He is nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy" due to the nocturnal nature of his crimes, his tendency to bite his victims' bodies, the uncommon size and sharpness of his teeth and other apparent oral fixations.

In his early forties, Dolarhyde sees the William Blake painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, which gives voice to his alternate personality.

To facilitate the process of "becoming", Dolarhyde previously traveled to Hong Kong in order to have a rendering of the Blake dragon tattooed across his back and has two sets of false teeth made.

One set is normal for his day-to-day life, while the other – based on a mold of his grandmother's deformed teeth – is ritualistically incorporated into the dragon persona he assumes during his killings.

Due to the nocturnal nature of the murders and Dolarhyde's tendency to bite the corpses of his victims with the malformed dentures, the tabloid The National Tattler nicknames him "The Tooth Fairy", a monicker he hates.

Graham had caught Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer whom Dolarhyde idolizes, and to whom he sends a "fan letter" describing his murders.

Graham visits Lecter in the Baltimore State Forensic Hospital for the Criminally Insane, hoping that the doctor would be able to help identify the killer or at least assist in creating a psychological profile.

Desperate to stop killing and keep Reba safe from the Dragon, Dolarhyde flies to New York, where he goes to see the original Blake watercolor at the Brooklyn Museum and devours it, believing that doing so would destroy his alter ego.

In a final effort to save Reba, Dolarhyde attempts to kill himself in a motel bathroom by hanging himself from the shower rod, but the noose breaks before he can suffocate.

Trace evidence has led to dead ends, the killer's partial fingerprint has no match on file, and authorities can find no connection between the targeted families.

Hearing a shotgun blast, McClane feels around Dolarhyde's burning living room and discovers what appears to be his dead body, which is incinerated in the subsequent blaze.

Rather than faking his death after being tracked down, Dollarhyde attempts to kill Reba McClane (Joan Allen) because he believes she is cheating on him, only to be caught up by Graham, who rescues her.

Like Dolarhyde, BTK engaged in necrophiliac acts with his victims' bodies; he also wrote letters to the police alluding to being under the control of an outside influence, which he referred to as "Factor X".