History Main / VanityLicensePlate

* When Music/{{Squeeze}} appeared on ''The Old Grey Whistle Test'', Jools Holland made an announcement asking the person with license plate "[=PEN1S=]" to move their car as it was in a fire zone. The band thought it was hilarious, but the audience didn't react.

* A minor character in a Creator/TimDorsey novel got a vanity license plate reading 'UNKNOWN'. Unfortunately, the police record 'UNKNOWN' as the license plate for any vehicular incident in which they couldn't get a plate number, so he ended up getting blamed for all of them.

-->'''Vic:''' Uh, the license is as follows: R, I, C, H...uh, I think that spells "rich"..."KIDS"...with a K...for..."kids".
* Parodied in ''Film/NotAnotherTeenMovie'': rich JerkJock [[spoiler: [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold with a heart of gold]],]] Jake Wyler (aka Johnny Storm), drives a sports car reading "FILTHY RICH"; Janie Briggs, [[HollywoodHomely the pretty ugly girl]], gets dropped off for school by her dad in a beat-up old truck reading "DIRT POOR".

* The book ''[[Literature/BlueAvenger Blue Avenger and the Theory of Everything]]'' included this as a plot point: the main character has to figure out how to get the word "suck" past the license plate censor. [[spoiler:The end result? SSCHWAK.]]

* "The Jackal", videogame-villain brought to life in the short-lived series ''Series/DeadlyGames'', has the license plate "JKL". The final scene of the series reveals that the same plate belongs to Johnathan Kenneth Lloyd, father of The Jackal's programmer (both were played by Christopher Lloyd).

** The most complex one is [=REV13:10=], Axel's license plate. It refers to a specific passage within the Book of Relevation in the Bible that calls for endurance and faith in the most dire of situations. Situations like being trapped inside an infernal 2-wheeled death machine as Axel is are probably not what the writer of that passage had in mind, but when your life is a living hell, you need all the faith you can get.

** Even commercial airlines can get in on the act. While most like to have a very regular sequential registration scheme, the short-lived Icelandic carrier Wow Air had a bunch of "clever" registrations (after the Icelandic "TF-" header), leading to aircraft named "MOM", "DAD", "BRO", "SIS", "SON", "DTR", even "CAT" and "DOG". They had a whole family! They also had "TF-GAY", which raised a couple of eyebrows (might have caused some issues if they ever flew that one to certain countries).

** Averted in ''Paperinik New Adventures'', where Paperinik switches from the 313 to the futuristic Pkar... That has no licence plate.

* The licenses on all the cars in ''Franchise/{{Cars}}'' have some sort of hidden meaning, either an inside joke or a reference to the character. Mater's plate is A113, the number of the animation classrooom at the California Institute of the Arts, where many of the Pixar animators studied. (It appears in other films as well.) Fillmore's (51237) is the birthday (May 12, 1937) of George Carlin, the actor who played him. And, interestingly enough, the zipcode for ''George'', Iowa. One of the minor characters is Fred, whose name is also his license plate, and who acts thrilled when famous racecars somehow know his name.

* The first episode of the second season of ''Series/AmericanGods'' opens with a golfer taking out his equipments from his car, which has the very on-the-nose license plate that says "PAR TEE" ("par" and "tee" being golfing terms).

* Similarly, the playfield of ''Pinball/{{Corvette}}'' has a blonde in a red Corvette with "CATCH ME" plates, while a yellow LT-1 Stingray has "FLIPOUT". It is rumored that "CATCH ME" is based on designer Creator/GeorgeGomez's RealLife Corvette plates, while "FLIPOUT" is a ShoutOut to fellow 'vette owner Pat Lawlor.

** The most complex one is [=REV13:10=], Axel's license plate. It refers to a specific passage within the Book of Relevations in the Bible that calls for endurance and faith in the most dire of situations. Situations like being trapped inside an infernal 2-wheeled death machine as Axel is are probably not what the writer of that passage had in mind, but when your life is a living hell, you need all the faith you can get.

** In "Itchy and Scratchy Land", Bart tries to find one with his name but the only ones availiable are "Barclay", "Barry", "Bert" and "''Bort''". Bart expresses incredulity at the latter only for there to be ''two'' people named "Bort" at the store. [[BrickJoke And later on]] a supervisor offhandly mentions that the "Bort" license plates ''sold out''. (TruthInTelevision now at The "Simpsons Land" at Universal Studios Florida. If you go to the Gift shop, built into a Kwik-E-Mart, you can find a large stand of novelty mini plates, and yes, the peg for "Bort" is ALWAYS sold out.)

