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Posters hanging on every second wall, always in the same design:
- A big fat "WANTED" headline on top
- A picture of the outlaw or gang that is wanted
- The reward in dollars
- Optional: For which crime they're wanted.
- Can sometimes have "Dead or Alive" as the bottom line.
- Comedic versions may add "(Preferably Dead)"
So pervasive that it doesn't just appear in westerns. In modern settings, they're almost exclusively seen in post offices.
The FBI still does these.
One common idea is for a character to see his poster and do one of a few things:
- Try to hide it.
- Admire it.
- Comment on the reward (pride at how high it is or anger at it being too low).
- Draw something on the poster to make the face look different from the real one, like a moustache. Bonus points if someone then captures an unrelated third party who just happens to look like the altered drawing.
Even more bonus points if, after seeing his own face on a Wanted poster, the outlaw stands next to (or in front of) the poster and adopts a pose exactly like the picture on the poster (deliberately or not).
See also Facial Composite Failure.
Like the Face on a Milk Carton trope, it may also be Played for Laughs, such as having the creator of a show make a Creator Cameo in the wanted poster.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Comics
- Often used in Lucky Luke for gags, especially with the Daltons. Notably in Daisy Town, the posters of the brothers are shown throughout their childhood and teens until adulthood, with the reward money for their capture steadily increasing — except for Averell Dalton, which keeps being $7.
- Wanted posters for Tintin can be seen in Tintin The Blue Lotus and for Tintin and Haddock in Tintin The Red Sea Sharks.
- The Man with No Name uses one to lampshade the fact that the comic's Blondie looks nothing like Clint Eastwood, with a character commenting on "these new Wanted posters which show how he's changed his appearance".
- In Mandatory Retirement, Wedge is teased about getting marriage proposals in the mail. His friend says it's because he looks handsome on the wanted posters, and Wedge says they just want the reward.
- In one Knights of the Dinner Table story, Bob and Dave are annoyed at the low prices on their Cattlepunk characters' heads, and start committing increasingly outrageous crimes to rectify the situation. This backfires when the rewards get so big that Brian and Sara decide to turn them in and collect.
- The covers of all issues of Bad Guys, a Gargoyles spin off, features wanted posters of the characters.
- Runaways has a cover featuring the main characters on a wanted poster.
- This◊ infamous and endlessly homaged X-Men cover (X-Men #141).
Films — Animation
- Shrek gets a few of these in the first film.
- Disney's Robin Hood has this.
- The Simpsons Movie uses the "capture a third party" variant.
- So did the Soviet cartoon adaptation of Cipollino.
- The FBI sends these around in Beavis And Butthead Do America; people keep recognizing them and calling the cops, but the kids are so stupidly unpredictable that they keep walking right out of the dragnet.
- Pictured: Tangled has Flynn's Wanted Posters, which they never get his nose right.
Films — Live-Action
- In For a Few Dollars More, the first villain we see added two zeros on his own wanted poster, claiming it wasn't anywhere near enough.
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly features a wanted post for Tuco (the Ugly) emblazoned with a humorously anachronistic high-res photograph of the outlaw.
- In one movie, Harpo Marx has a copy of his wanted poster ("Wanted for Jaywalking") attached to the inside of his coat.
- In Shanghai Noon, Chon Wang and Roy O'Bannon find wanted posters for themselves. Roy is annoyed on how much is offered for Chon Wang, as he's just a "sidekick", and Chon is annoyed as the poster calls him the "The Shanghai Kid", and he's not from Shanghai.
- In Wrongfully Accused, the hero, Ryan Harrison, comes across one in a fishing shop. He quickly scribbles a ridiculously long beard, an oversized pair of glasses and a comically small bowlerhat on it. Shorty after, the sheriff arrests a man with a long beard, wearing an oversized pair of glasses and a comically small bowlerhat.
- In The Good, The Bad, The Weird, the Good, a Bounty Hunter checks out wanted posters early in the film, and there's a scene where the Weird complains about the relatively low bounty on his head. Gets an interesting call back in The Stinger during the credits showing that the Bad was Killed Off for Real, as his poster is crossed out and taken down. The Weird gets a new poster with a much higher bounty, in light of his crimes during the film and revealed status as a Retired Monster. He's then briefly shown traveling on the road and having made a cool Evil Costume Switch.
- In Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Billy the Kid hits on a couple of girls by showing them his wanted poster.
- In L: change the WorLd, after Maki runs away the bio-terrorist group ringleader, K, goes on TV and declares Maki to be a medical patient with a deadly virus who must be detained at all costs. This, along with the wanted posters plastered absolutely everywhere, makes it very difficult for Maki and the others to move—especially since K is an acclaimed scientist, so no one doubts the story.
- The Three Stooges had variants of this in some of their shorts:
Reward: 50 Cents Each
3 for a Dollar
Literature
- The moving one of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
- A Running Gag in the Belgariad and The Malloreon is Silk appearing on wanted posters. He generally reacts with disdain, though he has occasionally felt flattered by high reward offers. Beldin also gets this treatment in Mallorea courtesy of Urvon, a disciple of Torak that he has a long-standing vendetta against — involving a smoking hot hook and the latter's guts.
