History Main / PhoneTraceRace

* Similarly subverted in the first ''Film/MissionImpossible'' movie, when Ethan Hunt stays on the line just long enough for his call to get traced to London (but not to the specific address) just as planned. Down to the ''second'', even. The person he was speaking to realizes that someone of Ethan's skill wouldn't have allowed them to track him down unless he ''wanted'' them to. [[spoiler: Ethan is a fugitive, having been branded a traitor. Having just found the real mole, he wants the IMF to catch them.]]

* Used in ''Film/GoldenEye'' to figure out where [[spoiler: Trevelyan's]] base is located.

* ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}'' and ''Series/AdamTwelve'' have both used this on occasion to find victims, such as potential suicide cases who've called somewher and got disconnected.

* In * ''Film/{{Hounded}}'', Mr. Van Dusen is forced to resort to this after all the hell Jay and Mike put him through to find his wife's missing show dog, Camille. The Martin brothers catch on when he first tries this, and then come up with a plan to frame his son, Ronny, for Camille's disappearance by sneaking her into the pool house. The plan works.

* In ''Film/TheBourneSupremacy'', Jason Bourne speaks to Pamela Landy on the phone, and hangs up before they can trace his location. However, what he says before hanging up makes them realize he's directly in the area.
--> '''Landy''': What if we can't find [the person you want to meet]?\\

* ''Film/ThreeDaysOfTheCondor''. The CIA thinks they've traced Turner's whereabouts, but Turner has stolen a phone linesmen's kit and wired fifty phones together.
* ''Film/{{Juggernaut}}''. The police are shown racing to where the call from the bomber is coming from, only to find a bunch of public phones wired together.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePerilsOfPenelopePitstop'' episode "The Boardwalk Booby Trap" combines this with ReachingBetweentheLines, where Penelope is 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.

* Set up in ''Film/{{Red}}'': Cooper is encouraged by the tracer to keep Frank Moses on the line, prompting Cooper to string out the conversation. [[spoiler:Frank was calling from Cooper's house and had made the call specifically to allow a complete trace to reveal that fact to Cooper]].

* ''WesternAnimation/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.

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

'''Bourne''': It shouldn't be hard. She's standing right next to you.

This trope can be complicated from an AnonymousPayPhoneCall, as phone booths in Fictionland are hard to trace.

* ''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.

* Subversion in ''The Seekers'', a drug dealer is mocking the bounty hunter company of the title, who picked up his slip after the dealer jumped bail. The dealer goes on about how the company will never catch him, because no one else ever has. But one day the leader of the Seekers opens his phone bill and finds an ad for a new service -Caller ID. The next time the dealer calls and brags (and brags and...), it takes about a minute for the number to pop up. Of course, it's never that easy.

* Subversion in ''The Seekers'', a drug dealer is mocking the bounty hunter company of the title, who picked up his slip after the dealer jumped bail. The dealer goes on about how the company will never catch him, because no one else ever has. But one day the leader of the Seekers opens his phone bill and finds an ad for a new service -Caller ID. The next time the dealer calls and brags (and brags and...), it takes about a minute for the number to pop up. Of course, [[PhoneBooth it's never that easy.]]

* An example of how television could be killing us - if calling 911 from a cell phone, don't count on them simply being able to do a quick trace and find out where you are. In fact, as of February 2015, a ''USA Today'' [[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/22/cellphone-911-lack-location-data/23570499/ report]] indicated that your odds were about 50/50 at best.

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]

[[folder: WebOriginal]]

[[folder: WesternAnimation]]

* In the hacker movie ''Film/WhoAmI'' this is done with IP addresses. The Special Task Force manages to locate the heroes at a Berlin State Library and rushes over to catch them red-handed but arrive too late.

* The Federal Marshals tracing Richard Kimble's call in ''Film/TheFugitive''. A subversion because Kimble wanted them to trace the call to the real killer's house; he just puts down the phone without hanging up.

* ''Series/MacGyver'' - The villain in the 1990 episode "Lessons in Evil" manages to beat a trace at one point.

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

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 to tell the cops what numbers called a given phone, and when, even months after the call.