History UsefulNotes / PayPhone

* In ''Film/FightClub'', after the Narrator's apartment is blown sky-high, he calls [[LoveInterest Marla]] on a payphone, then chickens out and hangs up without speaking to her. He then calls Tyler, a mysterious stranger he met on an airplane. Nobody answers, so the Narrator hangs up--and Tyler then calls the payphone back as he's walking away. [[spoiler:This is one of the many hints that Tyler is the Narrator's other personality, as a barely visible notice on the pay phone indicates that it can't receive incoming calls.]]

* Pay phones in ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' games can be used to save your game and transfer items in and out of your Item Box. This lasted all the way up to ''VideoGame/Yakuza6'' and the remake of [[VideoGame/Yakuza2 second game]], which lets you save anywhere. The games establish that you save the game by making a phone call, so in ''VideoGame/Yakuza0'', which takes place in the 80s, you weren't able to save anywhere you wanted since portable phones weren't mainstream yet. In the remake of the [[VideoGame/Yakuza1 first game]], ''Kiwami'', Kazuma Kiryu, who's been in prison for 10 years from 1995, gets a cell phone early on when he returns, which lets him save anywhere in the game (despite the fact the previous games don't let you use your cell phone to save). Kiryu also remarks on there being less phone booths around the city since then.

* ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'': While in 1986 San Francisco, looking for the nearest naval base (so the crew could use energy captured from a nuclear-powered ship's reactor to restore their warp drive), Chekov finds that it's in Alameda. The only problem is that [[HilarityEnsues neither he nor Uhura know how to get to Alameda]].

* The 2022 thriller ''Film/[[Lou]]'' is set in TheEighties. While this is established by a news report showing UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, we also have someone using a payphone shortly after.

* The 2022 thriller ''Lou'' is set in TheEighties. While this is established by a news report showing UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, we also have someone using a payphone shortly after.

* Early episodes of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' had characters regularly accessing public phones at Pokemon Centers and the like. [[SchizoTech They even had video chat]], ''more than a decade before Skype came into existence''! Later episodes replaced the public video phones with a calling function on the [=RotomDex=], much like the smartphones that were coming into existence at the time of ''Pokemon X and Y''.

* "[[JennysNumber 867-5309]]" by Music/TommyTutone has the line, "For the price of a dime I can always turn to you", implying that the singer is calling "Jenny" from a public telephone.

* The song "Sylvia's Mother" by Dr Hook and the Medicine Show is about man attempting to call his girlfriend from a pay phone and being unable to get past her mother. The chorus involves the operator's requests for him to insert more money.
* Ray Stevens deserves a mention with "It's Me Again, Margaret," about a prank caller who repeatedly called a woman from a pay phone. Also shows how the phone company had to be contacted to trace the origin of that call - ScienceMarchesOn, the song was released in 1985.
* "Payphone" by Maroon 5, has a man running out of change after spending it calling someone he was breaking up with, and being unable to call home because of that.
* Jim Croce's "Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)" is a conversation the singer has with a telephone operator about trying to get in touch with someone he knows. Namely, his ex-girlfriend, and his ex-best-friend whom she left him for and is now living with in LA. It's later revealed that he's using a pay phone to do it as afterward, when he decides not to go through with making the call, he tells the operator that "you can keep the dime".
* "Here's A Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares" by Music/TravisTritt has in the video a quarter constantly flying in the air until at the end it goes into the slot of a pay phone that the singer's ex-girlfriend is left standing next to, with the title of the song suggesting that's what she should do at that point.
* In the video for Benny Mardones' "Into The Night", Benny is on a pay phone trying to get in touch with the object of his affections.
* JennysNumber by Music/TommyTutone has the line, "For the price of a dime I can always turn to you," implying that the singer is calling "Jenny" from a public telephone.
* In The Wilkinsons' "26 Cents," a young woman [[LeavingTheNestSong striking out on her own]] finds that amount taped to a letter her mother gave her: a penny for her thoughts, and a quarter to call home when she's lonely.

[[AluminumChristmasTrees There was a time period where, in civilized countries everywhere, it was both possible and occasionally necessary to use a "public" telephone that required the insertion of change to make a call]]. Even for some time after the invention of mobile phones, ''very'' [[StatusCellPhone few people had (or could afford) one]].[[note]]Particularly in poor or remote areas, people considered themselves lucky to have a home phone, never mind a cell phone![[/note]] Those days, which spawned countless tropes, are [[TropeBreaker essentially gone]]. Cell phones [[TechnologyMarchesOn are now]] so cheap almost anyone can afford them, so the only reason to use a pay phone is when you run out of battery or minutes (or you don't want the call to show up on your phone), or the person you're trying to reach is not answering calls from your phone or has blocked your number, or your phone has been lost, broken, or stolen. Thus, the only places that have pay phones are ones with extremely high traffic, usually transient, where people either don't have a cell phone or don't want to use it, such as a bus depot, train station, truck stop, the occasional GreasySpoon, or airport, or places where cellphones are forbidden, such as hospitals or prisons. And even if you ''do'' find a pay phone out in the wild somewhere, there's no guarantee that it works; increasing numbers of them are being decomissioned altogether, [[TechnologyMarchesOn because of the prevalence of cell phones]].

[[folder:Film]]

* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Sixteen}}'' episode "A Ding from Down Under" centers around Jude passing by a mall payphone that due to a design error ''receives'' a call from a girl from Australia who dialed the wrong number while trying to contact her boyfriend (who just moved to the general area). The two end up engaged in a long call and become friends, but once the call runs out before they could exchange better contact info, Jude is forced to camp the pay phone to wait for her next call without arousing suspicion that it's defective. HilarityEnsues.