Poster-Gallery Bedroom

"Pretty unique decorating style you have here, [Jason]. It's like, '12-year-old boy' meets '13-year-old boy'."

— Eleanor, The Good Place

Giving clues to a person's personality through the decor of their bedroom, particularly wall posters.

A quick way of giving hints about a person's personality without spending a lot of time on exposition is to show their bedroom. This is particularly true from late childhood to college age, when people tend to have very idiosyncratic decorating tastes. (Before that, the child's parents/guardians tend to choose the decor, and as people mature, many of them feel less compelled to "mark their territory" quite so fiercely. And if a couple is sharing a room, it will tend to blend their tastes to an acceptable medium.)

The posters and other decorations of a bedroom can often convey such information as gender and approximate age, hobbies, religious affiliation, the region the story takes place in, approximately what year the story takes place, and the tolerance level of the parents if any (parents, that is). A change in posters can indicate a similar change in the inhabitant's interests or maturity level. (And whether they're torn down or gently put away tells the audience a lot about the feelings of the character.) If the set designers are careless, they can oversell the clutter effect, or create a false impression by putting all the things that were cool when they were kids on a contemporary teenager's wall.

For a twist, sometimes the posters will reveal the "true face" of a character, such as a burly Jerk Jock's room being plastered with unicorns and rainbows, while the Girl Next Door has decorated her room in Frazetta barbarian posters with black curtains and pagan symbols.

There are a number of poster stereotypes. For example, posters of Einstein, Che, Jim Morrison or some kind of Monet in a college student's dorm room. On the other hand, expect a Scarface (1983) poster in a gangsta-wannabe's room. In addition, a boy's room will nearly always be rather messy and will have at least one swimsuit model poster, while a girl's room will nearly always feature posters and magazine cut-outs of her favorite singers (heart scribbles optional), plus a vanity with mirror and cosmetics.

This trope is usually found in visual media, although print media will sometimes describe a bedroom's decor — and the conclusions the narrator draws from it.

Compare with Environmental Symbolism and Bad Bedroom, Bad Life. If the poster gallery contains one person, the room can double as a Stalker Shrine. Extreme examples may count as Room Full of Crazy. If the posters are all pinups, you're probably going to see the resident Admiring the Poster. Commonly crosses over with Nerd Hoard, which contains hobby objects other than posters.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Coach Lasso: Even though Lasso was very quickly fired from his coaching job in England, he made England his entire personality when he returned to the US, decorating his apartment with Britishisms like the Union Jack, teacups, "Keep Calm and" posters, and a framed soccer jersey.

Anime & Manga

• Futana, the title character's sister from Futabakun Change, has a bedroom filled with posters of naked and half-naked women.
• Ohno from Genshiken has posters of bald, muscular, middle-aged men in her bedroom, much to her public embarrassment.
• Great Teacher Onizuka: Tomoko's and Yoshikawa's rooms are decked out with Otaku paraphernalia, including posters. (Most, if not all of them are a Shout-Out to other Shonen Jump titles.)
• In Kimagure Orange Road, Akane had a poster of Cool Big Sis (from her perspective) Madoka on the ceiling above her bed.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: The first thing Itadori does with his new school dorm room is put up a poster of an attractive woman in a bikini. Which fits in with him introducing himself as being a fan of women who look like Jennifer Lawrence.
• Lucky Star: Konata has a room covered with many an anime and H-Game poster, amongst other miscellaneous anime-related products. This includes various Haruhi Suzumiya merchandise, natch.
• My Hero Academia does this with most students of Class 1-A in order to further establish their personalities. Many bring Hidden Depths, but some are so obvious and predictable that a flashy, extravagant character gets criticized for having a flashy, extravagant room.
• Ranma ½: Tatewaki Kunō has pictures of Akane and the Pigtailed Girl in his room. For a time he replaced them with Nabiki pictures, then all three of them at once.
• Yuri!!! on Ice: Yuri has a room full of posters of Victor Nikiforov. Which leads to a very awkward situation when that very Victor is trying to enter his room and Yuri keeps him out just long enough to hide all the posters.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: When Ishigami goes to Kazeno's school dorm for love advice, he's shocked to discover that the walls are covered in posters of Idol Singers. Kazeno admits that this is actually a fairly recent development and that he had become an Idol Otaku after Osaragi broke up with him.
• My Dress-Up Darling: Marin Kitagawa's room is covered all over in anime posters, pillows, figurines, and any other merchandise related to her favourite shows/games (including a body pillow of Shizuku-tan, the first character she cosplayed). When Gojo visits her home for the first time, his reaction is "Yes, this is definitely Kitagawa-san's room".

