Chest of Medals

Georgy Zhukov's party salad offers better protection than a T-34 glacis.^note The real Georgy Zhukov actually had even more medals than this, but they wouldn't all fit on Jason Isaacs' chest!

"New portraits of Brezhnev have appeared. He is ruining his own prestige, in my opinion, with all this pomp. So many gold stars! Ridiculous! There is no room left on his chest."

— Vyacheslav Molotov, Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics

A military (or police) officer wears on their person an improbably large number of medals and other decorations for their age/rank/duration of service. Forms this trope can take include...

1. An officer who has so many medals nailed to their uniform that one would expect them to be a ranking general-grade officer, but they turn out to be only a field- or junior-grade officer. And yes, they earned them all the hard way, fighting for their country. In other words, someone who is Colonel Badass / Majorly Awesome / The Captain that refuses to be promoted off the field, and has the medals as proof of their numerous heroic, badass achievements in combat. If the character in question is an enlisted man, you can guarantee he's a Sergeant Rock with a long and distinguished career.
2. A general who has more medals than many men earn in their lifetime. This is because they're a Four-Star Badass who engaged in numerous major campaigns, surviving each of which would be considered a miracle in and of itself. In other words, this guy has shiny and decorative proof that he is an Old Soldier.
3. A Miles Gloriosus who habitually takes undeserved credit or enjoys the benefits nepotism (daddy arranged easy, high profile postings) can superficially come across as a either of the above. (Frequently, alas, a Glory Hound.)
4. A Phony Veteran who buys "chest candy" at auctions that they never earned and just wants to look impressive.
5. It's not that the person hasn't earned all those medals or that they are fake. It's just that on closer inspection they are for the military equivalent of being Milk Monitor or for ordering other people to do heroic things or for administrative roles. These are often found on The Generalissimo, which likely has something to do with real-life examples sometimes being described in American slang with the not-very-politically-correct term "Mexican General."^note Likely in reference to General Santa Anna or President Porfirio Diaz, both who almost always had chests of medals in public appearances.

It's not uncommon for examples of 1 and 2 to decline to actually wear all of their ribbons and medals if their particular military allows that to be done (in some cases, they might not be allowed to wear certain ones on their uniform), either out of modesty or because putting on so many medals every day is a pain in the ass.

In military lingo, the area on the uniform where medals and ribbons are worn is often referred to as a "fruit salad" or "party salad".

See also Bling of War.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Sengoku in One Piece. It stands out as such since he's one of the few high-ranking Marines who actually wears a uniform and his merits. Justified though, since he's the Fleet Admiral, and surviving for as long as he did in the Marines isn't for sissies.
• In the first appearance of the Puchuus in Excel♡Saga, they are shown being awarded medals for doing a war dance around Hyatt's comatose body a hundred times.
• In a subversion, Tanya in The Saga of Tanya the Evil qualifies for this by her third year in service (having qualified for numerous decorations including the Field Aviation Medal) but only routinely wears one, the Silver Wing Assault Medal. Considering that it is the equivalent of a Medal of Honor, Victoria Cross or Knight's Cross, that is unsurprising. However due to her small physical stature, the decoration covers half of her chest.

Comic Books

• The Dastardly & Muttley story "Command Performance" (Hanna-Barbera Fun-In #6, a mash-up of TV episodes "Sappy Birthday" and "Sky-Hi I.Q.") has Muttley getting a ton of medals for his birthday. An efficiency expert notices this and assigns Muttley as the commander of Vulture Squadron.
  • In "Bug Brained," (Fun-In #7) the General orders Dastardly to get Muttley back after a misunderstanding over why their secret plans against the pigeon were leaked. It ends with Dastardly on his knees pinning medals on Muttley (the only way he'd come back).
  Dastardly: Keep 'em coming, Zilly. I'm going to pin medals on him till he falls flat on his big fat face!
• Spoofed in Sturmtruppen when two German officers were shown with this... And Musolesi picking which medals he wanted as payment for their poker debts.

Comic Strips

• In one early Knights of the Dinner Table story, Brian comes up with the idea of creating medals for gaming achievements. Bob and Dave run with the idea:
  B.A.: It looks like a convention for Third World dictators in here.
• In Willie and Joe, the titular GIs proudly bringing a garishly-uniformed prisoner to the MPs, thinking they've captured an Italian general, results in the disappointing revelation that he's actually the local police chief.

Fan Works

• In The Black Emperor, General Darlton has so many medals (all earned the hard way) that he has to keep them spread across several uniforms and just picks a uniform to wear each day.
• In Don't Say Goodbye, Farewell, after a supporting character makes a snide remark about being able to feel the shine on his boots being stripped right off, the narration comments that the party salad of the senior officers entering the lounge "ought to be enough shine for anyone". Characters in other stories similarly comment on Kanril Eleya's party salad, which includes a lot of combat "V"s. In Create Your Own Fate, she observes that the Moabite characters in turn have a lot of decorations but not all the ones they're authorized for, before giving them an impromptu medal ceremony for the Christopher Pike Medal of Valor.
• In A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script, Finrod's Captain of Rangers does not like wear them or boast about them, but he has received so many battle honours it is speculated they outweigh his hauberk.
• Gaz Dreams of Genie: In the Villain World created by Gaz's first wish where Zim took over Earth, the city streets are lined with billboards featuring him, including one where he's wearing an Irken military dress uniform covered in medals.
• In Summer Rituals Lavender's Uncle Charlie refuses to wear all of his medals on his Royal Navy dress uniform because three full rows would be a bit excessive.
• While several of the Kanmusu in Harry and the Shipgirls qualify, it has been joked that the Destroyer Fubuki has so many medals that if she attempted to set sail with all of them on, she would sink.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: The leader of the Imperium's forces attempting to colonize Tatooine (revealed to be an elderly Ciaphas Cain) is described by Boba Fett as having so many medals, seals, and ornaments on his greatcoat that it almost looks like he's wearing some sort of battle armor.
• In Harry and Sodor - The Magic of Normality Harry puts on all of his awards to make an impressive showing at a trial he's forced to attend.
  Nyssa: So what are they?
  Harry: Hmm...? Oh, lets see. Order of Merlin 1st Class for extraordinary achievement, the Queen gave me the Companion of the Bath for defeating Voldemort, Goblin Honour, Defence Medal, Voldemort War campaign medal, Battle of Hogwarts Survival medal, Auror Qualification, Good Service Medal, General Service medal, Legion d' Honour, Order of the Emerald Guard, Victoria Cross, Defence Medal, Expert Marksman, Palm Leaf, The Star Cross and the Alex Goodwin Bravery Award

