Slave Collar

"I train my men to make sure the slaves' flesh bulges a bit around the top and bottom. [...] If you fit it just right, their body never gets used to the feeling of wearing it. It cuts in just enough when they swallow or turn their head to remind them who they belong to. And it's that constant reminder that keeps them docile."

— Silus, Fallout: New Vegas

When you see someone wearing a collar (particularly the ones made of leather — and we're not talking about the collar of a shirt), you can assume that they're under the control of someone else. It's also a popular device to use when brainwashing someone, and it may also be a part of a Go-Go Enslavement routine. If it's part of a person's normal costume, it's usually intended to suggest that they're sexually adventurous, and often to suggest submission (though dominant types frequently wear them too). It's especially popular with characters on various levels of the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism who can justify it as basically the only article of "clothing" associated with animals. This is generally intended as fetish appeal (and even if it wasn't intended as such, will become fetish appeal anyway) because of the connotations of bondage and slavery.

Can sometimes take the form of necklaces, chokers, and cameos. May have some overlap with Shock Collar, Explosive Leash, and Restraining Bolt.

Because slave collars are a pretty obvious sign that someone is brainwashed, under Mind Control, or, y'know, enslaved, it will often be offensive to The Hero. If the hero has to fight someone wearing a collar, he may target it in the hopes that his opponent is an unwilling thrall of the Big Bad and destroying the collar will free them.

Spiked collars generally don't fall under this trope. The Chains of Commanding is completely unrelated.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Played with in .hack//Legend of the Twilight, in one episode Shugo receives a dog collar as an event item, since The World has nothing doglike he at first is kinda downed by its apparent uselessness until Ouka (A werewolf) suggested that he could always put it on her. So while it's not a Slave Collar per se, Ouka... made her suggestion of being Shugo's dog/pet pretty clear. From that point onward she wears it in both wolf and human form. And while she doesn't seem to consider herself submissive to him she definitely behaves the other way sometimes. Mostly to tease Shugo.
  Shugo: [Annoyed] Are you kidding me, what am going to do with this, you can't raise dogs in The World, can you?
  Ouka: You could always... put it on me if you felt like it [Gets close to him while her Character-song plays] I wouldn't mind it flyboy.
  • This subtext is made even stronger in the German Dub, while the first half of her answer is more or less the same the second half boiled down to that she doesn't mind putting on a collar as long as it's his.
  • And then there's always her Character song, aptly named "You Want To Have Me As Your Pet, Don't You...
• In Akame ga Kill!, Esdeath forces Tatsumi into a collar with a chain when she "claims him." Her subordinates think he just looks like a pet now, so Esdeath reluctantly removes it.
• In The Ancient Magus' Bride, Chise is shown in the first scene shackled and collared at the slave auction. Shortly after purchasing her, Elias says there is no need for them and dissolves the chains and collar with magic.
• Inverted in Black Cat, where Train Heartnet wears a red ribbon with a gold bell on it, like a cat's collar. He wears it after Saya is killed by Creed. In the manga, the choker expresses his conviction of "You are your own master" or "The only one who can tame me is myself".
  • In the anime, Eve reads an Aesop fable that reads "If you put a bell around the neck of a bad cat, he'll become good, and you'll always know where he is." This causes her to take the bell collar off of a stuffed animal (coincidentally a black cat) and try to force it on him. Her distrust was due to the fact that she was once his target, and was sent to kill her. After failing (sorta by choice) on the first attempt, he went after her again, but decided to spare her life and walk away.
• In Bleach, the device used to restrain Rukia and suppress her powers takes the form of a red collar with four ropes leading off of it (which can be removed).
• Tooya from Ceres, Celestial Legend wears a leather choker at the beginning, while still working for the Mikages. Before he finally removes it, he tells Aya that he chooses her over his past, and he is shown wearing Aya's favorite choker underneath. Aww.
• The collar worn by prisoners of Deadman Wonderland act as this. While their will is not suppressed and they have some slight freedom, they are forced to participate in the deadly and degrading games of the carnival or die from the collar's poison; which is injected into their bodies on a daily basis. While not initially lethal, it ensures that they do not attempt to rebel or escape, as the result will be death by poison after accumulated injection. Prisoners are encouraged to acquire and eat special candies, which contain an antidote to reduce the accumulated poison.
• All the DearS in the series of the same name. Being a slave race it's the hat they wear.
• In Endride, the child assassin Mischa wears a collar as a sign of her status. It's unclear whether the collar contributed to the brainwashing or is merely symbolic, but its destruction by Demetrio is a major step in her reclaiming herself and her independence.
• In Eureka Seven, Eureka and Anemone wear golden ring-like collars, which were put around their necks when they were working as soldiers of the United Federation. It becomes important later because the Big Bad collared them as part of his Evil Plan to destroy the Scub Coral; the collars have a virus programed in them.
• Aries from Fairy Tail has one. Fitting, since she's been owned by two very unpleasant people. Hers is unusually cute and fluffy.
• All angeloids from Heaven's Lost Property wear these, even those who are masterless still wear them.
• Often used on cover art as a motif in Loveless, though Soubi also has what appears to be a tattoo across his neck but is actually a scar from where Seimei carved his name into Soubi's skin with a knife as a symbol of his obedience to Seimei.
• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: When Ishtar enslaves Sanjouno Haruhime, she is made to wear a collar that doubles as a Tracking Device. When Bell Cranel rescues her, he destroys the collar.
• Fate and Reinforce from Lyrical Nanoha wear red belts around their neck as part of their outfit to symbolize the domination that their Evil Matriarch and corrupted programming has over them respectively. After they are freed from their respective metaphorical chains, they continue to wear this as part of their outfit, likely because it also happens to look pretty hot.
• As Ako, Akira, and Natsumi from Negima! Magister Negi Magi found out in an unfortunate way, people sold into slavery in the Magic World are forced to wear collars that would shock them anytime their master wishes to, and explode if someone tries to remove them by force. On the other hand, the collars do prevent masters from getting really abusive, and the shocks are not supposed to be used except in emergencies.
• One Piece: The collar around the slaves' necks contains a bomb. Should the slave try to run away, the collar will explode, severely wounding (If not outright killing) the poor guy/girl. Only the slave's master (Or a real badass) can remove them safely. There's also a Seastone version for Devil Fruit users. To add insult to injury, most slaves seen in the series are owned by the World Nobles, horrible jackasses who are completely above the law.
• Used humorously in Potemayo, with Nene dragging around one of Those Two Guys on a chain.
• Reincarnated as a Sword: Cat Girl Fran starts out as a slave and helpless to leave with a magic slave collar around her neck, after her new talking sword friend kills her cruel slaver and destroys her contract via magic fireball, the slave collar falls to pieces.
• Juri's locket in Revolutionary Girl Utena is a necklace variation of this. Its breaking at the end of her story symbolized her finally being free of her self-destructive, one-sided relationship with the person found inside the locket.

