Revealing something about somebody through their personal effects, often posthumously, in Live-Action Films.
- Alien: Covenant. After her husband is killed in an accident, a grieving Daniels goes through his personal effects. After watching a video of him mountain climbing, she chooses a piton to remember him, which she wears on a cord around her neck. This becomes a Chekhov's Gun when she later uses it as an Improvised Weapon.
- Also used for a (literal) Chekhov's Gun in Black Rain. US detectives Nick Conklin and Charlie Vincent have to hand over their firearms to the Japanese police before they're allowed to work in Japan. Charlie is later murdered (as he didn't have a gun to protect himself) so his personal effects are handed over to Nick. Masashiro, the Japanese detective they are working with, informs him that it's a Japanese tradition to keep an item for oneself in memory of the deceased. So Nick gives Charlie's badge to Masashiro...and keeps Charlie's firearm for himself.
- In The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Japanese soldier that Warden kills with his knife is shown lying dead on the ground with a photo of a young woman beside him.
- Told in a giant flashback, this trope is what starts off The Bridges of Madison County.
- This happens in Bullitt as Bullitt and Del go through the dead couple's suitcases and realize why both were killed.
- Done very clinically in Equilibrium, with Errol Partridge's stuff, although the main character later grieves for him.
- In Hamburger Hill soldiers follow a blood trail after an ambush and find an NVA soldier's abandoned equipment, including his helmet, canteen, and wallet, but no actual body. Inside the wallet is the picture of a pretty young woman. The sergeant is unmoved, commenting that the victim was an "FNG-type, walking around the A Shau Valley with a half-empty canteen" that made a lot of noise. The new soldiers in the squad who see the picture are clearly thinking of their own girlfriends back home.
- In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Lord Humungus opens a decorated and classy gun case, dissonant with his gang's diesel punk look. Also, there is an old photograph of a married couple inside the case. It gives him and his comforting words to Wez (we've all lost someone we love) an extra layer of Hidden Depths.
- At the beginning of Memphis Belle, the airmen go through a dead crewman's effects to make sure nothing embarrassing gets sent back to his wife (like adult books or letters to a mistress).
- A brutal one in Once Were Warriors. After the daughter Grace hangs herself, her mother finds the notebook Grace uses as a diary, which her father had ripped in half in a rage. The mother pieces it back together and reads in it that shortly before her death, Grace had been raped by one of her father's friends.
- Early in RoboCop (1987) an officer is mentioned being shot off-screen. The next day the captain comes into the locker room with an empty box settling the debate on the officer's condition.
- This sets off the plot of Spectre - after the events of Skyfall, Eve goes looking around the ruins of the Bond family estate and finds a picture of a young James with an older gentleman, custody papers from after James's parents were killed, and a ring with an emblem on it. These all lead to the current plot - the man is the head of SPECTRE who adopted James after his parents were killed.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: Nemesis: In a deleted scene, as Geordi and Worf are clearing Data's quarters, Geordi discovers Data's emotion chip, meaning his last moments with his shipmates were genuinely emotional and he had achieved his goal of growing beyond his programming.
- Star Trek Beyond: Spock Prime is revealed to have died between this film and Star Trek Into Darkness. Towards the end, Spock receives his Prime counterpart's remaining possessions, which includes a picture with his TOS Prime crewmates (circa Star Trek V).
- Happens twice in Taking Chance: First when the mortician takes all of the items Chance had with him when he died and carefully cleans the blood off, and again later when Chance's family receives the belongings.
- Maverick packing up Goose's stuff in Top Gun.
- In Tuskegee Airmen two of the students go through their friend's footlocker reminiscing over a photo while one of them is wearing the deceased's favorite hat. This nearly sparks a fight since it's not their responsibility to clean it up, but they blame the Army for driving him to suicide.
- Used as part of The Reveal in The Usual Suspects. The gold watch and lighter featured in the opening as belonging to Söze are given back to Verbal Kint when he leaves the police station.
- In The Village (2004) two town elders open a keepsake box at the film's climax, and it contains color photographs and decades-old newspaper clippings, revealing that the film takes place in modern times.
- Towards the end of We Were Soldiers, one of Colonel Moore's men brings him a diary they found on the body of a Vietnamese soldier Moore had killed during the battle. Slipped between the pages of the diary is a photo of the girl back home the soldier had hoped to return to.
- On Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as Eddie Valiant remembers his late brother Teddy, the camera pans over Teddy's desk, perfectly preserved since his death. On it are items like a scrapbook of news clippings of their cases involving toons and photos of them acting goofy, which contradict everything the audience knows about Valiant up to this point. (Note that in this case, it's the audience doing the discovering, not another character, and that the revelations also apply to a living character, not just the deceased.)
