History Main / IdentificationByDentalRecords

* ''Series/{{Treadstone}}''. Samantha [=McKenna=] shoots an intruder in her house, and because they're afraid of calling the police she and her husband 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 and teeth. "It won't prevent an ID forever, but it'll delay whoever finds him."

* In a Münster episode of the German police series ''Series/{{Tatort}}'' [[spoiler: a man faked his death in a house fire in South Africa 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.]]

Dental indentification lets the audience know the death was gruesome without necessarily showing the body. It also adds another layer of complexity to the plot. Was the body really correctly identified? What if the records are missing?

Sometimes in fiction a character has his teeth surgically altered so he can fake his death. Such surgery is easily identifiable in RealLife, at least in modern times, and in most cases the best way to fake a death through dental ID would be to [[JustEatGilligan switch the records]].

* A rather silly version of this pops up in ''Film/TimeChasers''. An alternate-timeline verson 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''.

* Invoked in the Swedish film ''Ondskan''. [[spoiler: Erik corners [[PrivilegedRival Silverhielm]] and threatens to remove all his teeth so there would be nothing 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 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/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 dentalwork (anyone living in the Soviet Union would have stainless steel dentistry) revealing that he's a foreigner.

* 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 bodycount by removing other identifying features from their victims.

* ''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.

* 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 the 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]].

* The four Ted Bundy victims found at his Taylor Mountain dump site were identified by dental records -- mainly because all they found were skulls and jawbones. One of the pieces of evidence presented at a trial was [[ManBitesMan bite marks on one of his victims]] which were compared to Bundy's dental records.

Compare TheGirlWhoFitsThisSlipper. If a relative is brought in to positively identify the body, see IdentifyingTheBody.

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.]] If a relative is brought in to positively identify the body, see IdentifyingTheBody.

Compare TheGirlWhoFitsThisSlipper.

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.]]

[[caption-width-right:179:"Also, he never flossed in the back."]]

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

* Used for deceitful purposes at the end of ''Film/Novocaine''.

->''"Mom and Dad are going to have to call up kindly Doctor So-and-so. Pick up your dental records. Wanna know why? ''Because there's gonna be nothing left of your face''."''

->"Mom and Dad are going to have to call up kindly Doctor So-and-so. Pick up your dental records. Wanna know why? ''Because there's gonna be nothing left of your face''."
-->--'''Tyler Durden''', ''Film/FightClub''

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

* 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/DavidMitchell 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."

* 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 [[FakingTheDead faked her death]] by incinerating a literal meat puppet. The coroner who performed the identification was also complicit in Mustang's deception.]]

* Subverted in a post-war ''{{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.]]

* Several LordPeterWimsey stories invoke this trope, though the identification is usually subverted.

* 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 DavidMitchell 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."

* 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 ''{{QI}}'', and DavidMitchell 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."

* ''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 along with the heir's parents, and his records were lost in a fire.

* ''Brat Farrar'' 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 along with the heir's parents, and his records were lost in a fire.

* Referenced in the Creator/KevinSorbo 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.]]