Trophy Room

One good way to establish a character's Backstory and personality is to give them a Trophy Room or wall full of trophies and mementos of their accomplishments. It may be revealed with a camera pan in the intro (which can double nicely as exposition thanks to newspaper clippings and magazine covers), as background Scenery Porn to their home, or worked into the script when another character discovers it and becomes awestruck (or fearstruck, read on). Potential owners include but are not limited to: actors, rock stars, Adventurer Archaeologists, football players, hunters, officers (police and military), politicians, Go-Getter Girls, and high-ranking members of an Artifact Collection Agency.

If they have had an adventurous and eventful life, it may become a full-blown museum, taking up not just a wall or room but an entire wing of their mansion as it verges on becoming (or surpassing) a Superhero Trophy Shelf. The nature and content of the Trophy Room says a lot about the owner; it may be a modest acknowledgment of their achievements (which is not indicated anywhere else in the house), a narcissistic Shrine to Self, a creepy Egomaniac Hunter's room full of stuffed animals (and not the huggable kind), a creepier Stalker Shrine full of "trophies" won from preying on others, a selection of Battle Trophies won in combat, or a small-scale Bazaar of the Bizarre full of archaeological wonders or curious kitsch.

Expect youngsters who think their parents/relatives are boring to radically reassess their assumption once they accidentally stumble upon this room.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• For most superhero examples, see Superhero Trophy Shelf.
• In B.P.R.D., the new CEO of Zinco Corporation, Mr. Pope, has a secret room stuffed to the gills with Nazi memorabilia, including from some of their wacky supertech and disturbing occult artifact collections, including stuff related to Project Ragna Rok.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Scrooge McDuck has one of these in the Carl Barks and Don Rosa continuities, containing various valuable mementoes from his previous adventures, often referencing earlier comics. For Scrooge, the Money Bin itself is also an enormous trophy room, where every coin represents a unique, personal memory.
  • The Black Knight: Arpin Lusène, Scrooge's Worthy Opponent Gentleman Thief, is himself is shown to have a sizable collection of stolen art and treasures in his French villa during the news item on him.
• Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted: The creepy hunter kind. The Big Bad Raymond Martin has a facility filled with the stuffed corpses of Skull Island and Hollow Earth megafauna that he's sought out and killed before the start of the comic.
• The Shadow Gallery, V's stronghold from V for Vendetta, is where he keeps various cultural items stolen from the hyper-censoring megalomaniacal government.
  • The Shadow Gallery exists in the film adaptation, too. It also shows Gordon Deitrich as having a similar trophy room, including a satirical painting of the Big Bad in drag and a copy of the Qur'an. Unfortunately, his owning the latter has him put to death by Sutler's thugs when they arrest him.
• In Violine, Violine's father had one of these in his mansion.
• Wonder Woman:
  • The third Cheetah, Barbara Ann Minerva who is the Cheetah in modern times, has a large collection of artifacts reflecting her nature as a Adventurer Archaeologist, and in the Post Crisis continuity most of those artifacts were mystical and powerful in nature reflecting her sinister power hunger.
  • The version of the first Cheetah, Priscilla Rich who was the Cheetah during and right after WWII, from The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) has a large creepy collection of taxidermied animals from all over the world reflecting her background as a Egomaniac Hunter.
• Ziggy Pig - Silly Seal Comics reveals that Doctor Doom has a wall where he keeps trophies of his defeated enemies. In addition to spaces reserved for the Fantastic Four, he has The Nurse Who Gave Doom A Shot Once (ONCE!), Doom's 5th Grade Math Teacher (Doom Hates Fractions!), and A Butt.

Films — Animated

• BoBoiBoy: The Movie: To showcase how far BoBoiBoy's come as Rintis Island's superhero, he has a wall of newspaper clippings about his rescues and heroic endeavours in his room.
• Inverted but serving the same purpose in Cars, with Doc Hudson leaving his three Piston Cups laying around the garage rather than proudly displayed; one is in a pile of junk parts, one has an oily rag lying on it, and the third is on a workbench, holding wrenches. He's completely left the racing world behind, and has no importance attached to them anymore.
  Lightning: You have three Piston Cups! How could you have... ...Just look at those trophies!
  Doc: You look. All I see is a bunch of empty cups.
  • At the end of the movie, though, Doc has made his peace with his history and there's an entire wing of the Radiator Springs Museum for his trophies, clippings and memorabilia.
• In Beauty and the Beast, Gaston's bar is full of his game trophies among them include a bald eagle, a frog, a weasel, and (supposedly) Bambi's mother.
• Hercules: Phil has a cave on his island filled with mementos about the Greek figures he'd failed to train.
  Phil: Watch it! That was part of the mast of the Argo!
  Hercules: The Argo?
  Phil: (scoffs) Who do you think taught Jason how to sail? Cleopatra? I trained all those would-be heroes. Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus. A lot of "eus"-es. And every single one of those bums let me down, flatter than a discus!
• Up: Muntz has one of these onboard his blimp and is seen bragging to Carl about some of his exploits. It serves as the first site for Carl and Muntz' final battle. Since Muntz is totally nuts, he ends up destroying most of it during the fight.

