History Main / GPSEvidence

** In ''Series/CSIMiami'', the team discovered a missing child's location by traces of a plant found ''only'' in a specific area of the Everglades. On ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' a suspect was caught due to sand from a specific island in the Pacific which the suspect had imported to donate to a prestigious pre-school in order to increase the chances of his son getting in.

*** ''Series/{{CSI}}'' used this in a remarkably literal sense in the episode "Fracked." GPS data from a car and cell phone played important parts in the investigation of the title case.

** In ''Series/CSIMiami'', the team discovered a missing child's location by traces of a plant found ''only'' in a specific area of the Everglades. On ''CSI:NY'' a suspect was caught due to sand from a specific island in the Pacific which the suspect had imported to donate to a prestigious pre-school in order to increase the chances of his son getting in.
** Subversion: ''Series/{{CSI NY}}'' played a long game with this trope in the fourth season. In the season's first few episodes, a lot of cases were solved using {{GPS Evidence}}. However, in "One Wedding And A Funeral", Stella finds tree bark at a crime scene. She locates the only furniture store in New York that uses wood from that tree, and lo and behold there's someone with a record who works there. But wait! He didn't do anything! The tree bark was actually a clue left by Mac's stalker, intended to lead him to the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

*** ''Series/{{CSI}}'' used this in a remarkably literal sense in the episode "Fracked". GPS data from a car and cell phone played important parts in the investigation of the title case.
* ''Series/DCIBanks'': In "The Buried", a footprint left behind at the scene of a crime contains the mixture of the chemicals used in match heads. This leads the police to the only old match factory in the area.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': Used by the Ninth Doctor, of all people, in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E5WorldWarThree "World War Three"]]. The Doctor gathers up everything the cast has learned about the Slitheen and is able to use the outer space equivalent of the trope to identify their home planet, thus their species, thus their WeaksauceWeakness.

** In "Just Us Justice Ducks, Part 1", Darkwing deduces the location of Negaduck's hideout from a single crumb -- [[FailedASpotCheck completely failing to notice the enormous Negaduck flag on the roof]]. As the page quote says, Negaduck planted the crumb there on purpose because he knew Darkwing wouldn't notice the flag.
** In "[[Recap/DarkwingDuckS1E48InLikeBlunt In Like Blunt]]", Darkwing presents a grain of sand as their only clue to a case. All of his chemical tests can only reveal that it is indeed a grain of sand, so the Film/JamesBond-Ersatz tastes it and says that it could only have come from one of several hundred islands... but only one didn't have a plant that the villain was deathly allergic to growing there indigenously.

* ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'': Parodied by [[https://xkcd.com/683/ "Science Montage,"]] which contrasts a "[[HollywoodScience Movie Science]] {{Montage}}" (lots of lasers and test tubes) with an "Actual Science {{Montage}}" (lots of waiting for a centrifuge). The strip provides the page image.

* Done a few times on ''WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego?'' (the 1990s cartoon). In these cases, they had a bit more credibility, as the clues were often intentional hints left by Carmen for the detectives, and were usually significant enough culturally or historically to be useful: for instance, the idea that komodo dragons are found on only one island in Indonesia.

** Most likely the program was ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Detectives The New Detectives: Case Studies in Forensic Science]]''. The show mentions forensic applications of botany and entomology in different episodes. E.g., chiggers were the clincher in one case, being found in only one place in an entire county - the exact place a murderer chose to dump the body of his victim.

* The kidnapping/murder of Bobby Franks, committed by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb]], was solved as police found a pair of eyeglasses with an unusual hinge design at the crime scene next to the body. A design so unusual that only '''three''' had been sold in the area, one of which was to Leopold, the younger of the killers. Even worse for Leopold, the police easily dismissed the other two owners as suspects: one was able to show his glasses to the police when they came to question him, and the other guy had been out of town when the murder happened. Leopold tried to dismiss it by saying he dropped them while in the area studying bugs, but this admission proved to be GPS evidence in itself since it tied him to the location where the body was dumped in the first place.

* ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'': Parodied by [[https://xkcd.com/683/ "Science Montage"]], which contrasts a "[[HollywoodScience Movie Science]] {{Montage}}" (lots of lasers and test tubes) with an "Actual Science {{Montage}}" (lots of waiting for a centrifuge). The strip provides the page image.

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While this can border on DeusExMachina if done badly, the RealLife examples show that there is some TruthInTelevision to it. Usually goes hand in hand with SherlockScan.

** In "In Like Blunt", Darkwing presents a grain of sand as their only clue to a case. All of his chemical tests can only reveal that it is indeed a grain of sand, so the Film/JamesBond-Ersatz tastes it and says that it could only have come from one of several hundred islands... but only one didn't have a plant that the villain was deathly allergic to growing there indigenously.

** In ''Discworld/FeetOfClay'': Angua and Cheery bring some clay from a crime scene to a pottery hoping that there's lots of different kinds or something, but are disappointed to be told that "It's just clay." [[spoiler:However, double-subverted in that they also learn where it's from in the process, and this turns out to be an important clue.]]

