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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"I know these tracks. These are white miners. Ten mules, two outriders. One of the outriders is fat. The other one has yellow hair. He dyes it."''
|'''Native American Scout archetype''', ''[[Deadlands]]''}}
So you have a character in the group who is nature-savvy. Maybe he or she is an [[Our Elves Are Better|Elf]] or [[Magical Native American]] or just some gruff [[Wild Man]] or [[Ranger]]-type. One way to establish that character as being [[Badass]] and not the [[Granola Girl]], is to show him to be a good tracker. Of course, any moron can follow footprints in the mud. Since our character is so good, he'll not only be able to tell you how many people were there, but any of the following also:
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* What was their last meal.
* The subject of conversation as they were walking.
* Alternatively, a
There are two ways the
See also [[Sherlock Scan]] and [[Hyper Awareness]]. May be [[Rule of Perception|represented]] via [[Fluorescent Footprints]].
Compare [[They Have the Scent]], with which this trope can overlap. If the Tracker is non-sapient then you may have a [[Super
{{examples
== Advertising ==
* Subverted in a car commercial where a hiker, hearing a car coming, demonstrates his scary-competency in tracking to his friends by putting his ear to the ground and identifying the approaching vehicle as a high-end sports car. The car that eventually passes by isn't a sports car, of course, but the point of the commercial was supposed to be that you shouldn't be able to tell the difference.
* A British car commercial had a tribesman observing vibrations and identifying the animals causing them from a great distance. He then spots a car passing in the distance and seems to think it must be a ghost because it's so quiet that nothing is vibrating.
* Another series of car commercials had random people placing their ears on the ground and managing to identify the brand, model, various specifications ''and even the color'' of the car.
* Either a case of terrifying competency or overlooked logic: in the ''[[Samurai
▲== Anime & Manga ==
▲* Either a case of terrifying competency or overlooked logic: in the ''[[Samurai Seven|Samurai7]]'' anime, Kyuzo puts his ear to the ground and can hear the bandits approaching. Only one problem: the Nobuseri are giant mecha. That fly.
* [[Inuyasha]] has a preternatural sense of smell, keener even than Shippo's, though not as keen as his older brother Sesshomaru. It's still keen enough to track someone by scent ''while running'', detect the clash of magical auras, and detect Kagome's arrival through a trans-temporal portal from at least half a mile away.
** The last one is especially jarring, since it is simply not possible to smell something unless the air that carries the scent comes all the way from there to you.
** Don't forget his heightened sense of hearing, once shown comically when he overhears what Shippo is whispering about him from a distance of a couple hundred feet.
* Ears from ''[[Vinland Saga]]'', courtesy of his...[[Exactly What It Says
* Especially early on in the series, Gon from ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'' was talented at tracking, being able to locate shapeshifting foxes who specialized in stealth in the middle of a dense forest at night.
* Shampoo from ''[[Ranma
* In ''[[Azumanga Daioh]]'' Mayaa found his way to
== Comic Books ==
* Laughed at in the Scrooge McDuck story "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff" (a part of ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck]]'' entirety), where Scrooge's uncle Angus tries to act like one of these by trying to hunt down the villains by broken tree branches. Young Scrooge and Goklayeh point out that the villains would have to be fairly incompetent to hit the only tree in miles' reach, and set out to mock him by 'tracking' the villains by noticing a single bent cactus spine and ''a disturbed grain of sand''.
{{quote|
** Donald's nephews demonstrate this skill often, though they can be tricked.
* In [[The DCU]], Tomahawk has this ability, unerringly following a trail invisible to everyone else across a dinosaur-infested jungle in ''[[The War That Time Forgot]]'' mini-series.
* Nearly all Native-American superheroes:
** [[X
** Arak
** [[Legion of Super-Heroes (
** Owlwoman
** [[Spider
** [[
* The [[Silver Surfer]] has cosmic sense that allow him to (if narration is to be believed) track a single atom on the other side of a galaxy. That one just moves straight into [[A Wizard Did It]].
* The [[Black Panther]] doesn't take it to comical lengths, but he can still track a robot through a devastated war zone by seeing how the rubble has been displaced from where the patterns of explosions would place it.
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* [[Secret Six|Thomas "Catman" Blake]] claims to be [[Informed Ability|the greatest tracker on Earth.]]
