Stalker Shrine



"Shepard: Conrad. If you have some kind of weird shrine of me, I'm going to be very unhappy.

Conrad: It's just a poster with a few candles. It's very tasteful!

Shepard: Gah!"

- Mass Effect 3

The contents of the Stalker Shrine are usually photos of the stalker's obsession.

Lots of photos. More rarely, newspaper and magazine articles, timelines, address book information or videos are added. If there's a statue or bust of the stalkee, it has probably been kissed. For extra creepiness factor, a couple of half melted candles are strategically located at the base of the shrine. There might also be locks of hair, trash, or other mundane items stolen from the object of the stalker's obsession.

While encountering a stalker shrine is almost always a very creepy event, on rare occasions it can be strangely touching as well, if the stalker truly cares for the obsess-ee. The shrine is simply a substitute for their physical presence.

A less creepy version of the Stalker Shrine replaces the shrine with a hidden stash of photos of the obsession taken in secret.

Compare Shrine to Self, Shrine to The Fallen, Trophy Room, and Kitsch Collection. See also The Doll Episode. Compare Room Full of Crazy.

Anime and Manga

 * Although he's one of the good guys, Bak from D Gray-man spies on Lenalee and has a few pictures of her that he secretly takes.
 * Creed from Black Cat (during episode 20) is revealed to have made a giant sculpture in Train's likeness as well as a painting of Train and himself together.
 * Harry has tons of pictures of Melfina on his wall in Outlaw Star.
 * Kuno in Ranma One Half has a wall dedicated to Akane and the Pig-Tailed Girl. It was temporarily replaced by a Nabiki wall when the fortune-teller told him he was supposed to marry Nabiki.
 * In Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei Matoi, the stalker girl, is shown having a wall covered with pictures of Nozomu Itoshiki.
 * In Great Teacher Onizuka, one teacher had a wall full of (photoshopped) pictures of himself and the teacher he had a crush on in wedded bliss.
 * Case Closed has several:
 * Ran mistakes the photos behind Judy's bathroom mirror to be this, and she's right, except on one thing:.
 * Rose, one of the suspects in the New York arc, keeps a wall of photos in her dressing room like all of the other actresses, but Shinichi notices that they are all of the Archangel Michael, the character that the actor Heath plays in the musical that they are starring in. This turns out to be.
 * In Okane ga Nai, Ayase gets an insanely creepy Stalker With a Crush,, who makes one of these in dedication to Ayase. The whole room is filled with pictures he secretly took of Ayase, along with items Ayase discarded, such as water bottles, which he's been doing ever since high school.
 * In the seventh Kara no Kyoukai film, is shown to have one for Shiki, featured in the opening credits and later found by Mikiya.
 * Not a shrine specifically, but in Rosario + Vampire Mizore collected all the articles of the school newspaper Tsukune penned (he's a member of the Newspaper Club) into a scrap book and showed it to him. He was a bit creeped out.
 * Although less of a 'shrine', Kotone Kirishima of Nyan Koi has most of her phone dedicated to Junpei. He is noticeably creeped out when he finds out. Her sister's reaction to this indicates that this may be normal for Kotone.
 * This trope was Played for Laughs in an Omake of Maria-sama ga Miteru where Yumi is made to be a stalker of Sachiko with her own Stalker Shrine.
 * From Keroro Gunso, Momoka is rich enough to give her Stalker Shrine to Fuyuki its OWN BUILDING. And that's not the half of it, as her own bedroom has things like Fuyuki-cherubs decorating the bed, an alarm clock with Fuyuki's voice...
 * One episode has Momoka coming to terms with the presence of "the other woman" (Chiruyo Tsukigami), and willingly taking down the Stalker Shrine. Her bedroom remains untouched though...
 * Rune from Karakuridouji Ultimo has this huge painting of his crush Yamato in his room.
 * Then, when Yamato finally comes to his house in Chapter 21, his reaction to the painting is hilarious. But the chapter, unfortunately, gets worse after that.
 * Koharu no Hibi: As of chapter 16, Koharu covers her walls in pictures of Akira, her crush.
 * Me-Mania of Perfect Blue has a Stalker Shrine of Mima in his apartment.