Comic Books

• The Avengers:
  • In The Avengers #154-156, the Atlantean villain Attuma captures the Avengers and uses slave collars to control their minds so that they'd fight for him. The collars are described to fill the victims with blind rage, and they seem to be readily-available technology for Attuma's Atlantean empire - but the Avengers manage to get rid of them.
  • In West Coast Avengers #12, Tigra is captured by an unseen foe while running through the woods. Later, Graviton turns up with Tigra lying at his feet in a collar and leash and defeats the rest of the WCA. He imprisons the others but keeps Tigra around with the goal of making her his pet.
    • Another time, Tigra was captured by Kraven the Hunter, who put a Mind Control collar on her and made her fight Spider-Man. Spidey realized that there was something odd about the collar and ripped it off, allowing them to team up to defeat Kraven.
• In the premiere issue of Marvel's The Cat series, the newly empowered Shirlee Bryant naively dons a studded collar as part of her costume. Only then does her sponsor, Malcolm Donalbain, reveal that it is a "will-nullifier" that makes her obey him. Later, Donalbain attempts to place a will-nullifier on the similarly empowered Greer Nelson but she manages to escape, subsequently returning to put an end to his plans and launching her short-lived superheroine career.
• The Warlord: The cat-girl Shakira wears a spiked collar in both human and cat forms. One storyline implies that she was the product of sorcerous experimentation as all of the sorcerer's other subjects wore identical collars. After defeating the sorcerer, Morgan takes the collar off and throws it away. Shakira retrieves it and puts it back on.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): The women of Mercury have enslaved their men and force them to wear collars that they can use to inflict pain if the men don't obey them.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): The Sangtee Empire enslave women, stick them in manual labor jobs designed to work them to death, and put them in shock collars to guard against escape attempts.
• X-Men:
  • The body-hopper Malice manifests a black choker on whatever body she is inhabiting.
  • Genoshan slaves have full-body suits grafted directly to their skin.