** In ''Discworld/{{Thud}}'', Angua smells clay from Quarry Lane, the home of a large part of the Ankh-Morpork troll community down in the dwarf mine. She however remember's Vimes philosophy on clues: "Don't trust them, you could walk around with pockets full of them." It '''is''' a really important clue for that reason, because it tells them a dwarf is trying to frame the trolls.
** In ''Discworld/TheFifthElephant'', Reg Shoe remembers Vimes' advice as well when investigating the murder of rubber goods manufacturer Sonky. One must beware of trusting clues too much, otherwise one might find a wooden leg, a pink slipper and a feather and "hatch up a theory involving a one-legged ballet dancer and a production of ''Chicken Lake''".
** In ''Discworld/{{Jingo}}'', Klatchian coins and sand in the room of the man suspected for the assassination attempt of the ambassador is supposed to be seen as proof that "Someone in Ankh-Morpork did a bad job trying to frame the Klatchians". It turns out to be "[[spoiler:Klatchians are smarter than Morporkians give them credit for.]]"
** Played straight in the same book, though: Angua can smell a particular dye on the coat belonging to an assassin (not to be confused with an Assassin) which she knows comes from a specific city and is important in discovering said assassin's identity.

** PlayedWith in ''Discworld/NightWatch'', where Vimes is shown to be able to tell where in the city he is by feeling the brickwork on the road through thin-soled boots, since he spent decades patrolling the city while wearing cardboard-soled boots.

* In ''Disney/TheGreatMouseDetective'', a MouseWorld version of ''Sherlock Holmes'', the combination of three substances on a piece of paper are used to pinpoint a villain's hangout, the only bar (brandy) located where the sewer (coal dust) meets the river front (salt water). It could of course have been dropped by a coal deliveryman who'd treated himself to a QuickNip and bought a bag of chips on his way home from work, but hey.
* In Disney's ''Disney/{{Mulan}}'', Shan-Yu's falcon brings him a doll from a village to which they are ''en route.'' The doll has evidence on it — pine tar, a white horse hair, and sulphur from cannons — that tells him the location of the village and that the Imperial Army are there.

*** When Jessica realizes that Kilgrave has someone taking pictures of her, she initially tries to go to various spots around the city where these pictures have been taken, in order to pinpoint the photographer's position. While on another job, she sees an NYPD surveillence camera and realizes that maybe one of those cameras caught the spy. So she contacts Will Simpson and has him dig up feeds from a couple of different cameras.

*** Early in season 2, after an encounter with the fake "Dr. Leslie Hansen" (actually [[spoiler:Jessica's mom]]), Jessica realizes that the imposter was wearing a wig made of real human hair. Trish says there are only three wig shops in New York City that make wigs of that high quality, and the first one they hit - one where Trish got her wigs as a kid - happens to be the correct one.

* The kidnapping/murder committed by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb Leopold and Loeb]] was linked to the perpetrators pair of eyeglasses with an unusual hinge design found near the body, of which only '''three''' were sold in the area, one of which to Nathan Loeb, the younger of the killers. Even worse for them, the other two owners were very easy to clear as suspects: one was able to show his glasses to the police when they came to question him, and the other guy had been out of town when the murder happened. Loeb tried to dismiss it by saying he dropped them while in the area studying bugs, but this admission proved to be GPS evidence in itself since it tied him to the location where the body was dumped in the first place.

* The kidnapping/murder committed by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb Leopold and Loeb]] was linked to the perpetrators largely due to a pair of eyeglasses with an unusual hinge design found near the body, of which only '''three''' were sold in the area.
** Even worse for them, the other two owners were very easy to clear as suspects: one was able to show his glasses to the police when they came to question him, and the other guy had been out of town when the murder happened. Talk about bad luck.

* In ''Film/JackTheRipper1976'', the pine needle found clutched in the dead woman's hand comes from a Indian species; the only examples of which in London are in Kensington Gardens. This tallies with the scent the blind man Pritchard had smelled on Jack.

* In the first ''Film/CharliesAngels'' film, one of the Angels hears a bird call on a tape sent by the bad guys, and recognizes it as a species that only lives on one very small island. Except she identifies it as a pygmy nuthatch, which isn't even close to rare, and lives pretty much everywhere in California.

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'', more than once. Columbo once figured out a killer had been in the area of a murder because [[Recap/ColumboS10E03 mulberries had fallen inside the killer's luxury car's hood]]. In [[Recap/ColumboS10E10 another episode]] a pivotal piece of evidence turned out to bea dead mouse--specifically, the mouse was found in a Los Angeles restuarant but it turned out to be a breed native to the mountains of Southern California but not the city.

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'', more than once. Columbo once figured out a killer had been in the area of a murder because mulberries had fallen inside the killer's luxury car's hood.

* In ''Film/FastAndFurious'', Dom looks at the crash scene where [[spoiler:Letty (allegedly) died]], and finds ash of a peculiar color which he recognizes as coming from a meth-nitro afterburner system. He then immediately knows exactly what garage the person responsible for the crash went to. This despite the fact that 1: The idea that there is literally only one mechanic willing to do a particular car mod in a region as heavily populated as the LA Metro area is ridiculous, and 2: Since Dom hadn't been to LA in five years, even if it had been true when he last lived there, there was a good chance it wasn't true now. It still works.

* In ''Theatre/{{Pygmalion}}'', Henry Higgins can determine a Londoner's address down to the street name by his accent alone. The musical adaptation, ''Theatre/MyFairLady'' has an entire song based on this fact, entitled "Why Can't the English [Learn To Speak]?"

While this can border on DeusExMachina if done badly, the RealLife examples show that there is some TruthInTelevision to it.