Basic Trope: A police sketch or wanted poster of someone ends up looking inaccurate.
- Straight: Bob is a police sketch artist who is asked to draw a picture of Alice, the person who robbed and then beat up Charlie. The sketch is very inaccurate.
- Exaggerated: The sketch of Alice somehow ends up looking like a bunch of dancing weasels.
- Downplayed: The sketch of Alice is mostly accurate, but some details are wrong.
- Justified:
- Charlie didn't give a very precise description of Alice.
- Bob is a Terrible Artist. Don't even ask how he got his job.
- Alice isn't even human, but Bob assumes she is since he wasn't told otherwise, resulting in the sketch looking like a human with Alice's features.
- Inverted: The sketch is very accurate, but Alice sees it on the news and for whatever reason says it doesn't look anything like her.
- Subverted: Charlie sees the sketch and says it doesn't look like Alice, but later finds out he was remembering incorrectly.
- Double Subverted: Alice actually looks much less accurate than she does there.
- Parodied:
- Alice turns on the news and sees a police sketch of herself. She starts freaking out, not because she realizes she's being tracked by the police... but because the sketch looks nothing like her.
- Charlie starts describing Alice. Bob reveals he was just drawing a picture of a sailboat the whole time.
- Bob draws photorealistic sketches in a Thick-Line Animation show.
- Zig-Zagged: Some of Bob's police sketches are accurate, and some aren't.
- Averted:
- There is no police sketch/wanted poster.
- Any police sketches/wanted posters are accurate.
- Enforced: To add some humor (or even conflict) to the scene where they attempt to catch a criminal.
- Lampshaded: "They just can't get my nose right!"
- Invoked: For some reason, Charlie intentionally gives false information to Bob as to what Alice actually looks like.
- Exploited: Because the police sketch is inaccurate, nobody can identify Alice, making her harder to catch.
- Defied: Bob asks for as many details of Alice as possible to avoid making mistakes.
- Discussed: "That's not what she looks like at all!"
- Conversed: "Why do police sketch artists always suck at their job in fiction?"
- Implied: The police sketch/wanted poster is not seen, but someone says that it doesn't look like the criminal.
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