Fan Fiction

• At the start of Corrin in Peril, Corrin is captured, imprisoned and forced to do chores around the castle. Her Nohrian captors put a slave collar around her neck.
• Defied in this Maleficent fanfic; Diaval (who is a submissive in the BDSM sense of the word) states that he won't wear a slave collar. Which is logical considering that he hates dogs in the film.
• In Maybe Sprout Wings patents on slave collars are the source of Castiel's family wealth and something which causes him great guilt and distress. He uses his fortune to free and rehabilitate slaves, including Dean Winchester.
• In Star Wars: The Sith, Zero Louise is outfitted with one of the shock collar variety during her time as a Slave to the Sith Empire.
• Lex Luthor's "IRONs" in Teen Titans: Together for Tomorrow have this vibe. As Damian's narration says, Luthor could have designed handcuffs or injectable microchips but chose a collar because he liked the idea of a superhuman as his pet too much.
• The Violet Demon: The Fornaxians make use of devices called control collars, which can override a slave's nervous system and turn them into People Puppets.
• In Zim the Warlord: Irken Reversion, Zim presents Gaz with one as a sign of how she'll be his slave once he takes over Earth. To his credit, it's mostly aesthetic, as she can take it off at any time. Also, it can unfold down her shoulder and over her arm to form an energy gauntlet.

Films — Live-Action

• Jet Li wore one in Danny the Dog, a movie where he's treated like a dog and trained to fight since childhood.
• Princess of Mars: When he is captured by the Tharks, John Carter has a slave collar placed around his neck and he is dragged along by a chain attached to it.
• The prisoners in the early part of The Running Man wear collars that explode when taken past the perimeter of the work camp.
• Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi: Princess Leia is forced to wear a collar by Jabba the Hutt. (In fact, this seems to be standard attire for all his slaves.) At one point he yanks her around by a chain attached to the collar: she later uses the chain to strangle him.
• In Warcraft (2016), Garona has a slave collar on her neck, as she's pretty much Gul'dan's property. When Taria notices this, she has it removed.