Asian Animation

• Bread Barbershop: Wilk's bedroom is shown to have a bunch of Donut Ranger posters on the wall, Donut Ranger being an in-universe tokusatsu show Wilk likes. This helps to establish his excitable, kid-like personality.
• Simple Samosa: The titular character has a bunch of posters for his favorite professional wrestler, Sumo Momo, on a wall in his bedroom.

Comic Books

• Allergic: Maggie's room starts this way, covered in posters of various animals such as cats, dogs, and bears to show she's an Animal Lover. When she learns she's so severely allergic to animal dander that she can't have the dog she wanted, she tears down all the posters and gets rid of all her books about animals in anger. Her room remains undecorated as she struggles to find a pet until the end when, after visiting an aquarium with her mom and baby sister June, she decides she wants to be a marine biologist and re-decorates her room with various images and toys of sea creatures and adds a fishtank.
• In Batwoman: Elegy, a flashback has a glimpse of the Kane twins' room, showing baseball equipment, an Ultraman Tiga plushie, and a gymnastics poster. Kate has a couple posters each for Blondie and The Sisters of Mercy on her section of the walls next to the bunk bed, while Beth has a soccer poster.
• Robin: Tim Drake had a room filled with band posters when he still lived at his biological father's home. Amusingly his girlfriend had a prominent flattering poster of his close friend Superboy over her bed to Tim's endless annoyance.
• Superman:
  • Last Son: Superman's foster son, Chris, has an entire room full of Superman merchandise. Clark mentions how embarrassed he was buying so much stuff with his own face on it.
  • Supergirl's Greatest Challenge: Linda's friend Margie is president of Midvale's Superman fan club and has her room filled with posters, pictures, statuettes... of Superman.

Comic Strips

• Dick Tracy: One storyline introduced a scary-looking "goth" kid. Eventually, we see his room, which has posters of Goths. As in Visigoths. As in burly bearded men in fur armor wielding axes. Almost certainly intentional, as the storyline was (unusually for Dick Tracy) about not judging by appearances.
• One issue of MAD Magazine had a "Mad Look At..." strip dealing with teenagers. In one of them, a character's mother rips down all of his Slasher Flick movie posters, and he retaliates by hanging up stripper merch instead (presented fully uncensored, if cartoony). His beloved movie posters are promptly returned.
• Phoebe and Her Unicorn: Phoebe's bedroom is heavy on pink and unicorns. Unlike many girls with similar decor, she actually knows a unicorn.
• Zits: Jeremy's bedroom, aside from Trash of the Titans, has posters of his favorite bands, especially Gingivitis.^note A fictional band and a Stealth Pun, since his dad's an orthodontist (and it turns out the band members used to be as well). The Goodnight Moon parody in one of the collections, "Goodnight Dude", also draws attention to "a poster of a woman with some big bazooms".

Fan Works

• The first post of Ask Ben Solo shows him sitting on his bed, with a poster of Darth Vader's helmet on the wall. Also another of Max Rebo.
• Doing It Right This Time: The decor in Mari Makinami's bedsit only has two actual posters, one for Liverpool FC and one for Hufflepuff House, with the rest of the walls being covered up by overstuffed bookshelves and photographs that she's either taken herself or tweaked in GIMP. You can still infer quite a bit about her personality from the description of the place.
• In A Saga of Parallel Worlds, the Angry Video Game Nerd had a bedroom filled with Nintendo Power posters during his childhood.
• Discworld witch Irena Politek has an apartment decked out like this, with a twist. Her two-room apartment in Ankh-Morpork is decked out with propaganda posters, both antique survivals and recent reproductions, dating from the days of the Union of Soviets. While she acknowledges the Union of Soviets is long defunct and it looks unlikely it'll be re-established any time soon, and her own faith in the Revolution is very much diminished by contact with everyday reality outside Rodinia, she keeps them on the wall out of respect for her old-time communist family and upbringing, and mainly because it pisses off her lifelong friend, Lady Olga Romanoff. ^note Irena views keeping Olga, a powerful Witch, in a state of everyday grounded irritation, performs the same service that Nanny Ogg provided for Granny Weatherwax.(mayhersoulhavemercyontheGods)

Films — Animation

• Tangled: Rapunzel's tower is filled from top to bottom with paintings that she made the whole 18 years she was there. The growing lack of space is lampshaded in her "I Want" Song and it's even a plot point, since her bedroom is filled with subconsciously drawn versions of the sun symbol that is the kingdom's insignia and alerts her that she is the lost princess.
  I'll paint the walls some more — there must be room somewhere...
• In Toy Story, the Western posters and decor in Andy's room shift to space-themed items after the arrival of Buzz Lightyear, much to Woody's dismay. Even the bedspread changes! Also consider the Darker and Edgier decor of the troubled Sid's room.
• In Toy Story 3, this comes up again when we are shown a fairly wide shot of Andy's room—and how it's changed since his childhood.
• In Turning Red, the posters in Mei's room advocate studying, working hard and listening to your elders signifying how much of an influence Mei's Education Mama, Ming, has on Mei's life.

