History Main / AnonymousPublicPhoneCall

* ''Film/DarkCity'': After John wakes up, Dr. Schreber calls his hotel room from a phone booth, trying to explain very quickly what's happened to him and why he has to run ''right now''.

** After Mike learns that a GoodSamaritan was killed by Hector due to his actions, he scours the desert to find the body. Once he does, he calls the police on a payphone to report it, claiming that he found it while he was illegally hunting in the area.

** In "The Mad Woman In The Attic" part two a man, claiming to be a priest,, calls the police from a railway station payphone claiming to be able to confirm a man suffering from Amnesia after seemingly jumping off a train is the SerialKiller "Sweeny", as he told him he murdered a woman and dumped her body in a river in confession. The police are able to track the phone call to the platform but by then the caller has departed on the train. Searching the river the do find another body. [[spoiler: As Fitz quickly figures the caller is in fact Sweeny, who is trying to remove the one witness to his crime]].

* ''Film/TheFugitive'': Pay phones are a crucial part of Kimble's search for his wife's killer, as he needs to keep moving to evade the US Marshals. He's shown placing calls to various suspects, claiming to be tracking them for a high school reunion; the one time he uses a house phone is to lure the Marshals there, as the house belongs to [[spoiler:Sikes, the one-armed killer]].

* In the 1928 Literature/LordPeterWimsey mystery ''The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club'', a mysterious phone call is made to the victim's apartment by a man using a fake name, and the police trace it to a public phone in a train station. A sign of how new the trope was at the time is that Lord Peter's first response to this news is to ask if the operator can identify the caller, with the police officer he's talking to having to clarify that it's one of the new type of automatic pay phone with no operator.

* Literature/TheExecutioner series
** Mack Bolan would often disguise himself as a telephone repair linesman while doing a reconnaissance and phone-tapping of his target, and sometimes he'd use this equipment to call them directly. He will also make regular contact with undercover FBI agent Leo Turrin by sending him a collect call from a [[Literature/DonQuixote Mr. La Mancha]]. Turrin would refuse to accept the call, then leave his office and contact Bolan via a public phone booth.
** In ''Into the Maze'', Able Team are in Mexico City and have to make contact with Stony Man without going through the US embassy, which they think has been compromised. They also have to transmit a lengthy recorded transcription of an interrogation. So they make use of the services of the ''Oficina de Telefonos Larga Distancia'' which provides private booths where you can make long distance phone calls. Unfortunately the [[GovernmentConspiracy NSA has been compromised as well]] and tells the people hunting them where they are.
* In ''The Brotherhood of the Rose'', by David Morrell, a spy who's under surveillance uses a phone booth to make contact, but in a subversion the call is meaningless and the actual message is a code written as graffiti on the booth.

** The [[ColdSniper Bradfield Sniper]] from "Synchronicity" calls the police twice during his killing spree, first to mock them about never being able to stop him, next to demand an enormous ransom (which he doesn't even intend to collect its just a distraction whilst he kills someone else), with both calls being traced back to payphones on different sides of town.

* Spoofed in ''Film/{{Paddington}}'': When Mr. Curry undergoes a MistreatmentInducedBetrayal, he calls the Browns from a phonebooth with a badly altered voice to tell them where Paddington has been taken by the BigBad. Mr. Brown nonchalantly greets him by name, despite the former's protests he is "Murry", and eventually tells the rest of the family that it's "Mr. Curry, doing a silly voice".

The older sister trope to BurnerPhones. This is when a character, usually in an area with only a few services and no internet, uses a public phone, like a pay phone or phone booth, but the other character who is being called is unsure on who's calling, as the caller has made a disguised or anonymous call. Public phones have the caller labeled as anonymous at worst, and labeled as the pay phone at best. Because of how the caller is kept private or anonymous, the caller can disguise themselves or come off as someone else, or disguise the activity taking place. This complicates PhoneTraceRace, making it harder for others to track them down. Though, it is the only way to trace people who have gone missing on a road trip. Alternatively, this trope could be used to play a PrankCall on others.

In RealLife, pay phone and phone booth calls keep the caller anonymous, but the pay phone can be tracked down by the Police and other services. Authorities are not stupid and the few remaining pay phones in modern countries are extremely likely to be under camera surveillance - combine this with the plethora of CCTV cameras in modern society they can very likely track you to and from your starting location and the pay phone making it very unlikely you'll actually be entirely anonymous if you do this.

In RealLife, pay phone and phone booth calls keep the caller anonymous, but the pay phone can be tracked down by the Police and other services. Authorities are not stupid and the few remaining pay phones in modern countries are extremely likely to be under camera surveillance - combine this with the plethora of cameras in modern society they can very likely track you to and from your starting location and the pay phone making it very unlikely you'll actually be anonymous if you do this.

* ''Film/{{Juggernaut}}''. When the bomber rings up to demand a ransom, the police do a PhoneTraceRace only to find it's just a relay, attached earpiece-to-mouthpiece to another public phone which is receiving another call from the bomber's actual location.

* Inverted in Music/LimpBizkit's video for [[Film/MissionImpossible2 "Take a Look Around"]], where Fred and the guys are called to a pay phone from an anonyomous source that gives them a mission to complete.

%%[[folder:Comic Strips]]
%%* In one ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' strip where Calvin runs away from home in the middle of the night, he is seen calling his parents from a pay phone, speaking in broken Spanish and claiming an alternate identity.
%%[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Strips]]
* In one ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' strip where Calvin runs away from home in the middle of the night, he is seen calling his parents from a pay phone, speaking in broken Spanish and claiming an alternate identity.
[[/folder]]

This trope is largely a DiscreditedTrope now, due to TechnologyMarchesOn, as public phones are now fairly difficult to find (the UK still has a few thousand telephone boxes dotted around the isle, however).

* In ''The Brotherhood of the Rose'', by David Morrell, a spy who's under surveillance uses a phone booth to make contact, but in a subversion the call is meaningless and the actual message is a coded message written as graffiti on the booth.

** Mack Bolan would often disguise himself as a telephone repair linesman while doing a reconnaissance and phone-tapping of his target, and sometimes he'd use this equipment to call them directly.