Literature

• Beast Tamer: When Rein first encounters the God Race kitsune girl Niina imprisoned in the mayor's mansion, he sees that her captor has placed a collar that forces her to obey. Rein is able to remove the collar because the magic it uses is similar to his own Beast Taming magic, but not before having to endure the Shock Collar feature it has to prevent such tampering.
• Jestyn in Blood Feud wears a thrall-ring. Its removal is when he becomes Heterosexual Life-Partners with his erstwhile owner.
• Evvy from the Circleverse is revealed to have been a slave and worn an iron collar. Being a stone mage, she was able to break it with a rock and escape.
• Codex Alera features both conventional slave collars, which merely indicate that someone is a slave, and the far-creepier magical Discipline Collars, which kill if removed by anyone other than the one who put it on and can be used to give both pleasure (when they obey an order) and pain (when they disobey). Over time, those who are collared will gradually go insane. And the collars are used to create berserkers that will use any means to complete their orders, even if it kills or maims themselves in the process, and they enjoy it too. The only known way to beat a discipline collar is to already be wearing one — the furycrafting of the second collar doesn't take.
• Crest of the Stars: All the Baron's maids wear one; just one reason why Lafiel compares them to trained cats.
• Rosemary Sutcliff's The Dolphin Ring:
  • In Dawn Wind, the enslaved hero wears this. After his master frees him, someone comments that he obviously had been wearing either a royal neckring or a slave collar.
  • Aquila in The Lantern Bearers also wears a thrall-ring. The scar is a physical reminder of the traumas of enslavement.
• In the Gor series, all slaves wear collars. The first time Tarl sees a slave girl he notices her collar but, having no point of reference for Beautiful Slave Girls, it doesn't click that it's a slave collar. He thinks it's just a piece of jewelry.
• Leigh Bardugo's The Grisha Trilogy sees this happen to heroine Alina Starkov. Initially, she's led to believe that a collar made from the antlers of a great white stag will amplify her power to summon sunlight. This is true, but only the person who kills the stag has control over the amplifier. When Alina refuses to kill the animal, The Darkling seizes the opportunity to kill it himself, taking control of Alina's power and enslaving her as a weapon.
• Mercedes Lackey/Andre Norton's The Half Blood Chronicles:
  • In The Elvenbane, the elves use magical collars to control both their human slaves and elven subordinates.
  • When the main characters in Elvenblood are taken prisoner by the Iron People, they are made to wear iron collars that block their natural magic talents.
• How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Slave collars are enchanted with a registered owner, and tighten if the wearer acts against them, up to decapitating the wearer on the spot if they severely harm or kill the owner. Of particular note: after Castor and Carla Vargas are taken prisoner in the Civil War and then convicted of treason, Souma has collars put on them to control them. After having to Shoot the Dog at least a dozen times during the conflict and surrounding power struggles in Elfrieden, he begins to worry about Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and orders Carla to kill him if his reign ever turns tyrannical, to which she agrees, knowing it will be a Mutual Kill because of her collar.
• Inverted in Inukami! where Keita wears only a collar as a sign of his ownership of Yoko. The thing is that Yoko wants to play this trope straight, but Keita's hard-headedness forces her to use her overwhelming powers when she wants him to comply. Recall that Keita is the master in this relationship and Hilarity Ensues.
• Ivanhoe: Gurth, the swine-herd of Cedric, wears around his neck a soldered brass-ring, "resembling a dog's collar", with an inscription saying in "Saxon characters" that "Gurth, the son of Beowulph, is the born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood." After he has saved his master's life, his master frees him, and the collar is ceremoniously sawed off.
• Journey to Chaos
  • A Mage's Power: Tahart hides one of these in the ruffled maid collar he gives to Annala as a uniform. She's unaware that it places her under any more control than implied by a summer job. At a command it can choke her into submission.
  • Ordercrafters can force these things onto the necks of their victims. They lock down any magical power that the target possesses and then brainwash them into docile slaves. Annala is again a target during Mana Mutation Menace.
• In the Magic: The Gathering novel Prophecy the Keldons outfit their slaves with collars that kill them if they try to take them off.
• In Octavia Butler's Parable series there are shock collars worn by slaves.
• Jane Yolen's Pit Dragon Chronicles trilogy features 'bond' slaves who wear collars with bags attached. The bag represents the price of their freedom; fill the bag, and the slave is free. It's a case of not as easy as it looks.
• Timkin in Victor Kelleher's novel The Red King is forced to wear a slave collar.
• In The Red Vixen Adventures, professional bodyguard Alinadar wears a choker made of three intertwining chains to indicate her ownership by the Red Vixen.
• Invoked in H. Beam Piper's story "A Slave Is a Slave". A delegation of slaves (they do all the work) from the newly annexed planet Aditya mistakes Commodore Shatrak of the Galactic Empire's Space Navy for a slave because he wears the Knight's Star of the Order of the Empire on a collar ribbon (they wear slave collars), and he's bald (their heads are shaved). The commodore is not happy.

  Shatrak's face turned pink; the pink darkened to red. He used a word; it was a completely unprintable word. So, except for a few scattered pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions, were the next fifty words he used.

