History Main / SuperIdentikit

* Played with in an episode of the [[AnimatedAdaptation animated]] ''WesternAnimation/MenInBlack'' series: The "sketch" artist used the witness's face instead of a sketchpad to physically recreate the criminal's appearance.

* Played oh-so-straight on ''Series/{{Castle}}'': Nearly every episode has the cast picking out a suspect based on sketches that could only feasibly have been drawn if the subjects were posing for them.

* In the film ''[[Film/DangerDiabolik Diabolik]]'', Valmont has one of his girls describe Eva so that one of his goons can use a device to create a picture of her. The effect is...interesting to say the least. Aside from the girl giving a very hard to follow description that no-one could possible draw a likeness from, the face on screen appears to change at whim. Why, one could even assume that the images we saw on the device were nothing more than pre-rendered animation, but [[SpecialEffectsFailure that would just be silly.]]

* In ''Sketch Artist II: Hands That See'', the only survivor of a SerialKiller-rapist is a blind woman. The titular character manages to create a perfectly detailed sketch (complete with hair color) based on her feeling the guy's face. Naturally, when the murderer is caught and brought to trial, the defense starts raising doubts about the sketch's accuracy... until it's repeated just as perfectly with a random guy off the street.
* In ''Film/TheUsualSuspects'', a sketch artist is brought in to assist in describing the ramblings of a hospitalized, horribly burnt Hungarian gangster. Despite the language barrier (with the description being relayed through a translator because the artist doesn't know any Hungarian), he successfully draws a perfectly accurate picture of Keyser Söze/[[spoiler:Verbal Kint]].

* On ''Series/TheCloser'', on one occasion, Brenda brandishes accurate pictures of her detectives (who were identified being where they shouldn't be) to prove her point. On other occasion, she's seen grimacing over a ridiculously vague drawing. The strangest version came when her wacky, airbrained sister decided she would describe the killer from her "psychic vision." Incredibly, she successfully describes . . . Chief Pope. [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Whom she'd never met.]]

* Subverted in an episode of ''Series/{{Dexter}}''. The title character has just killed, in cold blood, a man who was about to commit murder; he is now stressed about a sketch being made from a description given by a young witness -- the boy who was about to be killed. Dexter gets a glimpse of the image before it is completed; it seems to resemble him and throws him into a further anxious frenzy. However, at the end of the episode the full picture is revealed to be a sketch of Jesus; the traumatized and delirious boy conflated the two as his savior.

* Subverted in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', in "[[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0339.html C.P.P.D. Blues]]". A police artist draws two highly-detailed portraits of the lead suspects in a serial murder case (Nale and Thog) from eyewitness descriptions alone - and is immediately fired because his realistic drawings look nothing like the simple art style the OOTS world exists in, rendering them useless for identifying anyone.

* Played with in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/QuackPack'', when WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck thrashes the living-room while playing with his nephews' VR-videogame, which he'd been admonishing them about earlier, he makes up a description for an assailant to cover for it. This turns out to perfectly match someone - a known criminal with an unbelieveably brutish appearance. Involved in numerous crimes, nobody had ever dared to bear witness against him - and he's then arrested based on Donald's bogus claims.

* In ''Film/TheUsualSuspects'', a sketch artist is brought in to assist in describing the ramblings of a hospitalized, horribly burnt Hungarian gangster. Despite the language barrier, he successfully draws a perfectly accurate picture of Keyser Söze/[[spoiler:Verbal Kint]].

* Webcomic subversion: See [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0339.html this strip]] of the ''[[Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick Order of the Stick]]''.
** Double-subversion. Those are race-pic from the core manual-style pictures of the exact subjects!

* The "funky description" shtick was also done in ''Film/JohnnyEnglish'', where the aforementioned spy makes up an "aggressor" to cover his [[SelfOffense accidentally knocking out of a security chief]]. The "aggressor" looks like Ronald [=McDonald=]'s EvilTwin, yet a matching person appears in the final scene, reading a newspaper.
* In ''Film/SketchArtistIIHandsThatSee'', the only survivor of a SerialKiller-rapist is a blind woman. The titular character manages to create a perfectly detailed sketch (complete with hair color) based on her feeling the guy's face. Naturally, when the murderer is caught and brought to trial, the defense starts raising doubts about the sketch's accuracy... until it's repeated just as perfectly with a random guy off the street.

* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'': Like many tropes on NCIS, this is played straight and subverted depending on the writer and plot requirements. Once this is played for laughs when Palmer's attempt at describing his attacker ends with a super villian-esque result. Other times, this is played incredibly straight, like when [=McGee=] created a program that successfully de-aged a suspect about ten years. Still other times, this averted when they get a vague pencil sketch that could be anybody.

** There was one particularly grating example: in "Face Lift", they had a picture of a freckle-faced young girl grinning a toothy, squinty grin. They took us through the early stages of artificially ageing her, starting to make her look like a freckle-faced grinning adult. Then later when we saw the final result it was a picture of an unsmiling, closed-mouthed, wide-eyed young woman, which couldn't possibly have been extrapolated from the earlier picture.
** They also once managed to put together a recognisable face out of a nine years decayed skeleton; bones provided a gender and possible ethnicity, dental estimated the age. Then some computer work and a tissue database put muscles and other features on the skull, the shapes suggested more ethnicity information leading to hair and eye colour, and Archie did the rest.

** Subverted in "Necrophilia Americana." Mac asks a young boy who witnessed a murder to sit down with a sketch artist. He ends up perfectly describing a character from one of his comic books. His traumatic experience caused him to confuse the events in the comic with reality.
** "American Dreamers" had a reconstruction somewhat like the second ''CSI'' example above, but it was played much more realistically. The intact skeleton was more than a decade old, but had been sheltered from the elements. Instead of using any kind of age progression, Aiden draws a pencil sketch before using hands-on techniques to "flesh out" the skull and sculpt the face with clay. Someone who'd met the young man did recognize him but had never gotten his name, plus he had no record and wasn't in any database so they never did identify him, subverting the trope.
** Aiden herself was reconstructed after her charred body was found in “Heroes”. Hawkes used computer programs to build the face after the flesh was removed. He knew the technique doesn’t produce exact matches, so when he showed Mac that it was Aiden, he came prepared with her police records photo and showed how it matched her skull. This is a real life technique to confirm a match.