Film - Animated

• A non-military variant in Up. Russell the Wilderness Explorer wears a sash coated front and back with merit badges.

Film - Live Action

• In Seven Days in May ^note It's worth mentioning that the amount of real estate on Col. Casey's chest isn't ludicrous, and is a reasonable amount for someone of his rank:
  Sen. Prentice: You make me think that fruit salad on your chest is for neutrality, evasiveness, and fence-straddling.
  Col. "Jiggs" Casey: On the contrary, Senator, they're standard awards for cocktail courage and dinner-table heroism. I thought you'd invented them.
• Clint Eastwood's character, Gunnery Sergeant Highway, in Heartbreak Ridge is an example of this.
• Minister of War Herring in The Great Dictator, after he ran out of space on his chest, they started pinning new medals on his back.
• Once scene in Patton has the camera linger on a bunch of his medals and awards, though as noted below in Real Life he probably had way more medals than that.
• Joaquin in The Book of Life has a chest full of medals as an adult and he will gladly tell you about everyone of them. Which help him hide the most important medal of all: The Medal of Everlasting Life.
• While we don't really see them, the Secretary of Defense in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension claims that he has "enough decorations to snap a Christmas tree."
• In Super Mario Bros. (1993), Koopa's military uniform has tons of medals, as well as spikes.
• In a medal ceremony scene at the end of Red Sparrow, all the SVR characters are in full dress uniform, with many medals on the chests of the likes of General Korchnoi and Matron. Inverted with Dominika, who only wears the medal she was just awarded: the Gold Star of the Hero of the Russian Federation.
• In The Death of Stalin, Field Marshal Zhukov's torso is plastered with various medals, of which he's evidently extremely proud. This was actually not all the medals Zhukov was entitled^note and, according to Soviet uniform regulations at the time (as seen here), actually required to wear in Real Life, as he actually wore◊ nearly twice as many. His actor noted in an interview that they were going to put even more on him, but he simply wasn't as broad up top as the real Zhukov and they ran out of room.
• In The Hunt for Red October, Captain Ramius wears ribbons for pretty much every single award handed out by the Soviet Union, though he is rather conspicuously lacking "Hero of the Soviet Union". Given that Ramius is supposed to have created and trained the Soviet nuclear submarine arm pretty much by himself, anything less would be suspicious.
• Robin Hood: Men in Tights: When Luca opens his coat to show the Sheriff of Rottingham his archery medals, the sheriff is stunned by the amount of them (and the amount of light they reflect).
• In White House Down, General Caulfield's uniform chest is so blinged-out that he's probably bulletproof from the front. Being played by Lance Reddick is pretty much the only thing that keeps him from looking completely ridiculous.
• In the Bad Future Knightmare at the end of Zack Snyder's Justice League, The Joker is shown mocking this trope having covered his chest with police badges to go with the stolen SWAT vest he's wearing. Then again given that it's the Joker, he might well have got them the hard way...
• In The Rock, Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel sports a spectacular chest of medals on his Marine dress uniform in the opening scene. It's used to establish his credentials without any exposition; this is a guaranteed war hero who is very good at what he does.
• A Few Good Men shows several characters' ribbon stacks, since they spend a lot of time in formal uniform for the court martial of Dawson and Downey. However, a noticeable aversion is Daniel Kaffee, who wears a single ribbon representing the National Defence Service Medal, which he would have qualified for simply by being in the service during the Gulf War. This serves to highlight his inexperience, as he's noted to have only been a JAG lawyer for less than a year at this point.
• Maverick in Top Gun: Maverick is shown at Iceman's funeral with a truly impressive number of medals that cover most of the left side of his uniform for various actions throughout his career, something that is commented on by Admiral Caine earlier on when going through his record. This is in contrast to the more subdued ribbon stack he wore in the original film, which makes sense, since he was likely awarded most of these medals in the various conflicts the United States found itself in in the decades since.
• The Sky One film adaptation of The Last Dragonslayer has an interesting twist on the trope — pompous King Snodd is the leader of Hereford's military, and he wears a dozen or more medals pinned along the ermine trim of his royal robes.