Live-Action TV
- Honorable Mention: One of Dom Jolly's Trigger Happy TV pranks was to get a random passerby to do something embarrassing for him, and then walk away, leaving them on (hidden) camera looking confused. He'd do it standing under a giant billboard with a picture of himself, and the words "Don't Trust This Man".
- One will occasionally turn up in Kung Fu: Caine is wanted by the Chinese government for killing the Emperor's Nephew. "$10,000 Alive, $5,000 Dead." A likeness of Caine is drawn on the posters, along with drawings of his forearm tatoos/brands.
- Commonly show up in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, as the Evil Empire has put out a bounty for the crew. The reward on each member goes up every few episodes — Butt Monkey Don Dogoier always has the lowest amount. And during the end of the run, the reward for capturing Marvelous skyrockets to a crazy amount. How? How does UNLIMITED REWARD sound? They've pissed off the Empire when that bounty went up.
Music
- Wanted: Dead Or Alive by Bon Jovi.
- The video for Michael Jackson's "Bad" shows a wanted poster of someone wanted for sacriledge. Oh, and being BAD.
Pro Wrestling
- Mick Foley had a variation made for his Cactus Jack begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting t-shirts. Someone had scratched the 'alive' part out of the Wanted: Dead or Alive bit.
Puppet Shows
- The famous "Great Cookie Thief" sketch on Sesame Street also involves the "defaced poster" variant.
- The Muppet Show segment "Bear on Patrol" always had these pinned on the wall of the police station, featuring members of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.
Theater
Video Games
- Guybrush gets his very own in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, which is continually updated as your list of crimes keeps growing. Altering it is part of solving a puzzle.
- Also, a clever use of it in the game Zack and Wiki: it's shown as a sort of ranking screen, as you do great acts of piracy/solve puzzles, the bounty goes up, and the fidelity of the sketch on the poster increases, starting from wildly inaccurate (not to mention looking like a six-year-old drew them) and ending at a dead ringer, then going on to photographs of increasing clarity.
- Tales Series games like to do this, oddly. Tales of Symphonia has them scattered around Sylvarant, portraying a rather odd description of Lloyd.
- In World of Warcraft, wanted posters act as questgivers, and the quests usually involve killing a boss and bringing something from them to an NPC as proof of their death.
- Having a bounty on your head is apparently something of a status symbol for Skies Of Arcadia's Air Pirates. At one point you see a poster that clearly has the viewpoint character on it, but no-one acknowledges this.
- Sundown Kid in Live A Live. He actually put the bounty on his own head so someone would take his life.
- Assassin's Creed 2 has these pop up whenever you start performing evil (or impressive) acts. Ezio can then tear them down to become anonymous again (as well as by bribing town criers and killing bad-mouthing politicians in broad daylight.)
- Bowser is on one of these in Mario Party 1, as long as Western Land in Mario Party 2, complete with cowboy hat and pistol, under the name 'Bowser the Brash'.
- Mario (or actually a doppelganger) is wanted for graffiti in Super Mario Sunshine, and these are found all over Delfino Plaza. You can spray them and coins pop out.
- In the canceled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, Thrall learns about Grom Hellscream by finding a wanted poster for him in Durnholde.
- In Spelunky, "Wanted" posters appear in shops a level after you commit a crime to a shopkeeper. When you're declared innocent (don't kill shopkeeper nor steal from him for another few levels), they disappear.
- A Staple of the Metal Saga series.
- Gun.Smoke shows a wanted poster before each round, though the relevant text is displayed beside it rather than on it.
- The Bard occasionally finds wanted posters of himself in The Bard's Tale. Incredulously, he somehow has the gall to sell them back somewhere, because they're worth money just like any other collectible.
- Red Dead Redemption has wanted posters indicating bounties that the player can claim.
- In the arcade version of Double Dragon, wanted posters of the game's bosses can be seen in Mission 1 and Mission 3. The award for Machine Gun Willy, the final boss, is $100,000, ten times more than the other bosses (who are only worth $10,000 each).
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Avatar The Last Airbender has about six of them (Aang, Jeong Jeong, Chey, the Blue Spirit, Iroh and Zuko). Oddly, they never made one for any of Aang's friends.
- Toph got one for her antics in "The Runaway". She couldn't see it, of course, but she keeps it anyway.
- The Looney Tunes short Drip-Along Daffy has villain Nasty Canasta standing in front of his own wanted poster, then stepping away from it in a memorable reveal.
- In the Wartime Cartoon Confusions of a Nutzy Spy, one of the wanted posters is of a pin-up girl with no crime alleged, but a note attached saying "and you ain't kiddin', brother!" and signed "U.S. Army."
- The Donald Duck cartoon Donald's Crime has him trying to tear away his wanted poster, but reveals another poster underneath with a higher price on his head. Donald keeps tearing off until the zeros go past the poster and into infinity.
- Kim Possible has a few of these for its villains, though they keep the details sketchy for some reason.
- The Mr. Bean series once had this, with a Criminal Doppelgänger involved. Here's the image.◊
- Appears in the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "A Bird In The Hoof", after Princess Celestia's pet bird Philomena goes missing. Since Philomena doesn't want to be caught (long story), she sneaks around drawing mustaches on the posters.
Real Life
- Variant: For the second Iraq war, the US Military issued a deck of cards with 52 mini-wanted posters for various Iraqi baddies.
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