• In Shimoneta, the entire population of Japan is forced to wear "Peace Makers", or PMs, at all times, which are thin metal chokers paired with computer bracelets that constantly monitor the user's speech, movements, and online activity to automatically report "obscenity" to the government.
• Spellster: Collars are the most logical method to apply the Restraining Bolt to mages in the army.
• Members of the legions in The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, who have been taken away from their tribes, wear metal collars. They are unable to remove these, thus the Masters are always able to identify deserters.
• Exploited in Survival in Another World with My Mistress!. Slave collars work by reading the wearer's magical signature to detect them acting against their registered master, and then choking them when they do. Kousuke is able to take his on and off at will, because as a human from Earth, he has no magic at all (his super crafting powers are apparently something completely different). He and Sylphy are able to use this to prove conclusively to the villagers and refugees that he has no connection to the human-supremacist Holy Kingdom.
• The Rada'han of The Sword of Truth (the similarity is not accidental) suppresses the magical power of the wearer and can only be removed by another magic user. It's also standard practice for Mord-Sith to put collars on their "pets".
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs has Loic, a Stalker with a Crush who repeatedly offers one to the heroine of the second dating sim, Noelle, as part of his route's Bad End. It's a magical item, made from the roots of a World Tree, coming with a chain that ties to the master's wrist, and whenever the chain is summoned, the victim is magically pulled towards the master. Loic puts it on Noelle, after blackmailing her into wedding him, only for the novel's protagonist, Leon, to crash the wedding, lop Loic's arm off, and take the master half. Afterwards, she and Leon flirt using it, only to be walked in on by his fiancee.
• In Tamora Pierce's Trickster's Duet, all slaves wear metal collars. The collars are enchanted to strangle any slave who goes out of a given range of a member of the owning family. The one exception is the main character herself, who manages to get hers deactivated on the grounds that she's serving a god.
• The ones in The Viper's Scheme are functional as well as symbolical. Human mages created the collars to bind magic and make it impossible for the wearer to commit violence, making it safer for them to keep demons as slaves.
• The A'dam of The Wheel of Time looks like a leash with collar at one end and a bracelet at the other, and is not only a symbol but also affects direct control over its wearer. Only works on those with magical potential. Both the master and the victim must have magical potential, and given the culture that led to using the A'dam in the first place... it's not a pretty revelation.
• In A World Less Visible Ash is initially forced to wear one, then later wears the collar of his rescuer as part of his healing process.

Live-Action TV

• In Crisis on Earth-X, the heroes are placed in power-dampening collars while imprisoned on Earth-X, even the ones who don't have powers. They double as shock collars.
• In the Doctor Who serial "The Keeper of Traken", the Melkur uses a collar to control Kassia. As for who was inside that statue at the time... he gets to wear one of his own in "The End of Time". And how.
• Apart from the Nebari Shock Collars, Farscape also featured the Living Ship Moya wearing a very large control collar over her hull in the pilot episode.
• In Game of Thrones, slaves in Essos wear collars. This was part of Missandei's outfit, which she loses when she is given to Daenerys. Part of Daenerys' psychological warfare campaign against the slave masters of Meereen is to catapult barrels full of broken collars over the walls, signalling that she can and will free Meereen's slave population. Interestingly enough, Daenerys's own clothes in seasons three and four often incorporate a collar-like band. A subtle "screw you" towards the masters?
• The pendant Lauren wears around her neck in Lost Girl marks her as the "property" of the Ash, although the word "slave" is never used. Bo takes it off of her before they sleep together, insisting that no one owns Lauren, but then gives it back to her (and calls it a dog collar) when she finds out that Lauren slept with her because the Ash told her too, although it should be noted that Lauren's feelings for Bo were quite real.
• One episode of Sliders starts with the crew already stuck in collars, from a dimension that's treated entirely as a Noodle Incident. Fortunately the current dimension has people who can crack them, but the fact that they will zap you if you lie makes explaining them that much harder.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand All regular slaves wear a collar, to take it off is an obvious sign of rebellion. Gladiators don't wear a collar but are branded instead.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series. Members of the Enterprise crew wear collars in two episodes: "The Gamesters of Triskelion" and "Spock's Brain". In each case, the collars are high-tech devices that can inflict pain on their wearers on command and are used for control purposes.
  • In one alternate universe episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the captured Garak is restrained this way by Worf.
• Survivors includes a period of forced labor in a coal mine for two of the main cast. The miners wear metal collars connected by a length of cable to help prevent escapes.

