I vaguely recall the same thing from something fantasy, but can’t recall what. I decided to brave TV Tropes to see. I got this:
[In A Song of Ice and Fire,] Chella daughter of Cheyk wears a necklace of ears from defeated enemies. Unusually for the trope, all of them had been left alive — they can come back to challenge her and get their ears back if they ever find the courage.
and then again in the TV show section:
[In Game of Thrones,] Chella daughter of Cheyk, the chieftainess of the Black Ears, stays true to her tribe’s custom of stringing the ears of defeated foes on a necklace. She can be seen taking a new pair in “Baelor”.
And in Western Animation:
At one point in Blue Eye Samurai, Heiji Shindo tries to buy Mizu off from her revenge quest, offering a fortune in gold and a position as a lord, with the price being that she must cut off her right thumb, so she can never wield a sword against Shindo and Fowler again. After making the offer, he shows Mizu and Taigen a box with a small collection of severed thumbs, in various states of decay.
In “Lair of Grievous” [in The Clone Wars], Kit Fisto and Nahdar Vebb discover that Grievous collects the padawan braids from young padawan learners he’s killed.
But that’s the best I could find. Definitely not ringing a bell for me.
There’s a squad of elite soldiers in a book series (Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind) who collect ears as trophies, so definitely out there in some other literature as well
I vaguely recall the same thing from something fantasy, but can’t recall what. I decided to brave TV Tropes to see. I got this:
and then again in the TV show section:
And in Western Animation:
But that’s the best I could find. Definitely not ringing a bell for me.
There’s a squad of elite soldiers in a book series (Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind) who collect ears as trophies, so definitely out there in some other literature as well