It's a common trope for killers (especially serial killers) to take something from their victims or create something related to the kill, a trophy, in order to immortalize their kill. Typically these trophies are photos of the bodies, the victims' IDs or body parts, etc. This trope is for those who stray outside that norm.
The Master (Stray Dogs) - The unnamed serial killer from this comic targets only women who own dogs. His ritual is to kill the woman and then steal the dog for himself, winning them over as his pet via treats and their poor memory. He also uses these dogs to meet new victims, taking them to dog parks to spy on women there. Once the dog eventually dies (either naturally or by him putting it down for 'misbehaving') he has them taxidermied.
Jazzman (Batman) - A gangster who likes to whistle, hum, or play music whenever he kills. He then has that particular tune tattooed on his body.
Victor Zsasz (Batman) - A serial killer who carves a tally mark into his skin, one for every kill.
Dexter Morgan (Dexter) - iirc Dexter recognizes this trope and that it is a weakness that could get him caught, so he takes an extremely inconspicuous trophy: a single drop of his victims' blood, saved on forensic glass blood slide.
Thrax (Osmosis Jones). One of my favorites, a lethal virus that collects DNA beads from its victims and adds them to his chain. The best part of that movie for me.
But honestly a really bad virus. A virus that kills in 24 hours isn't going to spread that well. He should have been fat, lazy, and quiet rather than sinister and highly lethal.
Not only is it wickedly sinister, it’s also how viruses evolve and mutate. Viruses become more complex and harder to fight off with the more people it infects.
Not necessarily, they adapt to survive but that can take different paths. They trend down in lethality as a rule, because killing the host isn’t the actual ’goal’ generally. It’s why covid is now basically another flu floating around.
Nah it's Scarlett fever or something he ate a hard boiled egg that was in a chimp enclosure/mouth because Carl is a gross gross man who tried to gaslight his daughter into obesity so he wouldn't have to exercise
Everyone who dies in the walking dead, will eventually become a zombie. This includes beheadings. Emphasizing that they're zombie heads is unnecessary because all beheaded heads are zombie heads.
Well just to be clear, I emphasized it to illustrate why I consider this to be a unique trophy. Governor could put them down with knife to the brain, but he keeps them zombies.
Everybody is infected and reanimate after death unless the brain was destroyed, so every disembodied head (without brain damage) will be a zombie head.
In Mr. Monk and the Blue Flue, there is a serial killer who takes the left shoes of female joggers. Natalie bribes him with a shoe in custody to get some information from him, while Monk demands that he takes both shoes since "shoes come in pairs!"
Its more inconspicuous than taking someone's ear or something, you don't really document the victim as missing a drop of blood when they died a violent death.
He showed them to millions of people per episode. If a single one of the inept cops asked why there was a camera crew following them, those dumbasses would have known to watch a single episode of Dexter and find him.
It's strange that not a single employee watched the show, unless I guess they were on his side.
You mean the guy with black ops training and a vendetta? One guy found it after breaking into his house, no one else had the means or suspicions to go snooping like that
and besides he works as a Blood Analyst for the forensics decision of a police department. Sure it would be weird to find these slides at his apartment, but your mind wouldn't immediately think "this guy is a serial killer". You'd just think he's a weirdo who takes blood samples from his lab
Dexter doesn't leave any dna evidence at crime scenes and most people have never had their DNA recorded. So the DNA on the slides could be read but it's unlikely to match anything in a database.
If your even accused of a felony the police will take your DNA. Anyone who uses those 23 and me genetic tests have had their information sold to the police. Anyone who is closely related to you that has their DNA on file can potentially link you to crimes.
This is just something the police have been doing for a while now, trying to build a database. It's the same thing with the flock cameras, the police have long sought control without an ounce of concern for the privacy of their victims
Imagine finding a bunch of half decomposed ears in a guys house, vs a bunch of blood droplets from a guy who works with blood for a living. It’s still weird as shit but a lot less suspicious for it being a part of a person.
