History Main / TheCoroner

* Whittington (Creator/GregoryHines) fulfills this role in ''Film/{{Wolfen}}'', as well as being half of ThoseTwoGuys with his friend Ferguson (Creator/TomNoonan). Together, they're the ones who figure out that the attacks are being carried out by wolves.

!!Examples:

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* Quincy, eponymous main character of ''Series/QuincyME'', is an example where the coroner is the star of the show. Every week a dead body and a mystery that the cops alone cannot solve.
* Al Robbins (played by Robert David Hall) on the original (Las Vegas) ''Series/{{CSI}}''. Also David 'Superdave' Philips, assistant coroner (played by former real life coroner David Berman)
** Doc Robbins one complained about a predecessor whom he described as eating chili dogs over the corpses he examined.
* Alexx Woods (played by Khandi Alexander) on ''Series/CSIMiami'', although she was eventually PutOnABus.
** Later replaced by Tara Price, who was later replaced by the fairly goofy Tom Loman after [[spoiler: getting busted for drug addiction.]]
*** Shannon Higgins, who ''actually'' replaced Alexx...only to [[PrettyLittleHeadshots take one right between the eyes]] shortly after her debut. ''Ouch.'' Tara wound up replacing ''her'' shortly thereafter.
* Dr. Sheldon Hawkes in the first season of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'', replaced in season 2 by Dr. Sid Hammerback when Hawkes decides to become a CSI himself. Hammerback has [[SpecsOfAwesome cool glasses.]] There's also been Dr. Evan Zao (who disappeared with no trace), Dr. Peyton Driscoll (who got PutOnABus) and Dr. Marty Pino (who showed up twice in season 2 [[spoiler: before showing up again in season 5, having been fired from the coroner's office, become a [[TheGamblingAddict gambling addict]], and making the money for his gambling debts ''by make drugs out of dead drug users'' and selling it. He also happens to get his wife killed in that episode and ends up in jail by the end of it.]]
* ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'' had several. Most memorable were the stereotypical crusty sardonic old man Dr. Lausanne, and the [[HotScientist very unstereotypical]] Dr. Julianna Cox.
* Most of the cast on ''Series/CrossingJordan''.
* In an episode of ''Series/NightCourt'', a storm causes the cast to take refuge in the morgue; the elderly coroner there is so used to his job that he can eat his lunch while doing an autopsy. (Sure, [[ArtisticLicense that would be a pretty serious safety violation in reality]], but anything to make it funny, supposedly.)
* During its 13 year run, ''Series/InspectorMorse'' went through a number of coroners and pathologists, with varying degrees of desensitisation. Series 1 and 2 had Max Debryn (who also appears in the prequel series ''Endeavour''). In series 3, the pathologist is Grayling Russell, and Laura Hobson, who goes on to appear in ''Lewis'', is the pathologist in the specials. Series 4-7 have various one-off pathologists.
* ''Series/InspectorRex''
** In Vienna, Leo Graf is the elderly forensic doctor who helps the Criminal Police.
** In the Italian seasons (at least the six earlier ones) Katia Martelli does both chemical studies and forensic medicine. After [[spoiler:Fabbri's death]], she appears less frequently and other women also take her role. Giorgio Gaiba, who has a similar role to that of Leo Graf, also works in that aspect.
** In the latest seasons, Giorgio Vettori and Sonia Randalli are the ones who analyze the bodies.
* Dr Pasquano from Italian crime series Series/IlCommissarioMontalbano is always at odds with the titular detective. He takes every opportunity to drily snark and snipe at the poor detective who just wants details on the victim.
* ''Series/KamenRiderExAid'''s fourth Rider, Kiriya Kujo, is a medical examiner. Though, given that he seems to show up whenever needed and also whenever he wants, he's probably off duty most of the time. Not surprisingly, given that a forensic pathologist may not have as much to do as a surgeon or a pediatrician. [[spoiler:Also, he's officially dead for most of the series, so he probably ended up working fulltime with CR after that.]]
* The unfortunately-named Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David [=McCallum=]), ''Series/{{NCIS}}''. Also, his protégé, Jimmy Palmer, who recently earned his degree and can take over in Autopsy whenever Ducky's not available. And now that Ducky has retired from his medical duties, Jimmy is officially the NCIS Medical Examiner.