** Turns out to be true in a later storyline.
{{quote|
* The original roster of the third incarnation of ''[[X-Force]]'' consisted of [[Wolverine]], [[Opposite
* Sabretooth and Wolverine are both considered to be excellent trackers, even without their heightened senses.
== Film ==
* Aragorn does this in ''[[The
** Far more realistic in the book, where Aragorn is only able to notice signs because the hobbits had dropped their cloak-clasp as a sign on the way before they escaped, and had been carried away from where the main battle was. Even then, Aragorn is only able to deduce fairly basic information from the signs, and outright admits that a lot of what he sees doesn't make sense unless he acknowledges that a few pertinent facts will have taken place elsewhere, or will otherwise have left no visible signs. Nevertheless, he does have impressive tracking skills, which is justified by having been raised and lived as a Ranger of the wilds of Eriador. He does mention having limits, being unwilling to continue the chase across the plains of Rohan at night, as the trail is harder to see compared to when they were in the forest and the risk of losing it in the dark is too great. Also the only reason he finds Pippin's lorien leaf clasp in the book is because Pippin ran from the Orcs to drop it away from them, so the clasp wouldn't be trampled and hidden. In the movie, Aragorn finds the clasp after it's been trampled and buried in the ground. At another point, he's completely baffled by what he sees, because he's never encountered Ent-tracks before.
** The original novel also mentions how he tracked down and captured Gollum, one of his most impressive feats. It had been decades since the only solid clue of Gollum's location had gone cold!
* Prince Humperdinck does it on the location of the duel between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black in ''[[The Princess Bride (
** According to the book version, Humperdinck actually ''can'' track a falcon on a cloudy day.
*** A bit of [[Fridge Brilliance]], though, in that the unmarked corpse of Vizzini, coupled with an odorless vial nearby, may very well have indicated that it ''had'' to have been iocaine powder, as no other poison has that trait.
* Hawkeye from ''[[The Last of the Mohicans
** [[Badass Grandpa|Hawkeye's Dad]] Chingachgook determines it was Ottawa who ravaged the settlements based on the shape of the moccassin-print. Then they track their footprints down the middle of a ''stream''.
** After the girls are captured, the Mohicans track them up the side of a solid granite hill after spotting a deliberately-turned leaf. (see the Aragorn example [[Older Than They Think|above]]).
** [[Mark Twain]] had a lot of fun lampooning the [[Adaptation Distillation|original book]] for this. See [http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/writings_fenimore.html On The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper], possibly the world's first blog entry. It's troperrific.
{{quote|
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Mulan]]'', the Huns are able to identify the movement of the Imperial army simply by analyzing a lost doll (although it's a joint effort of four or five commanders, and makes a reasonable amount of sense given the setting.)
* They don't get any scarier than Anton Chigurh from ''[[No Country for Old Men]]''.
** Less scary, but just as competent is [[Deadpan Snarker|Colonel Carson Wells, Ret.]] from [[No Country for Old Men|the same]].
{{quote|
Carson Wells: Took me all of three hours. }}
* In an ordinary movie, either [[Big Bad|Angel Eyes]] or [[Designated Hero|Blondie]] would be one. But in ''[[The Good, the Bad
* Subverted in ''[[Night
* Parodied in ''[[The Aristocats]]''. Napoleon the dog is able to tell his sidekick Lafayette the size, type, and condition of the pair of squeaky shoes he hears, and then:
{{quote|
Napoleon: Why they're bla- now how would I know that? }}
** Later, he correctly identifies the sound of a one-wheeled haystack.
* Billy, the [[Magical Native American]] from ''[[Predator]]'', does this several times throughout the movie. As does the Predator itself, but it has the advantage of technology.
* Featured in the truly abysmal movie ''[[The Hunted]]'', in which Tommy Lee Jones' character tracks Benicio Del Toro's character, using footprints left by the "untrackable" moccasins Del Toro's character is wearing. Please note that no shoe is "untrackable" if someone is wearing it and walking, though.
* ''[[Maverick (
* Sniffers of ''[[Push]]'' kinda qualify in that they can tell everywhere an object has been and who has used it by sniffing. It's a psychic power though, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
* ''[[Van Helsing]]'': "It's carnivorous. Whatever it is, it appears to be human. I'd say he's a size seventeen, about three hundred and sixty pounds, eight and a half to nine feet tall, he has a bad gimp in his right leg, and, uh... three copper teeth." The last clue subverts the trope in that he only knows this because the monster is standing right behind Anna, but the rest of his analysis is played straight.
