Storyboard Body

"And the tapestry here on my skin
It's the map of the victories I win!
Look where I've been, I make everything happen!
Look at that mean Mini-Maui a-tippity-tappin!"

— Maui "You're Welcome", Moana

A character description trope.

Due to The Law of Conservation of Detail, characters rarely have tattoos unless they're in some way important to the character. These don't have to be some extremely significant plot point, but they usually do give us greater insight into the character's personality. The tattoos often involve symbolism of some kind related to the character's past or purpose. Many times the character will be a part of some society, such as a Proud Warrior Race, Gangbangers, or The Syndicate.

Sometime this trope is played for laughs.

This trope overlaps with Tattooed Crook. However, in this instance the character is not always a rebel or bad guy.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• One Piece:
  • Nami has a tattoo that represents her past, and pays homage to her adopted mother and father figure. Whether she would have gotten this tattoo if her former 'pirate crew' tattoo could have been cleanly destroyed is not quite clear.
  • A pirate crew composed partly of former slaves took on a tattoo somewhere on their body to hide who had been a former slave and who hadn't to turn the mark of shame into a mark of the bond of shipmates.
  • Also, Ace. Most obviously, he has the Whitebeard jolly roger on his back. Less obviously is his seemingly misspelled name on his arm. When first introduced it seemed to be a funny little visual gag. Then as more of his and Luffy's past gets revealed that little crossed out "S" gets a lot more significant.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Marik Ishtar has a tattoo on his back telling the entire story of the Nameless Pharoah. It provides a frightful glimpse into his backstory, as he was just a child when he had the tattoos violently burned onto his back against his will by his own father, the trauma of which was a major factor in his Evil Alter Ego's development.

Comic Books

• Batwoman: Katherine has several tattoos: a nautical star, a Special Forces arrowhead, and a bluebird. These were given to her when Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III took over the character, as part of their attempts to make her more than a simple Bruce Wayne clone. The star is a symbol that lesbians in the 1940s used to identify one another, and the arrowhead symbolizes her advanced military training. The bluebird, however, seems to have no greater significance.
• Daken: Daken, who's even more of a Sociopathic Hero than his father Wolverine, has a large tribal tattoo on his chest and arms.

Fan Works

• Rocketship Voyager: B'Elanna Torres is a Brazilian-Venerian hybrid, and in the tradition of a Venerian Amazon has body tattoos that show her life tale. When he first lays eyes on her Tom Paris is surprised to see one of the tattoos is a Christian crucifix. B'Elanna later tells him she was raised in a Catholic orphanage on Venus.

Films — Animated

• Cars: Sally Carrera has a "tattoo" on her... trunk, hinting at her big-city past.
• Moana: The demigod Maui has enchanted tattoos adorning his body telling the stories of his legendary exploits. The tattooed image of himself is also alive and functions as his conscience. Moana's grandmother also has a large tattoo of a manta ray, highlighting her connection to the ocean, and lampshades it with "When I die, I'm coming back as one of these." Her ghost does come talk to Moana, and it initially appears as a ray before taking human form.