Films — Live-Action

• Famously featured in the Predator franchise, most notably in the second movie: Aboard a Predator ship is a trophy rack including a Xenomorph skull from the Alien series.
  • They have trophies from Earth, also: when Harrigan kills one Predator, the others give him a flintlock pistol from the 18th Century, presumably from their own collection.
• In Ransom, Mel Gibson plays a rich airline owner with several magazine covers featuring himself (Business Week, etc.) on his wall. The villain points to them and mocks him.
• In the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski, Jeffrey Lebowski (the titular "Big Lebowski") has a trophy wall displaying various awards which he and his "Little Lebowski Urban Achievers" (underprivileged youths Lebowski has sponsored) have won over the years.
• Roland Copping's room in Frauds, where he keeps things once belonging to the subsequent victims of his little games.
• Highlander: Connor MacLeod's Wall of Weapons is most likely one of these, reminding him of those he faced over the centuries.
• In Sky High (2005), a superhero's trophy room becomes a plot point. A villain deliberately loses a fight to the superhero at the beginning of the movie, correctly anticipating that the superhero will bring a trophy from that fight back to the superhero's trophy room. The villain, who is employing a Trojan Horse strategy, is counting on this.
• In Tremors 2: Aftershocks, we get a look at gun enthusiast Burt Gummer's trophy room, among them include a wildebeest and a graboid head-presumably the one he killed in the first movie.
• Speed Racer has shelves of trophies in the living room.
• Ace Ventura is brought to one filled to the brim with stuffed hunting trophies in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. He freaks out in the funniest way possible.
• Quint's shack in Jaws is filled with the jaws of sharks that he has killed over the course of his career.
• The film adaptation of Sahara uses one of these to provide Establishing Character Moment for Dirk Pitt in the opening titles, loaded with Continuity Nods to other books in the series.
• All the versions of "The Most Dangerous Game" (where a mad hunter hunts humans for sport) feature a variation. In Surviving the Game it's the victim's heads in jars. In Bloodlust he sets up tableaus of his victims at the moment of the kill.
• Done amusingly in Kingsman: The Secret Service. Harry's office is covered with the front page of issues of the Sun from days when he completed some important mission. Because of the utter anonymity of the Kingsmen and their work, none of the headlines of those papers have anything to do with whatever crisis he averted. Most of the headlines are incredibly shallow celebrity news titbits, like 'Brad Pitt Ate My Sandwich'.
• A variation in Big Game — rather than their Rite of Passage hunts themselves, Oskari's family keeps photographs of various family members with their thireenth birthday's hunting's trophies.
• Happy Gilmore: After Shooter McGavin buys Happy's grandmother's house, he taunts Happy by saying he'll convert Happy's old room into his trophy room.
• In Slavegirls From Beyond Infinity, Egomaniac Hunter Zed has a trophy room that houses both the heads and skins of the animals he has hunted, and the preserved heads of the people he has hunted.