Films — Live-Action

• American History X: Derek's bed is watched over by a large Swastika flag, and a bunch of neo-nazi propaganda flyers all over the walls. After Derek tells Danny the full story of what happened to him in prison, the two take down the decor.
• The main character of Under the Silver Lake has an early scene where he has sex with a woman under a Nirvana poster. This becomes important later.
• Kat's bedroom in 10 Things I Hate About You is plastered with posters of alternative girl bands. Her sister Bianca's room is rather juvenile in floral and white.
• Jesminder's room in Bend It Like Beckham, mostly pictures of David Beckham himself.
• The kid in C.R.A.Z.Y. is a big David Bowie fan and his walls tell.
• In Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, the babysitter stumbles into the teenage boy's bedroom and reacts in horror at all the heavy metal posters on the walls. In fact, it gives her a fatal heart attack and kicks off the plot!
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off: We can tell Ferris Bueller is cool (as if there was ever any doubt), because he has a Cabaret Voltaire poster.
• In The Forbidden Kingdom, the teenage protagonist's room is covered in kung fu movie posters and cut-outs. He even has a kung fu movie playing... when he wakes up in the morning.
• I'm Thinking of Ending Things: Played in a way that tips off both the young woman and the audience that something's amiss — Jake's childhood room is full of literature and films, including collections by Eva HD, William Wordsworth, and Pauline Kael, which the young woman quotes or he discusses. While this shows he's an intelligent loner, it also heavily implies that the young woman isn't real, characterized instead by the media he consumes.
• It Should Happen to You has Gladys' apartment covered in posters... of herself.
• The titular character of Juno has one of these rooms. Covered from wall to wall with band posters, toys, etc.
  • And nametags, don't forget the nametags. One of which reads "Hello I'm Drunk".
• The little brother's room in Just One of the Guys is covered with Playboy centerfolds pinned up. It's hard to tell this when you watch it on TV — the censor blurs obscure essentially the entire room.
• In Labyrinth, Sarah's room has posters of Broadway musicals, books of fairy tales and girls sent to magical worlds, and something foreshadowing nearly every event in the film.
• In Little Secrets, Isabelle's room is filled with girly stuff, posters of Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, *NSYNC, Stone Temple Pilots and Blink-182.
• Not covering all the walls, but hilarious: In The Lost Boys, the first thing Sam does upon moving into their new room is hang up a poster of a shirtless Rob Lowe.
• The original The Parent Trap. Susan's bed at camp has photos and magazine clippings of 1960s teen heartthrobs. Sharon isn't so cool, so she has no idea who Ricky Nelson is. "Oh, your boyfriend." Susan gasps in disbelief. "I wish he was! You mean you never heard of him? Where do you come from, outer space?"
  • This is updated for the Lindsay Lohan version with Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Chris' bedroom in Rock Star is covered in posters of his favorite band, Steel Dragon.
• The walls in Aimee's room in The Spectacular Now are plastered with posters related to her interests - i.e. sci-fi and manga.
• In the song "Kickapoo" at the beginning of Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, JB's ultra-religious father, after a vigorous spanking, begins tearing down about a dozen rock and metal band posters from his bedroom walls, forgetting the Dio poster on the door. The poster immediately sings to JB to tell him to go form a band.
• In Troll 2, Holly's room has posters of Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp. Joshua's room is a veritable treasure trove of Product Placement.
• The Ultimate Christmas Present has Allie's room with consists of posters of boy bands such as *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys.
• In the first Wayne's World film Garth's bedroom is shown in one scene. As should probably be expected, it's covered in posters of hard rock and Heavy Metal bands.
• Played for Laughs in a teen sex comedy (I think it was Loose Screws) where a teenage Fille Fatale is seducing a handsome boy when her daddy arrives home unexpectedly. She immediately reverses all the posters on her bedroom to more innocent versions and brings out the teddy bears — unfortunately the boy isn't as quick on the uptake and is chased away by the outraged father.
• In Paddington (2014), typical teenager Judy has an entire wall covered in various posters and pictures; Jonathan, who wants to be an astronaut when he grows up, has a huge mural of a planet seen from space.
• In Wild in the Streets, Senator Fergus's children have all decorated their bedrooms with posters of celebrities, including Max Frost. Once Fergus realizes Max has turned his children against him, he drunkenly rips the posters down.
• In Mario (1984), Simon and Mario's bedroom is decorated with pictures of Arab horsemen.
• Poltergeist: Robbie and Carol Anne had posters of Star Wars and Alien in their bedroom.
• In Tuff Turf, Frankie's room is covered in rock posters.
• Coley from Mackintosh and T.J. has decorated his room with pictures of naked or scantily-clad women. Mackintosh disapproves, thinking the pictures turn women into disposable objects.
• In Wild America, the Stouffer brothers' room is covered in posters of animals, mixed in with the occasional car or celebrity.
• In The Deadly Spawn, Kid Hero Charles' bedroom is filled with posters for old monster movies, establishing him as an Unabashed B-Movie Fan. The Deadly Spawn is itself a Genre Throwback to those very same movies.

