History Main / IdentificationByDentalRecords

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': "The GReen Man" has a bunch of skeletons found behind a wall. They're thought to date from the previous century, but then one is found to have 20th-century dental work.

** "The Meat Puzzle" features a macabre variation. A suspect in a serial-killer case is said to have died years ago, and dental records confirm this... but other evidence point to the man being still alive. The forensics team tests the blood type of both the teeth and the corpse, and finds that they don't match. Meaning that the killer faked his own death all those years ago by removing his own teeth and gluing them in the corpse's skull.

* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'':
** One episode features an odd variation. The one suspect in the murder case is said to have burned to death three years ago, and dental records confirm this... but the forensics team, on a hunch, tests the blood type of both the teeth and the corpse, and finds that they don't match. Meaning that the killer faked his own death all those years ago by removing his own teeth and gluing them in the corpse's skull.
** In another episode, Tony is arrested for murder when he is tied to a bite mark on a dismembered leg via dental impressions. [[spoiler:It turns out that it was part of a chain of evidence set up by Abby's revenge-obsessed lab assistant, Chip.]]

* In ''Manhwa/{{Veritas}}'', this is how Lightning Tiger's remains are identified after he's burnt to a crisp.

* {{Double subver|sion}}ted in one episode of ''Series/{{Castle}}''. The killer yanked out the victim's teeth to prevent dental identification and threw her in a bonfire to get rid of the body, but he didn't account for the fact that the victim has a titanium dental implant, and the team is able to identify her by tracing the serial number.

* In ''Film/StuartLittle'', it is stated that Stuart's birth parents (who are mice) were killed in a grocery store incident where [[DoomedSupermarketDisplay a stack of soup cans fell over]] and crushed them. The bodies had to be identified by their dental records.

* ''Literature/BratFarrar'' {{discusse|dTrope}}s this but eventually {{avert|edTrope}}s it. The protagonist is impersonating a long-lost heir; it turns out that he doesn't have to deal with matching the heir's dental history, as the dentist who could have recognized him died, and were his records destroyed, during the Blitz.

* ''WesternAnimation/Archer'': [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in the episode "The Wind Cries Mary". The horrifically burned corpse of [[RememberTheNewGuy ex-ISIS agent]] Lucas Troy is discovered in a crashed plane after he killed 4 of his fellow ODIN agents and stole $10 million and a case of uranium, only identifiable by his dental records. It turns out Luke faked his own death, having paid a homeless person to get his teeth drilled to match Luke's dental records.

* A unique variation appears in the ''[[Series/{{Vera}}]]'' episode "Sandancers". A DNA sample from a deceased soldier is needed to identify a blood stain, but the victim's family had already cleaned or disposed of everything that could yield a sample. Then Joe asks if the mother kept any of his baby teeth.

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[[quoteright:179:[[Webcomic/TheDreamer https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/46_issue_14.png]]]]
[-[[caption-width-right:179:"Also, he never flossed in the back."]]-]

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A crime drama trope. Sometimes a dead body will be so devastated (e.g. burned or decayed beyond recognition) that identifying the victim by their appearance is impossible. The investigators have no choice but to use the victim's dental records to find out their identity.

A common trope in police procedurals, medical mysteries, and forensic shows. Identifying bodies from dental records is TruthInTelevision, but it works a lot better in fiction than in real life. See the [[UsefulNotes/IdentificationByDentalRecords Notes.]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]
* In ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', when Roy Mustang is led to believe that Maria Ross assassinated Maes Hughes, he cuts off her escape and incinerates her to the point that the corpse can only be identified in this fashion. [[spoiler:Subverted in that Mustang knew she was innocent all along and [[DeathFakedForYou faked her death]] by incinerating a literal meat puppet. The coroner who performed the identification was also complicit in Mustang's deception.]]
* Subverted in ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'': [[spoiler:Takano, who vanishes on the night of Watanagashi, has her burnt body identified thusly when they find it stuffed in a well. However, she's the BigBad who faked the corpse after all.]]
* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', [[spoiler: at the end of the first arc, Maria's jawbone is identified this way.]]
* In ''{{Manga/Loveless}}'', Seimei's body is identified this way after it is mangled beyond recognition before the start of the story. [[spoiler:In one of the biggest MindScrew moments of the last decade, Seimei turns up alive and well later on and apparently faked his own death, and it's heavily implied they pulled this off by switching his records with the real victim who died in his place.]]
* In ''Manhwa/{{Veritas}}'', this is how Lightning Tiger's remains are identified after he's burnt to a crisp.