Literature

• Dave of John Dies at the End has a shed in his backyard where he keeps mementos of his and John's "adventures" dealing with paranormal horrors.
• Gilderoy Lockhart's office in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. What isn't portraits of himself are trophies he had taken from other people and claimed that he earned.
  • In the same book, Hogwarts is said to have a trophy room like any other boarding school, and it's stated that one of the trophies was a special award for services to the school by Tom Riddle. When Ron and Harry have to polish the trophies as part of a detention, Ron jokingly asks if Riddle's great service to the school was killing Moaning Myrtle, one of the castle's ghosts. He's more right than he thinks. Riddle's Services to the School were killing Aragog, a Giant Spider who was believed to be the Chamber of Secrets monster, but he did so in order to deflect suspicion from himself opening the chamber to the real monster, a basilisk who did kill Myrtle.
• In the Vorkosigan Saga, Cordelia sees Aral's trophies; His early medals are all carefully mounted and displayed, but the later ones, including some incredibly prestigious medals, are stuffed carelessly into a desk drawer. Miles repeats the pattern with his own awards, partly because they all relate to covert operations, and what's the point of a medal you can't tell a good story about? He does, however, have a wall display of seemingly innocuous items that reference important events of his life, like a millipfennig, his old leg braces, a copy of the holy book he used to 'uplift' the Marilacan POWs from Dagoola IV, etc.
• In the Seeker Bears book called Smoke Mountain, peeking into a hunter's cabin, the journeying bears are horrified to see a bear's head mounted on the wall. They are shocked that the humans would mount their prey on a wall instead of eating it. But seeing three brown bear pelts waving like flags during a storm did not help them at all.
• The X-Wing Series reveals that after taking power, Emperor Palpatine sealed off a wing of the Jedi museum on Coruscant to use as his personal trophy room, where he defaced or destroyed exhibits presumably as the people they honored were killed in his Jedi purge.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Bolton family is rumored to have one, filled with the skins of enemies they've flayed alive, including some Kings of Winter.
• A twisted version of the hunter's trophy room is mentioned in Hogfather. The Assassins' Guild does not have statues of former assassins. That would be gauche. Instead they have statues of various civic leaders in fields other than assassination, with discreet plaques explaining exactly how they came to a premature end...
• A Lampshaded aversion of this occurs once within the Dragaera series, in which Vlad is reflecting on the home of Sethra Lavode, a Time Abyss who has an unknown part of the inside of an entire mountain for personal living and storage space, and whose history implies she's had more chance to collect than any non-god. He notes that while her home is gloomy in an understated, not-really-trying way, comfortably furnished and not without decoration or artwork, he has never seen a single thing within it — anywhere — which clearly has any personal meaning to her or reflects on her past. And this probably says something just as significant and profound about her — he's not sure quite what, though.

Live-Action TV

• House of the Dragon: The Hall of Nine in High Tide is decorated with the spoils of Corlys Velaryon's famous nine voyages across the Narrow Sea. As of the War of the Stepstones, he's put the Crabfeeder's golden mask on proud display as a Battle Trophy.
• A comical version of this would be the TV show Top Gear. After they won an Emmy, they kept the trophy in the toilet of their offices, which are little more than portable cabins. However, they prominently display a selection of vehicles from previous adventures in their studio. Notable among these (and the only one to be a permanent fixture) is the Toyota Hilux pickup truck which survived their prolonged, intense campaign to destroy it.^note  It's been driven down a stone staircase, into a tree, submerged in the ocean through an entire tide cycle, dropped from a crane, driven through a cabin, had a trailer dropped on it, been hit with a wrecking ball, set on fire, and chained to the top of an imploding high rise. It now rests on an enormous tilted plinth behind the main platform.
• Done on Blood Ties (2007), with the heads of shapeshifters on a wall.
• CSI: NY: "Yahrzeit" shows the Trophy Rooms of two Neo-Nazi characters, both full of Nazi memorabilia, guns and items taken from Holocaust victims. Definitely at the creepier end of the spectrum. Accordingly, this was the only episode of the series that opened (when originally aired on CBS) with a viewer-discretion notice.
• In Justified, an art expert keeps badgering Raylan Givens to come and see his collection of Hitler paintings. Raylan is understandably not keen, but is surprised by what he finds when he finally gives in. The expert has dedicated his life to buying up all of Hitler's paintings, so that he can burn them and keep the ashes in jars.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The old king, Tar-Palantír, owns a secret Trophy Room where he stored legendary objects like: a sword similar in design to the Narsil from Jackson's films, a palantir, a painting on the wall of Lúthien and Beren holding a Silmaril, the Swanshield and the great axe Dramborleg, and the dragon-helm of Dor-lómin, among others.
• In the second episode of season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, Picard finds himself in an Alternate Universe where humanity is xenophobic and militaristic to the extreme (but not the Mirror Universe). His counterpart, General Picard, is a ruthless and savage conqueror, and he finds a trophy room in Château Picard full of alien weapons and the bleached skulls of the enemies the General has personally slain, including Grand Nagus Zek, Gul Dukat, General Martok, and Director Sarek.

Multiple Media

• BIONICLE: Ackar has at least one whole wall covered in the shields of Glatorians he's bested in the arena. While Mata Nui's suitably impressed, Ackar more or less admits it's just a habit by this point, having long ago stopped caring about the glory of the arena and more on his duty and pride as his tribe's only real protector (and with the stress of the battles and position, he's starting to believe he's a washout past his prime).