Comics

 * In a Bronze Age Spider Man story about the Black Cat, she has been stealing numerous artworks connected to love. Since she has a known obsession with her father, Spiderman assumes this is some sort of dedication to him, "as if she was making a shrine". He is wrong; she is making a shrine for Spiderman.
 * Another storyline has the Parkers' creepy neighbor building a shrine out of MJ's publicity photos.
 * Hebe has one dedicated to Hercules in Incredible Hercules.
 * Played for Laughs on an Archie Comics cover, as Betty has apparently turned her entire bedroom into a Stalker Shrine to Archie.
 * Actually, Betty often has a stalker shrine on covers or even in-story. It's usually never more than her locker or a wall in her room, but it's still kind of creepy. Occasionally, Archie does this for Veronica as well. Reggie, on the other hand, has a Shrine to Self.
 * Superman used to have a bit of a habit about those. If you were one of his love interests, one of his enemies, or just someone he vaguely knew, there was a pretty good chance he had a room somewhere plastered with your pictures and complete with a life-sized statue.
 * Powerboy had one of Supergirl, a wall of photos.

Film
""When I heard the song, I know that is you, mother""
 * In One Hour Photo, the whole film sort of consists of this trope.
 * Mimic 2 had Remy's door, covered in pictures of herself, crying after some sort of poor experience with the person labeled under the photo
 * Being John Malkovich
 * Conspiracy Theory has the protagonist have one of the female lead.
 * Not - so - creepy example: Hellboy
 * Celia has this in the 1991 Australian film Proof. Because her point of obsession is a blind man played by Hugo Weaving, he's unaware of it, even as he's standing in the room.
 * Minority Report features a pile of photographs of the lead detective's missing son. It is, however,.
 * Willy Wonka's dad turns out to have built one of these, as Charle and Willy discover at the end of Tim Burton's Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, including clipped newspaper articles about Willy's success. It serves as proof that Dr. Wonka truly cared about his son, and followed his rising career with genuine interest, despite initially deriding Willy's dream of being a candymaker.
 * In Ace Ventura, Ray Finkle's room is a stalker shrine to Dan Marino...or at least, to the famous Super Bowl play that made Finkle a goat.
 * In Perfect Stranger, it turns out that  actually made one of Rowena that's hidden in a secret room in his house.
 * The B Movie Black Belt (1992): muscleman serial killer with Mommy Issues keeps a shrine of a singer, adorned with dozens of candles.


 * A plot-point in My Super Ex Girlfriend; the Villain is the Superheroine's old boyfriend, and he still loves her. The main character finds this out when he finds the shrine in his house. He brings this up to stop the Battle at the end.
 * The Avengers 1998. Sir August has one to Mrs. Peel (or her clone) in his mansion above the Ominous Pipe Organ.
 * In Better Off Dead, Lane Myer has cardboard cutout hangers of his girlfriend Beth's head hanging up his entire wardrobe.
 * In Halloween: H20, it is revealed that Dr. Loomis' office is a shrine to Michael Myers, with three decades worth of newspaper clippings about Myers taped all over the office walls. To add to the creepiness, he also has high school photos of Laurie (Michael's sister) stuck to the wall too.
 * The Duke of Buckingham in the 1973 movie of TheThreeMusketeers keeps a painting of Queen Anne in a secret room surrounded by hundreds of candles. Possibly a subversion, as taken in context it comes across as more romantic than stalkerish.
 * In the 1996 movie Fear David is Yandere for Nicole so one of the creepy things he does is make a Stalker Shrine dedicated to her complete with doctored pictures of Nicole’s family—replacing Steven’s head with David’s—a pair of Nicole’s panties, etc.
 * Madison turns it Up to Eleven with her crush on Ben in the 2002 movie Swimfan. Ben discovers a creepy shrine of his personal belongings that Madison had been secretly stashing.
 * Jed Parry from Enduring Love toward Daniel Craig's character Joe. He creates a shrine (together with creepily writing Joe's name all over paper and photos), which Joe promptly trashes... only for Joe to find Jed nearby naked. God knows what Jed was doing with it.
 * Helen Sharp in Death Becomes Her has one of her nemesis and rival Madeline Ashton.

Literature

 * In A Certain Justice, by Ruth Rendell (at least in the TV adaptation), a lawyer who was a sort of mentor to the lawyer Venetia Aldridge obsessively keeps a scrapbook of newspaper clippings of her career. When she's murdered he puts her birth and death dates in big press-on letters.
 * The second half of the Chronicles of Amber reveals that there is an underground "Amber Cult" in the Courts of Chaos, where adherents have taken to fixating on individual members of the Amber royal family. Participants create shrines to their favorite Amberite, with images and paraphernalia -- the more authentic, the better.
 * In the Honor Harrington short story "What Price Dreams?", the suicide bomber who attempted to kill the princess had one of these. It was created by the people who warped his mind so that he would become a suicide bomber on command, so that any investigation would classify her death as the act of a deranged stalker. It would have worked had the man not been taken alive.
 * Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, a Cloudcuckoolander who's teased at school, mentions not having had friends until she became the Sixth Ranger to the main characters. In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Harry, Ron and Hermione go to the Lovegoods' house for the first time, and her room has portraits of them painted on the ceiling surrounded by the word "friends." This was intended to be weird-but-touching, befitting her social awkwardness, but came off to some readers as a genuine Room Full of Crazy.