[[folder: Comic Books]]
* Examined in ''ComicBook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns'', where Batman dives after a figure that he believes to be Two-Face, who had seemingly been rehabilitated but now plotted to destroy the Gotham Twin Towers, which he falls from thanks to his disloyal henchmen.
--> ''The impact is tremendous. Even bone is turned to powder. Not much of a corpse left. Mostly liquid. Problem is...there might not be any fingerprints. Even dental records would probably be useless.''
* Sherman Shackley ("Shark" of the Terrible Trio, low-tier Batman villains) [[FakingTheDead fakes his death]] by throwing a corpse stolen from a morgue to sharks, but not before ''pulling out his own teeth'' and throwing them in the water too, ensuring the police would identify the corpse as his.

[[folder: Fan Fic]]
* A variant in ''FanFic/{{Symbiosis}}'', [[{{Anime/Pokemon}} Delia Ketchum]] and her husband's bodies were so charred, they had to identify them by their [[TechnologyMarchesOn DNA]] to tell which was which.

* ''Film/TheWholeNineYards'' the main character has a ChekhovsSkill: he is a dentist, and can thus can fake deaths by altering the teeth and dental work of corpses to resemble those of living people. Averted in the sequel ''The Whole Ten Yards'', as Lazlo Gogolak isn't fooled for a second.
* ''Film/WildThings''. Police find some teeth by the beach and use Suzie Toller's dental records to identify them as hers and confirm her death. [[spoiler: Later it's revealed that she knocked out her own teeth to fake her death.]]
* Earl Talbot Blake fakes his death in ''Film/{{Ricochet}}'' by switching his dental records with another inmate, and killing said inmate after escaping from prison.
* In ''Film/{{Bushwhacked}}'', Reinhart Bragden's alleged remains are identified by his dental records. His teeth had been pulled and planted at the scene of a fire in order to fake his death and frame the protagonist Max Grabelski for arson and murder.
* A rather silly version of this pops up in ''Film/TimeChasers''. An alternate-timeline version of Lisa is killed and her body left totally unrecognizable from a plane crash, meaning police have to use dental records to confirm her identity. The trouble is that '''A:''' There isn't really any "database" for finding dental records, so investigators need to have an idea of who their John/Jane Doe is before they can compare records, and '''B:''' Lisa is alive and well in the timeline this occurs in, so the cops had no reason to compare dental records against those of someone who ''isn't dead''.
* Referenced in the Kevin Sorbo vehicle ''Paradox'', in which a cop from a {{Magitek}} world who hates using magic visits our world and is fascinated by the idea. He's later inspired [[spoiler: to check the teeth of a murder victim, and uses the fact they show evidence of dentistry at all to conclude that the victim came from the science universe.]]
* In ''Film/StuartLittle'' it is stated that Stuart's birth parents (who are mice) were killed in a grocery store incident where [[DoomedSupermarketDisplay a stack of soup cans fell over]] and crushed them. The bodies had to be identified by their dental records.
* Used for deceitful purposes at the end of ''{{Film/Novocaine}}''.
* Invoked in the Swedish film ''Film/{{Evil|2003}}''. Erik corners [[PrivilegedRival Silverhielm]] and threatens to remove all his teeth so there would be nothing to identify after killing him. [[IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim He doesn't go through with it.]]
* After a bungled bank robbery in ''Film/CharleyVarrick'', Charley breaks into his dentist's office after hours and removes the dental records of a deceased gang member, to prevent the police from identifying her body. He also decides to switch the records of himself and his unreliable partner, which later allows him to pass off the latter's dead body as his own.

* ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix'': Attempted in the few times when the bodies were decomposed beyond recognition. It doesn't always work.
* Several Literature/LordPeterWimsey stories invoke this trope, though the identification is usually subverted.
** In the short story ''In the Teeth of the Evidence'', the dentist who makes the initial identification is working from written records and is so disturbed by the state of the badly-burned body that he performs only a cursory examination. It's only after the coroner finds hyoscine in the remains that he re-examines the teeth and determines that [[spoiler:the corpse's teeth had been altered so that they would match the dental records of the killer, an evil dentist who had hoped to fake his own death.]]
** ''The Nine Tailors'' also featured a failed dental identification.
* Dental identification is also a key plot point in Creator/AgathaChristie's novel ''One, Two, Buckle My Shoe''.
* In Rupert Holmes' novel ''Swing'', a character is killed in a fiery car accident and identified via dental records. [[spoiler: It later turns out that the character instead switched dental records with the woman she killed in order to appear to have died.]]
* ''Literature/BratFarrar'' by Creator/JosephineTey discusses this but eventually averts it. The protagonist is impersonating a long-lost heir; it turns out that he doesn't have to deal with matching the heir's dental history, as the dentist who could have recognized him died, and his records destroyed, during the Blitz.
* In the ''Literature/NancyDrew Files'' book "Till Death Do Us Part'' a woman plots to kill Nancy's boyfriend Ned Nickerson and pass him off as her husband so she can collect the husband's inheritance. Stealing Ned's dental records was part of her fiendish scheme.
* ''Literature/GorkyPark''. Three bodies are found in Gorky Park, Moscow -- shot and with their faces cut off. Each was also shot in the face, not as a coup-de-grace but to destroy their teeth. However, a clue survives in that one of the characters had gutta-percha in his dental work (anyone living in the Soviet Union would have stainless steel dentistry) revealing that he's a foreigner.
* ''The Brotherhood of the Rose'' by David Morrell. One of the protagonists -- on the run from the world's intelligence agencies for having killed inside a TruceZone -- visits a Mexican dentist and asks to have all his teeth removed. It turns out to be a trap and his surrogate father Elliot recaptures him while he's under the anesthetic. Elliot asks his 'son' why he wanted his teeth removed, and is shocked to find he intended to commit suicide; as his body would never be identified, his surrogate family would think he had successfully escaped, thus being spared the pain of his death.
* In the novella ''Angels of the Silences'' by Simon Bestwick, two teenage girls return as ghosts after being murdered, but they look just as they did when they were alive and are torn between whether to move on or try to return to their human lives. Eventually, [[spoiler:the killer abducts their friend. The girls rescue her and set the house alight, killing the man by slowly roasting him over the flames. They are then able to stage their "deaths" and finally choose to move on to the next world - their bodies had actually lain in the house for months since they were killed, but are now so badly burned that they can only be identified by dental records, and no one knows how long the girls have really been dead.]]
* In Creator/DorothyGilman's ''Literature/TheClairvoyantCountess'', when Madame Karitska gets enough evidence, Lt. Pruden has a grave exhumed to double-check with this.
* Subverted in a post-war ''Literature/{{Biggles}}'' short story in which he receives a report of the death of an acquaintance of his from wartime service, whose charred skeleton was found in the wreckage of an aircraft owned by said wartime acquaintance, which he was flying in a solo speed-record attempt. It's only because Biggles insisted upon it that dental records were checked at all, at which point the incident ceases to become a crash investigation and turns into a homicide, because not only do the dental records not match but the body has a bullet embedded in its skull. [[spoiler:It turns out that the guy had picked up a passenger, a young aviation enthusiast who just wanted a joyride, then shot him in the head and hit the silk. The body was supposed to provide [[FakingTheDead the ultimate alibi]] while the perpetrator committed a jewellery heist. He ultimately ends up running out into the path of a truck whilst fleeing the police, and dental records end up being used a second time to identify what's left of him.]]
* In the Joe Gunther novel ''Borderlines'', after a body is discovered in a burned house it's announced that while they think they have a positive ID on him they'll have to wait until dental records confirm it. Since the novel was written in the 80s this is expected to take several weeks, [[spoiler:and the records eventually show that he's not who they thought he was, and that man was actually alive. The real victim was someone who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.]]
* In the Series/{{Longmire}} novel ''The Dark Horse'', the murder victim was shot in the head in his isolated ranch house, which was then burned down around him. By the time the authorities got there, he could only be identified by his teeth. Given a twist in that [[spoiler:the victim's brother]] is a dentist, and therefore in a position to [[FakingTheDead falsify his dental records]]...
* In ''The Blue Nowhere'' by Jeffrey Deaver, an early potential suspect is cleared when the detectives discover that his decomposed body had been found years before, confirmation having been made via dental records. [[spoiler:The killer, being a computer hacker who specialized in databases, had changed his official records to match that of the corpse]].