Literature

• In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) the American Military Officer known only as The Chief of the Army.
  The Chief of the Army was wearing so many medal-ribbons they covered the entire front of his tunic on both sides and spread down on to his trousers as well.
• Gaunt's Ghosts: Lord General Hechtor Dravere, the Big Bad Wannabe of First and Only, makes a habit of wearing the full complement of his campaign medals at all times, regardless of the occasion. Since his Establishing Character Moment introduces him as an Armchair Military leader par excellence, these are all implied to have been awarded for "leading" campaigns where everybody else did the actual fighting.
  • The background book The Sabbat Worlds Crusade adds that Dravere's old boss, Warmaster Slaydo, called him "The Old Gong" behind his back (and quite possibly to his face).
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • In Komarr the local Chief of ImpSec figured out that Lord Auditor Vorkosigan wasn't just a courier during his military career:
    "In the accessible part of your records, you have medals at five times the density of the next most decorated courier in ImpSec history... You were never a bloody Courier, Captain Vorkosigan."
  • In Memory, Miles actually dons all of his medals for the first time. In addition to all the medals he got from his own nation (which include multiple rows worth of Purple Heart equivalents - which does not include every time he was wounded in action, because that happened so many times that after a while Ilyan refused to give him any more), he has the highest possible military honor from Vervain (for saving them from the Cetagandans), Marilac (for saving them from the Cetagandans) — and Cetaganda (for saving them from themselves). People are shocked by the medals because he's a really fragile midget (due to development problems caused by poison while his mother was pregnant with him). Miles is slightly shocked as he's pinning them all into place on his tunic, describing the combined effect as "little short of looney." Miles's first stop with all of the decorations is an audience with the Emperor... at which he picks up another decoration, the chain and seal of an Imperial Auditor, which he needs for his next stop.
  • Averted by Ghem-Admiral Har in Cetaganda, who could have worn "enough medals to sink him should he chance to fall in a river" to a gathering, but instead one-ups the competition by wearing only the ribbon and medallion of the Order of Merit - the same exceptionally high award Miles receives at the end of the book and wears in the above example.
• The Supreme Custodian in Septimus Heap is depicted as this.
• In The Lost Fleet:
  • Nearly every Alliance sailor, even very junior ones, wears an impressive collection of awards because they've participated in numerous bloody campaigns. Geary is conspicuous in his lack of decorations (since he spent almost the entirety of the war in stasis).
  • In the follow-up series Beyond the Frontier, when Dauntless first encounters the "Shield of Sol"^note actually an uninvited Edgeward force asserting dominance over Old Sol, the Shield High-Commodore-with-special-sauce's solid wall of medals is Geary's confirmation that he's dealing with a peacetime amateur navy. Desjani promptly nicknames the commodore Mister Medals, and Geary snarks that he probably has medals for wearing his other medals correctly.
• In Darksaber, the Imperial warlords Daala gathered together and assassinated all had lots of self-awarded medals. One actually had some medals that could be assembled into a knife (much good that did him).
  • Lightheartedly mentioned a few times in the X-Wing Series, as when Wes Janson receives (yet another) commendation for valor and his squadmates joke that he could build a fort out of them. One of the local perators is wearing the more traditional Generalissimo-style block of decorations in Starfighters of Adumar, although fitting the culture there he probably earned them, too.
• The Kris Longknife series, Kris, after only 6 years in the military, accumulated essentially every top award for valor in combat issued in human space, including that given by her usual mortal enemies of Greenfeld, and from an alien species she'd literally just met a few days previously (and saved from invasion and extinction). One of the aliens, trying to hang a medal around Kris's neck, snarks she's having difficulty finding a place for it. Earlier in Resolute, she wryly observes that her opposite number from Greenfeld, Hank Peterwald, has more medals than her, but no combat "V"s, whereas all of hers feature a "V" device (The sole exception was a medal awarded for fighting in a specific battle, so there was no reason to have a "V" device, as everyone who earned it did so in combat).
• In Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, Captain Walker Hoxie's chest is decorated with several rows of ribbons he won for his service in World War II and the Korean War, indicating his one and only calling in life.
• Journey to Chaos:
  • Eric's civilian boss on Threa wore one of these to his commerical energy company because he still thinks he's in the military.
  • When Tiza complains about the lack of recognition for capturing a criminal mage above her level, Basilard replies that if she wants a chest of medals she should join the Ataidar military. The Dragon's Lair doesn't do that sort of thing; mercenaries are only awarded their wages.
• Halo: The Fall of Reach: After John (the future Master Chief) is wounded in his first combat mission and awarded a Purple Heart, he's quite proud of it and works hard to keep it shiny, until the news of Harvest's devastation at the hands of the Covenant makes him reconsider his priorities. 27 years later, when he's a galactic war hero and has been awarded almost every medal in the UNSC Navy, he's shown walking in with a uniform coated with medals and no longer caring how they look. It's mentioned that he earned every medal the UNSC has to offer except the Prisoner of War medal, since the Covenant have a nasty habit of not taking prisoners.
• The book Bellmaker in the Redwall series has the character Meldrum Fallowthorn the Magnificent, who would be type 4 or 5, but is actually a Type 2 because he is very capable in combat, as he awards himself a medal after defeating an enemy and his chest is full of medals, though at least one of them (which he uses to assist in breaking out when the characters are thrown in prison by the villain) was given to him by someone else.
• L'ami retrouvé: The narrator's father, a Jewish WW1 veteran living in Germany, wakes up to find a Nazi thug hammering anti-Semitic posters on their front door. He changes into his full uniform (including the many medals he won), and plants himself at attention next to the thug. Intimidated, the thug leaves.
• The list of medals and knightly orders in Honor Harrington's full title would make for an impressive fruit salad per se, though they are but the highest awards she's received in her half century of service.
• In Shiva 3000 a character sees the Baboon Warrior, a national hero of India, and initially assumes he's wearing a glittering vest until realizing he's actually wearing all the medals he's been awarded.
• In The Feast of the Goat, Trujillo the Goat, dictator of the Dominican Republic, had so many medals on his chest that he was nicknamed "Bottlecaps".
• RCN: In The Way to Glory, Daniel Leary is said to have enough medals to make an admiral jealous despite being ranked only a lieutenant. These include the Cinnabar Star with cluster, equivalent to being awarded the Medal of Honor twice.
• By the second book of Theirs Not to Reason Why, Ia has earned so many decorations that the awarding officer can't find room on her uniform for all of them and is forced to just hand them over in their boxes. (This is why the real military uses studs of some kind to signify multiple instances of the same decoration.)
• In The Serial Murders, one representative at the Auction of Evil is a General Skinner who has "a chest-spread of medal-ribbons", which Richard notices aren't all from the 20th century (the story is set in The '70s). This doesn't indicate he didn't earn them, though; it indicates he's been in the military longer than humanly possible.
• At the start of Mr. Standfast, the third Richard Hannay novel, Hannay (by this point a Four-Star Badass in the regular army as well as a veteran of the British secret service), reflects on his collection of honors:
  They gave me my battalion before the Somme, and I came out of that weary battle after the first big September fighting with a crack in my head and a D.S.O. I had received a C.B. for the Erzerum business, so what with these and my Matabele and South African medals and the Legion of Honour, I had a chest like the High Priest's breastplate.
• In Christopher Anvil's "The King's Legions", Roberts suspects that a Space Force officer isn't genuine when he sees the man has three rows of ribbons, half of which he doesn't recognise, and a Cross of Space with three stars.
  The Cross of Space was awarded sparingly—to win it required proof of heroism in the face of such danger that it was rare for the hero to come back alive. Try as he might, Roberts could not visualize the miracle that would enable the same man to win this award four times and live.
• In Starfist when General Alistar Cazombi is first introduced, some of the soldiers are incredulous because the general only has two ribbons on his chest. A more savvy characters points out that they need to look at what the medals are. The first one is the common Rifleman medal every Marine receives after finishing their training. The second one is the highest medal for bravery their nation awards. The general has dozens of other decorations but only wears the two that really matter.
• In Starship Troopers, Johnny mentions that the boot camp quartermaster and a civilian police officer wear decorations on their uniforms. He says that if he'd known what the quartermaster's ribbons meant at the time he wouldn't have dared backtalked the man (luckily the quartermaster treated recruits kindly) and he immediately treats the cop with respect after quick look at the man's rack.
• One cover of Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy: Greater Good shows Thrawn with a dozen medals hanging from a couple gold strings across his chest.
• Zigzagged in The Day of the Jackal, as part of his plan to create a disguise as a wounded veteran, Jackal buys a large number of pawned medals. But then he looks up what they all mean and only keeps a subset of them, enough to support the identity he's creating without being so highly decorated as to draw attention to himself. What he ends up keeping declares his cover identity to be a veteran of the North Africa and Normandy campaigns, who was decorated for valor once.
• The novel Glory by Noviolet Bulawayo (not to be confused with the comic) is set in a post-colonial African dictatorship inhabited by animals à la Animal Farm. Naturally, a lot of the military leaders show up, and they're described as having "shiny constellations of medals glistening on solid chests".