* The angel Gabriel in ''[[The Prophecy (
* Walter Crow Horse, sheriff of the Native American reservation in ''[[Thunderheart]]'' tries to convince the FBI that a footprint left at a murder site was of a man who walked like a white man, which the prime suspect doesn't do. The FBI remain unconvinced so he proceeds to tell one of them about his own weight, eating habits and ankle holster from footprints.
** When the FBI agent sarcastically asks how much change was in the man's pockets, the sheriff gives that information too. Given that Crow Horse is a [[Deadpan Snarker]], one assumes that he's joking.
* In ''[[Rabbit Proof Fence]]'', the 'school' employs an Australian Aboriginal tracker Moodoo. When the girls run away, they do what they can to conceal their tracks, yet he manages to follow them. (It's implied that he deliberately lets them get away from him.) The DVD commentary reveals that the ''actor'' who played the tracker could do the same thing.
* Etain (Olga Kurylenko) in ''[[Centurion]]''. She tracks the Romans relentlessly through the whole movie, even after they use every trick they know, including riding river rapids. One of the Romans remarks, each time, "How does she ''do'' that?"
* In ''[[Butch Cassidy and
* In ''[[Rango]]'', [[The Quiet One|Rango's deputy Wounded Bird]] can ''[[The Nose Knows|smell]]'' blindess. Or an enlarged prostate.
* In the [[Cyberpunk]] movie ''Circuitry Man'', there are these two cops who keep showing up in pursuit of the main characters, all the way across the U.S. They're clearly rather incompetent
* Part of the advertising for ''
* The title character of Dersu Uzala (subject of a book and two movies) is a real-life hunter and super-tracker in the Russian far east.▼
== Jokes ==
* This trope is parodied in the following joke:
{{quote|
** In a variation on the joke, an Indian presses his ear to the ground and says "Buffalo come." The non-Indian members of the party, impressed, ask him if he can hear the vibrations. " {{spoiler|No. Ground sticky}}."
* In another joke a group of hunters come across tracks in the woods. They argue about the details of the animal that left them until one mans leans down and claims he's determined the animal's age and zodiac sign. When the others join him {{spoiler|they're all hit by the train}}.
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* [[Sherlock Holmes]] did this ''a lot''.
** In the very first story, ''A Study In Scarlet'', he provides this description of the murderer:
{{quote|
::: His explanation to Watson follows shortly:
{{quote|
{{smallcaps| Holmes:}} "Why, the height of a man, in nine cases out of ten, can be told from the length of his stride. ... I had this fellow's stride both on the clay outside and on the dust within. Then I had a way of checking my calculation. When a man writes on a wall, his instinct leads him to write about the level of his own eyes. Now that writing was just over six feet from the ground. It was child's play."
{{smallcaps| Watson:}} "And his age?" I asked.
{{smallcaps| Holmes:}} "Well, if a man can stride four and a-half feet without the smallest effort, he can't be quite in the sere and yellow. That was the breadth of a puddle on the garden walk which he had evidently walked across. Patent-leather boots had gone round, and Square-toes had hopped over.
{{smallcaps| Watson:}} "The finger nails and the Trichinopoly," I suggested.
{{smallcaps| Holmes:}} "The writing on the wall was done with a man's forefinger dipped in blood. My glass allowed me to observe that the plaster was slightly scratched in doing it, which would not have been the case if the man's nail had been trimmed. I gathered up some scattered ash from the floor. It was dark in colour and flakey -- such an ash as is only made by a Trichinopoly. I have made a special study of cigar ashes }}
* William of Baskerville does it too, at the beginning of ''[[
** In the film, he's a Scarily Competent Tracker, too, but he does not reveal his deductions till later on.
* One of the guardsmen in [[David Gemmell]]'s book ''[[Literature/Legend|Legend]]'' does this. Basically he retells how a fight happened, move by move, just from the footprints in an alleyway.