* Frequently on ''Series/{{Bones}}'', where they deal with corpses in advanced states of decay and/or dismemberment.
* Also frequent in ''Series/WireInTheBlood'', where they deal with deeply disturbed people who either frantically mutilate their victims or cold-blooded sociopaths min-maxing their way to maximal body count by removing other identifying features from their victims.
* Referenced on ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' when Barney says that, given the things he knows about Goliath National Bank, he'll never be fired, but that he might one day "wash up on shore with no fingerprints or teeth."
* ''Series/{{CSI}}'': several episodes, being a long-running cop show. For example "Bad To The Bone": skeletal remains are identified as Marissa Cleary from her dental records.
* ''Series/TheBill'' Several episodes. For example Season 5, Episode 6: "Life And Death" a man has a drug overdose after confessing to a murder. He is identified by dental records, allowing the police to track down his family.

** One episode featured an odd variation: The one suspect in the murder case is said to have burned to death three years ago, and dental records confirm this... but the forensics team, on a hunch, tests the blood type of both the teeth and the corpse, and finds that they don't match. Meaning that the killer faked his own death all those years ago by removing his own teeth and gluing them in the corpse's skull.
** In another episode, Tony is arrested for murder when he is tied to a bite mark on a dismembered leg via dental impressions. [[spoiler: Turns out it was part of a chain of evidence set up by Abby's revenge-obsessed lab assistant, Chip. ]]
* There's an UrbanLegend that the reason you're told to adopt the "brace position" or "crash position" in case of a plane crash or emergency landing is to preserve your dental records if you die. This was debunked on ''Series/{{QI}}'', and Creator/{{David Mitchell|Actor}} commented that he'd never believed it in the first place, because surely they'd just say, "In the unlikely event of the plane crashing, I think we can all agree you'd like to be identified. Bite down hard on your armrest."
* Brought up on ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' when Mac and Charlie want to fake their deaths. They leave a few of Charlie's teeth in a car. This is not how it works.
* Mentioned in an episode of ''Series/{{Hustle}}'': a deceased criminal, quoth Morgan, "threw himself under a goods train a week after his release... there was so little left, by the time they scraped him off the track, they had to identify him from dental records". (Their goal is to make it ''seem'' like they NeverFoundTheBody, and that he actually [[FakingTheDead faked his death]] to abscond with the stolen gold.)
* An episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' had them discover skeletal remains where the teeth had been purposely removed by the killer to prevent positive ID.
* One episode of ''Series/TheMentalist'' had a body burned in a car identified by dental records. As it turned out, [[spoiler:the dentist providing the actual records was helping the "victim" fake their death and supplied falsified records. The body was an unclaimed cadaver]].
* In the GrandFinale of ''Series/{{House}}'', [[spoiler: House fakes his death by swapping his dental records with that of a drug addict whose body has been disfigured beyond recognition by a fire. House had been seen in the burning building moments before it collapsed, but the addict was a full head shorter than House, so it's possible the dental records were checked in this case specifically because the identification was otherwise doubtful.]]
* Averted on ''Series/BreakingBad'' where Hank and Gomez can't identify burnt corpse because "teeth do this popcorn thing at a certain temperature."
* In the failed CW pilot for ''Aquaman'', a young man found floating in the ocean is identified as an air force pilot who disappeared in 1945. Unfortunately, even if you accept the ridiculous BermudaTriangle [[AlienAbduction reappearing abductees]] premise of the pilot, [[http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Aquaman_2006.aspx?Page=7 dental records do not work that way.]]
* DoubleSubverted on one episode of ''Series/{{Castle}}''. The killer yanked out the victim's teeth to prevent dental identification and threw her in a bonfire to get rid of the body. But he didn't account for the fact that the victim had a titanium dental implant, and the team is able to identify her by tracing the serial number.
* On ''Series/TheListener'' a prima ballerina goes missing and her car is later found abandoned outside the city near a lake. In the car, the police find some blood and a tooth. They use dental records to verify that the tooth belonged to the missing woman and suspect that her abusive husband followed her out to the lake, hit her hard enough to knock out a tooth, killed her and dumped the body in the lake. However, Toby then discovers that [[spoiler: the woman lost that tooth a month before and kept it as a souvenir. She then planted it and the blood to fake her death and frame her husband]].
* In a Münster episode of the German police series ''Series/{{Tatort}}'' [[spoiler: a man faked his death in a house fire in UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica by having his dentist tamper with his dental records. Since Professor Boerne was the one thus fooled into signing a false death certificate he took this personally and went to the extra trouble and expense of reconstructing the face from the skull found in the burned-down house to identify the victim's real identity.]]
* This is a DefiedTrope in ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' episode "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E2TheHundredDaysOfTheDragon The Hundred Days of the Dragon]]", which is about a foreign dictatorship's EvilPlan to KillAndReplace William Lyons Selby, a leading Presidential candidate, with an EvilDoppelganger. After the fake Selby assassinates the real one and begins impersonating him, the conspirators cremate Selby's corpse to prevent this trope, and we later see the impostor canceling a dental appointment.
* ''Series/{{Treadstone}}''. Samantha [=McKenna=] shoots an intruder in her house, and because they're afraid of calling the police she and her husband Doug take the body out in the woods to be buried. Samantha is an ER nurse, so she knows they have to remove the hands, feet (with an electric saw) and teeth (with pliers). "It won't prevent an ID forever, but it'll delay whoever finds him."
* ''Series/PersonOfInterest''. While working as a CIA hitman John Reese is sent to kill a supposed traitor, but finds out he's only being killed because YouKnowTooMuch. Reese gives him a ticket to Canada and says he will fake his death, then takes out some pliers.
-->'''Reese:''' One more thing. Boss is gonna need proof of death. Couple of molars should do it. Care to do the honors?
* ''Series/IronFist2017''. In "Felling Tree With Roots", Ward Meachum walks into his father's apartment to find him using a hammer to smash out the teeth of two Hand assassins to delay identification.

