Burner Phones

When spies or criminals need to communicate while performing illegal activities, they often take the precaution of using cheap, pre-paid cellphones, commonly known as "burners". This allows them to quickly dispose of said burner if law enforcement or other criminals use it to track them.

Some Consummate Professional criminals even go as far as to completely destroy their burners to make sure it can't be used to track them. Bonus points if after they are done with the call the criminal tosses the phone into a garbage can in slow motion.

This can also be Played for Drama when an innocent or naive character fails to use a burner, after which a more knowledgeable character snatches the phone away from his ear and hurriedly tosses it out the nearest window.

This is Truth in Television^note Or rather was in some countries, as after "burners" have been used for terrorist attacks, it is now mandatory there to register a phone line with an identification, as Cellphone Surveillance is used by law enforcement agencies to monitor the movements of people from their mobile phones. Also, people cheating on their spouses or partners often use burner phones to hide their indiscretions.

See also Cutting the Electronic Leash. Also see Anonymous Public Phone Call, the older Sister Trope for when a character makes an anonymous call from a public phone, such as a phone booth. No relation to the discontinued Samsung Galaxy Note 7, which had a propensity to overheat, leading to a worldwide recall.

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Examples

Fan Works

• The Jethro/Monty fratello uses a "vampire app" that searches for a nearby mobile phone and uses it to relay a call.

Films — Live Action

• The Bourne Ultimatum: Jason Bourne buys a prepaid cell phone, which he then smuggles into the pocket of a journalist with whom he wants to communicate. While the agents observing Bourne and the journalist are perfectly prepared beforehand to surveil the journalist's own phone, this new phone comes completely out of the blue from their perspective, and thus it takes them a while until they are able to track it down and eavesdrop on it.
• Polar: Duncan Vizla uses the same phone and only ever speaks for no less than 30 seconds before hanging up and breaking the sim card before putting in a new one. The only time he ever breaks this rule is when he's luring a Damocles hit squad into a trap.

Literature

• In the sixth book of Michael Vey, the former EGG Welch purchases and uses no less than six burner phones in order to avoid being tracked and caught by the Elgen.
• These Words Are True and Faithful: When Ernie decides to have an affair, he buys a burner phone to communicate with his new bit on the side and thereby hide his indiscretion, which eventually comes to light in another way.
• In Andrew Vachss's Burke books, Burke and his crew often use these to communicate discreetly.

Live-Action TV

• In The Boys (2019), whenever Vought or their Supes get too close for comfort for the eponymous Boys, they will immediately contact the others that "I've been burned," which causes all of them to smash their phones on a wall, or stomp on them, and high-tail it out of there before the cops, Vought's security team, or even someone like A-Train or Homelander gets them.
• Breaking Bad: Burners are regularly snapped in half and otherwise disposed of to cover up criminal activity over the course of the series. Saul has a whole drawer full of different burners. In Season 2, Walt manages to deflect Skyler's suspicions about him having a second cell phone. That is, until Walt is being sedated for cancer surgery, Skyler asks him about his cell phone, and Walt says, "Which one?" This leads to Skyler finding the burner phone and unspooling Walt's entire web of lies.
• Burner phones are also a key plot element in Breaking Bad's prequel series Better Call Saul, and its lead character Jimmy's descent into becoming the corrupt mob lawyer Saul Goodman. With his law license suspended in Season 4, he takes a job managing a cell phone store, but a combination of boredom and a temptation to the dark side leads him to take a side job selling his shop's wares as burner phones to lowlifes and criminals.
• Everyone in Burn Notice uses burners constantly.^note Ironically, the name of the show actually has nothing to do with burners—it refers to a notice sent to intelligence agencies stating that an operative has gone rogue and is not to be trusted. It's probably impossible to identify a single episode in the seven-season show that doesn't have at least one shot of someone throwing away a cell phone. In one episode, a client doesn't have any cash so he offers to pay in cell phones from his store, and Michael grins that he might be able to find a use for them.
• Daredevil (2015): Matt Murdock gives a burner phone to Claire Temple so she can keep in touch with him, and uses one himself for all calls he makes while operating as Daredevil. Before finding out the truth about him, Foggy teases Matt about using it for a secret girlfriend.
• In Forever (2014) Adam uses one to call Henry in "The Frustrating Thing About Psychopaths", then leaves it at the scene before Henry can find him. Abe identifies it as a burner, thus untraceable. Henry carries it with him and Adam calls him on it several times, but at the end of the episode Henry doesn't want to talk to Adam any more and throws it into the river. Adam's favorite place to call Henry from seems to be just outside the antique store, where he can watch Henry's reactions inside through the windows, but it's unclear whether he's using a burner cell phone or a pay phone.
• The "clone phones" from Orphan Black. Sarah is surprised to see that Beth has two phones but quickly learns that the pink one is only for calling the other clones, Alison and Cosima. At the start of season 2, she's hacked by Rachel Duncan and has to take other people's phones, so Felix gets new green phones for the clone club to use. Then in season 3 he replaces those with blue phones, just in case. And now in season 4, the Clone Club has purple ones.