** Well, that and the bodies scattered around. I imagine that makes it somewhat easier.
* Many of the Tanith First-And-Only from the ''[[Warhammer
** Mkoll is a
*** Let us not forget the scene in Sabbat Martyr, where Mkoll {{spoiler|Essentially has a '
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** In
** Vimes
** Gaspode might also qualify in ''[[The Fifth Elephant]]'', although admittedly, he ''is'' a dog.
*** Dog or not, his highly-detailed description of Ginger (as discerned by smell alone) from ''[[
** Granny Weatherwax parodies this trope in ''[[
* In the ''[[Wheel of Time]]'', we're treated to Lord Gareth Bryne, who's grandfather allegedly could track a shadow over a river. While the grandfather never actually comes on-screen, the Lord manages to track Suian and Leane across at least half a continent, only because Leane insisted that they ask for directions barely a quarter of the way there. When he successfully finds them, a random soldier informs the women that he has arrived, which is the cue for Suian's priceless and dumbfounded reaction.
** There was the line about the old soldier who could track yesterday's wind across stone by moonlight. Although it's obviously hyperbolic.
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** Though Moiraine quickly realizes that she was actually tracking Egwene, who she had once healed with The Power and thus could now naturally sense the location of.
** Although he was helped considerably by his sense of smell and being in a 'shadow world', Hurin tracked an army, not by following them, but actually finding out where they will be in the future, and arrived at the destination where the army was going to camp with time to spare in The Great Hunt.
* Alekhin from the [[Louis L'Amour
* Basically everyone from the book ''[[Lonesome Dove]]'', but especially Deets, who is somewhat of a [[Magical Negro]]. He can identify someone's horse AND that that person was riding it just from the hoofprints.
** It should be pointed out that the person in question was an old trailmate of Deets and he favoured a certain type of horse and had a distinct way of riding it.
* [[Voltaire]]'s character Zadig has an example at some point, but it gets him imprisoned due to what is either poor communication skills or smartassery (on his part).
* In Andy Hoare's [[White Scars]] novel ''Hunt for Voldorius'', Kholte is angry because although he managed to detect a squad of the Raven Guard, famed for their ability to
* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "[[
* Famous Shoes the Kickapoo tracker in the ''[[Lonesome Dove]]'' series can track pretty much anyone, anywhere. He can also walk further and faster than you can ride your horse.
* In the [[Belisarius Series]] the title character has Abbu, a bedouin chief who is doing mercenary service as a scout with the Roman Army.
** Rana Sanga has a Pathan who does this for him. In his case Rana Sanga captured him in battle. The Pathan serves him on the grounds that any warrior great enough to capture him must be worth serving.
*** The fact that Belisarius is able to fool the Pathans tracking him and escape, makes him an instant legend among them.
* Muldoon shows himself to be one in ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. He finds the crashed tour car after the T-Rex kicked it, the last known place where Tim and Lex were known to be. After finding Tim’s watch left behind, he notices that while the face is cracked, the band is uninjured, deducing that given the toughness of watch face crystals, it could have only broken during the attack, but the uninjured band means that the T-rex didn’t tear it off the kid. So Tim must have taken off the broken watch after the attack, meaning he survived.
** The paragraph before, though, Muldoon subverts this. He remarks that it’s usually very difficult to track anything after an animal attack, and while most people assume the aftermath of such encounters are filled with blood and gore, the truth is that there’s usually nothing, since a predator can easily kill a child just by shaking them to snap their neck, making it look to the detectives as though the child just walked out.
* ''[[Twilight (
* The titular rangers from [[
* Lew Wetzel (a/k/a "Deathwind") and Jonathan Zane in Zane Grey's ''The Last Trail.''
* ''[[
* The ''[[Redwall]]'' books have a number of these. One in ''Triss'' is even able to keep tracking her target even after they go through a river by picking out broken reeds that they left in their path.
▲*
* ''[[Labyrinths of Echo]]'' has Masters of Tracking, who can follow the quarry's footsteps, movement for movement. Which e.g. allows to use transport, but the tracker may drive only if quarry drives. Also, the quarry feels the presence (symptoms range from mild headache to fatal in extreme cases). And this normally works only if the quarry is alive. The trackers, even real masters, become obsessed with the chase and fairly oblivious to surroundings, which makes them very vulnerable to ambush by anyone else, unless accompanied by a bodyguard (Lesser Secret Investigations Force lost their first Masters of Tracking this way).
** [[Our Ghosts Are Different|Ghosts]] see a glowing line (height and other parameters being individual) trailing after any living human, so if a ghost wants to follow someone, there's no way to shake it off. Which is part of the reason why the provincial unit of Secret Investigations composed entirely of ghosts did consistently show the best performance, despite having to oversee the biggest and busiest trade port in the kingdom.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* Bra'tac and Teal'c in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' sometimes do this, most notably in "Maternal Instinct". O'Neill, [[Deadpan Snarker|being]] [[Genre Savvy|O'Neill]], lampshades it. Bra'tac is not amused.
