History Main / FingerprintingAir

* Frequently averted in [[TheWire]]. At the end of Season 1 when [[spoiler: Kima]] gets shot, the shooters wear gloves. The prints the police ''DO'' get are from several blocks away after the shooters ditched their gloves and hoodies, and even then, only one of the prints, the one from a soda can is usable. The one from the pay phone is too smudged. And in season 5, when dealing with [[spoiler: the bodies dumped in the vacant houses]], police find almost no usable evidence to tie the crimes to anyone. When it comes to fingerprints, it's explicitly said that there's nothing they can use at any of the 22 different crime scenes.

[[folder:ComicBooks]]
* DNA version. Subverted in ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' in which Spidey is confronted with a woman who claims to be the daughter of his former girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. He happens to have a letter from Gwen but notes that he can't use it to obtain a DNA sample because it's quite simply too old by this point, forcing him to retrieve a sample from her grave.
* ComicStrip/DickTracy was once left a message by a perp in alphabet blocks on a drugstore counter, left there for customers to play with. It was taken in for fingerprinting. When he checked up with Forensics later, they responded that the blocks must've been handled by just about everyone who passed through the store.
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* In ''Film/{{Se7en}}'', the trope is initially averted when the killer deliberately coats a wall with prints, yet it still takes the finger print analysis team many man hours to identify the source. Played straight, with the killer going to excessive lengths to avoid leaving any of his own finger prints anywhere (where latex gloves could have easily sufficed).
* In FastFive Tej is able to lift a full hand print off of a bikini, and it good enough to get through a high end scanner.
* Subverted by ''InsideMan'', where they find many fingerprints, but quickly realize that all any of them prove is that the dozens of suspects were all at the bank that day.

* Aversion in the novel ''Literature/GorkyPark'', Renko and an American detective are dusting a woodshop for fingerprints, and someone points out some rags that they both missed. Renko and his American friend dismiss them knowing they aren't going to get any decent prints off them.
* Subverted deliciously in Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Discworld/FeetOfClay''. Obviously there are no fingerprint kits on the Discworld, but Vimes makes a point several times of saying that they'll never get any clues off of (object X) since it's full of so many dirty fingerprints.

* In the novel ''[[Literature/JasonWood Digital Knight]]'', fingerprinting turned out to be totally useless because the shapeshifting abilities of werewolves was so accurate as to copy the fingerprints and DNA of the people they imitate. The hero had to invent a special sensor to distinguish werewolves from humans.

* One episode of ''CSIMiami'' had an interesting variation; the fingerprints on the weapon matched a rape ''victim'' from a previous crime that the tech hadn't deleted. The tech ended up losing her job, and yes, the victim was the new perp.

** One possible aversion was a case where the DNA matches turned out to be contamination from a worker on the swab assembly line not wearing proper equipment while working on the swabs. This was based om something that did happen at least once in real life.
* Possible aversion: the first episode of ''KnightRider'' had a character mention that fingerprints are not kept on file for anyone who has never been convicted of a crime or employed by the government.
* ''Series/LawAndOrder'':
** Played it a bit more realistically in regards to latent prints. The detectives often mention that in processing the crime scene they could only find inconclusive partial prints or dozens that couldn't be identified.
** In addition, one L&O episode revolved around a fingerprint technician who gave the detectives positive matches by cooking (faking) the evidence. Van Buren takes it hard, as one of the cases the tech cooked was the one that got her promoted to Detective First Grade and helped make her career.
** This is often averted on [[Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit Special Victims Unit]] too: There have been episodes where the only fingerprint and/or DNA evidence they've had were barely passable matches. (As in, yeah they match this guy but they could match ten thousand other people too.) This is generally used as a device to force the detectives to go and gather actual evidence.
* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'':
** Averted in an episode where partial prints were run through AFIS and it did come back with something: 80,000 possible matches.
** In another episode, AFIS was backed up for several days, nearly allowing the criminal to escape.
** They do manage to "rehydrate" a burned corpse to retrieve prints.
** Ducky once ''claimed'' they had gathered evidence like this, and relied on TheCSIEffect to trick the suspect.
** Another episode saw the Victim of the Week killed in a public restroom. They found so many prints that Abby stopped running them through AFIS
* ''Series/TheCloser'': Varies as the plot requires. In one memorable episode, they actually sluff the skin off the corpse's hand in order to get a print. In order to use the glove-like skin, they have to slide it over Chief Johnson's hand. This actually works.
* In a possibly literal example of this trope, ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' had the crew use "Displaced Photons" to determine who was telepathically attacking the Maquis crew members.
* Averted in an episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. When they're looking for a DNA sample from Dr. Pulaski, they search her quarters and eventually come up with a hairbrush. Data finds a hair with an intact follicle, which is where you'd find DNA.
** In an even more literal example, Data tracked a person's movements through a system of caves by monitoring the ''displaced air from the person's passage.''