Literature

• In the Alex Rider book Point Blanc, students are encouraged to decorate their rooms. So that the Big Bad can impersonate them better.
• In Animorphs, Cassie notes that everything in Rachel's room is neat and matches, like from a magazine. She also has a bulletin board where she puts up Post-It notes with quotes; Cassie is sad that recently they're all about danger or war.
• Discworld:
  • In Moving Pictures, Victor discovers that Ginger has decorated her bedroom with posters for the "clicks" she's starred in.
  • In other Discworld novels, some characters are conversely described by how neat and impersonal their bedrooms are. Malvolio Bent's room is entirely plain, simple and undecorated except for a closet containing a dark secret, exactly like himself.
  • Unseen Academicals opens with the narrator mentioning the value of bedrooms to illustrate personality, and then describing the bedrooms of the central characters. For instance, Juliet's bedroom is mentioned as having everything painted pink with little yellow crowns, except for the beer crates holding up the bed. As the color scheme and decorations were picked by her late mother, it seems to indicate that Juliet has not yet truly entered adult life.
• Subverted in Everworld: when David sees Senna's room he's frustrated that it provides no clue about her personality: the only decorations look like they came from an interior designer, the only books she owns are for school, etc.
• Harry Potter:
  • Ron's room is entirely orange due to Chudley Cannons Quidditch posters, bedspread, etc., and even more chaotic than usual because, of course, all the players are moving. His sister, Ginny, likewise has posters of her favorite team, the Holyhead Harpies.
  • Sirius Black's teenage bedroom was primarily red and gold (for Gryffindor), broken up by Muggle pin-up girls on motorcycles. Meanwhile, his brother's room was festooned with Slytherin banners and newspaper clippings for a "Death Eater Youth League" vibe.
  • Luna Lovegood painted her bedroom ceiling with portraits of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville linked together with the word "friends" repeated a thousand times in gold ink. Somehow this comes off as more poignant than unsettling.
  • Every year, Dean carefully hangs up his poster for the West Ham Association Football team in the boys' dorm room.
• In Isabel Allende's novel The House of the Spirits, Alba Trueba was granted permission to paint the walls of her room as a little girl, and she uses them as a journal of sorts until she is well into teenagehood. The last thing painted is a little heart, meaning that she has fallen in love for the very first time. Given that she eventually is revealed as the writer/narrator of the whole story, this is kind of prophetic.
• Marci Jensen from I Am Not a Serial Killer has one of these, which John describes as “less decorated than attacked”. In this case, it’s not specified what the posters are of, just that she has a lot of them, sometimes layered messily over each other, establishing her as enthusiastic personality and normalcy relative to John.
• In My Brother is a Superhero, Cara's bedroom has two posters of a famous male singer, and another of an artsy French film. Most notably, she has a poster version of the famous photo where Star Guy saved her from a runaway bus (though of course, Cara doesn't know that Star Guy is Zack). Other than that, though, she doesn't have any superhero posters, which Luke finds "disturbing."
• In The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, the wall over Kali's bed in the dormitory is decorated with photos of American gangsters, prize-fighters, and the kind of movie actor who plays gangsters and prize-fighters. In the sequel, The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School, Kali's wall is still similarly decorated, while her roommate Amy has decorated hers with photographs of costumed crimefighters she aspires to emulate.
• The lodgings of Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street had a number of frequently mentioned decorations, including pictures of General Gordon and Henry Ward Beecher, and VR written in bullet holes, which all give clues to the personalities of the residents.
  • Don't forget the Reichenbach landscape over the fireplace
  • Or the stuck-to-the-mantlepiece-with-a-knife correspondence.
  • Or the chemistry set in the corner.
  • Or the insane amounts of papers from various cases he has lying everywhere. (At one point, Watson even gets annoyed with this one.)
  • Or the initials VR (for Victoria Regina) which he patriotically inscribed on the wall in bullet holes.
• Molly from I Think I Love You has covered an entire wall of her bedroom with Leonardo DiCaprio. Petra tries to stop her from using Sellotape, which damages the paint.
• Elizabeth from Dogs Don't Talk has a room covered with dance posters.
• My Dark Vanessa: Because Vanessa spends most of her time at boarding school, her bedroom at her parents' house is a time capsule of her fourteen-year-old self, complete with poster-covered walls, although it doesn't say what the posters are of.
• When Will from If I Fall, If I Die gets into skateboarding, he starts papering his room with pictures from skateboarding magazines. His mother worries that he'll try some of the really unsafe stunts from the pictures.
• In You Look Different in Real Life, the protagonists attend a college party in a suite whose walls are entirely covered with posters.
• Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen!: Nate's walls are covered in posters of baseball players, mostly catchers.
• In Harmonic Feedback, Naomi's bedroom is lined with posters of various bands, most of which Drea doesn't like.
• Tornado Brain: Tess's room is decorated with inspirational posters and her own artwork. Frankie's is covered in pictures of tornados.
• In Peta Lyre's Rating Normal, Jeb's room is decorated with posters of cars and movies. The car posters used to belong to his Big Brother Bully, but Jeb can't remove them, since it would damage the paint.
• In Underdogs, fourteen-year-old assassin Oliver Roth decorates his room with death metal posters.
• Rosina from The Nowhere Girls decorates her room with vintage posters of bands from The '90s. Her favorite is Sleater-Kinney.
• In The Evolution of Emily, Emily and Olivia's room is covered in posters of male celebrities, including Austin Mahone. When August comes over, Emily is embarrassed of the posters and decides to do some redecorating soon.
• In Post-High School Reality Quest, Buffy's roommates have covered their walls with Taylor Swift posters in an effort to hide the peeling paint.
• Counting to D: Kaitlyn's bedroom is covered in posters of Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, and other people who look like they're named Justin.
• In The Mermaid's Mirror, Lena's room is covered with pictures of waves and surfers, some of which she cut out of magazines, and some of which she took herself.
• In Even If We Break, Liva's room at the cabin is decorated with posters of WyvernCon and sewing patterns.
• In No One Needed to Know, Donald's room is covered in baseball pennants and posters of sports stars. During Heidi's short-lived attempt to teach Donald to stop acting like a Kiddie Kid, she has him take them all down and tells him to hang up posters of rock musicians and swimsuit models instead. The next morning, she sees that Donald has hung all his old posters back the way they were.
• In Ana on the Edge, Tamar's bedroom is decorated with posters of her and Ana's favorite sports movies.
• Timmo from Small Persons with Wings is an aspiring astronaut. His room is covered in star charts and nebula posters.