Films — Live-Action

• The A-Team: All four have Ranger tattoos.
• Blades of Glory: Played for laughs, as Chazz Micheal Michaels' tattoos are for each famous figure skater he allegedly banged.
• Dogfight: The four Marine buddies, the "killer B's", get a bee tattooed onto their forearms during their last night on the town before being shipped to Vietnam. River Phoenix's character isn't with them at that moment in the evening so one of his buddies gets an extra bee "for him". Later, when Phoenix returns to the states, he has four bees tattooed on his arm.
• Don't Breathe: Rocky has a new tattoo of a ladybird on her wrist. She explains to Alex that to her the ladybird represents hope and freedom (and why). When she gets to California, she plans to have the tattoo coloured, and that will be the last time she ever marks her body.
• Eastern Promises: Nikoli. Each tattoo has some symbolism. Also a subversion of Tattooed Crook as he is an undercover cop.
• Faster: Driver has prison tattoos that are his scoreboard from the fights he had in prison. And by "fights", we mean "Curb-Stomp Battle / No-Holds-Barred Beatdown " that he handed out.
• The Fountain: Tom the astronaut tattoos an elaborate up his arm to mark the passage of time during his trip through space reminiscent of the rings inside a tree's trunk, starting from the ring he tattooed around his finger where he'd lost his wedding ring after his wife's death back on Earth. He's been out there for hundreds of years.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): At least half of Drax the Destroyer's muscular body is covered in elaborate red tattoos that, according to a Deleted Scene, tell his life story.
• Memento: Lenny has very limited amounts of short-term memory. To remind himself of any clues he gets when he makes a breakthrough in solving his wife's murder, he has the details tattooed on his skin.
• Pacific Rim: An alien biologist named Newton Geiszler has tattoos depicting the alien monsters called 'kaiju' which are the main antagonists of the film. The tattoos are a way to visually reinforce his status as The Xenophile and the Ascended Fanboy.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow has the poem The Desiderata tattooed on his back.
• Soldier: The titular character. The cheek tattoos are lists of battles and also his rank.
• Ultraviolet (2006): Violet has tattoos in Thai Hindi on the fingers of one hand, listing romantic life stages. The pinky is "Comrade", the ring finger "Lover", the middle finger reads "Wife". She became a hemophage before the next finger could be tattooed with "Mother".
• Waterworld: Enola has a Chinese-looking tattoo on her back. It ends up being the story's MacGuffin.

Literature

• A Brother's Price: The Whistlers have their ancestry tattooed on their bodies, or more precisely, their military heritage. That's how others know that they're dangerous if crossed.
• Dark Shores: Cel legionnaires have two tattoos — the number of their legion on their breast and their own personal number on their back, used to identify the deserters and the fallen.
• Courtship Rite: The people of Geta scar their bodies and faces in intricate, beautiful patterns, using toxic native plants to make the scars more permanent. The scars tell of clan allegiances, religious beliefs, and personal interests or history.
• The Godless World Trilogy: Played straight. The Kyrinin tattoo their faces based on a level system, including the first for killing an enemy and the third for stealing an enemy's fire. The Kyrinin achieve the highest level by literally stealing the enemy's cooking fire.
• The Illustrated Man: An inversion. The main character's tattoos tell other people's stories, and eventually how the person watching will die.
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A subversion. Vinculus has the complete text of a book of magic tattooed on his entire body. However, this would seem to reveal something about the character.
• The Mortal Instruments: Strange tattoos cover Jordan Kyle's arms. They're actually mantras from the Upanishads.
• Oona Out of Order: Oona leaps in time from 1982 to 2015 and finds a tattoo of an hourglass with galaxies instead of grains of sand and the letters M.C.D.R. She figures the first two letters are for her parents' names (Madeleine and Charles) and the D is for Dale, her boyfriend from the past. When she leaps to 1999, she finds a note her past self left her, instructing her to ask her mother what does the tattoo mean. The letters are her biological son's initials.
• Stranger in a Strange Land: Patty Paiwonski is entirely covered with scenes from the life of the founder of her religion, Fosterism.