** His counterpart in ''Series/NCISNewOrleans'' is Dr. Loretta Wade (Creator/CCHPounder). She loves the city and the surrounding area at least as much as Pride. In the ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' BackdoorPilot, she explains that she originally came with a round-trip ticket and still has the return ticket from all those years ago.
* The ever-cheerful George Bullard in ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' (except for a brief spell when the ME was snarky replacement Dan Peterson). Bullard later retires and is replaced by Dr. Kate Wilding, who herself ends up leaving and being replaced by Dr. Kam Karimore.
* On ''Series/LawAndOrder'' and ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'', [[DeadpanSnarker Elizabeth Rodgers]] (Leslie Hendrix). On ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'', Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie).
* ''Series/NUMB3RS'' has a few (some recurring, others who only appeared once), but the most notable is Claudia Gomez, who is also David Sinclair's love interest for a while.
** One episode also had a corrupt coroner using his job to hide the body of a victim.
* On ''Series/TheXFiles'', Dr. Dana Scully's specialty certification is in pathology; prior to and occasionally during her tenure in the eponymous unit, she taught forensic path at the FBI Academy in Quantico.
* Non-standard personality type: Doug Murphy of ''Series/{{Scrubs}}''. Despite being a pathologist, or at least working in the morgue, he retains a very odd mix of loser and cloudcuckoolander. In fact, the reason he was shifted to the morgue is that he is a horrible doctor, having killed nearly all of his patients. This is what leads him to being such a great pathologist: he has seen nearly every way someone can die, because he probably caused it at one time or another. Still, he is seen forgetting where he left bodies, tagging patients before they've died, and playing Texas Hold'Em with a group of corpses.
* ''Series/PushingDaisies'' has an (unnamed) coroner who lets the main characters into the morgue in every episode, complete with an incredibly dry wit and the tendency to be skeptical about any excuse he's given for needing to see the bodies. WordOfGod say he lets them in because he has a crush on Emerson.
* On ''Series/TruCalling'', Davis is completely desensitized to anything dead, but extremely {{squick}}ed out by working on anyone living.
* The RealityShow ''Doctor G, Medical Examiner'', which bounces between the various Creator/DiscoveryChannel networks.
* Dr. Lanie Parish in ''Series/{{Castle}}''.
** Also Dr. Sidney Perlmutter - one of the [=MEs=] who eats his lunch in the morgue. Thanks to the industrial-strength disinfectants, it's the cleanest place in the city.
* Natalie Lambert from ''Series/ForeverKnight'' was a city medical examiner, although her work was only occasionally relevant to the plot.
* Dr. Maura Isles of ''Series/RizzoliAndIsles''; also gets points for an amusing tendency not to notice which of the morgue refrigerators is for staff use.
--> "Is this from the good fridge or the dead-people fridge?"
--> [[ShapedLikeItself "Cold air is cold air."]]
* Gordy the Ghoul from ''Series/KolchakTheNightStalker''. Ran a lottery based on the corpses time of death. Often bribed by Kolchak into giving him information.
* ''Series/{{Psych}}'' plays with the trope. Woody looks like the typical coroner... except he's full out a CloudCuckoolander . He's predicted how Shawn and Gus will die, offered to hold organs in the freezer overnight (not for medical reasons), and when he woke up from a drunken stupor surrounded by a white powder he assumes his cocaine problem returned. But his autopsies are usually right, at least.
* In ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', a different one appears in many episodes (since the Winchesters are moving all over the country working on cases) to explain to the Winchesters how the latest VictimOfTheWeek met his or her gruesome end.
* Dr. Ogden in ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' is more sensitive than most examples, but her occasional mild jokes over the bodies are enough to make the straitlaced Murdoch uncomfortable. (And not for [[UnresolvedSexualTension the usual reason]] being around Dr. Ogden makes Murdoch uncomfortable.) Her temporary replacement at the start of Season 4, Dr. Francis, maintains a constant stream of barbed sarcasm, apparently thinking Murdoch discovers murders just to annoy him. From Season 5, the coroner is Dr Emily Grace, who is essentially a younger Dr Ogden, although once Dr Ogden returns to Toronto, she also helps out occasionally. When Emily moves to London at the start of Season 9, Dr Ogden takes over again, Dr Ogden takes over again, training Rebecca James as her successor. Miss James later leaves the morgue, and is replaced by Violet Hart, who has a dispassionate efficiency, but feels she has something to prove, and therefore dislikes Murdoch questioning her findings (although she's also ruthlessly ambitious enough to fake them if she has a reason to).
* ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' has the recurring character of Molly, a coroner who often ends up contributing useful information and even became close enough to him [[spoiler: that she was one of the only people, along with Mycroft, who knew Holmes faked his suicide by jumping off a large building, though how she was involved is not stated]].
* There are a number of pathologists on the German police procedural series ''Series/{{Tatort}}'', the most famous and popular being [[InsufferableGenius Wagner-loving Professor Karl-Friedrich Boerne]] (Jan Josef Liefers) of Münster. In the episode ''Der doppelte Lott'' he even has a cross-over with his colleague from the Cologne "Tatort", Dr. Joseph Roth. (Joe Bausch, the man playing Dr. Roth is a doctor in real life.)
* [[PunnyName Mort]], the opera-singing coroner on ''Series/DueSouth''.
* Two Patients-of-the-Week on ''{{Series/House}}'' were coroners/medical examiners: a woman who started hallucinating that her subjects had come to life and were attacking her, and an employee of PPTH who kept records on which doctors killed the most patients, and insisted on being diagnosed by House because he had the best record (not terribly surprising given that House is the chief of Diagnostic Medicine). The patient didn't think much of Chase as a diagnostician, but did insist on having his surgery done by Chase, as he apparently had the best ''surgical'' record.
* Dr. Temperance "''Series/{{Bones}}''" Brennan serves a similar role as a forensic anthropologist, but she only studies the skeletal remains. A full autopsy, flesh and all, usually falls to [[BenevolentBoss Dr. Camille Saroyan]]. They've been known to butt heads over who gets the body first - reasonably in the case of Saroyan, since Bones is only interested in the bones and tends to do things like ''dissolve the flesh off with acid'' in order to be able to see them better, which would destroy any soft tissue evidence.
* [[Creator/MasiOka Dr. Max Bergman]] of ''Series/HawaiiFive0'' is the AsianAndNerdy medical examiner with an AmbiguousDisorder. He's about the same age as the main team, though, so he's a younger example, and his sense of humor tends to be more goofy than dark.
* [[Creator/IoanGruffudd Dr. Henry Morgan]] in ''Series/{{Forever}}''. Having lived (and [[ResurrectiveImmortality died]]) for centuries means he has a ''lot'' of experience with death, to the point where he can frequently figure out the cause of death without even opening up a body. It helps that he keeps a journal of all of his deaths, and the pilot even shows him testing how long a particular poison takes to kill on himself.
* Dominic Da Vinci in ''Series/DaVincisInquest''. He's a crusading coroner in Vancouver, once an undercover officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who now seeks justice in the cases he investigates.
* ''Series/{{Vera}}'' has the irreverent Dr. Billy Carstairs in seasons 1 - 3, who had numerous quirks (such as hiding car magazines in the ceiling of his office) and was probably a pathologist because no living patient could tolerate him. He is replaced in later seasons by Dr. Marcus Sumner, who is younger but more serious.
* ''Series/ATouchOfCloth'': Like many crime drama tropes, parodied. Natasha is a female coroner whose every line dialogue consists of her aggressively flirting with Jack Cloth, she has an incredibly dry sense of humor related to death, and at one point [[BlackComedyAnimalCruelty dissected a cat because she thought it would be amusing]].
* John Sutherland, the central character of the 1970s BBC series ''Sutherland's Law'' played by Iain Cuthbertson, is the Procurator Fiscal of a fictional small Scottish town with a close resemblance to Oban. The procurator fiscal is a uniquely Scottish public official who has nothing to do with tax matters but combines the roles of District Attorney and Coroner.
* ''Series/TheCloser'' and ''Series/MajorCrimes'' has the non-nonsense Dr. Fernando Morales, who generally appears in the operating room and gives the cause of death and other clues. He became a regular character on Major Crimes and after that was seen occasionally at crime scenes.
* ''Series/{{Coroner}}'', the cases of a Canadian female coroner working in UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}}.
* ''Series/PieInTheSky'': The medical examiner in "Who Only Stand and Wait" is a good example of the type.
[[/folder]]