Live-Action TV

• The Benny Hill Show: in a sketch about a wheelchair race we see one of the participants pre-race talking with someone, shot from below. He's got a chest full of medals. He crosses his legs, at which time we see he's even got medals on the soles of his shoes.
• The British DJ/comedian Kenny Everett used to have a character on his TV show who was a fire-breathing American General Ripper, frequently crashing into the sketch through a wall. He had massive shoulder pads on his uniform to allow him to show off the ludicrous number of medals he wore.
• Star Trek: when Captain Kirk is being court martialed, as part of his identification process the computer starts reading out a very long list of impressive-sounding medals he's won. The opposing side wants to cut it short because it's taking too long to list his achievements.
• This is repeated in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man, as part of Picard's goal to show Data is a person. Somewhat interesting, both characters don't have that many awards (Kirk 7, Data 4), the problem comes from the fact that the machine reading them out does so SLOWLY.
  • For your information, images of Kirk and Data's awards (among others) can be found here.
• 'Allo 'Allo! has Captain Bertorelli (a type 3) who has three rows of large, showy, medals (and loads of gold braid):
  Bertorelli: The first row are for service in Abyssinia. The second row are for service in North Africa.
  General Von Klinkerhoven: And the bottom row?
  Bertorelli: They are for servicing Fiats!
• NCIS: Gibbs has been awarded numerous medals and citations, however since he doesn't particularly care for them Tony has to keep track of them; he even gave away his Silver Star in one episode.
• In The Andy Griffith Show, "A Medal for Opie", Opie has an Imagine Spot about winning a foot race, when receiving his award he already has numerous medals pinned to his shirt, so Andy turns him around and pins it on his back.
• In JAG this trope is somewhat subverted as the main characters actually have far fewer ribbons (in terms of quantity not quality) than Navy and Marine Corps personnel in real-life similar positions do have.
  • Although few judge advocates has ever earned the Navy Cross (like Chegwidden), a Silver Star and two Distinguished Flying Crosses (like Rabb), or the Bronze Star (like Turner). Fewer still have the SEAL Trident and Bronze Star with Combat V (Chegwidden again).
• Stargate SG-1 lead character Colonel Jack O'Neill is shown wearing a fairly impressive rack of commendation strips on his regular dress uniform, all of which he's earned over a military career of several decades. Teammate Captain Samantha Carter has a smaller but still respectable collection.^note Using the term "rack" in this case might lead to an unfortunate double entendre. Commanding officer Major General George Hammond has even more. Sam's father General Jacob Carter by contrast has a much smaller party salad, but it includes the Legion of Merit, the United States military's second-highest honor.
  • Over the franchise's long run, O'Neill eventually gets promoted all the way to Lieutenant General and Carter to Brigadier General. They acquire even more medals over this time, although the dress uniforms are rarely seen.
  • Carter's medals become a plot point when she's in Washington to receive the Air Medal and her father (also an Air Force officer) is skeptical about how her work on "deep-space radar telemetry" (the Stargate program's cover story) would earn her a medal reserved for heroic achievements while participating in aerial flight.
• Red Dwarf's series 1 finale "Me2" depicted Rimmer as having earned four medals, which he wears with an exaggerated dress uniform. Surprisingly, each of these medals is a genuine award, though, a lot less surprisingly they're not high honours:
  Rimmer (pointing at each medal in turn): Three years long service... Six years long service... Nine Years long service... and Twelve years long service.^note All as a vending-machine repairman, without ever advancing beyond the rank of First Technician - which makes him senior only to Second Technician Dave Lister and the Skutters. And none of them have even the faintest smidgeon of respect for him.
• In the Ultra Series, the eldest member of the original Ultra Brothers, Ultraman Zoffy, have star-shaped medals adorned all over his chest surrounding his Colour Timer.
  • Later in the series, Ultraman Hikari from Ultraman Mebius comes from a similar high ranking as Zoffy, and indeed his chest is similarly adorned with star medals.