Live Action TV

• Arrow
  • Combined with Every Scar Has a Story when The Hero Oliver Queen returns to Starling City after being Lost at Sea for five years, now with a well-muscled body Covered in Scars and some unexplained tattoos, the full story of which is gradually revealed over the following seasons. One tattoo identifies him as a Captain in the Bratva, there's a dragon tattoo the same as his Love Interest Shado given as a Mark of Shame by Slade Wilson (who blames Oliver for Shado's death) and a magical protection from Constantine.
  • Deadshot has the names of his victims tattooed on his body. One of them is Andrew Diggle, brother of Oliver's Fire-Forged Friend John Diggle. As with Oliver's tats it's a while before we get the full story on that.
• Caprica: Sam Adama and most of the other members of the Tauron Ha'la'tha. The writers even worked the whole thing out.
• ''Elementary: in the episode "A Study In Charlotte" a dead woman is found to have a large tattoo reading "RACHE" (German for revenge) on her back. It is later revealed the tattoo was expanded from originally just "ACH", the initials of the woman's ex who dies in the opening of the episode.
• Farscape: D'Argo's tattoos mark him as a general. They're actually fake, as he got them so he could act as a decoy to protect his own general.
• Lost: Jack's tattoos. The producer chose to openly show actor Matthew Fox's personal tattoos during the first season and eventually reveal the circumstances under which the character got the tattoos with special attention towards their meaning (in traditional Lost-fashion).
• Prison Break: It is subverted, though, in that whilst the many tattoos on Michael Schofield's body seem to have some significance to his past or his character, they are actually just there to assist in his breakout from Fox River.
• Sons of Anarchy: tattoos are a significant part of the culture of SAMCRO, as already seen in the opening credits. Whenever Jax has a Shirtless Scene, you can read a lot about his gang and family life from his ink.
• The Wire: Osman the sailor from Season 2 has compass roses on his knees and the Turkish crescent on his arm. These help The Greek to guess his nationality, and later, helps the police identify the body.

Music

• The Pixies: A girlfriend is characterized in this way in "No. 13 Baby" from Doolittle.
  Black tear falling on my lazy queen
  Got a tattooed tit say number 13.
• Discussed at the end of the music video "For My Dawgs" by Waka Flocka Flame, where Waka shows tattoos dedicated to dead and locked up loved ones.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: As Lunars had their Exaltations tainted by the Wyld as a result of hiding out there for centuries, they came up with using silver tattoos as a way to affix their Caste and protect themselves from the Shaping magics of the Wyld. Part of the process of getting the tattoos involves telling the story of your life and having another Lunar translate it into tattoo form.
• Magic: The Gathering: Inverted by Reki, the History of Kamigawa — his tattoos don't tell his history. They tell everyone else's history.
• Talislanta: Thralls, a race of clone troopers so uniform in appearance that they can only be distinguished from one another by their unique tattoos.
• Warhammer 40,000: The Novamarines have inherited the tradition of tattooing their bodies with scenes of their greatest achievements from the feral tribes that they recruit from. The Novamarines believe that after their death, the Emperor will judge the worth of their life by the deeds inscribed on their skin.
• Warhammer Fantasy: Slayers are Dwarves who had shamed themselves in some way and seek redemption via death in combat. Part of the Slayer appearance includes ornate tattoos covering most of their faces and bodies.
• Werewolf: The Forsaken: Werewolves calculate worth in their society by Renown, split up into five categories — Cunning, Glory, Honor, Purity, and Wisdom. These categories are recognized by the spirits as a form of status, and appear on their bodies as silver brands whenever they enter the Hisil.

