Whenever an investigative character looks up information in a telephone directory and find the one piece of information they've been looking for, they'll rip out the entire page from the phone book. A lot of the time, the directory was one of those found next to a public telephone, which mean that our Sam Spade or Intrepid Reporter has just ruined the chances of anybody else looking up anybody who's name begins with B. Perhaps it helps to
show how rushed and straight to the point they are but you'd think people in those professions would have gotten used to carrying around a pen and notepad.
This can be
Truth In Television, although it might just be
Life Imitates Art. In either case, it can get very frustrating after the Oh-don't-know-how-many-times one has gone to look up something in the Phone Book at a public pay phone only to discover several pages missing, including the one you needed. (Of course, this is getting rarer as phone books at public telephones, and indeed public telephones themselves, are increasingly hard to come by.)
Examples
- In one episode of The New Adventures Of Superman, there was a plot point where Clark Kent was looking for information on an individual but it wasn't in the phone book nor yellow pages. It was however in the white pages and he promptly tore a page out of a copy in the phonebooth.
- In Back To The Future, Marty searches for Doc in a phonebook in a cafe and rips the entire page out for one number. The cafe owner doesn't seem to mind; maybe he was used to seeing it happen all the time in Bogart flicks.
- Although he does respond to Marty holding the page and asking him a question by interrupting with a snippy "Are you gonna order something, kid?"
- "You can vandalize my property as long as you buy stuff!"
- Done by one Rock Star in an episode of CSI; he was tracking down an ex-groupie who had given birth to his son.
- The Terminator does this in the first movie with the page for "Connor". Since it feels no pain, has no emotions and will stop at nothing to accomplish its mission, it has no compunction about causing damage to phone books.
- Or killing every Sarah Connor listed.
- Fridge Logic kicks in here, though - although that incident helps to establish how ruthless the Terminator is, it makes no sense given that Terminators have computer brains and digital photographic recall.
- Toaster does this in The Brave Little Toaster.
- Bender does this in Bender's Big Score when he is searching for Fry in the past.
- Hilariously taken to the extreme in Knowing when Nicolas Cage's character crowbars an entire door (which of course has information written on it) off of it's hinges and takes it with him. Well, he was in a hurry.
- Done in The Dream Team by Billy when he and the group are searching for their missing psychiatrist in a hospital. One of the group, Henry, does note that what Billy did is vandalism, but Billy shrugs it off and it's never brought up again.
- Intrepid Reporter Carl Kolchak regularly did this in Kolchak The Night Stalker. In one episode he went to find a number in his office phone book but discovered he had previously ripped out the page. He used the phone book of fellow reporter Ron Updyke - and ripped the page out of it too.