* Averted in ''Series/{{Life On Mars|2006}}''. When Sam is annoyed because a body has been moved before it's been fingerprinted, his 1970's colleagues are bemused because the technology to take fingerprints off skin hasn't been invented yet.
* Subverted in an episode of ''Series/NUMB3RS''. They have two potential suspects and a partial print. Charlie is criticizing the forensic technician's methods--how does she know which finger it's from, etc.--and she gets pissed at him and points out that the print has [[GPSEvidence a rare marking that only matches one of the suspects]]. [[spoiler: Then it turns out that the culprit was a ''third'' man, who had the same rare marking on one of his fingers.]]
* One episode of the live-action ''{{Zorro}}'' show had Zorro invent fingerprinting. He investigates the Alcalde's (Mayor's) office in an episode where the Alcalde is acting strangely: rescinding unpopular decrees one moment, then punishing people for violating the decree they were just told was rescinded the next. He finds two sets of fingerprints in the Alcalde's private office (which he presumably doesn't let other people into), leading him to realize that there are two Alcaldes, eventually leading to a SpotTheImposter moment in a public duel against both Alcaldes. Subversion in that the fingerprints were only used to confirm that there ''was'' an imposter, but not to identify the imposter That was done by Zorro pointing out that the real Alcalde had a scar on the back of his wrist from a previous fight with him and cutting the sleeves of both Alcaldes to see which one had the scar.

* Variation aversion: In the ''Series/BurnNotice'' pilot, Michael's voice-over remarks that any decent lawyer can explain away fingerprints on the outside of a gun. Explaining away prints on the inside of the trigger assembly is another matter.
* Averted in ''Series/MythQuest''. The detective tells a woman that fingerprinting a man found in a stream is impossible.

* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'':
** In the DS-only parts of the ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' series (i.e. the 5th case of the first game and the 2nd case in the fourth, ''Apollo Justice'') you must at time dust for fingerprints. The series however, subverts this trope by having the fingerprinting be mostly realistic. Not only do you not get usable print a lot of the time, but you're shown, and have to do, the entire process, from finding a usable spot, finding a print within that spot, then comparing the prints to those in file, so it doesn't feel like the process is magically down with some magic bottle of dust. The list of fingerprints you compare the lifted print to also only contains those tied to case, subverting the common unrealistic tread in crime dramas of comparing it to a large database. The only unrealistic aspect is how easily prints are lifted, however can be seen as an AcceptableBreakFromReality, seeing as it would be tedious as and long as hell to realistically lift the prints.
** Whenever prints are lifted from a piece of evidence that wouldn't normally hold prints, there's always almost always an explanation; For example, [[spoiler:Juniper Woods]] fingerprints were found on a stuffed animal's tail because it happened to be made of vinyl. And [[spoiler:Ema Sykes]] fingerprints were found on a piece of cloth because the jacket it was cut from was made out of leather.
** As shown above, an inverted example comes in episode 2 of the third game. When defending a client for the larceny of a urn (yes you heard right, for once it wasn't a murder. ...Well, sort off), Phoenix ends up cornering the real thief due to his own fingerpints being on the urn. The urn was vigorously polished after it was secured at a exhibition, and the only time after that that he had to get his prints onto the urn was when he was feeling around inside a bag that was sitting in [[spoiler:Luke Atmey's]] office. Therefore his prints prove that the urn was at [[spoiler:Atmey's]] office between it being stolen and then found. [[spoiler:Although, not really. This comes back to massively bite Phoenix in the butt later on when it's discovered that a murder occurred at the exact same time as the theft. Phoenix basically just proved the bad guy has an airtight alibi. Good job there Phoenix.]]

* Averted in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', when Shepard and Kasumi have to thoroughly search to find a useable DNA sample from their target's own bedroom.
* The ''Franchise/BatmanArkhamSeries'' has Batman using his detective vision as an EverythingSensor to analyze and find clues in crime scenes, sometimes to put together pieces of the puzzle and solve a mystery but often to find some method to track someone through the environment. ''Arkham Asylum'' was especially bad about using this trope, at one point he tracked a corrupt security officer across the compound via traces of bourbon in the air. ''Arkham City'' is slightly better about this, such as using multiple impact points to trace the origin of a sniper, although the convenience of certain clues was a little suspicious. By ''Arkham Origins'' it is mostly averted as, while maybe better than real life, several sequences involve a "scrubbing" mode where he uses realistic evidence (scuff marks, bullet entry angles, explosive patterns) to recreate crime scenes in three dimensional space, allowing him to locate vital evidence missed by the police.
* Averted in the fourth case in the first ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' hidden object game when Jessica Fletcher comments that the candlestick used as the murder weapon has been handled too many times during the two years since to have any useful prints.