Live-Action TV

• In the All That skit, Whateverrr!!, Gina and Jessica had a room with a girly wallpaper filled with posters of rock and pop bands and artists such as Matchbox 20, Fuel, Sugar Ray, Jewel, Ben Folds Five, Joey Mc Intyre, etc.
• Lampshaded in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Freshman", in which vampires were grabbing college students and making it look as though they'd just dropped out. They'd run a sweep to determine whether the poster left behind was Claude Monet's "Waterlilies" or Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, the two being the most common prints in real-world college dorm rooms.
• This trope was used in a programme on Channel 4 about puberty, where we see the a boy age from being 8 years to his teens (as though it were time-lapse footage) in his bedroom. When he becomes a teenager, his posters suddenly change to those of girls.
• Played with on Chuck. All through the series, the main character has a TRON poster on his wall. We get it: he's a nerd, and very, very rarely has women in a position to see his bedroom. Then, in the last few episodes of season two, he takes it down for the first time and we see that on the back of it he's been drawing a web of notes this whole time about the Intersect, Bryce, Fulcrum, etc. He's been taking a proactive role in his life despite appearances to the contrary, he's been prying into the world of espionage he's so scared of, he's been watching the details of everything that goes on around him... and he's been hiding all that in the one place none of the people spying on him would notice, because it's just part of the scenery.
• Clarissa, from Clarissa Explains It All, was both cool and brainy, as evidenced by her They Might Be Giants poster.
• In the Criminal Minds episode "Elephant's Memory" the spree killing youth is partially profiled by the stuff in his room, which included things like a mirror painted black and posters relating to James Dean (Reid notes its kind of disturbing how the killer had more posters of the car accident that killed Dean than Dean himself).
• Max's room in Dani's House illustrates that he's a young boy and thus has loads of posters of stuff boys his age would be interested in, such as Duel Masters and Doctor Who.
• Doctor Who: In "Rose", what little we see of the title character's bedroom is very pink.
• Doogie Howser, M.D.: Doogie Howser was obviously a genius, but was also funny and a bit cynical. He has a Save the Humans poster on his door. He also has posters of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein, among others.
• Played for laughs in a series of sketches on The Fast Show, where the posters plastering a teenage girl's room kept changing to whichever famous person she "really loved" at the moment.
• Paris Gellar of Gilmore Girls has a poster of Noam Chomsky on her wall, and Rory has a couple of similar smarty-pants posters as well.
• On The Good Place, Eleanor describes Jason's "budhole" as "12-year-old boy means 13-year-old boy", since it's filled with video games, posters of cars, models, and female celebrities, and all-around immature things. Certainly a quick and easy way to prove that Jason is nothing at all like the wise Buddhist monk he'd been masquerading as up to that episode.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: Alan's dormitory room (which he shares with Bambang and Prima) is full of Ariel Noah posters to show what a fan of Ariel he is. Later on, it's revealed thath Juna's room is decorated with a lot of his own photos, which the others take as a sign of how narcisstic he is.
• One of these appeared at least once on The Muppet Show, perhaps most notably when Joan Baez sang "Honest Lullaby". Posters included John Travolta and (maybe) Luke Skywalker.
• This was a minor plot point in an episode of NUMB3RS: The team is investigating the disappearance of a college student, so they go to check out his dorm room. They quickly realize that the posters in his room are a bit too calculated, leading them to suspect that he had a double life.
• In Rescue Me, most of Tommy's interaction with his nephew Damian takes place in Damian's room and showcases his many posters proclaiming his love of anime and alt-rock.