Radio

• Old Harry's Game: The modest "I keep it in the toilet" variant gets deconstructed. When Edith says this about her awards, Satan points out that it's the only room where a visitor has nothing to do but stare at the walls.

Tabletop Games

• In Nomine: Valefor, the Prince of Theft, has a special gallery in the Palazzo Furto to display his most interesting, valuable, or historically significant prizes. The treasure in this vault includes three copies of the Mona Lisa — the true original and two excellent fakes — the original complete manuscript to Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony, and Lenin's last will and testament. It's tended to by the Demon of Looting, who serves as security and as a tour guide for favored visitors. Valefor also used to have the only copy of the proof to Fermat's Last Theorem here, before Janus counter-stole and returned it to Heaven.

Video Games

• The Elder Scrolls
  • After the Video Game 3D Leap with Morrowind, it became possible to place items in the game world. The games in the series also tend to throw more legendary artifacts and unique items at you than you can reasonably use. Naturally, ever since, any houses you build or buy tend to become trophy rooms for showing off this awesome loot. The modding community has contributed significantly to improve this functionality as well.
  • Oblivion: In the Shivering Isles expansion, souvenirs of your progression through the main quest line appear on plinths in Sheogorath's throne room. Some can be moved or even equipped, like the Sword of Jyggalag, and others are only set dressing.
  • Skyrim has the Heartfire expansion, which allows the player to build a custom house. A dedicated trophy room is one of the options. Other rooms, especially the armory, also allow for construction of display cases, weapon racks, and armor mannequins for showing off your epic loot.
• The Lucky 38 Casino's executive suite from Fallout: New Vegas is designed with this in mind. Many players extend this to the entire casino, particularly its cocktail lounge, which often becomes filled with Nuka Cola and other culinary trophies that wouldn't be safe from the greedy guts of your companions in the main suite. The Sink, from the Old World Blues DLC, also has some shelving and empty tables a nostalgically inclined Player Character might choose to hold their assorted knick-knacks.
  • Fallout 4's extensive settlement building system includes a whole category of furniture specifically designed for displaying items — illuminated display cases, wall-mounted weapon racks, mannequins for armour and clothing, even units for displaying Powered Armour.
• The second level of Grabbed by the Ghoulies takes place in the trophy room. The player must pass through the room while the mounted monster heads come alive and scream at him.
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary
  • The Croft Manor training level had a room with display cases for the ancient relics the player collected during the game. They can be examined in closeup and Lara will make an admiring comment.
  • The Wii port went one step further, with an additional trophy room with even more mementos, including big game Lara killed. Seriously nice.
  • Tomb Raider III also has a secret trophy room, filled with all of the items Lara got in her quests (and Gaiden Games), as well as the skull of the Tyrannosaurus rex from Tomb Raider II.
• Bully has Jimmy Hopkins' room become filled with mementos from all his exploits during the game, be it the main missions or side quests. Pretty much everything he accomplishes is marked with a new trophy. Jimmy can also buy a few items to add, like posters. The Bully: Scholarship Edition also adds a few new ones to the already crowded room.
• Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening has Vigils Keep being filled with items you collect over the course of the game. Including a dragon skull and a golems armour.
• The Captain's Cabin of the Normandy SR-2 in Mass Effect 2 gets gradually filled with various trinkets and mementos as you progress through the main plot and side quests.
  • The most amusing being the Prothean Orb from the Firewalker missions. Shepard uses it as a paperweight.
  • The cabin reprises this role in Mass Effect 3, picking up some notable items from the various DLC packs, like Petrovsky's chessboard from Omega or a husk head "experiment" from Leviathan.
• Fable II allows you to hang the trophies of your choice on the walls of your home(s).
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time features one from artifacts collected in the games. Some of them can even affect gameplay.
• In Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 2, Dr. Wolfington's office at the insane asylum is filled dangerous animals that have had encounters with a taxidermist, including a narwhal, multiple bears, and a rhinoceros.
• NieR has one in the village Library across from Popola's office, with statues of all the bosses you've killed. Taking into account some very late game and NG+ revelations, and it ends up as a Shrine to the Fallen.
• In RC Pro-Am and Championship Pro-Am, finishing a race in first, second, or third will add a trophy to your collection. You even get trophies based on your total score.
• In Dungeon Defenders, the trophy case in the tavern fills up as you earn achievements.
• In Mario Tennis Power Tour, your bedroom houses every trophy you win in singles and doubles tournaments.
• The villa in Assassin's Creed II serves this purpose, serving as a storehouse for all the weaponry and artwork you collect over the course of the game.
  • The Player Headquarters in all successive games also are this. The Tiber Island Headquarters in Brotherhood, the Galata hideout in Revelations, and the Homestead's manor in Assassin's Creed III all feature weapon and armour racks, as well as some kind of memoria of your primary targets (portraits in Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood, books in Revelations, personal items in Assassin's Creed III).
  • Assassin's Creed: Valhalla has the longhouse in your main village, Ravensthorpe, which has trophies of the legendary animals you kill. After one mission where you participate in an early version of Halloween, your bedroom gets a decoration in the form of a jack-o'-lantern carved from a turnip.
• The addition of item frames in Minecraft allows you to build trophy rooms into your constructions.
• After virtually every plot mission and many side missions in X-Wing Alliance, another memento shows up in your quarters that serve as the player/mission management screen.
• Lord General Castor from Dawn of War II: Retribution mentions having one where he stores the heads of the Tyranids that he's killed over the course of his life, and orders his men to aim low so as to not damage the future trophy he expects to get from the Hive Tyrant they are facing.
• Super Smash Bros. has the recurring trophies viewable under a specific menu ever since Melee; SSB for Wii U groups them together in related families when you pick "Trophy Box" when viewing one.
• The GCPD evidence locker serves as this in Batman: Arkham Knight, being full of artifacts from each villain that Batman defeats, including some from previous games.
• Team Fortress 2: Egomaniac Hunter and Saxton Hale's nemesis, Charles Darling, has one of these with apparent stuffed animal heads... except they're not stuffed, they're still alive with their bodies in an adjacent room; he keeps them there just to look into their defeated, sad eyes whenever he wants.
• God of War (2018) and God of War Ragnarök have any collectibles you sell to Brok and Sindri get put on display in their main headquarters. Relics will be put on display behind the shop counter, and Ragnarök has a shelf for Kvasir's poems and spirit trinkets.
• Shrek SuperSlam: You can view all of your collected trophies and medals in the Trophy Room, which is represented as a castle tower with spotlights in the background. You can pick up trophies to view their descriptions and even throw them around the room. If you manage to obtain every trophy and medal, a giant gold statue of Shrek appears in the background and you unlock the Trophy Room as a multiplayer arena.