* Possibly parodied in an episode of the 1980s ''WesternAnimation/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|1987}}'' TV series, where a television detective mentions she can get fingerprints off a pizza crust. Even to a child that seemed off somehow.

An inverted version of this trope occurs when someone's fingerprints end up proving someone else's guilt. In both Colombo and ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney: Trials And Tribulations'', the bad guy's were caught because [[InvertedTrope the titular characters's prints]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome were on the evidence.]].

** People applying for a security clearance also have to provide fingerprints (Among other things). These prints are almost certainly checked against criminal records as part of the clearance process.

* The murderer protagonist in the RayBradbury short story "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" took this trope too much to heart; the police catch him while he's compulsively scrubbing the ''entire house'' in fear of what he may or may not have touched. Famously adapted for ECComics' ''Crime [=SuspensStories=]'' with the more ironic title "Touch and Go!"

* RealLife example: In October 2007, the FBI announced that it had obtained a partial DNA profile of D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a plane in 1971 and left his necktie behind. Apparently, they managed to get DNA off it after all these years (and somehow determine that it came only from him, and not a fellow passenger's dandruff flakes that fell on it).

* In ''{{Persona 4}}'' the police are able to get prints off of '''cloth''', Adachi is amazed at it.

* In ''{{Se7en}}'', the trope is initially averted when the killer deliberately coats a wall with prints, yet it still takes the finger print analysis team many man hours to identify the source. Played straight, with the killer going to excessive lengths to avoid leaving any of his own finger prints anywhere (where latex gloves could have easily sufficed).

An inverted version of this trope occurs when someone's fingerprints end up proving someone else's guilt. In both Colombo and PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyTrialsAndTribulations, the bad guy's were caught because [[InvertedTrope the titular characters's prints]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome were on the evidence.]].

* In the DS-only parts of the ''PhoenixWright AceAttorney'' series (i.e. the 5th case of the first game and the 2nd case in the fourth, ''Apollo Justice'') you must at time dust for fingerprints. The series however, subverts this trope by having the fingerprinting be mostly realistic. Not only do you not get usable print a lot of the time, but you're shown, and have to do, the entire process, from finding a usable spot, finding a print within that spot, then comparing the prints to those in file, so it doesn't feel like the process is magically down with some magic bottle of dust. The list of fingerprints you compare the lifted print to also only contains those tied to case, subverting the common unrealistic tread in crime dramas of comparing it to a large database. The only unrealistic aspect is how easily prints are lifted, however can be seen as an AcceptableBreakFromReality, seeing as it would be tedious as and long as hell to realistically lift the prints.

** As shown above, an inverted example comes in episode 2 of the third game. When defending a client for the larceny of a urn (yes you heard right, for once it wasn't a murder. ...Well, sort off), Phoenix ends up cornering the real thief due to his own fingerpints being on the urn. The urn was vigorously polished after it was secured at a exhibition, and the only time after that that he had to get his prints onto the urn was when he was feeling around inside a bag that was sitting in[[spoiler:Luke Atmey's]] office. Therefore his prints prove that the urn was at [[spoiler:Atmey's]] office between it being stolen and then found. [[spoiler:Although, not really. This comes back to massively bite Phoenix in the butt later on when it's discovered that a murder occurred at the exact same time as the theft. Phoenix basically just proved the bad guy has an airtight alibi. Good job there Phoenix.]]

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* DNA version. Subverted in ''{{Spider-Man}}'' in which Spidey is confronted with a woman who claims to be the daughter of his former girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. He happens to have a letter from Gwen but notes that he can't use it to obtain a DNA sample because it's quite simply too old by this point, forcing him to retrieve a sample from her grave.

* ''TheCloser'': Varies as the plot requires. In one memorable episode, they actually sluff the skin off the corpse's hand in order to get a print. In order to use the glove-like skin, they have to slide it over Chief Johnson's hand. This actually works.