• Used as a minor plot point on Skins when Katie, faced with her twin sister Emily's blossoming homosexuality, has a good look at Emily's side of the room comparing it to her own: While Katie's side has posters of hot boys, including Daniel Craig, Emily's side is covered in art and photos of women, including Audrey Hepburn, possibly Fergie, and a particular focus on a Blondie poster. With a wall full of chicks, Katie finally has the physical evidence that yes, Emily's gay. Astute viewers may notice that Emily's posters have actually changed from the first appearance of their room in the first episode, when they was more musical (the most prominent poster was the Plain White Ts).
• Jackie's bedroom in That '70s Show had posters of 1970s bands. Eric's bedroom has Star Wars and Planet of the Apes posters and, most notably, the iconic Farrah Fawcett red swimsuit pin-up.
• Jake on Two and a Half Men decorated his room at Charlie's house with pin-ups. This is not what bothers Charlie; what bothers him is that he nailed them on the wall. His father, Alan, expresses disappointment with the fact that to make way for them Jake tore down his formerly precious (but now uninteresting to him) Harry Potter posters. It turns out Jake hasn't quite grown out of it though.
  Jake: [dons Harry Potter glasses and toy wand, smiles at posters] 'Ello ladies, I'm 'Arry Potter.
• Underbelly Benji is introduced with a tour of his room, which includes such oddities as a Scarface (1983) picture, kickboxing trophies in a cluttered mess, a cross, and gym equipment which he is currently using.
• The X-Files:
  • Mulder's office is a non-bedroom example with mild Room Full of Crazy and String Theory overtones. It is completely covered in photos, clippings, and posters of paranormal phenomena (mostly UFOs and aliens), including the iconic "I Want to Believe" poster, and a slight smattering of books and memorabilia on the topic.
  • Conspiracy Theorist Blaine Faulkner's bedroom in the episode Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' would also qualify. Notable in that it is basically Mulder's office IN A BEDROOM! with much stronger Room Full of Crazy vibes. It even contains a poster identical to Mulder's which simply reads "I Believe".
• On Seinfeld, George's bedroom was decorated in a disturbingly childish way, with a cartoony dinosaur lampshade and baseball-printed bedsheets. Note that this was not his childhood bedroom at his parents' house, but his own apartment. This indicated his general immaturity.
  • Newman's apartment has a gigantic poster of a "Tyrannosaurid" and generally a bunch of weird odds-and-ends, suggesting he was some sort of a hoarder.
• Unriddle: A father's insistence that he left his missing daughter's bedroom "exactly as it was", combined with it not reflecting her personality as reported by her friends, tips off the cops to the father's overly-controlling nature. A sports poster in the room (the father picked the sport she was allowed to play) gives a further clue to what actually happened.

Theatre

• In Oklahoma!, the walls of the smokehouse where Jud lives are plastered with pink pictures of women from old covers of Police Gazette.

Video Games

• In Bully, Jimmy's room changes over time, gaining a new wall ornament for each major mission he completes.
• In Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you get to see Kylo Ren's bedroom... which is covered in Darth Vader posters and memorabilia.
• In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, in one of their many codec conversations, Rose complains to Jack about how bare his bedroom is, there's "not even a poster". Jack had been little more than a tool of his controllers up to that point. He claims to remember little of his past.
• No More Heroes: Travis Touchdown, another Otaku, also has many posters plastering his walls and shelves full of plastic figurines.
• The Sims naturally has posters and wall art for your virtual doll houses, in particular, there will often be an item that consists of multiple posters and other wall hangings with various themes that would suit a child or teen bedroom, to invoke this trope.
• Super Paper Mario: Fort Francis. Okay, sure, if you want to get technical, it's more of an entire fortress than just a bedroom, per se, but still...
• Most of the bedrooms in What Remains of Edith Finch give strong indications of their occupants' personality. The most straight example is Lewis' room, which is literally lined with posters.
• Unpacking: Consistently, though decreasingly so as time goes on, the protagonist decorates her bedrooms with posters of her favorite shows and games including the ones she's worked on.