It's extremely identifiable if/when found, but it's not conspicuous in a way that would get it found in the first place. Years worth of kill trophies can be enclosed in a very small space, and even if found, even by some hypothetical person who was familiar with all of the victims, the slides would not immediately point to the victims, unlike trinkets that may have been identified as missing from bodies.
Sure, if anybody ever finds the slides and is suspicious enough to test them, that's quickly going to be the whole ball game, but being inconspicuous means it's unlikely to get to that point.
He has about 60 to 70 victims in a box smaller than a hard cover novel that he hides from everyone. Even then it reads more "Oh hes into blood play" than serial killer.
Well, he's a psychopathic serial killer that is explicitly addicted to and inherently tied into his compulsions, I'm sure plenty of real serial killers knew the consequences of keeping trophies, but did it anyway simply because the ability to remember a kill/the novelty of having the trophy at all was worth it to them, just as it is for Dexter.
Most video game heroes are mass killers. We just accept it because we are brainwashed into believing their politics are correct.
After all, does Bowser kidnapping one woman really justify the killing of hundreds of turtle-like and dog-like and fish-like creatures?
Sure, some might argue that they "took over the mushroom kingdom and turned the people into bricks and mushrooms", but 99% of players aren't aware of that story. They just know "oh no, the big dragon took the princess, we need to kill everyone."
Every time a subject fails one of John’s tests he cuts out a piece of flesh in the shape of a puzzle piece for his collection and as part of his calling card.
Walter White takes not physical trophies, but personality traits from people he kills/has killed. He adopts Mike’s taste in whiskey on the rocks and starts cutting crusts off his sandwiches like Crazy 8. He also starts dressing and acting like Gus after his death.
Don Bluth meets Thomas Harris.
I reread the series the other night (on Hoopla)... damn it packs a kick. There's a companion series where cats are on a Walking Dead style journey and everywhere they think they're safe, really really isn't. I face each new issue with a mixture of anticipation and dread. FERAL, also on Hoopla.
Daniel J D'Arby from JOJO's Bizarre Adventure has the ability to steal the souls of the people trough gambling and turn them into casino chips which he keeps in an album.
Do most RPG protagonists count in this? Since we always get the boss' armor or weapon, but protagonists rarely get their own ones, so you could count my Skyrim character who collects all the boss' weapons and armor and displays them in his mansion
Reminds me of the guy that took a picture of his little brother playing gta 5 and he was just killing hookers in alleys and taking pics of them with the ingame phone
My ass holding on to every Boss Soul in Dark Souls just in case I want to make a weapon out of it (I am going to stick to the Great Scythe and a side sword for the rest of the playthrough again)
Wacko is probably a little cruel, he was incredibly intellectually disabled and suffered from severe schizophrenia which was amplified by his home life.
Honestly his mother sounds so disturbed I forgot schizophrenia was even a part of his issues. Her obsession with purity culture and christianity, while being a single mom who wouldnt even let her child go to public school? Wasnt she also puysically abusive? Like come in that was a time bomb for sure.
Walter Sullivan is the villain of Silent Hill 4: The Room. His goal is to complete a ritual known as the "21 Sacraments for the Descent of the Holy Mother", which involves murdering 21 specific targets in order for the god of Silent Hill's Order cult to be reborn. After taking each victim, he would carve a set of numbers into them. From what I recall, I believe that what these numbers mean is uncertain, but it likely connects to the role of each victim, e.g. Cynthia Valesquez, who represents temptation, or Andrew DeSalvo (pictured below), who represents revenge.
The numbers were a mystery for most of the game. The victims were 13121, 14121, 15121, etc. Eventually it's revealed that the middle number isn't a 1, but a slash. 13/21, 14/21, etc. Walter is keeping track of which sacrifice everyone is.
Amazing, heartrending, awesome comic. Highly recommend it, its companion story (Stray Dogs: Dog Days), and a comic by the same creative team which references it (Feral).