Music

• According to the old variety song, "My Great Big Brother Sylvest" had "A row of 40 medals on his chest." The lyric of the song is a series of ever taller tales about Sylvest's badassery.
• In George Formby's "Our Sergeant Major", the singer suggests this in his insulting song about the sergeant major.
  His medals break our hearts
  He won 'em playin' darts
  And while competing
  Who was cheating?
  Our Sergeant Major
• Italian song "C'era un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones" ends with the line "In the chest he has no heart / But two medals or three" (one might be a Purple Heart, given the previous verse states he died in the Vietnam War).
• In the prologue to Yarnhub's story video for the Sabaton song "Lady of the Dark", a mysterious old woman sits down in the front row of a gathering of Yugoslav war veterans. When one of the other attendees asks her what she's doing there, she unbuttons her jacket to reveal a row of medals across her chest, because, of course, she's Milunka Savić, the subject of the song: the most-decorated female soldier in recorded history.

Newspaper Comics

• Bill Mauldin mocked the US Army for its plethora of badges awarded for relatively minor accomplishments, particularly compared with the British. One panel shows an MP surrounded by curious combat troops, explaining, "Da red one wit' white stripes is fer very good conduct, an' th' real purty one wid all the colors is fer bein' in this here Theater of Operations." In another, a British soldier comments, "They get that red'n'white one for stayin' out of trouble for a bloody year."^note Truth in Television: enlisted personnel can receive the Good Conduct Medal for three years' service without any sort of disciplinary action. And the Army version has a red and white ribbon Another cartoon has a dogface telling his medic, "Naw, just give me an aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart." Said medic is offering him a PH from the stack of them he has on his table.
  • Which actually happened to Mauldin when he received a tiny flesh wound, inspiring the cartoon. Mauldin didn't want the medal, but the medic said it would count toward an earlier discharge when the war ended, and gave him a tip on how to mail the medal home. (from The Brass Ring)

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Imperial Guard generals tend to follow this model, with the authenticity of the medals depending on the generals and the regiments involved.
  • Subverted by the Space Marines, whose accolades usually take the form of lists of accomplishments written on parchment and affixed all over their armor rather than concentrated on the chest. Length of service is indicated by forehead studs, one per century.
  • The Living Legend Sly Marbo has received countless medals for his accomplishments and multiple Stars of Terra, but he doesn't keep a single one on him, instead his commanding officer holds onto them for him.

Theatre

• The French Ambassador in Of Thee I Sing:
  (Enter the French Ambassador. You never saw so many medals.)
  French Soldiers: Ze French Ambassador!
  Wintergreen: I still can't see him!

Video Games

• Mass Effect: One of the characters claims that Anderson "could melt all his medals and make a life-sized statue of himself".
  • The presentation and names ("Council Legion of Merit", "Service Star") of the games' achievements suggest that they are actual awards presented to Shepard over the course of the game, which would mean a quite hefty medal case for them, too.
• Two of the bosses in Bionic Commando Rearmed are generals with so many medals that they actually stop bullets, rendering them immune to attacks from the front. You have to either shoot them in the back or throw grenades behind them.
• General Krukov in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has a modest Soviet Officer uniform with one of two medals when we first see him in the prime universe (or for what the term Prime Universe means anymore). By the time he has adjusted to the Alternate Universe where the Soviets are winning the war, he's got tons, on both sides of his chest no less. It's implied that he awarded most of these to himself.
• Super Time Force's Commander Repeatski has a whole chest of medals, awarded to him for saving the world.
• Though not as exaggerated as other examples, General Mikiel from Strider (2014) has around half a dozen medals and two large badges proudly displayed in his chest.
• Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth:
  • In the first game, Quercus Alba is revealed to have a rather impressive one, once he stops pretending to be a harmless, scatterbrained old man and reveals himself as the Big Bad. Notably, he is fond of doing an Aside Glance directly into the camera with the smuggest expression possible while showing off how much his medals sparkle and shine.
  • In the second game, Blaise Debeste, one of only two prosecutors in the series to actually wear his prosecutor's badge instead of keeping it in his pocket (the other being his son Sebastian), apparently decided to make up for everyone else in his profession by wearing about thirty of them at once. It's implied that these are the badges of the prosecutors he took down as part of the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee. His own badge is separated from the rest and pinned to his lapel instead.
• Solar Alliance Admiral Grey from Sunrider has quite a few medals covering his uniform, and the game makes it clear that he’s one of the Solar Alliance’s best military minds. His PACT counterpart, Veniczar Kuushana, has a much more modest five medals◊ pinned to her uniform.
• In Witches' Legacy 8: Dark Days to Come the leader of the resistance movement against Marcus and Mara has about twenty in a big block. Possibly legitimately earned as he appears to be in his forties or fifties and is a two-star general.
• Level 41 of Incredible Dracula 2: The Last Call has a general with about fifty, to the point where it looks like he has a crazy quilt on his chest.
• In the first Wing Commander game, the player character can end up like this if you are highly successful. This is purely a cosmetic achievement that only impacts an image in the barracks, and rank and commendations have no impact on game abilities or progression. This is discarded in the sequels.
• The Boomers in Fallout: New Vegas have US military medals, ribbons, and patches from their neck to their ankles. They didn't actually earn any of them, since they're just Gun Nuts who took control of the post-nuclear holocaust Nellis Air Force Base.
• Xenonauts has this as a gameplay mechanic. Soldiers can be awarded medals for various feats (Killing a certain number of aliens, surviving a certain number of missions, being wounded in action, etc.) and each medal provides bonuses to a soldier's stats.

