death]]", the Tardis lands in a museum where displays about UsefulNotes/YuriGagarin, Leonardo [=DaVinci=]'s flying machine, and a futuristic teleporter are all in the same room. On the other hand, this museum was pretty much the work of one person, who probably did have limited funding and space. Though it looks like a mishmash at first, it is [[JustifiedTrope explained]] that it is in fact a single exhibit about the history of transportation -- which is what early flying machine designs, the first man in space, and a teleporter have in common that results in them being displayed together.