- Basic Trope: A character not answering his/her phone, emails, texts, etc. is an indicator that s/he is in some kind of danger.
- Straight: Alice hasn't answered her phone for days, hasn't answered emails or texts, and hasn't been seen on social media. Bob goes to check up on her, and finds her dead in the living room.
- Exaggerated: Alice hasn't been seen or heard from in years, and people are only now just beginning to get worried.
- Downplayed: Bob worries that Alice is angry with him for some reason when she doesn't respond right away to his texts.
- Justified: Alice is normally very good about returning calls and replying to texts and emails in a timely manner. So if she doesn't, something is likely to be wrong.
- Inverted: Alice normally returns calls, texts, and emails hours or days later. So when Bob gets a reply or a callback within 5 minutes, he knows something is up.
- Subverted:
- It turns out Alice was just busy.
- Alice was visiting her Country Cousin, and didn't have a cell phone signal.
- Alice went on retreat in the mountains, and either couldn't get reception, or was forbidden to have her phone on her person.
- Alice is on vacation.
- Bob finds Alice at home, alive and uninjured.
- Alice doesn't have any sort of telecommunications devices or social media.
- Double Subverted:
- She didn't tell anyone where she was going, and that caused them to get worried.
- She is, however, suffering from a serious bout of depression, and that's why she hasn't been answering her phone.
- Her neighbors haven't seen her in days, and start to get worried about her.
- Alice is put in danger during her vacation.
- Parodied: Alice tells Bob that she's going on vacation and may not have access to her phone/a Wi Fi signal for a while, but Bob doesn't get it and panics and declares her missing when she doesn't respond to the text he had just sent.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice doesn't have a cell phone, or a home phone, or email, or social media.
- Enforced: The writers are trying to give the first sign that Alice is in danger, so they have her not respond to her text messages.
- Lampshaded: "Hey, has anyone heard from Alice? She hasn't answered her phone in days, or replied to any of my texts."
- Invoked:
- Alice travels somewhere without a phone signal and doesn't tell anyone.
- Alice commits suicide, and turns off her phone first.
- Alice is too busy to answer the phone.
- Alice is depressed, or too upset by social drama to answer.
- Exploited: Alice wants people to worry about her, so she turns off her phone.
- Defied: Alice returns calls and replies to texts and emails ASAP.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Alice hasn't responded to her texts in a long time. I hope she'll be okay, she's one of my favorite characters!"
- Deconstructed: Alice doesn't respond right away, but Bob panics and reports her as a missing person. It turns out that Alice had her phone turned off to watch a movie, and Bob wasted police time.
- Reconstructed: It later turns out that Bob did have a good reason to worry, since there actually was a threat to the place Alice lives. While the threat either ended up being a false alarm or was not actually as dangerous as it seemed, Bob's intentions were understandable and so the police forgive him.
I haven't heard from you in days! Come on, let's go back to Suspicious Missed Messages so everyone else knows you're fine after all.