Web Comics

• Girl Genius: Mechanicsburg Militia Gunner Mitko wears a jacket with thirty-seven badges indicating victorious battles.

Web Original

• As part of its coverage of the 2000 US Presidential Election (and Charlie Foxtrot aftermath), The Onion ran an article on Bill Clinton declaring himself President for Life and a photo of him wearing this trope.
• The News Parody ChigüireBipolar sometimes mentions president Maduro (who isn't a militaryman) wanting to use this trope, mocking his attempts at looking militaristic. Most notably in Chocolate condecorations melt over Maduro's military costume.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic imageboard Derpibooru gives out little badges for different things such as being an artist, a heavy contributer of high scoring artwork, a donator, and etc. The artist Badumquish has managed to land 19 of them^note The artist badge and all five uploader badges, three of the four "milestone" badges, a badge for having an image hit 1000 upvotes, four badges for monetary donations, one for finding and reporting a security flaw in the site, and numerous "mystery" badges just by being an active member of the site who uses it itself as his home gallery (which is apparently not common). As a result his comments tend to stick out like a sore thumb.

Western Animation

• DuckTales (1987): The president of the Banana Republic in "Allowance Day".
• In Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars!, the Air Marshal exemplifies this and is basically in it for the medals.
• In M.A.S.K., Miles Mayhem is usually shown in military uniform with either an impressive-looking ribbon or a row of medals. Although he did serve in the military before becoming a terrorist without a cause, the letters page in the UK comic once claimed that he stole the medals, making him a type 4.
• In one episode of Hanna-Barbera's Breezly and Sneezly, Breezly the polar bear manages to sneak into a fancy dinner held at the Army camp by masquerading as a 10-star general (five stars being the highest possible rank). He successfully pulled this off for a while wearing only the upper half of the uniform.
• In the old Looney Tunes short "Little Beau Porky" (1936), set in the French Foreign Legion, the fort commandant has so many medals on his chest they jingle loudly as he walks, and the bars holding them are wider than he is. At the end of the cartoon Porky has a similar collection for defeating the bandit Ali Mode.
• On Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines, Muttley imagines himself this way in "Sky High I.Q."
• A variant shows up in Animalympics with swimming champ Mark Spritz, a veteran athlete who wears a vast number of Olympic-style gold medals around his neck. Based on a real person, incidentally.
• Downplayed and parodied in The Simpsons S7 E9 "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" with the Squeaky Voiced Teen as an airman with the Air Force. Downplayed in that he has three medals. Parodied in that those three medals are for acting as a car park attendant.