Radio

• In the John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme episode "Here's What We Do", Pidge is afraid he may have invoked this accidentally with a girl he likes, prompting the Irrevocable Message plot:
  Pidge: We had this sort of running joke between us, about how whenever she turned round, there I was, and she did this joke about how I should have a bell on my collar. So I thought... I'll send her a dog collar. With my name on it.
  Gavin: Pidge, mate.
  Pidge: I know.
  Gavin: A dog collar, though? With your name on it?
  Pidge: I know! I can't explain. When I thought of it, it seemed, like, cute and playful and, you know, not weird. And I went and bought it and sent it, really quickly so I wouldn't have second thoughts, and then I had massive second thoughts.
  Gavin: Well, yeah. I mean...
  Pidge: I know! Like, what am I saying? "I want to be your doggy"?
  Gavin: Yeah, or, like, a fetish thing?
  Pidge: Oh, God.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness sourcebook for Third Edition has a pair of rings, a Master Ring and Slave Ring. The Master Ring can be connected to up to nine Slave Rings, and can, at will, cause agonizing pain in the wearer of a connected Slave Ring. It also allows the wearer to communicate telepathically with the wearer of connected Slave Rings. Only the wearer of the connected Master Ring can remove Slave Rings from their wearers.
• Marvel Super Heroes by TSR: In the module "Nightmares of Futures Past'', captured mutants are forced to wear inhibitor collars that prevent them from using their mutant powers.

Theatre

• Invoked in The Phantom of the Opera musical, where the Phantom rips off the necklace on which Christine strung Raoul's engagement ring.
  The Phantom: Your chains are still mine, you will sing for me!

Video Games

• Darc in Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits is enslaved in his backstory, and spends the first chapter wearing a slave collar that's enchanted to choke him if his mistress suspects he's being disobedient.
• The prisoners in the Astral Prison in Baldur's Gate II must wear cursed collars that reduce their stats and are impossible to remove with normal means.
• In Borderlands 2, Handsome Jack developed specialized collars that can imprison Sirens, which act as a Power Limiter that renders the captured Siren unable to use her powers. He uses this first on Angel, his daughter, in order to render her docile and controllable so she can channel Eridium to power the Vault Key, and later he captures Lilith using a similar device and uses her to do the same thing.
• Nagito Komaeda spends all of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls with a collar around his neck when acting as the Servant to the Warriors of Hope, a group of gifted kids leading a massacre of all adults in Towa City. Kurokuma at one point asks him if he's finally realized he's Hard Gay.
• In Dragon Age II, Fenris, a former slave, was once kept in one, and also apparently leashed. Especially creepy once one considers that he was sexually abused, according to Word of God.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind have a play on this in Slaves' Bracers, which are left and right bracers worn by slaves that drain their magicka.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3 slaves usually have exploding collars that are activated if they try to escape.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has the player forced into one after first meeting the Brotherhood of Steel unless he or she brought along Veronica and during the entirety of the Dead Money DLC. Also in New Vegas, the Legion makes use of these as an army of slavers. In one case, a Centurion discusses how he's able to adjust the collars for maximum discomfort.
• In Final Fantasy VI, Terra was forced to wear a device called a slave crown to make her a puppet to Kefka's will at the start of the game, this is later nodded to in Duodecim Dissidia Final Fantasy this time as an actual necklace, that once again makes her Kefka's puppet.
• Potemkin of Guilty Gear wears one. There used to be a bomb in it, and even without the bomb, it makes movement very difficult. He wears it as a reminder of what he's been through. This overlaps with Power Limiter since step one of his Instant Kill is taking the collar off.
