History Main / PhoneTraceRace

* In ''Film/AirForceOne'', when the President calls the White House from a staffer's mobile phone, the White House operator naturally assumes it is a prank call...until the President tells her to trace the call and note it is a staffer's phone.

* Subverted in ''Film/InTheLineOfFire'', in that the bad guy stays on the line for quite a long time. The trace goes through, but to the wrong location.

* In ''Film/HighAndLow'', police are trying to trace the kidnapper via this method.

* Attempted in one episode of ''Series/PoliceSquad''. The call is ended before the trace is completed, and when they show the phone that they had 'tapped', there is a faucet attached to the handset.

* ''Series/HawaiiFive0'' (remake): Is done by a drug ring holding schoolchildren hostage.

* The aptly named Trace Tracker program in ''{{Uplink}}'' provides a very stereotypical depiction of this trope, as befits the game's ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation of HollywoodHacking.

* [WesternAnimation/TheDickTracyShow Dick Tracy]] gets a phone call from Stooge Viller saying that he and Mumbles have kidnapped the Retouchables (Hemlock Holmes' crew of police officers) for ransom. Tracy patches the call to Hemlock via their two-way wrist radios and somehow Hemlock is able to trace where the call came from.

* WesternAnimation/DickTracy gets a phone call from Stooge Viller saying that he and Mumbles have kidnapped the Retouchables (Hemlock Holmes' crew of police officers) for ransom. Tracy patches the call to Hemlock via their two-way wrist radios and somehow Hemlock is able to trace where the call came from.

* ''ThePerilsOfPenelopePitstop'' episode "The Boardwalk Booby Trap" has Penelope trapped in a phone booth headed for a fish cannery, so she calls the Ant Hill Mob (Pockets answers with a phone in his jacket) which leads to the "You don't say!/She didn't say" gag. Clyde tells Zippy to trace the call to see where Penelope is. Zippy does so by entering the phone itself and traversing the phone line to Penelope's booth.

* Happens all the time in ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'', but it was a plot point of an entire episode. In "911", the squad gets a call from a 9 year old girl who says she's locked in a room, she's been abused, and does not know where she is. Olivia stays on the line with her and works with the squad to try and narrow down the area to where the girl might be being held. The number itself is untraceable, but a tech expert in cell phone mapping eventually is able to narrow down the cell phone tower the girl is using.

* ''Film/WarGames''. After David accidentally hacks into NORAD and takes over its main computer system, he hangs up before they can trace the connection and determine his location. When the {{AI}} computer calls David back the FBI manages to trace the calls and find him.

* Used in ''Film/{{Goldeneye}}'' to figure out where [[spoiler: Trevalyen's]] base is located.

In order to justify this trope in a modern day setting, the call is often bounced through a bunch of alternate locations, and the back-tracing of the call to it's actual source will take time.

As technology marches on, this trope has morphed into tracing the computer connection, but the essence remains the same. Is often a source of artistic license, since (unless the work is set in the 1960s or earlier) the phone company can use their computer records tell the cops what numbers called a given phone, and when, even months after the call.

If the call was long distance, they'd have to send someone to the central office that connected the call to the city, then trace it back to wherever it was connected from, and so on. This is why if someone was making obscene phone calls long distance, it would require many repeated calls to trace back the caller because of the time involved to trace, say, a call over mechanical switches from Pasadena, California to Ellicott City, Maryland. Traces from major cities, say, Los Angeles to Baltimore or Chicago, even over mechanical circuits would be much faster, however because the calls didn't have to go through intermediate cities.

A horror and police procedural trope where the police set up a phone trace to catch a criminal but they need them to stay on the line for a certain amount of time. The amount of time will vary, yet somehow the criminal will know the exact amount of time and [[DangerouslyGenreSavvy purposely hang up]] just before the police can get a trace. If it's a particularly high-tech setup, expect to see a computer generated map showing the tracing process.

* Invoked in the RealTrailerFakeMovie [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg4ztJ32iPI The Waldo Ultimatum]].
* [[http://www.cracked.com/article_18385_7-bullshit-police-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies_p2.html Cracked's references to misconceptions about it]].

As digital computers became more powerful, a switch basically was a mainframe computer with a bunch of phone lines plugged into it instead of a bunch of racks connected by mechanical relays. As a result, tracing a call means nothing more than going to the console, entering the phone number and asking who is connected to it. Eventually with the development of SS7 switches, it got to be sophisticated enough you could get it yourself in real time for a few dollars extra through Caller ID.

* The ''{{Archer}}'' episode "El Secuestro" has ISIS trying to keep Pam's kidnappers on the phone long enough to trace the call (and usually failing, due to Archer or Malory's tactics). The two minutes needed to trace the call is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by Gillette, who says Malory cut money from the tracing program to pay for her new conference table.