[[folder: Tabletop Games]]
* An interesting subversion of this can be found in most versions of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' regarding the spell Speak With Dead. In most cases, the spell required that the corpse's jaw was intact in order to function (basically the caster was briefly animating the corpse for the purpose of answering some questions) so a common practice was to remove the lower jaw of anyone you killed and didn't want blabbing about it later.

[[folder:Videogames]]

* A variation in ''Webcomic/TheDreamer'': a body is identified [[http://thedreamercomic.com/comic.php?id=396 by its false teeth.]]
--> Lord Almighty, it's Joseph, alright. I made those teeth just for him.
* In ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'' [[http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1662 #1662,]] after Hannelore idly wonders if she has a clone somewhere, she has a disturbing fantasy about said clone as a mercenary for her CorruptCorporateExecutive mother. The clone's about to kill her (to fake her own death using the matching DNA), and promises not to pull out her teeth to prevent dental identification while she's still alive.

[[folder:Web Video]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

[[folder:Film]]

* In ''Film/StuartLittle'' it is stated that Stuart's birth parents (who are mice) were killed in a grocery store incident where a stack of soup cans fell over and crushed them. The bodies had to be identified by their dental records.

* A variation in ''Webcomic/TheDreamer'': a body is identified [[http://thedreamercomic.com/comic.php?id=396 by its false teeth]].

* In ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'' [[http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1662 #1662]], after Hannelore idly wonders if she has a clone somewhere, she has a disturbing fantasy about said clone as a mercenary for her CorruptCorporateExecutive mother. The clone's about to kill her (to fake her own death using the matching DNA), and promises not to pull out her teeth to prevent dental identification while she's still alive.

* Serial killer [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Haigh John Haigh]], a.k.a. [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast the Acid Bath Murderer]], was convicted partly on the evidence of a victim's dentist, who was able to identify her dentures. (Haigh's [[NotEnoughToBury usual method]] of disposing of evidence wasn't as effective against plastic.)

* A variant in FanFic/{{Symbiosis}}, [[{{Anime/Pokemon}} Delia Ketchum]] and her husband's bodies were so charred, they had to identify them by their [[TechnologyMarchesOn DNA]] to tell which was which.

* In the failed CW pilot for ''Aquaman'', a young man found floating in the ocean is identified as an air force pilot who disappeared in 1945. Unfortunately, even if you accept the ridiculous BermudaTriangle [[AlienAbduction reappearing abductees]] premise of the pilot, [[http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Aquaman_2006.aspx?Page=7 dental records do not work that way]].

* UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Blaschke dentist]] was used by the Soviet special forces to identify his incinerated corpse they found outside the Führerbunker in Berlin.

* ''Manga/DetectiveConan'': In the case of Mermaid Island, arranging for a surreptitious dental record swap is how [[spoiler: the suspect [[FakingTheDead faked her death]] and framed the very victim whose records she swapped with]], but eventually both Conan and Heiji see through the deception.

* Invoked in the Swedish film ''Ondskan''. [[spoiler: Erik corners [[PrivilegedRival Silverhielm]] and threatens to remove all his teeth so there would be nothing to identify after killing him. [[IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim He doesn't go through with it.]]]]