Visual Novels

• Discussed in Psycholonials. Z. comments that a person's posters are an important reflection on who they are, as most people's personalities these days are defined solely by what media and things they like. The only decoration her entire house is a wall of posters near her bed that represent things that were once important to her: an Insane Clown Posse poster representing her Juggalo past, a Post Malone poster representing her perfect man, and a picture of Karkat, representing another past obsession. Together these represent her obsession with clowns and weird cantankerous goblins.

Web Comics

• Gunnerkrigg Court. Antimony's dorm room is rather spartan. Kat's is decorated with posters (and action figures) reflecting her interests: Metal Gear Solid, The Goonies, Lobster Johnson and the techno band Orbital.
• Character introductions in Homestuck are typically handled with a wide shot of the character's bedroom accompanied with a short biography. Naturally, many of the rooms have posters reflecting their interests, such as John's room having posters of films most people would consider Guilty Pleasures that he genuinely enjoys. The most extreme example is almost certainly Jake English's room, which is so plastered by movie posters you can't see the wall.
• The first panel of this strip from The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! gives a good indication of Molly's eclectic tastes and indeterminate age.
• Rets' room in Mistakes Of Youth, in which every inch of the wall has been taken up by anime posters, most of which display little girls.
• NEXT!!! Sound of the Future: Hatsune Miku superfan Shine has an apartment filled with Miku merch, including expensive albums, posters, and a life-sized standee of a Miku behind her TV, which shows how much she defines herself through loving Miku idols in place of becoming one herself.
• Miko of Prague Race has a bunch of overlaying posters on the walls in the corner of his room where he keeps his desk. While several of them look like concert posters there are a number of art posters in the mix as well.
• The lack of any such personal touches for the protagonist teenaged girl's bedroom in Transcerebral is the first big clue that most of her purported background is false.
• The Order of the Stick: The prequel volume Start of Darkness has a scene in teenaged Xykon's room, which is decorated by a couple of band posters, a swimsuit pinup,... and a picture of a skull.

Web Original

• The Angry Video Game Nerd has a variation-his game room is covered in video game posters culled from his issues of Nintendo Power. The two-part review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III also displays posters of The Transformers: The Movie and Army of Darkness prominently in the beginning.
• Twisted in The Nostalgia Critic's review of Disney Afternoon, as the point is not that he has posters on the (studio) wall, but that he's delusional and gets really angry at any intrusion of reality.
• Both Spoony and Allison Pregler (who even used her wall as the background for title cards before hiring an artist).
• While not much detail has gone into it, the interior of Anna Chase's room in Survival of the Fittest is implied to be this on a few occasions. It's mentioned that she has a lot of posters and figurines in her bedroom, of course relating to her interests (horror media and anime). In post-game, it's revealed that before she came home that her parents removed her posters and figurines from the room, out of a concern that she would be triggered by them, much to her mild annoyance.

Western Animation

• In Code Lyoko. Jérémie, the computer geek, has the obligatory Einstein poster in his room. Ulrich, the martial art jock, has pencak silat posters on his half of the dorm he shares with Odd. And Sissi, the Alpha Bitch, has fashion models and girl bands poster in her bedroom — along with the aforementioned vanity with mirror and cosmetics.
• Daria
  • Tiffany's room is covered with poster-sized pictures of herself, showing exactly how narcissistic she is.
  • Daria, on the other hand, has a poster of Franz Kafka and another that seemingly portrays a human skeleton protruding from the earth. Perhaps an archeological dig? Her room had very few posters besides that one, since it was formerly occupied by someone psychotic and still had the padding on the walls, which she thought was cool enough by itself.
• In the King of the Hill episode "Sleight of Hank", Bobby (who's twelve or thirteen) wants to paint his blue bedroom walls with "white, fluffy clouds." Hank naturally dislikes the idea but eventually gives in.
• In The Loud House, All of the Loud siblings' bedrooms, excluding Lola and Lana's and Lisa and Lily's, have some of the posters. Even Luna had rock music posters on her room.
• In Milo Murphy's Law, Milo's room is decorated with various warning and road signs. There's also a photo of some firefighters hanging right next to his loft bed (why someone so accident-prone has one is a mystery), a music stand and a dog bed for Diogee.
• Miraculous Ladybug: In case her actions around him aren't enough of a reminder, Marinette's bedroom is filled with photos and pictures of her crush Adrien. Doubles as something of a Stalker Shrine, since she's also got his schedule written down somewhere.
• The Simpsons: When Homer re-enrolled in college, he briefly turned his bedroom into a dorm room with the use of cinder block bookshelves and the poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue.
• The Owl House
  • Luz's video diary in "Thanks to Them" uses this trope to show both the passage of time and her descent into the realm of fandom, starting off with a blank wall when her family first moved into the house and slowly gaining more and more posters of various books, anime, movies, and video games (along with some of her own hand drawn artwork) until the wall is almost enitirly covered by the time it reaches the present day. Vee took all of the posters down while she was living Luz's life, and they never appear to be put back up even after Luz comes home (though Vee did at the very least return all of Luz's action figures to their proper place).
  • Gus's room is unsurpisingly full of random human junk.
  • Willow has various plants and plant themed furniture, along with a poster and newspaper clipping about Flyer Derby.
  • Boscha's entire room is full of various trophies and awards that she's won playing grudgby. There's also a large poster of herself right next to her vanity.

