Basic Trope: A person makes a phone call to someone close enough to talk to normally.
- Straight: Alice takes out her cell phone and calls Bob. After they talk a while, they discover they're in the same room.
- Exaggerated: Alice calls Bob on her cell phone while they're standing back to back. They never notice.
- Downplayed: Alice calls Bob on her cell phone. After a little bit, they discover they're in rooms across the hall from each other.
- Justified:
- The room is so crowded, Alice and Bob couldn't see each other and didn't know they could just talk to each other normally.
- Alice calls Bob's cell phone even though he's next to her because she needs his voicemail to record an important piece of information.
- Alice calls a number she doesn't recognize. It turns out to be Bob's while he's ten feet away from her.
- Alice and Bob are trying to find his phone, the ringtone should help them with zeroing in on it.
- Inverted: Alice calls Bob, thinking he's nearby, so she can locate him. It turns out he's somewhere far away.
- Subverted: Alice places a phone call and Bob's cell phone rings. But it turns out it's Charlie calling him.
- Double Subverted: Then Charlie says he needs to patch a call to Bob. It turns out to be Alice.
- Parodied: Alice deliberately calls Bob's number when they're standing face to face with each other. He answers and holds a phone conversation with her as if they're far apart.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice and Bob talk on the phone several times. Sometimes, they're close enough to talk normally without realizing it. Other times, they're a justifiable distance apart. At least once, Alice calls Bob when she thinks he's nearby, but he's actually far away.
- Averted:
- Alice calls Bob, thinking he's some distance from her. She's right.
- Alice and Bob never call each other.
- Enforced: Bob was Put on a Bus and is now making his return. The writers wanted to surprise the audience with Bob's appearance and decided to do it with a phone call.
- Lampshaded: "Bob, you sound like you're in the same room as me." "I am."
- Invoked: As a prank, Charlie tells Alice to call Bob even though he knows Bob is close enough to talk without phones.
- Exploited: Charlie sees that Alice is going to call Bob, even though he's in the same room, and lets her so she'll be too distracted to notice something he's about to do.
- Defied: Alice looks around to make sure Bob isn't within speaking distance before calling him.
- Discussed: "Look at this crowd. You could call someone on their cell phone and not realize they're also here."
- Conversed: "Calling someone on their cell phone is a good way to get in touch...unless they're in the same room, then you can just go up to them."
- Played for Laughs: While Alice and Bob talk on the phone, they complain about someone else in the room talking loudly on their phone and mouth off to them. It turns out they're complaining about each other.
- Played for Drama: Alice and Charlie find a person so badly injured, they can't be identified. Alice calls Bob for help and the victim's cell phone rings. They check the phone and Alice's number is displayed on the caller ID.
- Played for Horror: Alice and Bob are searching a room for evidence of a killer's identity. Alice discovers the killer's phone number and calls it. Bob's phone rings. Cue Slasher Smile.
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