* Almost every state in the U.S. has special ''designs'' for their license plates. They were already very distinctive and colourful (compared to the boring European sameness), but you can make them ''much'' more colourful and interesting. Sometimes they even remove some of the alphanumeric characters to fit in a special design, which could range from a special designation for war veterans, support for a charity project (usually with the extra fee for the plate going to the charity), or something as banal as your favourite sports team. Whether this is seen as awesome or self-aggrandising depends on the design and the state in question. The king of custom designs is Virginia, which will essentially make any plate design that has at least 300 people signed up for it, and which accordingly has a dizzying variety of them, incluidng for [[http://www.dmv.virginia.gov/exec/vehicle/splates/category.asp?category=S fox hunting, bowling, Class J No. 611 steam locomotive, and credit unions]].

* In some places, ''very'' high-ranking officials get plates with no alpha-numeric characters at all -- they just get a symbol. The reigning British monarch and their family get red plates with a crown (which is replicated whenever he goes to one of the other places where he’s King, like Canada or Australia). [[UsefulNotes/JapanesePoliticalSystem The Emperor of Japan]] and his family get plates with the chrystanthemum emblem of the Imperial family.

* Tracy Jordan on [[Series/ThirtyRock 30 Rock]] was incensed when his wife called his vanity plate inscrutable: 0ICU81MI. Short for "I see you ate one, am I?".

* When Music/{{Squeeze}} appeared on ''The Old Grey Whistle Test'', Jools Holland made an announcement asking the person with license plate "PEN1S" to move their car as it was in a fire zone. The band thought it was hilarious, but the audience didn't react.

* In ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', the time-traveling [=DeLorean=] has OUTATIME (Out of Time) as its plate, which would not actually be legal in California due to character limits.

* In some places, ''very'' high-ranking officials get plates with no alpha-numeric characters at all -- they just get a symbol. The reigning British monarch and their family get red plates with a crown (which is replicated whenever she goes to one of the other places where she's Queen, like Canada or Australia). [[UsefulNotes/JapanesePoliticalSystem The Emperor of Japan]] and his family get plates with the chrystanthemum emblem of the Imperial family.

** ''Series/TopGear'''s James May has a plane registered in Britain as "G-[[CatchPhrase OCOK]]".

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie'', the plate on Mario and Luigi's van reads "[=M4RI0BR0=]".

* In Music/WeirdAlYankovic's "Tacky", the narrator's car has a "YOLO" license plate (along with a whopping 43 bumper stickers).

** A few states actually had [[StillFightingTheCivilWar Confederate flag designs]] as possible vanity plates. That one was eventually banned for being... well, tasteless, and when people sued claiming that it violated their right to free expression under the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_v._Texas_Division,_Sons_of_Confederate_Veterans shot them down]] saying in the end, it's the ''government'' who's talking, because it's the government who owns the plate design -- and if the government doesn't want you to have it anymore, you don't get it anymore.

* The licenses on all the cars in ''WesternAnimation/{{Cars}}'' have some sort of hidden meaning, either an inside joke or a reference to the character. Mater's plate is A113, the number of the animation classrooom at the California Institute of the Arts, where many of the Pixar animators studied. (It appears in other films as well.) Fillmore's (51237) is the birthday (May 12, 1937) of George Carlin, the actor who played him. And, interestingly enough, the zipcode for ''George'', Iowa. One of the minor characters is Fred, whose name is also his license plate, and who acts thrilled when famous racecars somehow know his name.

* ''[[VideoGame/MidnightClub Midnight Club 3]]'' let players customise their licence plates, giving them the option of using the plates of all 50 states, plus historical plates for the three states whose cities are represented in-game (California, Georgia and Michigan).
* [[TheMafiya Vladimir Lem's]] license plate in ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' reads "[[VodkaDrunkenski VODKA]]".
* When a player mounts the Hellbender Jeep in ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament2004'' its license plate changes to the driver's name, dropping vowels to fit if needed.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity'' is the first ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' game to feature vanity plates by featuring "LUVFIST" plates on hair band [[FakeBand Love Fist's]] custom limousine. ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' upped the ante by including a far larger number of vanity plates on specifically parked or mission-specific cars.
** Presumably the result of a failure to implement randomized license plate numbers in the final game, every road vehicle in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' features license plates that read "LIBERTY CITY".
** Vehicle Cargo missions in ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV Grand Theft Auto Online]]'' are all about stealing [[RiceBurner gaudily modified]] sports cars, all of which have licence plates like [=PR3C10US=], [=2FA5T4U=], [=B1GM0N3Y=], [[MidlifeCrisisCar M1DL1F3]] and [[Creator/CharlieSheen W1NN1NG]], [[http://gta.wikia.com/wiki/Vehicle_Cargo#Target_Vehicles among many other "tasteful" examples]].
*** In addition, players can make their own custom plates for their owned vehicles. For the rare occasion that someone else is looking at your car and not, say, blowing it to pieces.
* In ''VideoGame/DeadlyPremonition'', every named character with a car has a vanity plate. Even the otherwise generic patrol cars you drive around town have vanity plates.
* In ''VideoGame/MafiaII'', you can change the plates on the car you're currently driving as one way to get the police off your trail. Empire Bay [[VulgarHumor doesn't seem to have restrictions on plates]].