** [[Stargate Atlantis|Ronon Dex]] from the spinoff show has managed this a few times. Once he didn't even ''look at the ground.'' That could have been bad blocking, however.
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** "It's gonna start raining in one minute." A minute later, he opens his arms, looks up and it starts raining. Locke ''wins''.
* Benton Fraser in ''[[Due South]]'', taking the stereotype of all Mounties well past the point of parody. This usually involves whatever the best [[Gross Out]] is, such as [[Fingertip Drug Analysis|licking something horrible]] and [[Absurdly Spacious Sewer|diving into the sewers]].
* The Huntsman ([[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|natch!]]) does this in ''[[The Tenth Kingdom]]'': after emerging from the Dwarf mines, he puts his ear to a boulder and is able to hear through the rock (complete with cool shrieking hawk sound-effects) all the way to the Royal Estate where Virginia and Tony are walking. Either something they say is indicative of their location, or he can tell how far the sound traveled, because he's able to know exactly where they are.
* ''[[The Adventures of Brisco County Jr]]'' has Lord Bowler. "Dirt talks to me, Brisco."
** And Brisco himself.
{{quote|
''Comet whinnies''
'''Brisco''': No, I don't know why they left the road. }}
** And there was the episode where they were being tracked by a U.S. army Black OPS team. Bowler knew the tracker and said that he was able to track anything over land, no matter what.
* Parodied in ''[[Father Ted]]''. When Ted has to locate a lost sheep, he tells Dougal that sheep instinctually head north and gives a long explanation as to why. When Dougal then asks which way is north Ted [[Incredibly Lame Pun|sheepishly]] admits he doesn't know. He then tries to press his face to the ground, and gets a face full of mud for his trouble, while Dougal is able to figure out where the sheep is simply by following ominous noises.
* Connor on ''[[
* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' took a different spin on this, but nonetheless subverting it all to hell. House's team is attempting to figure something about their delusional homeless patient's identity and their only clue is sheaf of artwork she had drawn. House is able to take one look and interpret each of the details in one drawing to mean that the patient was in a car accident in Philadelphia on Oct. 22, 2002. The team's shock at discovering that House is a
** Played straight in the season 3 episode Whac-A-Mole. House tells his team that he knows what is wrong with the patient, but wants to give them a chance to figure it out for themselves. He writes something down and seals in an envelope and tells them they can do one test each. After they fail to diagnose the patient, House opens the envelope which, instead of saying the diagnosis, says which test each team member had done, and in Foreman's case, ''why'' he had done it (too stubborn to take House's hint.)
* [[Chuck Norris]] does this in ''[[Walker, Texas Ranger]]''. He is traveling through the forest, gets on the ground, sniffs some dirt, takes a lick, and then states in a matter of fact voice that, "A plane crashed here."
* Lampooned during the ''[[Top Gear]]'' Small Japanese Car Hunting episode when Richard Hammond proudly uses his "tracking skills" to follow Jeremy's 4x4 through a forest.
{{quote|
* Ian Edgerton, from ''[[Numb3rs]].''
* The black tracker Fuller uses to pursue the bushrangers in the second episode of the ''[[
* One episode of ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' had an Apache tracker come in to consult on a case that had Native American themes. The man was able to deduce an insane amount of detail, including seeing from Hotch's footprints that he wore a gun on one ankle, because his footsteps were slightly deeper on that side.
* Despite the show's title, the protagonist of ''[[
* Hawk, the Native American deputy, can do this in ''[[Twin Peaks]]''. However at one point he leads everybody to the wrong cabin in the woods.
== Newspaper Comics ==
Line 186 ⟶ 184:
*** The best part about that comic was the dropped spear nearby; indicating that his "friend" already spotted the cavalry and high-tailed it out of there without telling him.
* This troper recalls a cartoon from a magazine(?) with the traditional Indian with his ear to the ground, reeling off the usual list of facts ("one of the horses is lame", etc.), concluding with "A satellite is passing over their position."
== Tabletop Games ==
* In ''[[Dungeons
== Video Games ==
* Apparently {{spoiler|Raiden}} turned into one in between ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''s 2 and 4 {{spoiler|in addition to having [[Took a Level
* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', the hunter class can track things... which basically means they have radar. Confusingly they can only track one type of monster at a time: if they're tracking humanoids, they won't be able to track beasts.