Real Life

• Gen. Patton was an interesting aversion in that he had a huge quantity of medals from his service with Gen. Pershing's expedition to Mexico, and his service in WWI and WWII (the top ranking officers got a lot of bling from various countries afterwards), but he hated putting all of them on at once. There's supposedly only one picture,◊ taken in his own backyard at the insistence of his wife, showing Patton with all his medals.
• Audie Murphy, who earned every decoration for valor that America could grant plus several French and Belgian decorations, and was often described as America's most decorated soldier of that war. He was uncomfortable with the fame this brought him, but did believe that the Army was entitled to use him for promotional and recruiting purposes. However, Murphy rarely wore all his decorations at once and most photos of him in uniform only show him with a fraction of the awards he was entitled to.^note The famous publicity shot that's used as his page image here was hastily thrown together when the uniform he meant to wear didn't arrive in time, hence the awkward positioning of the medals on his chest. The ones he did wear grabbed the attention of everyone who knew what they were looking at.
• Notably averted by the British military.^note Except for very senior officers and uniformed Royals. Who drip with golden bling when the State occasion calls for it. Regard description of Lord Mountbatten below. It gives out medals for campaigns and exceptional acts during battle, so most British servicemembers only wear one or two campaign medals/ribbons on their uniforms and even those with several years of service will only have one row compared to the chestful of medals their American counterparts can accrue even in a short career. Any British servicemember who has a chest full of medals is certain to have had a truly eventful career and be a certified badass.^note Or a member of the Royal Logistical Corps or Royal Army Medical Corps, whose personnel are frequently seconded to other units and get bounced around from theatre of operation to theatre of operation, thus accruing multiple campaign medals in a short time.
• NYPD officers have a huge number of various medals attached a bar that holds their badge on their chest. It's kind of ridiculous that you have trouble finding the badge among the giant square on their chest. The most recognisable one is also one of the simplest; a gold 'WTC' on a black blackground, indicating a 9/11 first responder.
• The standard in the Soviet military and political structure; if you wanted to be recognized within the high command or local Party chapter, then having more medals on your chest than a Christmas Tree has ornaments was essential. Only became more common with the USSR's expanded influence after World War II, such as with North Korea. This was exacerbated by the Soviet uniform regulations that insisted that you must wear all your decorations at once, this making the "less is more" approach practically impossible (so you have people whose uniforms are more medal than fabric) — you're allowed to wear only ribbons, but still only all at once. For an ideology that deplores personal glory in the wake of collective effort, the communists sure loved their medals; although communist ideology, at least in its Soviet version, had absolutely nothing against personal glory, it was against putting oneself above the community, which a lot of people did get away even with through clever manipulation. It was also a result of the fact that most Soviet orders had no classes (officially being a classless society and all that), so instead you could be awarded the same order or medal several times.
  • Marshal Georgy Zhukov,◊ said to be the most decorated officer in all Russian history, who earned all but one of his medals^note His last Hero medal, which he received for turning sixty (which Brezhnev later adopted), as well as Operation Whirlwind, sending tanks against "counterrevolutionaries" in Hungary due to Four-Star Badass-worthy accomplishments not only against the Wehrmacht in the Great Patriotic War, but also against Japanese forces during the 1930s invasion of Mongolia. ^note Not the least of which is forcing Japan to stay away from Russia by leading the Russians alongside the Mongolians at Khalkhin Gol to beat the Japanese in 1939, and (through no actual intention of his own) convincing the Japanese generals that all of Russia's generals are as much of Four Star Badasses as he proved himself was against them. Did we mention that he did all of this with a Soviet military that was more or less at its weakest in its entire 70 years of history, the ranks of its experienced officers (many of whom were WW1 veterans) having been so devastated by Stalin's Great Purges in the '30s? And mostly against Stalin's (who envied him, but could not risk touching him) personal desire?
  • In the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was the punchline of countless Soviet jokes ridiculing his love for medals, due to him being perhaps the most notorious Type 3 in the Soviet Union. He even awarded himself with the Order of Victory that was only given to the greatest WWII military leaders,^note That's a platinum star covered with diamonds and five Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction sized rubies which, by law, was only to be awarded for strategic scale critical victories. It was awarded — legitimately — only 19 times, 14 of those times to Soviet figures (Zhukov, Vasilevski, and Stalin himself were given two awards of the medal) and 5 times to other Allied generals (specifically Montgomery, Eisenhower, King Michael I of Romania — he was the last living recipient, dying in 2017 —, Michał Rola-Żymierski, and Josip Broz Tito). All of these awards occurred in the summer and early fall of 1945. Brezhnev awarded himself the Order, making the number of awards an even 20, in 1978. despite his own modest WWII record.^note Despite demonstrating genuine bravery, he served the whole war as a Political Officer, not a field commander, and was discharged at the end of the war as a Major General, certainly not entitled to such a lofty award. Like Georgy Zhukov, he had four Hero of the Soviet Union stars and a star of the Hero of Socialist Labour, as well as dozens upon dozens of other decorations that he, to put it mildly, didn't entirely deserve and wore very prominently. After he died, the rules were changed so you couldn't get awards for things like birthdays, and his Order of Victory was specially posthumously revoked from him. In spite of all this, he's still well-regarded today. Some of the jokes include:
    What would happen if a crocodile ate Brezhnev? The poor thing would be crapping medals for two weeks straight.

    Yesterday, Moscow was devastated by an earthquake caused by Brezhnev's jacket with all his medals on it falling off a chair.

    Brezhnev, after receiving his umpteenth medal: Dear comrades! Enemies of the state speculate that I have a soft spot for decorations. This is an outrageous lie! Last week, I declined the highest honour of Mauritania: a golden ring through the nose.

    "Did you hear that Brezhnev just got out of the hospital?" "Really? Heart trouble again?" "No, chest expansion. He's run out of room for medals."

    "Did you hear that Brezhnev survived an assassination attempt yesterday? His medals shielded him." "But I heard the assassin shot him for five minutes with a machine gun." "What is your point?"