• In South Park, Kyle has the classic "Einstein sticking his tongue out" poster, and sometimes a poster of the Jewish rapper Matisyahu. Stan has a poster for Street Warrior, an obvious knock-off of Road Warrior. Cartman's room sometimes has a pin-up of Mel Gibson in his Braveheart costume (Cartman admires him for his anti-Semitism). Wendy is seen to have a pin-up of Russell Crowe in her bedroom or bathroom.
  • In season 18 Shelly has a poster of the singer Lorde, though she doesn't realize that Lorde is actually her father.
  • In Season 20, Stan's Street Warrior poster has been switched with a Fury Road poster, with the Tagline changed to "What a Sweet Day."
  • Fans have noticed that Craig has an assortment of space-related decorations in his room, creating Fanon that he's into astronomy and/or sci-fi.
• Steven Universe:
  • Steven's room has various action figures, a few books, a TV and video games. He also has posters for shows/movies called Star Battlers and Ninja Squad (the latter of which was replaced with the more depressing New Ninja Squad when Steven was trying to act more mature). You can also see a copy of Sailor Moon on his nightstand, which makes sense for someone being raised by Magical Girl Warriors from space.
  • Each of the Crystal Gems have their own room in the Temple, where the environment actually is designed to fit their personalities. Amethyst's is a total pigsty with many large puddles that you can swim in; Pearl's is more elegant, with tall pillars of water you can stand on. Averted with Rose's old room: it's basically a magical holodeck, so it could have theoretically been just about anything when she was around to use it.
• In Total Drama, you can sometimes see characters' bedrooms in their audition tapes:
  • From the Island cast, Katie and Sadie's have pictures of male models on the wall; Cody has a swimsuit model and a man in front of a microphone (a comedian, maybe?); Beth has stuffed animals, as does Lindsay, plus various pictures of herself in swimsuits; and DJ has sports awards, a lot of CDs and a picture of his mother.
  • From the Revenge of the Island cast, B has a bunch of computers, books and a periodic table; Sam has video games, snacks and trash everywhere; Zoey has arts and crafts, most notably a sewing machine; and Mike has something hinting at each of his split personalities from that season.
  • The Pahkitew cast has this for almost everyone. Beardo has sound equipment and a vinyl record on the wall; Leonard's room looks like a wannabe wizard's lair; Max's looks like a wannabe Mad Scientist's lair; Ella has tons of stuffed animals; Topher has a picture of Chris and Jasmine has jungle wallpaper and a picture of Ayer's Rock. Sammy's is mostly nondescript, but there's a second-place ribbon on the wall. Scarlett has a bunch of science equipment and, in an interesting bit of Foreshadowing, a globe embedded with meat cleavers. Sky room's can be seen in the show itself, with a dreamcatcher that hints at her Native American ancestry.
• On Young Justice, Beast Boy's rooms (in Qurac and Mount Justice) are decorated with pictures of animals (including dinosaurs) and superheroes (including Aqualad and Martian Manhunter).
  • Here's an interest analysis of Jaime's room that points out how little sense it makes.
  • Wally's room has a poster with The Flash's symbol, another which might be Batman, an unidentified burly man (maybe a wrestler?) and, of course, a bikini model.
  • Artemis is an interesting example, as the main feature of her room is an Alice in Wonderland poster left behind by her runaway sister, the supervillain Cheshire. She also has a poster on her side of the room, but it's just a vaguely-designed symbol with no apparent meaning.

Real Life

• The ubiquity of this trope with students is why universities around the world hold regular poster sales. College/university dorm rooms are often extremely dull and institutional-looking, and housing rules usually prevent students from making permanent modifications to the room like painting the walls or nailing up proper paintings, mirrors, wall hangings, or picture frames. Posters, which can be taken down at the end of the year or semester, serve as a substitute for the ability to really decorate. Sometimes annoyingly pointless in British universities, where many halls of residence will prohibit the hanging of posters, flags etc. In this regard, blue painter's tape is a university student's best friend because it can be used to hang lots and lots of posters without damaging the walls in any way.

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