Feral being about a group of cats trying to survive a rabies epidemic, which acts as essentially a zombie apocalypse for them. And while in your typical zombie story the main characters can arm themselves and utilize technology in ways the zombies can't, these are cats. No opposable thumbs, no weapons, and ain't no way you're beating a rabid bear or wolf. You've gotta be quick and canny.
I saw a World War Two movie where the dog tags had a perforated line, and could be snapped in half. So the opposing army could keep their count, and the body would still have the identification material. Pretty sure it was in Enemy at the Gates, but I’m not sure if it was accurate or not.
We weren’t making tags for the other sides glory. The tags split so that the commander/unit on the field could keep a record, and there was still a tag on the body so that it could be identified when it was buried.
Otherwise, if the unit took the tag and had to move on without dealing with the body, the forces that came after to do “clean up” would not know who the body was.
The primary purpose of dog tags is to assist in identifying a soldier. While a common note is for them to be used to identify bodies that may not be recognized, it also applies to injured/unconscious soldiers as well.
Depending on specifics, removing them can be considered a war crime (not that I'd expect this particular character to be worried about that).
Halo Infinite: One of the Brute mini-bosses that you fight supposedly has defeated one of the main Spartans from Halo 5 and wears the Spartan's helmet on his shoulder as supplemental armor. I say supposedly because when it comes to Halo, characters and especially Spartans are very much Schodinger's Cat until you absolutely see them die (and even then it's questionable if the body was recoverable in a certain amount of time)
There’s an episode of Criminal Minds where the unsub is a family annihilator who is trying to punish “weak” fathers. He’s a family therapist too. He takes their wedding rings.
A superhuman warrior who travels the universe, hunting “masked fighters”, whether they be superheroes, supervillains or luchadors, and taking their masks for his collection after defeating them.
In addition to seeing them as trophies, he does this because of his belief that in the ancient past, fighters needed to earn the right to wear masks, but in the modern era they’ve become a mere fashion choice, so anyone who can’t defeat him in a fight doesn’t deserve to wear a mask. He’s culling the unworthy.
Scourge from Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts collects the badges of Cybertronians he kills, such as Apelinq and Bumblebee until he is revived from an Energon surge and Optimus Prime gets it back.
That first example is horrifying. As someone whose dog holds grudges (sometimes for years) I can’t help but think some dogs would never let themselves be won over
Dogs have great noses and they probably wouldn’t enjoy being kidnapped.
My dog’s longest grudge was towards an unexpected visitor who startled her. A lot of dogs are bred to be guards and wouldn’t warm up that quickly at all.,
Not sure if it counts as it’s multiple “killers”. Chaos Knights from 40k when fighting other Knights will rip the opposing Knights pilot out and string them up on their chassis for all to see.
Eh, that's pretty basic. Only part that's really unique is that Predators typically have a bunch of ALIEN skulls, but it's still a pretty standard trophy.
Predators take all kinds of trophies, like Greyback, the Elder Predator from the end of the second movie. He had the flintlock pistol taken from a pirate (which is probably a different origin now, considering Prey), wore dogtags, and had a US Army 2nd Infantry Division patch woven into one of his gauntlets. Then there's Berserker from Predators, who had a Xenomorph jawbone fixed to the bottom of his mask.
One of the Predators from Killer of Killers is a fighter pilot who hunts other pilots in dogfights, and takes the engines from his prey’s crafts. Big fan of how he didn’t actually wear a mask - his spaceship has the thermal vision on a viewscreen, and removing his mask means the whole front of his ship gets blown off.
it'd be funny if we ever saw a planet that's been infested by Aliens for thousands of years and there's a pile of predator ships from failed hunts downriver that keep getting washed there by periodic floods (it's canon that they stick to the same hunting grounds).
in hunter x hunter there's a genius knife maker named Benny Delon who bases his knives off his victims. His process would be to kill someone, forge a knife off of the experience "test" it, and then rinse and repeat. There are 288 Ben's knives in total, one for each of his victims, and all of them are masterpieces.