    "Brezhnev is studying possible ways to receive the two medals he doesn't have: Mother Heroine^note A medal awarded exclusively to women who had raised at least 10 children and Hero City."^note Awarded to cities for outstanding heroism during World War 2
• Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, former dictator of Mongolia accumulated an impressive collection of medals and badges◊ for himself.
• Pretty much every country with a monarchy has multiple orders of knighthood and fancy medals to go with it. These are awarded to the royalty of other nations as well as to foreign republican heads of state. Most royals and heads of state receive dozens of these honors. That being said, state leaders generally refrain from wearing all their medals and orders, usually only wearing the insignia of their own country's highest order (so, e.g., the British monarch will usually wear the insignia of the Order of the Garter,^note Or the Order of the Thistle, if the event/portrait is for Scotland while the French President would wear the insignia of the Legion of Honour), though more flamboyant dictators will wear all their decorations at every opportunity, and monarchs may wear additional decorations in the most formal portraits. (The American Presidency is essentially unique in that it is considered very bad form for a U.S. President to wear any decorations at all.)
• Idi Amin wore dozens of medals◊ on his chest; it would seem as though he awarded those to himself.
• The aptly named Lt. Gen. Chesty Puller (USMC), probably the most decorated Marine ever. Received the Navy Cross five times, and all of his service ribbons takes up seven rows on his uniform.
• Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten◊ wore 13 rows of service ribbons that rose so high that his dolphin badge was practically on his shoulder. When wearing his decorations as medals,◊ the bar actually extended off his chest enough to get in the way of his left arm. Plus, he wore the badges of four chivalric orders, the Garter sash, and a number of medals around his neck. As a professional naval officer in two world wars with exceptional service in combat in many areas, and as an extended member of the royal family with all the ceremonial awards that typically come with it, he is likely entitled to wear more awards than anyone else in British military history.
• North Korean generals are rather infamous for handing out medals to themselves, even when the closest they are to leading actual battles is watching films and maybe staring at a prisoner being bayoneted. The lower ranked soldiers, on the other hand, tend to earn their medals the traditional way as the KPA, despite what many would believe, has participated actively in a number of outside wars throughout its existence, from the Arab-Israeli Wars to different conflicts in Africa and the larger Middle East. Being a communist nation, both points are more or less standard practice.
• In a non-military example, Eagle Scout James Calderwood has earned every merit badge offered by the Boy Scouts of America. To display all 122 badges, he had to sew his own triple-wide sash.
  • In another non-military example, the most decorated Olympian of all time, Micheal Phelps, occasionally poses with many medals across his chest.◊ Usually only those medals won at a single Games, however; if he ever tried to pose with all 28 from his career, he wouldn't have enough body to hold them (and cutting it to only golds wouldn't help much, since 23 of those 28 are gold^note Sports Illustrated once posted a picture of him wearing all his gold medals◊, which formed a solid rectangle of Olympic Gold which stretched from just inside each of his nipples widthwise, and vertically from nipple height to just above his navel). Other highly-winning Olympians like Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles also wear multiple medal stacks.
  • Mark Spitz, the man whom had his record for most gold medals won at a single Olympics broken by Phelps, did a series of photoshoots◊ posing with all seven of them.
  • Tom Brady of the New England Patriots/Tampa Bay Buccaneers can claim to have a fist of medals, since as of his retirement in 2022, he is the only person to ever have seven Super Bowl Champion rings, along with nine AFC Champion rings, one NFC Champion ring and sixteen division championships (including winning ten in a row, making the Patriots the first NFL team and only second American professional sports team to pull that off - the first was the Atlanta Braves in baseball).
  • Floating on the internet somewhere is a (probably Photoshopped) picture of Alabama Coach Nick Saban posing with his championship rings.
• Those Wacky Nazis:
  • Interestingly, despite building a Cult of Personality and plastering his picture everywhere, this one was actually avoided by Adolf Hitler, who only wore the Iron Cross and Wound Badge he received in World War I.
  • Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring embraced this trope, though. While he did earn a few Iron Crosses and the very prestiguous Pour le Mérite during the First World War, his later medals had little to no merit behind them and like many tinpot dictators were simply acknowledgments of his powerful position as Hitler's official Number Two. Much like Leonid Brezhnev, the Reichsmarschall eventually became the butt of many jokes about this.
  Hitler goes to inspect a new warship. Göring, who had turned up early, pokes his head out of a porthole and Hitler says "My God, the man has gone too far! He's draped an entire battleship around his neck!"
• Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke gives off an impression of this on his uniform, but it has been pointed out that many of the things pinned to his uniform are just novelty hat pins, evidently used to make himself look more impressive.
• Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek really liked this trope.◊ As so did Qing general and one-time Emperor Yuan Shikai◊ and Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin.◊
• The typical caudillo of a Banana Republic does this. One of the most famous examples in Latin America is Porfirio Díaz, the authoritarian President for Life of Mexico prior to The Mexican Revolution, wore his medals very often, and sometimes combined it with an equally fancy◊ nice hat. He's possibly the inspiration for the term 'Mexican General.' Diaz himself is a more complicated example straddling the line between types 2 and 5 because he served as an accomplished commander during Mexico's 19th century civil wars and the resistance to the French-backed Habsburg Imperial usurpation, including defeating the French Army at the Puebla in 1862. However, he is most famous as The Generalissimo and most of his medals were diplomatic awards.
• There are many detractors of the phenomenon known as 'medal inflation' in the U.S. military. A good example is in a picture located in the above link, wherein World War II generals like Eisenhower and Omar Bradley wear just two or three rows of ribbons on their dress uniforms, as opposed to modern day generals like David Petraeus (who while certainly can be argued are no less brave or capable than their forebears, have nonetheless not gone through nearly the same kind of large-scale combat with peer- or near-peer armed forces as soldiers of yesteryear), who is seen wearing ten rows along with other unit awards and bling. The medal inflation came about over the past fifty or so years after Vietnam, with the perception that available awards were limited to actions in battle, senior level distinctive service, and not much else. This led over time to the phasing in of various 'intermediate' and 'achievement' awards to award superior performance at much lower levels. Over the course of a career, this led to a servicemen's ribbon rack being seen as something of a resume; anyone who could see their full list of awards could have an overall general idea of the kinds of things he did or the places he served, and in what capacity. But as many of these achievement awards did not have firm criteria and were designed to be awarded at a commanding officer's discretion, this had the side effect of inflation, as some commanders would award a much higher award for an action than another commander would in the same instance. And officers who grew in rank and seniority were given higher degrees of awards simply by virtue of that rank and seniority, rather than by their accomplishments in their positions, because it was expected. Conversely, the number of the truly great awards like the Medal of Honor and the various Service Crosses being awarded has plummeted, both as a result of the lack of large-scale combat where they would be awarded becoming far less common^*A vast majority of those awarded in the past 20+ years in Iraq and Afghanistan were awarded in small skirmishes and special operations actions involving just a few dozen combatants on each side. and because their 'mystique' has grown to such a degree that the standards to award them in modern times have become almost superhuman.
• When Finnish nationalist Eugen Schaumann assassinated Russian governor-general Nikolai Bobrikov in 1904, one of the three bullets fired was actually blocked by one of the many medals worn by the Bobrikov. The two others however did wound him fatally.

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