I was thinking of encumbrance and the bulk of things for some reason, which led me to thinking of how characters look carrying all the junk they carry, which reminded me of this thread, particularly
Doc's post.
I don't really have anything of substance to add, but decided to post the opinion that it's too bad extraneous, non-equipped stuff doesn't appear on a character sometimes. If everyone is so concerned with their characters looking cool, they might stop trying to haul around all that stuff if it were visible. How cool can you look with those ten bags hanging around you, y'know?