Video Games

• Dante in Dante's Inferno has a cloth cross filled with his own backstory sewn onto his chest. The opening of the game even shows him doing it, in all its brutal glory.
• Played for Squick laughs in The Curse of Monkey Island as you have to remove a tattoo of a map of the tri-island area from a music promoter's back. Played straight in that the whole reason he had the tattoo was that he was traveling to those places all the time.
• The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment has a variation of this: He has instructions to find his life's story tattooed on his back.
• The Minmatar in EVE Online: The tattoos are supposed to reveal the character's life task or purpose. Also a Rite of Passage.
• Psymon Stark of the SSX series. Each of his tattoos are designed by him first, and they all tell a story and carry a deep personal meaning, at least according to DJ Atomika; Of course, you don't get to see many of his tattoos (he's a freaking pro snowboarder, you can't blame him for bundling up), but still.
• Runners in Mirror's Edge all have distinct tattoos (including Faith, the player character).
• Lilith from Borderlands has a large blue tattoo running across her chest. This tattoo most likely serves as an indicator that she's a Siren, and also draws attention to her, erm, assets. Commandant Steele and Maya have similar tattoos.
• In The Bouncer, you learn through text crawls that Koh Leifoh got his tattoos from the government, as part of an attempt to better blend in with the denizens of Dog Street. He pretty much hates them but sees them as a necessary evil to get the mission done.
• Jack in Mass Effect 2 has a lot of tattoos. Some are for prisons she's been in, some are for kills (good ones), some are for things she's lost (those aren't your business), and some are there because, well, why not? This becomes amusing (relatively, anyway), when you look closely and realise that many of the tattoos on her arms are her different looks in the official Mass Effect concept art. She also has a very plausible reason for all the tattoos; the symptoms of the psychological disorder known as Rape Trauma Syndrome often include getting tattoos to reassert control over one's own flesh, and Jack has a ridiculously Dark and Troubled Past.
• The bahmi in Rift are stated to cover their skin with Power Tattoos to commemorate their accomplishments. Unfortunately, player characters are somewhat limited in that regard.
• Every single Auroran warrior in EscapeVelocity: Nova uses tattoos to tell the story of their life as a warrior from the moment they are initiated into their House. The two most prominent markings are their House's emblem, and a symbolic image of what death means to that individual. The rest of the tattoos tell of every accomplishment, honor, rank, victory, as well as failures and dishonors, that warrior has earned or experienced. Warriors wear naught but a loincloth at formal gatherings and ceremones, that their lives are laid bare before their fellow warriors; elder warriors can still appear to be fully clothed by the density of their markings.
• Plumeria in Pokémon Sun and Moon is a member of Team Skull and has the Team Skull logo tattooed on her stomach. After the main story is over and Team Skull is disbanded, she gets an outfit to match her Salazzle, and the tattoo is gone.

Western Animation

• Hun, of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) fame, originally started out with two tattoos, depicting the logos of the two syndicates he was loyal to, The Foot and the Purple Dragons. When the character was redesigned for season 7, he no longer sported the Foot tattoo, reflecting how he'd left that particular group behind.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Airbenders, when they have not only learnt all the techniques but also invented one of their own and ascend to the rank of Airbending Master, receive tattoos that map the chi paths in their bodies and are made to resemble the markings on their Flying Bison out of respect for the original source of Airbending. Since as of the current time of the story the Avatar is known to be the last airbender, Aang's tattoos often serve to indicate his identity.
• Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness: Kim the Invincible in "Camp Ping" has tattoos on his body celebrating the major victories in his life over the warriors he's hunted down and defeated, including a lion warrior from Zambia and a spider monkey from Borneo. He also had plans to have his victory over Po tattooed on his body but eventually gets defeated before he can get around to it.

Real Life

• Several cultures have tattoos which are significant to their culture and/or tell the story of the bearer. Dwayne Johnson (who is half Samoan) has a fair amount of Culturally Significant Tattoos on his upper body and at least one arm, which are usually digitally removed or covered with makeup for films.
• A gang member got the story of his murder of a member of a rival gang member tattooed on his chest. Detectives were going over random snapshots of gang tattoos when they noticed something eerily familiar about the tats of one Anthony Garcia who had been pulled over for a minor traffic offence. Not one to skimp on his tattoos, Anthony had included details such as the roof, windows and frames of the liquor store, which were the same as those of the liquor store where the murder was committed. And as if that wasn't enough, the image of a cartoon peanut-man was being shot to death by an angry helicopter. Garcia's gang referred to rival gang members as "peanuts," and Garcia himself went by the nickname "Chopper." The tattoo was so accurate that even the direction in which the shots were fired from the helicopter was exactly as it happened in the murder. The crime had otherwise gone unsolved for four years. Garcia was arrested again, and he soon confessed to an undercover cop. That's probably a detail that he'll leave out of his next tattoo design. Which he'll probably get in prison.
• Tattoo magazine Inked and fashion magazine GQ both have youtube channels that have videos where various celebrities break down their tattoos.
• In the traditional tattoo subcltures — sailors and prisoners — certain tattoos have to be earned, doubling as a resumé.

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