History Main / TheyHaveTheScent

* In ''RustyAndCo'', [[http://rustyandco.com/comic/25/ why you should not smoke: monsters hunt by smell.]]

* ''{{Mythbusters}}'' busted pretty much all of the traditional methods of throwing a dog off the scent: just about the only place you might conceivably lose a scent dog is in an urban environment, where there are too many other scents for the dog to concentrate on yours.
** Unless they're using a dog that has been specially trained to ignore all other city scents, as they demonstrated. In which case you're screwed.

* ''SchlockMercenary'' makes use of the eponymous [[TheBlob amorph]] ability to track by scent. Of course, [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-08-05 this works only so far]].

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** That is, the tracking dogs had to be primed with a scent, and the scent they were given was of the girls. The police dogs caught the third scent mixed up with them, and knew from training that that was the real target [[spoiler: Wild Bill's]], and tried to hunt that down. The others track what they were given to track. Where the two diverge, they disagree. When they find the scent of the girls minus the third scent, they all chase that down. The search party makes the obvious assumption when the dogs lead them to what is found- a blood-covered ScaryBlackMan with the mangled corpse of a white girl in each hand. PoorCommunicationKills.

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* The titular hero in ''BatmanArkhamAsylum''. With his (bat?)scanner he can extract separate essenses (like tobacco stains or alcohol vapors) and then pinpoint them in the surroundings to track the smoker/drinker.

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* In ''TheSpecialists'', [[http://thespecialistscomic.com/page-13/ the dogs start to bay once on the trail.]]

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* The titular shero in ''BatmanArkhamAsylum''. With his (bat?)scanner he can extract separate essenses (like tobacco stains or alcohol vapors) and then pinpoint them in the surroundings to track the smoker/drinker.

* ''Ice Age'': Invoked

* StephenKing's ''TheGreenMile'' plays with this. A group of dogs tracks the two kidnapped girls at the beginning of the story, but they get mixed up at the creek; two of them want to go in another direction. After the scent is reestablished, they go with the rest of the pack. Later, Paul figures out that it's because those two dogs weren't hunting dogs, and got the smell of the killer and the girls mixed up in their head, so that when the killer ditched the girls at the creek, they went in ''his'' direction, rather than where the girls were eventually taken by John Coffey.

This is also used in superhero comics wherein you have a hero with [[TheNoseKnows animal powers]], or with aliens/fantasy races with [[TheNoseKnows strong senses of smell]].

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* ''LordOfTheRings'': ''The Two Towers''
-->'''Aragorn''': [about the orcs] ''Their pace has quickened. They must have caught our scent. Hurry!''
** Inverted in that it is the orcs that are being pursued, and they've caught the scent of their pursuers (Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli) and are speeding up so they won't be caught.
* ''Ice Age'': Invoked
-->'''Sid''': ''My family abandoned me. They kinda migrated without me. You should have seen what they did last year. I mean, they got up early, and quickly tied up my hands and feet, and gagged me with a field mouse, and barricaded the cave door, and covered their tracks, and went through water so I'd lose their scent, and... and... who needs them anyway?''
* ''{{Willow}}'' has the hell dogs, which Bavmorda sends to track down the escaping nursemaid in the opening sequence. The nursemaid barely makes it to the water in time to drop the baby on a raft before the hell dogs are upon her.
* Maximus tracks Flynn this way in ''{{Tangled}}''. (Maximus, by the way, is ''[[AllAnimalsAreDogs a horse]]''.)

* ''{{Mythbusters}}'' busted just about all of the traditional methods of throwing a dog off the scent: just about the only place you might conceivably lose a scent dog is in an urban environment, where there are too many other scents for the dog to concentrate on yours.

* Max tracks Flynn this way in ''{{Tangled}}''. (Max, by the way, is ''[[AllAnimalsAreDogs a horse]]''.)

* Not exactly dogs, but in the opening cutscene of {{Halo}} 3 [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the Arbiter]] warns a group of humans: "We must go. [[KillerSpaceMonkey the Brutes]] have our scent."

* In {{Discworld}}, some assassins use scent bombs. A thin glass vial of peppermint oil or aniseed oil is shattered in a busy intersection, where hundreds or thousands of people will walk over it. Also, Moist Von Lipwig has an emergency escape plan (hatched after he heard the watch employs a werewolf) including detours through the butchering district and riding dung carts.
** It's mentioned that it's not just assassins, but also a reasonably sized proportion of the intelligent criminals in Ankh-Morpork; as the narrator goes on to mention, it's the kind of reaction you'd ''expect'' from a criminal underworld that's heard the Watch has a werewolf.
** Its never mentioned that assassins use scent bombs. They aren't part of the criminal underworld, and don't have to fear the watch.
***Unless of course they aren't sanctioned by the Assassin's Guild.