Basic Trope: It is unrealistically easy to get accurate fingerprints.
- Straight: A detective takes a clear fingerprint from a cotton shirt.
- Exaggerated: A detective takes a clear fingerprint from a cotton shirt that was sitting at the bottom of a swamp for 6 months.
- Downplayed: A detective takes a fingerprint from a cotton shirt, but only with advanced computer heuristics does it become clear enough to get a match.
- Justified: A detective takes a fingerprint from a cotton shirt that was specially treated with an adhesive designed to capture prints.
- Inverted: A detective is unable to get a clear fingerprint even from a flat pane of glass.
- Subverted: A detective takes a fingerprint from a cotton shirt and has it analyzed, but it's not clear enough to get a match.
- Double Subverted: A detective takes a fingerprint from a cotton shirt and has it analyzed, but it's not clear enough to get a match, so he tries and succeeds on another article of clothing.
- Parodied: A detective takes a picture of the whole crime scene with his smartphone and runs it through the FingerPrint® app, which highlights all prints in the photo alongside mugshots of their owners.
- Deconstructed: A detective takes a fingerprint from a cotton shirt that is barely readable, but they try to use it anyway. The computer comes up with a low-probability match and the police waste time arresting and interrogating him, only to find that the have the wrong man.
- Reconstructed: A detective takes a fingerprint from a cotton shirt that is barely readable, but its size and shape still let them eliminate one suspect whose fingers are too small to have left it.
- Averted: The detective doesn't search for fingerprints, or only in places where they might realistically be found.
- Enforced: The criminal was originally going to be caught on camera pushing his victim down the stairs, but the producer wanted to show a cool scene of the police searching the fingerprint database.
- Implied: The detective identifies the criminal by his fingerprints. The audience doesn't see where they came from, but they saw that the criminal was wearing gloves during the crime.
- Lampshaded: A forensicist asks, "How on Earth did you get a print this clear from a cotton shirt?"
- Invoked: The victim, believing he is about to be assaulted, provokes the criminal into shoving him, thereby leaving a print to aid the police later.
- Defied: The criminal, realizing he left a print on his victim's shirt, takes it and burns it after leaving the crime scene.
- Exploited: A criminal places one of his victim's hands on the other victim's shirt to implicate the former.
- Discussed: "Forget what you've seen in CSI, rookie. You need a hard, flat surface to have even a chance of finding a good print."
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