Chest of Medals - Television Tropes & Idioms

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

An officer that has so many medals nailed to his uniform that one would expect him to be a ranking general-grade officer, but he turns out to be only a field- or junior-grade officer. And yes, he earned them all the hard way. 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 his numerous badass achievements.
An actual general who has more medals than a normal general could ever earn in a lifetime ^note. Might be because he's a Four Star Badass who engaged in numerous campaigns, surviving each of which would be considered a miracle in and of itself.
A Miles Gloriosus who habitually takes undeserved credit or enjoys nepotism can superficially come across as a either of the above. (Frequently, alas, a Glory Hound.)
A Phony Veteran who collects "chest candy" that he never earned and just wants to look impressive.

Often found on The Generalissimo. See also Bling of War.

Examples:

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Films

In Seven Days In May (though it's worth mentioning that the amount of real estate on Col. Casey's chest isn't ludicrous, and is probably 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.
A variant shows up in Animalympics with swimming champ Mark Spritz, a veteran athlete who wears a vast number of medals around his neck.

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.
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."
- In Memory, Miles actually dons all of his medals for the first time.
  "Dear God, Miles! I've never before seen you come the Vor Lord with intent."
  - In the Memory example, Miles had two major medals... from both governments that were involved in previous war. He usually wears one or the other, but at one event he wore both at once among lot of other medals. People were shocked as he's really fragile midget due to development problems by poison while his mother was pregnant with him. He even has a Cetagandan Order Of Merit, for service to his planet's (Barrayar's) former enemy, an award which a Cetegandan would literally kill for, and which seems a bit weird considering Miles's ancestors quite notably defeated Cetaganda bloodily.
  - 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.
The Supreme Custodian in Septimus Heap is depicted as this.

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 courtmartialed, 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).

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.

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."

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 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 looks more like Marshal Zhukov from the page image.

Western Animation

In Bucky O Hare And The Toad Wars, the Air Marshal exemplifies this and is basically in it for the medals.
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 an old Looney Tunes short 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.
On Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, Muttley imagines himself this way in "Sky High I.Q."

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, 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, 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, so unlike Patton there's a fair number of pictures of him wearing his Chest of Medals.
NYC police 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 typical Liberator-Father Of The Nation-Great Leader of a Banana Republic does this.
Marshal Georgy Zhukov◊, said to be the most decorated officer in all Russian history, who earned all his medals 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. ^noteNot 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 WW 1 veterans) having been so devastated by Stalin's Great Purges in the '30s?
- Well, except for the last Hero medal. Which he received for turning sixty, Brezhnev-style. People weren't as impressed by that last one, to say the least.
Idi Amin wore dozens of medals◊ on his chest; it would seem as though he awarded those to himself.
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 should only be given to great WWII military leaders, despite his own modest WWII record. 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, 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 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.
- Another one, riffing on his health problems, as well:
  "Did you hear that Brezhnev just got out of the hospital?" "Really? Heart problems again?" "No, chest expansion. He's run out of room for medals."
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".
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.
- If you think that's a lot, Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten's full set of service ribbons take up 13 rows.
North Korea (as pictured above) loves to hand out medals by the dozens to generals who closest they have to leading actual battles is watching films and maybe staring at a prisoner being bayonetted.