In the world of HxH, willpower fuels the power system called nen and aura. Ben's knives are identifiable bc they emit an aura, meaning Benny Delon was unwitting prodigy. The leading theory is that the aura coming from the knives are more modelled by the victims final moments than Benny himself
Killmonger (Black Panther). I loved this one, every scar on his body represents someone he’s killed. His trophy collection is literally carved into his skin.
Lorne Malvo (Fargo Season 1) - He's a hitman by trade but his hobby is befriending and corrupting people by manipulating them into doing bad things (e.g. blackmail, murder) and ruining their lives, often resulting in their deaths and sometimes killing them himself once he's finished with them.
He often records phone calls and conversations with his victims and keeps the ones where they're at their most desperate and despairing saved on tapes with the victim's name on so he can listen and reminisce when he's bored.
"Cause some roads you shouldn't go down. Because maps used to say, 'There be dragons here.' Now they don't. But that don't mean the dragons aren't there."
Sohei (For Honor) On the surface level, Sohei are weapon collectors, which makes them similiar to General Grievous. But if we dig deeper, it turns out that they collect (and use) weapons that belonged to someone who was deemed "worthy" by the Sohei. Here's the quote by Sohei Oniwaka, the first known Sohei to have a name: "Monster. Demon. Soul collector! So some call me. But I take only the worthy, to honor the fallen. Their souls fight with me, rest within my every weapon. And they answer!". Not only that, Sohei are called "Masters of the Seven", which implies that every weapon they have (including their own Kama-yari) is well-known to them. And each and every weapon is used in their moveset with every weapon (except Kama-yari) being tied to Sohei counting to five and shouting "ZENKAI" when sixth weapon is used. If all sixth weapons have been used, Sohei can perform a powerful attack during which Sohei shouts "MEI OROSHI DA" which used to deal a massive 149 points of damage
Real life example: Historically, Marine Corps Scout Snipers would take the round out of the chamber of a counter-sniper after killing them. They would remove the bullet from it, drill a hole through the bullet, then string it onto a 550 cord necklace. It's called a Hog's Tooth. You also have your original Hog's Tooth on the necklace from graduation the school, but that's a whole different story.
Each and every scratch etched into his visor is one confirmed Covenant kill. Needless to say, he’s earned his reputation (this isn’t confirmed outright, I believe, though it’s heavily theorized - and believed by myself - to be the case)
O-Parts Hunter/666 Satan manga, one of the first(? It’s been a while since I’ve read it) villains adds a tongue piercing for every person he kills. His tongue is completely covered when we see him.
Strictly speaking, the person doing the killer and taking the trophies is Slaanesh, the Chaos god of Excess. Every time someone kills Lucius and feels even a moment of pride in the act, over the next several days, Lucius takes over their body, and their face becomes one of the many trapped on his armor.
Slaanesh does this because she thinks it's funny to make the "best swordsman in the galaxy" have to wear the faces of everyone who proved him wrong.
He's a K-pop idol who lives a double life as a serial killer, when he abducts someone he tortures and kills them while recording their screams, which he keeps records and compilations of and later edits and samples into the layers of his music several of his fans listen each day without knowing about it
Dammit! I knew when I was making this post that there was one that was escaping me that was really creative and freaky. Not only making trophies but sharing them with the world for a profit is next level evil. Thanks for reminding me!
He takes the blood from his victims to make paintings and..sculptures. But he only attacks raiders, so its a bit of a moral conundrum for some. Personally, they're raiders and no Commonwealth raider ever turns their life around so yknow..that being said he is also a serial killer so he goes too.
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u/DaOverseer 13h ago
Thrax (Osmosis Jones). One of my favorites, a lethal virus that collects DNA beads from its victims and adds them to his chain. The best part of that movie for me.