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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|When you are interviewing the President of the United States, you push that as long as you can. You got a million questions. You keep him there, keep him there. It's like… a scene in a movie where they are tracing the phone call.|Chris Hayes|Late Night with Seth Meyers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}8Vfora4WyPY&t{{=}}32 (trimmed down)}}
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 [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|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.
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An essential part of [[The Calls Are Coming From Inside the House]].
As technology marches on, this trope has morphed into tracing the computer connection, but the essence remains the same. Is often a source of [[Did Not Do the Research]], since (unless the work is set in the 1960s or earlier) the phone company can use their computer records (at least supposedly) to tell the cops what numbers called a given phone, and when, even months after the call. Conversely, the relentless march of science has brought new problems – such as Caller ID spoofing, disposable "burner" handsets and widespread abuse of Voice over IP – which may well mean that the information is falsified in some manner or the call routed through multiple layers to misrepresent its origins.
{{examples}}
== Alternate Reality Games ==
* In ''[[The Lost Experience]]'' DJ Dan gets a call that turns out to be from Rachel Blake (using her hacker alias, Persephone). He tells his cohost Tanya to trace the call and she says "Trace it? With my pencil?"
== [[Comic
* ''[[Bookhunter]]'' has a variation where a perp is using a phone line to hack a computer. The cops are able to get the number the hacker is calling from easily enough, but it's a public phone booth, so they must race to physically apprehend the cracker and they don't have any way to keep the perp on the line longer.
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* Among the better known [[Horror Films|horror flicks]] to use the [[The Calls Are Coming From Inside the House]] twist, the original ''[[Black Christmas]]'' features quite a lot of effort on the part of the police force trying to get [[Ax Crazy|the lunatic killer]] who likes obscene phone calls to stay on the line so they can get a trace.
* In ''[[Air Force One (film)|Air Force One]]'', 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.
* In the ''[[Mission: Impossible (film)||Mission Impossible]]'' movie, Ethan stays on the line just long enough for his call to get traced to London, just as planned. Down to the ''second'', even.
* Used in ''[[
* In ''[[The Bourne Supremacy]]'', 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.
* Subverted in ''[[In the Line of Fire]]'', in that the bad guy stays on the line for quite a long time. The trace goes through, but to the wrong location.
* ''[[Hopscotch (film)|Hopscotch]]'': "Follett couldn't pinpoint his own backside in broad daylight!" A subversion, in that Kendig wanted the Feds to stop by and destroy his former boss' summer home.
* Set up in ''[[
* ''[[Three Days of the Condor]]''. The CIA thinks they've traced Turner's whereabouts, but Turner has stolen a phone linesmen's kit and wired fifty phones together.
* ''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.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* In one episode of ''[[Murdoch Mysteries]]'', Constable Crabtree ''invents'' phone tracing.
* Happens all the time in ''[[Law
* Played straight in a number of episodes of ''[[The X-Files]]''.
** "Pusher" comes to mind, where Mulder and Scully try numerous times to trace Modell's call, but cannot. The "countdown" aspect is even more sinister in this case, because in one instance, Modell induces a heart attack in the lead detective and hangs up seconds before the call is traced.
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* In an episode of the [[Britcom]] ''Nelson's Column'', [[The Ditz]] gets a call from the police telling her that she's about to get a [[Harassing Phone Call]], and she needs to keep him talking so they can trace the call. A few minutes in, Nelson asks how the police are supposed to have known this, and she looks blank for a second, then hangs up.
* In the ''[[NCIS: Los Angeles]]'' episode "Burned", the team attempt to trace a cell phone call to Callan. The guy on the other end is good enough to cut the call off when they triangulate it to within a block of his location.
* On an episode of ''[[Diagnosis: Murder]]'', the killer who had previously dodged phone traces allows the call to be traced to a pay phone to distract the police.
* Beautifully subverted on an episode of [[Wire in The Blood]]. The police are getting phone calls that the tech people can't trace to anywhere at all. Detective Jordan correctly deduces that the perp must be a phone engineer, and they find him all the faster for it.
* [[Lost]] had an episode in which Kate called the police from a phone booth, with a clock set to remind her of the seconds she had before they could track her.
* Attempted in one episode of ''[[Police Squad!]]''. The call is ended before the trace is completed, and when they show the phone that they had
* ''[[Hawaii Five-O]]'' (remake): Is done by a drug ring holding schoolchildren hostage.
* Certainly seen at least once on ''[[24]]'', probably much more often
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* 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 [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] by Gillette, who says Malory cut money from the tracing program to pay for her new conference table.
{{quote|'''Malory''': Guess how many pygmies died to build this table. I'll give you a hint: six. }}
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[[Category:Phone Tropes]]
[[Category:Sublime Rhyme]]
[[Category:
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