** [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|Druids in cat form]] can track humanoids.
** Certain elixirs and [[Health Food|food items]] grant the ability to track specific creature types.
** Through a certain combination of class, profession choice, and quests, it is possible to be able to track ''everything'' in the game. This is only possible if you roll a Hunter (Track Beasts, Humanoids, Dragonkin, etc, etc) who is an Herbalist (Track Herbs) and a Miner (Track Minerals), and who has also managed to fish up a "Weatherbeaten Journal" which, upon reading, allows you to Track Fish.
* Similar to ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', in ''[[
* Geralt can be this a few times in ''[[The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
* Ezio Auditore is the most prominent one in the ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' series - [[Justified Trope|Justified]] by his genetic Eagle Vision/Sense ability.
== Web Comics ==
* Subverted by Belkar in ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'', who as a ranger is supposed to be a scary-accurate tracker (and was hired as one) but actually has no skill at all at tracking - instead,
▲* Subverted by Belkar in ''[[Order of the Stick]]'', who as a ranger is supposed to be a scary-accurate tracker (and was hired as one) but actually has no skill at all at tracking, and has on more than one occasion forgotten it's what he was supposed to be doing.
** Well, actually Belkar seems to have some tracking ability, but he is too stupid and uncaring to use it....until Roy points out (falsely) that the person Roy wants him to track has insulted Belkar.
{{quote|
*** The next strip, however, Belkar forgets that he was tracking anybody.
* Parodied early in ''[[
▲* Parodied early in ''[[Eight Bit Theater]]'', Fighter attempts to find their way out of the forest by following tracks. When asked to describe the ones who made these tracks, [[Winnie the Pooh|he gives perfect descriptions of himself and Black Mage.]]
* [[Deconstructed Trope|Deconstructed]] by ''[[Abstruse Goose]]'' [http://abstrusegoose.com/384 here].
*
== Western Animation ==
Line 221 ⟶ 214:
*** Well ''Zuko'' tracks the airborne Gaang up one side of the world and down the other throughout season 1. From sea. And then there's Jun and her Shirshu, Nyla, who is the living embodiment of this trope, capable of tracking ''anything, anywhere'' on the planet by ''scent'' alone.
* ''[[Darkwing Duck]]'', being a mix of Batman and Sherlock Holmes, knows how to locate villains with one seemingly inconsequential clue. His [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] [[Evil Counterpart]] Negaduck lampshades this when he overtakes the city and moves into the tallest skyscraper:
{{quote|
'''Darkwing Duck''': Giant...flag?
(Flag with Negaduck's face is outside the window, at least 5 stories high, easily visible from the bridge) }}
* [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] in the ''[[Ace Ventura]]'' animated series: Ace finds a footprint and gives a detailed description of the owner's age, size, health, and appearance. Turns out the guy dropped a drivers' license next to the footprint.
* [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] in some episode of ''[[Family Guy]]'', where Peter and Chris are out hunting deer in the woods (it's winter). Peter sees some tracks, which he then begins to follow. Chris points out that they're SNOWMOBILE tracks, but lo and behold, they eventually come across a deer, drinking coffee from a thermos. It hears them, gets on its snowmobile, and drives away.
* Scourge (whose very title is 'tracker') and his huntsmen of ''[[Transformers Generation
* ''[[The Wild Thornberrys]]'': Nigel Thornberry, despite his slight [[Bumbling Dad]] appearance, is a formidable
* The Map of ''[[Dora the Explorer]]'' knows where everything is [[Fridge Logic|even before it gets there]].
** May be a [[Justified Trope]] in that it's, you know, a map.
== Real Life ==
Line 238 ⟶ 230:
** An extreme example: About every other group will try to "trick" Mantracker by doing something sneaky, like walking backwards through mud, or attempt to double back on their footprints. And almost without fail, Mantracker will take one look at their work and ''instantly'' spot the deception.
* To someone who doesn't know much about the subject, it can be somewhat ''scary'' how much a paleontologist can learn about a given dinosaur just by looking at its fossilized tracks: whether it was alone or in a group (usually; sometimes it's impossible to tell if the other tracks came at a different time), whether it was walking or running, how ''fast'' it was walking or running, the type of ground it was walking or running on, the general type of dinosaur if not the exact species (and through that, the approximate time period in which the tracks were made).
* [
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