** As soon above, an inverted example comes in episode 2 of the third game. When defending a client for the larceny of a urn (yes you heard right, for once it wasn't a murder. ...Well, sort off), Phoenix ends up cornering the real thief due to his own fingerpints being on the urn. The urn was vigorously polished after it was secured at a exhibition, and the only time after that that he had to get his prints onto the urn was when he was feeling around inside a bag that was sitting in[[spoiler:Luke Atmey's]] office. Therefore his prints prove that [[spoiler:Luke Atmey]] urn was at Atmey's office between it being stolen and then found. [[spoiler:Although, not really. This comes back to massively bite Phoenix in the butt later on when it's discovered that a murder occurred at the exact same time as the theft. Phoenix basically just proved the bad guy has an airtight alibi. Good job there Phoenix.]]

On the other hand, if it's not the kind of show where science saves the day, the best crime scene team in the world isn't going to find a single print. ''Series/{{Columbo}}'', in 35 years, only had three cases broken by fingerprints. (In one, it was prints on the ''insides'' of gloves. One where the gun used was wiped of prints but not the bullets. In another, the bad guy was actually caught because [[InvertedTrope Columbo's prints]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome were on the evidence.]] Yeah, it's a long story.)

* In the DS-only parts of the ''PhoenixWright AceAttorney'' series (i.e. the 5th case of the first game and the 2nd case in the fourth, ''Apollo Justice'') while fingerprints always provide a match, they're not always clear. It also shows in great detail how the fingerprinting process actually happens. On the other hand, most of the cases are "closed universes", so rather than trying to compare prints against everyone in the world, they're only compared against the eight or so people who we already know have ties to the case.
** On the other hand, you do automagically have fingerprints on file for everyone involved in those cases, even when there's no reason for you to (this is almost justified in the 5th case of the first game, since all the suspects are cops or work for the government -- [[strike:but there's no real reason why ''you'' would have access to those prints on file]] And you were given the kit by Edgeworth.)
** But then the game is rather realistic there -- in real life fingerprints are usually used to find out which of a group of ''existing suspects'' handled an object, rather than (as TV would have you believe) randomly comparing the prints to a whole database full. And in that case you can easily have the suspects fingerprinted at the time of the investigation.
** And in one of the cases of the third game, a case is broken because Phoenix's fingerprints are on a vital piece of evidence. This is spoiled pretty quickly to anyone looking in the Court Record, as in this part of this case (and nowhere else in the entire game until you change player characters), Phoenix's profile is available to present, so [[ChekhovsGun you know you're going to have to]]. That and you just found said evidence and put your fingerprints all over it in the previous chapter.

** Was able to pull ''[=DNA=]'' from a fingerprint. Another time, someone notes that no one has ever pulled a successful print off an object as small as the one in question, and all the team members look at each other as if to say "A challenge!"

** In addition, one L&O episode revolved around a fingerprint technician who gave the detectives positive matches by cooking (faking) the evidence.

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* Subverted deliciously in ''[[Literature/{{Discworld}} Feet of Clay]]'' by Terry Pratchett. Obviously there are no fingerprint kits on the Discworld, but Vimes makes a point several times of saying that they'll never get any clues off of (object X) since it's full of so many dirty fingerprints.

* Aversion in the novel ''GorkyPark'', Renko and an American detective are dusting a woodshop for fingerprints, and someone points out some rags that they both missed. Renko and his American friend dismiss them knowing they aren't going to get any decent prints off them.

In [[HollywoodScience fictionland]], you can get a fingerprint off of anything, including human skin. Most of the time, you'll get a complete print suitable for analysis. If you get a partial, odds are that it's ''still'' good enough for analysis. You can also get a sample good enough for identification by fingerprinting a heavily decomposed corpse. Everyone in the world has their fingerprints on file, so an AFIS search is always going to come back with something (but then, it ''is'' a MagicalDatabase). No one even takes the precaution of wearing gloves, which is a common practice among criminals, although it is sometimes possible to leave a fingerprint impression through thin gloves. The AFIS match is always conclusive.

* Averted in ''MassEffect2'', when Shepard and Kasumi have to thoroughly search to find a useable DNA sample from their target's own bedroom.

Fingerprinting in the real world is not quite so easy, but there are one or two places where the shows catch a break. ''{{CSI}}'' benefits from being set in Las Vegas, where the largest employers (the casinos) require employees to register with the gaming commission. The use of superglue fumes to process latent fingerprints is, surprisingly, quite real. While not quite so miraculous as it appears on TV, it certainly must have seemed that way when it was first discovered.

* ''TheCloser'': Varies as the plot requires. In one memorable episode, they actually sluff the skin off the corpse's hand in order to get a print. In order to use the glove-like skin, they have to [[NightmareFuel slide it over Chief Johnson's hand.]] This actually works.