Live-Action TV

 * Frasier, in "The 200th Episode", has every one of his radio shows on tape - except one, which is accidentally destroyed. To replace it, he contacts an obsessive fan who pulls back the curtains of his apartment to reveal a giant wall of stalk, where his window used to be.
 * One Tree Hill had an episode where  Peyton's brother does this.   Needless to say, when Peyton discovers the shrine, still thinking that he , she is terrified.
 * This crops up quite a lot in the various CSI series. Besides the Nick Stokes example referred to below, in the CSI: Miami episode "Under the Influence" a female stalker has shrines of her victim's photos in both her locker at work and her home.
 * The episode of Seinfeld where Elaine enters the apartment of Crazy Joe Davola for the first time and finds a wall of pictures of her that serve as the first hint to her that all is not well with her new boyfriend "Joey".
 * On Desperate Housewives, Lynette goes to give the neighbor who saved her life a cake, and discovers a basement full of toys and a wall covered in photos of young shirtless boys.
 * In Season 7 Susan's old schoolfriend offers to give her a kidney, and then reveals himself to have a huge crush on Susan. When Susan invites him over in order to thank him, he brings a scrapbook full of her old school pictures, her lock of hair, her old English essay and her retainer. Lampshaded by Renee: "It's like the part of the movie when they go to the guy's basement and find the candles in front of the picture of the woman he's gonna kill!"
 * There's also the "wall of VCR tapes" version:
 * Law and Order Special Victims Unit found a few of these in some of the houses of the pedophiles they were on the trails of.
 * In CSI (original), Nick discovered that he had his own personal stalker who installed cameras in his house and taped him doing stuff.
 * In an episode of I'm Alan Partridge Alan is creeped out by the discovery that his "number one fan" has a room papered entirely with Alan's publicity photos. (Mind you, they're creepy enough even before being turned into an obsession.)
 * In the... interesting TV movie She's Too Young, the Dogged Nice Guy happens to have a bulletin board covered in pictures of the girl he has a crush on. This is never commented on, even when said girl comes to his house.
 * Abbey's stalker has one of these in an episode of NCIS.
 * Used as a setup in the TV show Castle.
 * John Doe has one about himself, as he tries to find clues about who he is. Upon discovering it, Karen comments that it looks like a serial killer's shrine.
 * Sketch from Skins has one of Maxxie.
 * And Sophia has one of Naomi.
 * Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has one of Buffy.
 * In one Monk episode, it is revealed that Marci Maven has a stalker shrine for Adrian Monk.
 * In another episode, Monk observes that if the deceased person had been an obsessed fan, as the police assumed, one would expect some kind of stalker shrine in his apartment.
 * Sam "Whiplash" McBride has a door full of photos of Bridget "Red Cap" Sullivan on The Unit
 * One episode of The Mentalist has the team find one in the house of a suspected Red John copycat killer, showing the suspect photoshopped into pictures of the victim.
 * One episode of The Rockford Files featured one of these for Beth Davenport, but it mysteriously disappears before the police get there.
 * Barnaby and Jones discover one in a storeroom at the killer's house in the Midsomer Murders episode "A Rare Bird".

Music Video

 * In the video clip for George Michael's Father Figure, George has a shrine to the supermodel he carries around in his taxicab.

Professional Wrestling

 * Used twice in WWE/F. First was Diamond Dallas Page having a shrine set up for Sarah (The Undertaker's wife). A few years later Mickie James set one up for Trish Stratus.

