- The Collector: A narrative trope in which a character runs into an antagonistic being with an interest in collecting things (usually strange things) who adds that character to their collection
- Collector of the Strange: A character who collects items that are seemingly rare, dangerous or gross for one to keep.
- Living Doll Collector: A character who collects people, living or dead, and forces them to act out their delusions / fantasies.
- Might have a problem here since Laconic.Living Doll Collector says: "Collects people like they were dolls."
Wick Check:
- correct - 20 (40%)
- misuse - 23 (46%)
- ZCE - 7 (14%)
correct
- Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland: The Nightmare King traps his prisoners in pillars of crystal, and refers to them as his "collection."
- ArcVillain.Anime And Manga: The Guilst arc adds another twist to the formula. Illega, a Fat Bastard who prides himself as The Collector of beautiful women, commissions the kidnapping of Rebecca Bluegarden, but he is a Non-Action Big Bad who's barely even a danger to normal people, let alone those who use Ether Gear, and instead it's Fake Sister, an identity thief hired by Illega to kidnap Rebecca, who serves as The Heavy due to her connection to the real Sister Ivry, who Shiki and Rebecca are searching for due to Ivry's connection to the Edens Zero.
- Broken Bird.Literature: She was doing well enough on her own in the Big Applesauce, living under the name Inara in a loft apartment with a dozen other waitresses from the same restaurant. Then she's kidnapped by the Gardener who takes her to his Garden, tattoos a butterfly on her back, assigns her a new name, and rapes her. She lives among the other Butterflies in their Glassy Prison waiting until he kills her on her twenty-first birthday.
- Danger Mouse: The villain of the episode "Danger Fan" is the eponymous fan, who decides it's no longer enough to have every action figure ever made of Danger Mouse and his friends and enemies, and starts kidnapping the people themselves to add to his collection.
- Ultraman Ginga S The Movie: Showdown! The 10 Ultra Warriors!: Etelgar ("Super Space-time Demon") intends to conquer entire universes, firstly by abducting the Ultramen protectors of each universe and having them trapped in suspended animation, still aware of their surroundings but completely immobile. Invading the peaceful Planet Zandt causing untold amounts of destruction, Etelgar had the princess of Zandt, Arina, captured and put through brainwashing turning her into his lackey; implanting False Memories in her mind to trick her into believing that her home planet was destroyed by the Ultras; and subjecting her to regular Mind Rape to enforce her loyalty. Intending to invade the universe of Ultraman Ginga and Victory, Etelgar nearly managed to have Ginga and Victory sealed alive in his collection, and later recreates a mountain-sized copy of the previous villain Dark Lugiel to destroy the city for his own sadistic pleasure.
- Super Paper Mario: Francis has a massive collection of nerd memorbilia in his fortress, and is constantly trying to get more, which even leads him to kidnap Tippi.
- Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2: In his video game debut, we have Trazyn the Infinite. In the faction trailer, he monologues how the other faction's motives, beliefs, ideals or struggles matters not to him. All that matters is how they can be new additions to his "carefully curated collection".
- TheTwilightZone1985.Tropes A To H: In "Stranger in Possum Meadows", Scout was sent to Earth to collect specimens of numerous life forms, including a deer and a dog, for his people to study. Danny Wilkins is chosen as the human specimen and is briefly placed in cryostasis aboard Scout's ship. However, he is soon freed as Scout's thoughts turn to his own family and how he would feel if something happened to one of them.
- Night Gallery: In "Rare Objects", a gangster seeking refuge from his enemies cuts a deal with a collector of rare art and antiquities to hide him from his enemies, only to wind up locked away in the man's hidden collection of historical missing persons.
- Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!: The Collector finds the Guardians to be so unique that he just had to trap them and add them to his collection.
- Monty Pythons Flying Circus S 2 E 13: Herbert Mental has taken collecting to a truly meta level. Instead of collecting bird's eggs, he collects bird watcher's eggs; i.e. the hard-boiled eggs from the lunches of people who watch birds. The point where he crosses into this trope is when he talks about his other hobbies. Instead of collecting butterflies, he collects butterfly hunters, and then shows a couple of people pinned to the wall with giant push pins like they were butterflies. He also races pigeon fanciers, and a clip shows pigeon fancier racing in action.
- The Old Oilhouse: Adam has often brought up his plans to clone an army from Matt (aka King Grimmy, podcaster from a different transformers podcast). His reasoning for cloning him range from Take Over the World to just (The Collector) for something to put on the shelf.
- Wonder Woman (1942): In #106 Tooroo, a giant alien, tries to collect Diana for his significant other Rikkaa who has a charm bracelet decorated with "souvenirs" from other planets.
- Star Wars (Marvel 2015): Grakkus the Hutt is a collector of Jedi artifacts, and has a sizable private museum devoted to them. When he finds out Luke is one of the last living Jedi, he decides to add him to the collection.
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Grand Alliance Destruction: As part of his obsession with predicting the course of the Bad Moon, Skragrott collects powerful Seers, oracles, and other individuals capable of foreseeing the future. These unfortunate diviners are kidnapped, transformed into the mad fungus known as scyreshrooms, and kept within the extra-dimensional cave known as the fungal asylum. Driven mad by their situation, these transmogrified seers constantly babble a stream of prophesies that are interpreted by his Babbling Wand.
- Tangled - Villains, Mother and Father: They collect people by turning them into birds, letting them lose their humanity, and either caging or leashing them. Every bird they own was once a human being.
- The Raven Cycle: The Gray Man warns that Greenmantle is willing to be this if he finds out that the Greywaren is Ronan.
- EDENS ZERO: Ziggy - Mechanical King Ziggy: On Lendard, he has created a collection of hundreds of thousands of People Jars, all of which contain human mothers because they possess a special type of Ether that would allow him to trace Mother.
- Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons - Cognitum: Keeps a number of ponies in jars as trophies, who are alive and aware.
- Kung Fu Panda 3 - It was even his original name. What he "collects" is chi...and the masters that come with it.
misuse
just person who collects things
- Gundam Build Fighters Try - Meguta Yasu: Has a complete capsule-toy soldier collection.
- House of Anubis - Rufus Zeno: His identity for most of season 2 is literally known as The Collector, as he was collecting Egyptian artifacts, and had a special interest in artifacts owned by the Frobisher-Smythes.
- The Simpsons S8 E23 "Homer's Enemy": Ralph's model is not only not of a power plant (it is a Malibu Stacy dollhouse that had the word "nuclear" glued to it), but Ralph doesn't even know what a power plant is. Played with however, since Smithers (The Collector) does approve of the design, and Burns fails to even notice the plagiarism, only eliminating it because of misguided design and utility. Also, Ralph has to wait for his father to tell him to get off the stage before he does so. — this is referring to Smithers' collection of Malibu Stacy dolls
- Supernatural S 13 E 08 The Scorpion And The Frog: Shrike collects rare supernatural artifacts.
- Criminal Case: Pacific Bay - Case 40: Temple of Doom: Otto Schmetterling, a famous art collector who paid the victim a box full of gold for an ancient Aztec statue, which is why Burt was looking for the temple in the first place.
- Shugo Chara!:
- You know those 100 + episodes of Shugo Chara, in which Easter did horrible evil things to capture the Embryo for an (assumed) just as horrible and evil goal? Well, turns out The Boss is really just a collector of shiny objects, and wants to add the Embryo to his Trophy Room.
- Played with, with the fact that he's not just doing it for shiny objects: They're meant to be a substitute for actually feeling anything, which doesn't work. That, and it's played up that somebody did all of that for something so petty, saying that doing that for what is essentially nothing is even worse than somebody who would do what Gozen did for larger goals. Contrast with Tadase, who wants to take over the world, but is one of the friendliest boys you'll ever meet until the word "prince" comes up.
- Torture Garden: "The Man Who Collected Poe" showcases the rivalry between two obsessive Edgar Allan Poe collectors. One of the the two, Lancelot Canning, is a third generation Poe collector and his rival, Ronald Wyatt, eventually discovers Canning's greatest secret: his grandfather was a grave robber who stole Poe's remains from the cemetery and used black magic to resurrect him. Canning has the now immortal Poe a prisoner in his basement, where he is forced to scribe new tales for him.
- Weaverdice Tongju - Drone, Living Doll Collector: Behaves like a (The Collector) stereotypical nerd, lovingly talking about his controlled capes like they're action figures.
- Twitch Plays Pokémon Theta Emerald EX: Her primary goal is to fill in as many Pokédex entries as possible. Beating the League and stopping Teams Aqua and Magma are just necessary steps towards that goal.
- Transformers: Generation One - Autobots - 1986 to 1987 - Pipes: Likes to collect Earthling knickknacks of all types.
- Tower Of God: Great Warriors - Khun Edahn: He's said to have a veritable treasure of exotic and precious things - that Khun plundered before going off to climb the Tower.
- The King of Fighters '94 - Ralf, Hidden Depths: Only being All There in the Manual; Ralf's hobby is (The Collector) collecting knives. He's also a baseball fan, even being part of a "Baseball Lovers" team with Blue Mary and Lucky Glauber (you know, the basketball player).
- Requiem Vampire Knight - Mortis: Mortis collects many infamous weapons such as the rifle used to kill JFK and the knife used to kill Marat, just to name a few.
- Project × Zone 2: Brave New World - Pyron: As per his MO, Pyron seeks to add more worlds to his collection. Seeing how different worlds, dimensions, and times are intersecting, he felt that he's found the motherload.
- Pastamonsters The Pit - The Shadowlurker: He collects the souls and essence of warriors.
- Arrowverse: Star City - Independent Criminals - Meltzer/Chimera: Of vigilantes' masks.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender - Other Characters - Koh: Of faces.
- Battle For Dream Island TPOT Contestants - Cloudy, Stealth Pun: He is a cumulus cloud who also happens to be The Collector. this is a ZCE as is, but there's also a Collector of the Strange entry that explains "Has a convenient pile of junk lying around, and has even gone so far to collect immaterial concepts like favorite numbers."
- Dude, That's My Ghost! - Madame X: Madame X collects anything BJC related.
other misuse
- Dive Quest: Dompag's goal is to have sex with as many "weird" women as possible.
- Horrible Bosses: Julia, apparently, collects "cocks", a metaphor for simply any man she sleeps with. She reveals in this film that the major reason she pursues Dale so relentlessly is that he is the only man to continually (and successfully) resist her.
- Frontier Circus: A mild example is Duke Felix Otway in "The Race". He specialises in finding people whose talents he admires, and the manipulating them into joining his entourage, and making it effectively impossible for them to ever leave his service. He decides he wants Tony as part of his entourage.
- With This Ring Episode 62: Paul gives Ranx a power ring. After seeing him recruit Ragnar and Kalmin, Lantern Gardner is not impressed.
ZCE
- Second Draft OCT
- Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: Fortuna.
- Keys to the Kingdom: Grim Tuesday and Lord Sunday.
- The Collector (PixieGirl13 / MutantLover09): It's even the Curator's nickname.
- Young Justice (2010) - Other Villains: As the name indicates.
- Victor and Valentino - Valentino: It also gets him in trouble in at least two separate occasions.
- A Game of Gods Nomads - Upsilon (y): Not quite like the other Nomads.