* In ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'', Tsumiki helps out by examining the corpses of the murder victims, determining how they died, which often provides vital clues for the trials. [[spoiler:She uses her expertise to help cover up the times her own victims died]].

** Mr Waynesbury in ''Literature/{{Thud}}'' is Ham-on-Koom's coroner, as well as the magistrate. He spends his afternoons fly-fishing in the peaceful waters of the lower Koom River. Given the extremely trecherous nature of the upper Koom, this often leads to discoveries that require him to go back to work.

** Mr Waynesbury in ''Discworld/TheFifthElephant'' is Ham-on-Koom's coroner, as well as the magistrate. He spends his afternoons fly-fishing in the peaceful waters of the lower Koom River. Given the extremely trecherous nature of the upper Koom, this often leads to discoveries that require him to go back to work.

* The coroner, Doctor Hugel, in Jed Rubenfield´s Interpretation of Murder, has been given the nickname 'The Ghoul' for the eagerness with which he performs his post mortems. He also gets this line:

* Dr. Ogden in ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' is more sensitive than most examples, but her occasional mild jokes over the bodies are enough to make the straitlaced Murdoch uncomfortable. (And not for [[UnresolvedSexualTension the usual reason]] being around Dr. Ogden makes Murdoch uncomfortable.) Her temporary replacement at the start of Season 4, Dr. Francis, maintains a constant stream of barbed sarcasm, apparently thinking Murdoch discovers murders just to annoy him. From Season 5, the coroner is Dr Emily Grace, who is essentially a younger Dr Ogden, although once Dr Ogden returns to Toronto, she also helps out occasionally.

* Taken to ridiculous extremes in the German comedy movie ''The Vexxer'' by the grossly incompetent medical examiner, Dr. Bedpan, who is having a children's birthday party in his morgue.

-->'''Coroner''': All right. This loser has taken the chicken shit way out and punched her own ticket.

* The ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' franchise has Dr. Adam Heffner of the Metropolitan Police Department. While he first appeared in ''Film/SawIV'' and doesn't get much screentime to know his personality well, he was the one who examined the cause of death of all the victims in the Jigsaw killings from the [[Film/SawI first movie]] to ''Film/Saw3D'' (where he ends up getting killed by Hoffman).

A staple of the PoliceProcedural. Also known as the Medical Examiner or ME, he or she tells the detectives how the victim died and hands them any interesting trace evidence. Typically, this professional is the detectives' first stop depicted after examining the crime scene such as in ''Franchise/LawAndOrder''.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

--> '''Dr. Bedpan:''' We've got painters in the flat. It's my son's eighth birthday, so we've moved the party here.
--> '''Inspector Even Longer:''' Why here? Where's your wife, then?
--> '''Dr. Bedpan:''' Over there, slab 207.

--> '''Coroner''': All right. This loser has taken the chicken shit way out and punched her own ticket.

Note that in RealLife the position of coroner may or may not be held by a medical doctor. In some jurisdictions both positions are held by the same person, but in others the coroner is a lawyer or paralegal who handles the paperwork, conducts inquiries, etc., while the medical examiner is a forensic pathologist who conducts the autopsies. In some areas the coroner is an elected official like TheSheriff (indeed, in the United States this is very common), and a few US counties even combine the two offices. In some areas, too, there aren't enough suspicious deaths to justify the cost of a full-time forensic pathologist; in these areas, a local surgeon or GP usually handles less suspicious cases while obvious murders are farmed out to freelance forensic pathologists. Also, in RealLife most deaths reported to the coroner or medical examiner aren't investigated, since most deaths that have to be reported aren't suspicious deaths.

* Though not officially a Coroner, Sakurako of ''Anime/BeautifulBones'' effectively serves this role. In the first episode, she is able to determine that a couple found dead on the beach were, in fact, murder victims and not a double suicide as the police had initially suspected. In another episode, she comforts a young woman by pointing out that her grandmother's death was an unfortunate accident, and not a suicide (Sakurako was the one to discover the skeleton). And in another episode, she quickly determines that a man's "accident" was actually a suicide attempt.

--> [[ThingShapedLikeItself "Cold air is cold air."]]

* ''{{Coroner}}'', the cases of a Canadian female coroner working in UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}}.

* In Film/VForVendetta, Dr. Delia Surridge informs the police that V's victims were killed with commonly available poisons which are therefore untraceable. It turns out that she worked at Lark Hill an [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate Evil Scientist]], experimenting on the prisoners. She is killed painlessly by V in her sleep for her later remorse.

* John Sutherland, the central character of the 1970s BBC series Sutherland's Law played by Iain Cuthbertson, is the Procurator Fiscal of a fictional small Scottish town with a close resemblance to Oban. The procurator fiscal is a uniquely Scottish public official who has nothing to do with tax matters but combines the roles of District Attorney and Coroner.

* ''Series/KamenRiderExAid'''s fourth Rider, Kiriya Kujo, is a medical examiner. Though, given that he seems to show up whenever needed and also whenever he wants, he's probably off duty most of the time. Not surprisingly, given that a forensic pathologist may not have as much to do as a surgeon or a pediatrician. [[spoiler]]Also, he's officially dead for most of the series, so he probably ended up working fulltime with CR after that.[[/spoiler]]