Webcomics

• Draconia Chronicles: Lady Red's Trophy Room has such things as "Perfect Attendance" and "Spelling Bee, Second Place," to the confusion of a certain Stalker with a Crush. Due to how her caste of dragon is treated, she's had to work twice as hard as everyone else for half the recognition. She's earned her title after a century of hard work and is damn proud of it.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: "The Wrestler" has Stan showing Steve the a room full of trophies he won from when he was a wrestler in high school. Francine tells Stan to stop boasting about the room, while Steve notes that he's lived in the house all his life and never knew about the room before.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Batman's batcave has a several items he had collected from his previous cases, such as the giant coin, the robot T. rex, and Mr. Freeze's ice gun. In Batman Beyond, he has the costumes of his old Rogues Gallery on display.
• Ben 10: Omniverse: Khyber has one of these in his ship, containing several tropheys made out of the aliens he has hunted.
• Dexter's Laboratory: In the "Dial M for Monkey" segments, Huntor has a trophy room which includes the displayed heads of Marvel's Wolverine and DC's Cyborg.
• Doug: After being falsely accused of cheating, he went to Chaulkie's (All-Bluffsville Boy Football player) house to confront him, only to get shanghai'd into seeing the trophy room of Chaulkie's big brother, and realized the young man was suffering from under intense pressure to match up to the impossible legacy.
• Good Vibes: "The Grass is Always Greener" has Woodie showing Mondo his old room with a bunch of trophies...which his parents bought on eBay to compensate for they son's lack of achievement. The only trophy he genuinely won was for a Pokémon trading card tournament.
• Kim Possible: In the Grand Finale "Graduation", Warhok implied that he and Warmonga have one, and planned to add Kim to it.
  Warhok: Come Warmonga, we will take this one as a trophy. She will look handsome mounted beside your Thorgoggle spine.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Trandoshan Egomaniac Hunter Garnac has one filled with the mounted heads and hides of many Star Wars creatures and races that he's hunted. Disturbingly, he tries to add Ahsoka's head to his collection.

Real Life

• "Deal Toys" are memorabilia of important mergers, acquisitions, and other business deals: Sometimes they're semi-practical, like expensive watches or pens, but more often they're solely intended to be displayed as part of a trophy room. A particularly memorable example, from the collapse of Enron, were the mounted life-size busts of Chewbacca awarded to those who participated in the creation of a subsidiary called ChewCo.

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