History Literature / Cell

* ItCanThink: At first, the Phoners appear to be nothing more than mindless berserkers. As the book goes on, they organize into groups and show signs of intelligence. [[spoiler:It turns out that they're forming a HiveMind and are hell-bent on [[AssimilationPlot transforming the entire human race]].]]

%%* PreserveYourGays: [[spoiler:Tom survives.]] --ZCE

* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain: After the initial blast of crazy wiped out the higher reasoning of anyone talking on their cell phones at the time of the disaster [[spoiler: the Phoners who survive the chaos begin to regain some of their abilities, along with some [[PsychicPowers entirely new ones]]]]. The characters develop a theory in-Universe that they are using parts of their brains which had been dormant before.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Clay, Tom, and Jordan have a dream about being gathered before a massive crowd of Phoners, being declared one by one as "insane" by a Phoner. Alice doesn't have that dream. [[spoiler:[[KillTheCutie Then you find out why.]]]]

* [[spoiler:DownerEnding]]: Movie version, [[spoiler:Clay's plan ultimately failed and he becomes yet another zombie at Kashwak]].

* [[spoiler:HopeSpot]]: The movie ending, [[spoiler:it seemed as if Ray's plan worked and he is finally reunited with his son, only to turn out to be just an imagination as he is now a zombie at Kashwak]].

* GetAHoldfOfYourselfMan: During Alice's breakdown at Tom's house, Clay thinks about how in the movies, hysterical women always get a slap that immediately calms them down, but for obvious reason he doesn't want to do that. His idea to simply hold her would probably have worked too, but Alice calms down on her own.

* SupernaturalPhone: The phones turned everyone into zombies.

* TechnicallyLivingZombie: The Phoners, but only in the beginning.

* TheUnreveal: The cause of the Pulse. The most likely explanation the protagonists come up with is a terrorist attack GoneHorriblyRight.

* ZombieApocalypse: On a '''massive''' scale.

* InfantImmortality: {{Averted}}, unsurprisingly considering the author. [[spoiler:Alice is a teenager but very much seen as a vulnerable child rather than a fellow adult by Clay and Tom, despite her capability, and is the only one of the main group to die. Clay's son is a long-gone zombie when they find him at the end, though Clay at least has some hope that he can be cured.]]

* PostModernMagik: This particular zombie apocalypse is triggered by cellphones.

* AxCrazy: Anyone affected by the Pulse turn into gibbering maniacs driven to attack and kill everything around them, including both each other and in some cases, [[DrivenToSuicide themselves]]. When they start grouping into Flocks this lessens somewhat, as they become significantly more methodical with their bloodlust and even begin to actively convert others into Phoners instead of killing them. However, as the Pulse becomes corrupted into new strains and the Raggedy Man’s death triggering the collapse of the regional HiveMind, this becomes more of a ZigzaggedTrope, with some Phoners simply babbling semi-coherently or wandering with no purpose with only a few retaining a lust for violence.

* HaveIMentionedIAmGay: Tom's sexuality is explicitly brought up near the beginning, but never actually impacts on the story, except to demonstrate that you can be CampGay and BadassGay at the same time.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: It's really, ''really'' obviously a product of the 2000s. The cell phones central to the plot are all depicted as 2000s-era flip phones, and there's no mention of social media (which would almost certainly come up in a story involving cell phones written later).