* In ''VideoGame/TheGodfather 2'', the cars waiting for your use at your safehouses or compounds usually have "GDF-250" or some variant thereof.
* Dr. Cortex's mooks in the motorcycle levels of ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot3Warped'' drive cars with license plates that read CRTX.
* ''VideoGame/WatchDogs'': Aiden Pearce occasionally drives a silver car with the license plate "[=N3X=] U5 ", which a reference to the game's working title "Nexus". Additionally, [[TheCracker JB "Defalt" Markowicz]] and [[TheDon Dermot "Lucky" Quinn]] use "[=D3F=] 4L7" and "LUC KYQ" as their plate numbers, respectively.
* ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}}'':
** Enzo's plate reads "ED N EDNA", the names of his children.
** Jeanne's motorcycle plate reads "U1 QTJ" (Umbra #1 Cutie J).
* The red car in ''VideoGame/DeathRally'''s intro and title screen has the custom plate [=2BAD=]
* The 2012 reboot of ''VideoGame/RiseOfTheTriad'' has a few army-style trucks with the plates "R077 [=F7W=]".
* ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal'' 1 & 2 have car license plates that reflect the over-the-top personalities of the drivers or just the vehicle itself. Thanks to the hardware limitations of the original Playstation, they don't show up on the cars' in-game models and are [[AllThereInTheManual only detailed in the manual]]. For example:
** There's ISKREEM for the ice cream truck Sweet Tooth, DRYVBY and NRSITYMN (inner-city man) for gang-banger Bruce Cochrane and SOLTAKR for {{the grim reaper}}'s motorcycle, just to name a few.
** The most complex one is [=REV13:10=], Axel's license plate. It refers to a specific passage within the Book of Relevations in the Bible that calls for endurance and faith in the most dire of situations. Situations like being trapped inside an infernal 2-wheeled death machine as Axel is are probably not what the writer of that passage had in mind, but when your life is a living hell, you need all the faith you can get.
* Roadhog from ''{{VideoGame/Overwatch}}'' wears a Greater Australia license plate on his belt that says "[=ROADR8GE=]". His "Rudolph" skin turns it to "HOHOHOG".
* ''VideoGame/EuroTruckSimulator'' lets you customize your driver and co-pilot's plates. You can also set your own truck's plate to say anything you want, and can choose any of the in-game country or state plates as the backing.
* The license plate at Crazy Dave's shop in ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies'' frequently changes, but always reads something funny.

* Many jurisdictions in North America also have a provision for ham radio operators to get a license-plate with their radio call-sign on it. Some even feature the words "amateur radio" or the international ham-radio [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/International_amateur_radio_symbol.svg/300px-International_amateur_radio_symbol.svg.png symgol]] on the plate as well. Unsurprisingly, vehicles with such a plate tend to be bristling with radio antennae attached to the vehicle-body. Many times, ham-radio operators are also given a '''discount''' on their license-plate fees because as amateur-radio operators they also perform a community-service during times of emergency (aiding in communications when the ordinary communication-channels are out-of-service).

* {{Transformers}} often have [[RuleOfFunny humourous]] or [[MeaningfulName meaningful]] license plates. For example, the ''Universe'' toyline's version of [[Anime/TransformersArmada Hotshot]] has the license plate ''[[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/JaAm JaAm]]''.

* Claw's hearse in ''Film/InspectorGadget 2'' has "CRYMPAYS" (crime pays) as its license plate. The Gadgetmobile, of course, has "GADGET" as its plate.

It's a useful trope because it serves as a shorthand for the kind of character who would get one, usually someone with more money than sense and a lot of self-absorption. A CorruptCorporateExecutive might have one reading "BIG BOSS", a JerkJock might have "BEST QB", and a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob might have "MY TOY". An obscenely rich character might have a number at the end to signify that he has more than one such car. Almost every CoolCar on TV has a vanity plate of some sort.