• The Vortigaunts/Alien Slaves from Half-Life wear collars and armbands which signify their status: slaves to the Nihilanth. In the second game, most Vortigaunts are free and don't wear them anymore, but there's one behind a fence at the start of the game who's forced by the Combine to be the train station's janitor.
• Iori Yagami from The King of Fighters wears one, presumably to symbolize how his blood is tied with the Orochi blood thus whenever Orochi deems it fit, he would dominate Iori's mind and throw him into an Unstoppable Rage. After the Orochi arc, however, this is still kept, just for the cool and attracting more Fangirls than Kyo because chicks dig bad boys like Iori.
• Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid wears a collar, though whether it holds any meaning besides tying her to her wolves, and symbolizing the enclosure of war and conflict that her entire life was taken up by is unclear.
• The Neverwinter Nights add-on 'Shadows of Undrentide' has the player wearing a slave collar for the final chapter. It shocks them if they wander in the wrong direction and shatters after the death of the slave master.
• Kuka, of Princess Connect! Re:Dive, is a raging masochist who willingly wears a slave collar at all times. Note that she's no one's slave (as much as she'd like to be Yuuki's), making it a stylistic choice for her.
• "Shock collars" are commonplace in Imperial territories in Star Wars: The Old Republic, as slavery is legal in the Sith Empire and said collars offer an easy way to keep the slaves in line—even powerful Force users. On more than one occasion, Imperial players will be tasked with putting shock collars on people, and on one notable occasion, a Sith Lord on Belsavis sends his apprentice to be possessed by an ancient spirit, while wearing a shock collar, so that when the spirit takes the bait, it has no choice but to obey the Sith.
• Lamia Loveless of Super Robot Wars Advance wears this as part of her standard outfit, symbolizing that she is an obedient doll towards the Shadow Mirror. But when she rebelled, she didn't throw it away, adding more points to her hotness. Predictably, not only she gets another hijinx where someone actually turns her Brainwashed and Crazy (and surprisingly, both brainwashers FORGOT to put her collar back for extra symbolism), she also spends her normal times (especially in Fanon) as Excellen's Uke.
• It's a bit more complicated than some instances of this trope, but Presea Combatir from Tales of Symphonia was in this situation regarding the crystal around her neck. And Colette was headed down the same path before others intervened.
• Played for laughs in Tekken 5, in Lee's ending. He forces Heihachi to serve him while wearing a speedo and this, doubling as a butterfly necktie (not made of leather). For bonus parts, Lee also plants a bomb on that 'collar' which first threatens Heihachi by giving him the image of the explosion at Honmaru (which nearly killed him) and for the second time, explodes for real (we never see). This is actually enough to make Heihachi go weak in his knees. Hilarity Ensues.
• In one of his earlier designs, CR-S01 from Trauma Team wore his prisoner uniform open at the neck, revealing a collar and tag with his inmate serial number etched into it. Unfortunately, his final design is more conservative and lacks the collar, but it can still be seen in this early promotional video.
• Utawarerumono: Karura used to be a slave, but after gaining her freedom she continues to wear the collar despite being a free woman. She says it's to remind herself what it means to be weak, as a way to instill humility.
• Mutalist Alad V from Warframe owns a collar that he can throw at Tenno in order to control their warframes. He can also wear it himself to become invulnerable and perform a few other attacks. Getting to fight him in the first place requires fighting his experiment, the Mesa warframe with the same collar on her neck, putting her under the control of the Infestation.
• Octopath Traveler II: The members of the Blacksnakes all wear a collar to signify their belonging to the organization, one that will inject a deadly poison into its wearer if it's removed in any way besides properly unlocking it.