• The Sopranos: Tony and other mob figures would at times resort to using burner phones in order to have clandestine meetings that they believed would be safe from eavesdropping by law enforcement.
• Burners become crucial to The Wire's wiretapping cases from the second season onwards. Much of the series revolves around a surveillance and countersurveillance arms race between police and drug dealers.
• Frequently used by both heroes and villains in Elementary. Sherlock Holmes keeps a box full of them in a closet. In one episode a burner phone is found in the apartment of a suspect which the police take as evidence of his guilt. Sherlock points out that the whole point of a burner phone is to get rid of it when you're done, indicating that this phone was planted to frame the suspect.
• This was seen all the time on 24 in which the characters seemed like they were on the phone half the time anyway. Oftentimes these characters, including protagonist Jack Bauer himself, didn't want to be traced, hence the regular use of burner phones. Also played with in various ways such as placing a phone in another vehicle to trick any tracking that might be done.
• Parodied on Community when Chang does this, only to remember he just threw away his only cell phone, and then digs it out of the trash.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: When Mac and Charlie are stuck in an empty pool, Charlie reveals that he has a prepaid cell phone. Mac calls it a "burner" and says that only drug dealers have those.
• In CSI and its spin-offs, prepaid phones are widely used by all sorts of criminals, from drug dealers to pimps to murderers.
• For Life: Aaron has a hidden one so he can communicate with his wife and daughter.
• In one episode of Hustle, Mickey has to make a phone call to initiate the final humiliation of the Con's mark. As soon as the call is over, he casually tosses the phone into the Thames.
• Hunted is a British reality show in which several ordinary citizens go on the run as though they were fugitives. They are being hunted by an experienced team replicating several powers of the state, including mobile phone tracking. As a result, burner phones are seen quite often being used by the fugitives when reaching out to friends and family for assistance. They often do more harm than good as the fugitives do not always use them correctly (e.g. leaving them switched on and on their person after use). The hunters are also alerted when an unknown number calls a known contact of a fugitive and quickly step up surveillance of that person.
• In the "Pilot" episode of Rabbit Hole (2023), John Weir tries to hail a cab, only for the FBI agent Jo Madi to approach him commenting "Uh, shift change. Maybe get an Uber instead." She then continues that he can't because he has no credit cards and only burner phones. "Not suspicious at all," she deadpans.

Music

• The Dingees' song "Who Stole the Soul in Rock-n-Roll" ends with a recording of two men telling an interviewer: "Sometimes we get rid of our cell phones so the FBI and the CIA can't track us! And sometimes we get rid of them 'cause our bills is too high."

Tabletop Games

• In later editions of Shadowrun, characters frequently toss their commlinks (and the System Identification Numbers attached to them) after a Run.

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto V:
  • In the Prologue, Michael uses a Celltowa cellphone to detonate a bomb and gain access to a vault. The phone itself has low-end specifications (even for 2004 standards), the only contact is "Detonate", and it can't be used again after the explosion, implying that Michael either destroyed or disposed of the device.
  • Played for Laughs when Lamar, a man who makes Ryder look like an honest-to-god genius, makes a call on his personal cell phone to demand a ransom after having kidnapped a rival gang member. Franklin quickly grabs the phone away from Lamar and throws it out of the car window.
• The people trafficking sidequest in Watch_Dogs involves finding burner phones which belonged to Maurice Vega, the guy who tried to assassinate Aiden (and killed his niece by mistake) because his wife was being held hostage. Given that Aiden has him in his clutches from the start of the game, ditching them didn't help, and their only purpose in the game is same as any other audiolog collectible.
• A pre-paid phone and a card used to load it with minutes show up as evidence during your investigation into the disappearance of Rachel Amber in Life Is Strange. It's owned by Nathan Prescott and used to text with his drug deal contacts.

Visual Novels

• Discussed in Daughter for Dessert. Mortelli had one of these in order to cheat on his wife.

Web Original

• Homestar Runner: In "I Killed Pom Pom!", when Homestar thinks he's guilty of murder and tries to set up an alibi for himself, he hangs around the King Of Town's castle and talks on a "cell phone". The phone is actually a piece of cardboard with a screen and keypad drawn on it — and it has "BURNER" written across the screen.

Western Animation

• Exaggerated in a Futurama episode where a "nectar" dealer gives Leela and Amy the number to her disposable cell phone in case they change their minds about her product. Then a minute later they call it, before she even leaves the room, and the dealer tosses the phone into a wastebasket immediately after.

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