Video Games
"Fenris: This man is either very devoted or very insane."
 * The first area in the TV world of Persona 4 (The one with the noose) has photos of councilman Namatame's wife with her head cut out plastered all over the walls.
 * Portal, in the Room Full of Crazy, has a photo shrine for the Companion cube.
 * Persona 3 Portable in the Female Protagonist Magician Social Link, has the Protagonist get told by Junpei that someone took photos of her during gym class. Junpei briefly wonders why someone would do this but then gets quiet and tells the protagonist to enjoy the ramen. (They later find the culprit and Junpei fights with him offscreen)
 * Dragon Age II - One of the creepiest missions in the game features one dedicated to

"Conrad: Its just a poster with a few candles... its very tasteful."
 * Mass Effect 3 - When Shepard asks Conrad if he lost anyone when the Reapers hit Earth, he eventually admits that the "wife" he's mentioned before doesn't actually exist. Shepard sees this coming a mile away.
 * Conrad also let slip he does have a shrine;


 * Deadly Premonition - Near the end of the game

Webcomics

 * In Gunnerkrigg Court, Chapter 18, "S1", Antimony and her True Companions stumble upon a room full of robots, and an adjoining chamber with a large portrait of Jeanne and a much smaller portrait of someone named Diego. They conclude that Diego must have put the whole thing together to honor Jeanne's memory; they disagree on what the relationship between Diego and Jeanne must have been, and consequently whether the construction of the shrine was something sweet or creepy. The story itself later reveals that pushing it firmly into the creepy camp.
 * Tycho apparently has one to John Romero.
 * Driver of The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred has one of these to Mordred, complete with a life size plush doll and nude photos (from the back).
 * In Homestuck, Vriska Serket keeps one for Nicolas Cage (or rather, Cameron Poe).

Web Original

 * When Kate Modern's K-Team break into Justin's office in "WC ONE", they find that it is a repurposed disabled toilet with the walls plastered with notes, and photographs of Julia in a bikini and (bizarrely) Lee dressed as a jockey.
 * The Spoony One joked about having one for Morgan Webb in his basement in his Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh review, which apparently contains a dessicated human corpse.

Western Animation
"Quagmire: A couple of teeth and some toenails, and we'll be ready for our date!"
 * Tootie from Fairly Oddparents basically filled her entire bedroom with Timmy shrines, dolls, and pictures.
 * Veronica is Timmy's Stalker With a Crush, yet she is also obsessed with her popular friend Trixie and has tons of Trixie merchandise decorating her room. She isn't obsessed with Trixie. SHE IS TRIXIE!!
 * There was a Family Guy episode where Peter is trying to find a woman to make Lois jealous (they have to date other people because their marriage is rocky... or something). Unfortunately, one of the women he tries to pick up happens to be his old prom date, who has an entire hallway full of pictures of Peter. She is also wearing the dress that she wore to that prom... and hasn't washed the hand that touched Peter's since then... or flushed the toilet he used, for that matter.
 * How about the episode where Brian took pity on Meg, took her to her prom and she became violently obsessed with him? He discovers she made a shrine for him in her room.
 * Quagmire has been shown to have a shrine for Lois.

"Sam: Now about this shrine...
 * In Futurama, Leela discovers one of herself while hiding from the angry-mob-of-the-week.
 * Hey Arnold quickly established the intensity of Helga's love for Arnold by showing that she kept a shrine of Arnold in the back of her closet that was shaped like his head and made out of his used chewing gum. Later shrines shown included one made out of an actual football and garbage, and another that was some sort of hat / mask thing that she put on and danced around in.
 * About the only thing preventing this from being incredibly creepy is how it's Played for Laughs.
 * Heloise of Jimmy Two-Shoes has a very Helga-esque shrine of Jimmy. Unlike Helga, though, her interest in Jimmy is downplayed and used as a cute contrast to the fact that she's a horrid little undead engineer who spends her days working to create instruments of torture, and her free time to beat or murder anyone who looks at her funny.
 * Myron Reducto's not-so-well-hidden Booty Shrine in Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law.
 * Berry has one for Bloo in Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, and it isn't even in her house. It's in the house of the family she's kidnapping in an elaborate plot to be alienate Bloo from his best friend so he can spend more time with her.
 * Lorne The Friend for Life has one, glorifying his idols Sam and Max:

Max: What's the deal with these wax figures and yellowing news clippings? It's so outdated.

Sam: Yeah, a Sam and Max website is the way to go!"


 * A benign example Played for Laughs: Beetlejuice has a shrine to Lydia...in his head. She finds out in one episode where she gets stuck in his brain. (And of course, they do take donations for its upkeep.)
 * The Zeta Project: Buzz had one for Ro, which seriously creeped her out.
 * Candace from Phineas and Ferb has a shrine for Jeremy.

Real Life

 * This trope is common for many fans who are obsessed with famous people. They take pictures or videotape shrines they have for their favorite actors, actresses, musicians, etc.