Revealing something about somebody through their personal effects, often posthumously, in Fan Works.
Arrowverse
- In How the Light Gets In
: Following Laurel's death, Oliver packs up the Black Canary outfit and gathers all her personal items in the lair to give to her family. It's a horrifically agonizing affair and he considers keeping something for himself (ultimately deciding to keep her scarf), nearly breaks down when he finds a picture of her daughter and makes a point to treat everything "with the tenderness he should have shown Laurel while she was here.""He puts it all in the box and tries not to think about how fucked up it is that someone's whole life here can be summed up in a box full of random crap. It's not even a big box."
- The Hunger Games Prequel Collection: Some time after losing Iry in the Forty-first Hunger Games, Terra enters her late sister's room and is immediately confronted by Iry's belongings. The sight of them proves too much for her and she is left feeling that she can no longer live in the house in District 8's Victors' Village she was assigned after winning her Games.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Variant in that the personal effects in question are from hundreds of years ago: In chapter 26 of the sequel, Picking Up the Pieces, Gentle Step reveals that as Captain-General, she was allowed access to the personal journal of King Blueblood the First, and learned from it about how he'd spared Chrysalis and Shining Armor's child, and as a result she knows full well that the present Queen is their descendant.
- Blind: While Itachi isn't dead, he won't be returning to his former home after massacring his entire clan save for Sasuke. Though Sasuke searches his belongings, he finds that nothing amongst them suggests the monstrous murderer his brother became.
- Still Waters Series: For Absent Friends has such a box discovered several years after its owner passed away. At the time of her death, she wasn't even out of her teenage years, and the items inside her 'treasure box' reflect this.