Visual Novels

• Essentially what Ichika in Collar × Malice is forced to wear by the terrorist group Adonis. Although she has some free will and can investigate as she pleases, she does so knowing that Adonis is fully monitoring all her actions and listening in on who she talks to and that she can be killed the moment she does something that Adonis disapproves of.
• Umineko: When They Cry: At the end of the second arc, Beatrice makes Battler wear nothing but a collar with a chain leash when he (temporarily) submits to her.

Webcomics

• Collar 6 is named after this accessory (and "6" refers to one of the protagonists' title). Due to the fact that pretty much everyone in the world practices BDSM, collars hold the same cultural significance as wedding rings.
• In Domain Tnemrot, this is how the slaves are controlled remotely.
• Slaves usually wear these in Drowtales where slavery is just a part of the everyday economy. Liriel was the most notable example of wearing one until recently, even though she was closer to a Pretty Freeloader than an actual slave, which would have entailed taking orders, not spending all the time drunk, and so on.
• Repeatedly Played for Laughs in El Goonish Shive out of continuity — usually each character in a strip wears a collar with the initial of supposed Love Interest or blank if none defined. For example, here in this order: Lisa and Amanda (each other), Elliot (Sarah), Justin (Elliot), either humanified Jeremy (Tedd) or jeremified Susan (Justin), Grace (Tedd), Hedge (no-one), chibi Tedd (Grace), chibi Sarah (Elliot), Lisa and Amanda (each other), Dan (no-one). Jeremy, of course, has a legitimate reason for wearing a collar ...
  • Nioi, Lord Tedd's minion with a crush on him, wears a "T" collar in canon.
• Kin the Yuan-Ti in Goblins has a magical leash and collar; when the leash is held, it prevents her from violent acts. It is also implied by her captor to be the variety that explodes if tampered with (Kin suspects this to be a lie to keep her docile but doesn't want to risk it might be true). Although she is now free from slavery, she has not yet been able to remove the collar due to not having found a reliable way to remove the leash without the possibility of it exploding.
• North Italy of Hetalia: Axis Powers wears one with the Ancient Roman slave costume that he wears for the Hetaween 2011 event. And many other nations are wearing them by the Food End of the event, thanks to Ancient Rome's attempt at making the costume popular.
• In Holiday Wars, April Fools' Day has a watch attached to his wrist that lets the Easter Bunny control him, as seen in this strip.
• In morphE, Amical puts collars on each of his new recruits when training mages. They cannot be taken off and will not allow the wearer to escape his manor. When Billy argues that death collars are not a friendly gift, Amical responds that they must run in different circles.
• Naturally, fetish collars appear regularly in BDSM themed comic Sunstone; all the subs have them. Most of them are leather but special mention goes to the one Alan provides Anne which is made of solid silver.
• Unsounded: The Red Berry Boys put leather and steel collars on the people they abduct and enslave, making them look like slavers when they're really using those people to smuggle and mature the components of a supernatural weapon in.

Western Animation

• Generator Rex: Under Black Knight's command, Providence creates collars that emit a sonic frequency that forces EVOs into compliance. They also develop guns that shoot said collars, allowing them to turn the tide of battles against multiple EVOs by forcing them to attack their allies. This gets Providence better PR, as it makes the enslaved EVOs into "productive members of society" (it helps that EVOs rarely appear human).
• In the Five-Episode Pilot of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, COBRA uses special headbands, rather than collars, on enslaved citizens (and briefly, Scarlett and Duke) which could act like Shock Collars or even control the wearer like a puppet if it had too. (Duke was subjected to the second effect by Destro in a gladiatorial fight, until Destro found it boring and stopped using it, just to make the fight interesting; the hero was quickly able to mop the floor with his foe on his own.)
• Kim Possible: "A Sitch In Time": In the future, all the other villains wear shock collars controlled by Shego, now called The Supreme One.
• A popular form of enslavement in some episodes of My Little Pony, usually in the form of chained metal collars.
• The Owl House: Amity's amulet functions as a symbolic one, as her mother uses it as a medium to give her orders telepathically via Oracle Magic. When she finally stands up to her parents in the climax of "Escaping Expulsion", she rips off the amulet and crushes it to drive home the point that she won't let herself be controlled anymore.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): In "The Cat Woman from Channel Six", Shredder mutates April into a catgirl, puts a mind control collar on her, and sends her to kill Splinter.
• Unlike the comics version, Genosha in X-Men: The Animated Series uses explosive slave collars to force obedience of its captured mutants.
• In Young Justice (2010), prisoners and slaves have their superpowers neutralized with specialized inhibitor collars. These collars can also administer electric shocks for behavioral control.

Real Life

• This is very common among submissives in the BDSM community. In fact, the choice of a collar can be comparable to the choice of a wedding ring.
  • It's often so important that entire rituals (again, like weddings) have been created around the presentation and clasping of a collar, and usually tailored individually to the Dom/sub involved. Such collars are often hand-made and/or custom-ordered. A single collar can hold an amazing amount of significance, and it's not uncommon for the dedicated to have multiple collars, each with a different purpose: training/discipline, standard around-the-house (usually the most significant one, often also the 'playtime' collar), and/or one for public appearances (which is often a bit more 'tasteful' for the general public, such as a common-looking necklace that perhaps locks in the back). Seriously, going into further details, customs, and variations could fill a page.
• Truth in Television. Binding hands and feet can still let someone struggle. Collar the neck and struggling becomes self-strangulation.
• In Rome they took the form of hinged metal rings, and were used less as a restraint and more like a dog collar, detailing who owned them and where the owner could be found. Collars have even been found with writing on them to the effect of "This slave is a runaway. Return him to me and you will be richly rewarded."
  • However, no law required slaves to wear collars and they generally weren't highly visible. The Romans were wary about marking their slaves in an obvious way out of fear that they would unite in rebellion if they saw how many they were.

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