In our modern day and age, when communication needs to take place, we can do it with landlines, cell phones, text messages, and/or the Internet.
It is a good thing, too, because when the hero(es) need help, this trope comes into play.
There's a situation that's too big for our main character to handle on his/her own. But he/she knows a good number of people, perhaps because they are popular and friendly, or just from Walking the Earth. Either way, it's time to enlist their aid, and because the heroes are well-respected, anyone called on the phone is only too happy to pitch in and help. Not only that, but they're willing to call the next person in the chain of phone numbers to help get the giant group effort underway that much sooner.
A variation common in older productions: the viewer is treated to a split-screen as more and more people become involved in sending the message out.
Compare Gondor Calls for Aid, when unlikely allies (including enemies and a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits) are called upon to aid the heroes. Might be spurned by an "I Can't Do This by Myself" realization, as the character tries to win his allies back on their side by admitting they can't do things alone.
Can be invoked, particularly online or in print, by AstroTurfing (Viral Marketing by an organization disguised as grassroots, word-of-mouth support by ordinary people).
Examples:
Comic Books
- Global Frequency has this as its premise. The titular Global Frequency, with 1,001 people with specialized abilities or skills spread across the world ready to be summoned by a phone call from either Big Good Miranda Zero or Mission Control Aleph. Though only a couple of agents are actively involved in any particular crisis, there are a few times when the call goes out to all 1,001 members for any help they can provide (notably the last issue of the series).
- Young Avengers: In #11, Prodigy texts a couple of friends to run interference for the team while they get close to the Big Bad. They text some friends and... The next page shows a telecom tree of young heroes that has expanded to fill a full page.
Comic Strips
- Zits: We don't see the actual tree but Pierce calculates that in order to get 700 people to turn up to his Wild Teen Party he has to inform exactly one person (Brittney) and let the word spread. It works.
Fan Works
- The GiW meets its match: Justified through the military chain of command, and backfires majorly on Agent K when he calls a missile silo to launch a minuteman nuke at Amity Park. The next several stories follow up the chain of command as the individual who took the call, Major Jacob Green, calls the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Derek Brown, for a clearance check, who then reports the issue to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Abraham Whitman. General Whitman then calls an emergency meeting with the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, the Secretary of Defense, and the President, with the actual calls between them to arrange this meeting implicit. The communications then disperse into a mixture of phone calls and emails moving up and down the chain of command as the government hurriedly tries to dig up any information they can on the Guys in White.
Films — Animation
- "Tortoise Beats Hare": Bugs Bunny has challenged Cecil Turtle to a footrace. Cecil calls his old buddy Chester and together they set up a Ringer Ploy over a phone tree.
Films — Live-Action
- The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: Buckaroo Banzai has the Blue Blaze irregulars, a group of various people who help him out of tight spots, no matter what it is or who they are.
- The Crew (2000): One of the retired Mafia members uses the fact that he has kept in touch with every other former Mafioso to have retired to the greater Miami area to gather a posse to raid the base of a crime lord who had kidnapped the daughter of another member of the group. This leads to a hilarious scene where a freighter owned by a drug lord is attacked by a busload of gun-toting senior citizens.
- Galaxy Quest: Brandon and his friends do this for Jason Nesmith, providing info on how the ship works so he can save the day.
- Legally Blonde 2: When Elle is struggling to get the needed support for her bill about banning animal testing she turns to her sorority's phone tree. A few branched calls later and they've organised a "Million Dog March" on Washington D.C. to raise awareness of the cause.
- Practical Magic: When witches Gillian and Sally need extra help to get rid of the nasty ex-boyfriend ghost of Jimmy Angelov they activate the town Phone Tree, normally used to let all the moms know of school snow days. It turns out that despite the Gossipy Hens talking smack about the witch sisters, most of the women in town are not only genuinely curious about them but happy to pitch in because they can identify strongly with having a bad ex who won't go away without a female friend having her back.
- Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: The Cortez children send out a desperate wrist phone call to "Everybody!". Their parents and grandparents show up, as well as their uncle Machete, Floop with the reformed Minion, the reformed Uncle and Giggles families, the Mad Scientist, and the guy who owned the theme park at the start of the second movie with his son.
Literature
- Discworld: Working to a deadline? Need a mob to storm the castle? Just tell a member of the Ogg family. The rest will take care of itself.
- The Executioner: In Dixie Convoy, the truckers helping Mack Bolan use CB radio to spread a message from one coast of the US to the others.
- Morris and Chastain Investigations: The white witches in Evil Ways bring one to action when they perceive a threat against them, although theirs is magical.
- Newsflesh: This is used to get the entire site staff online for one conference before Shaun and company left the Weed compound.
- The Three Investigators: Known as the Ghost-to-Ghost Hookup. A system invented by Jupiter to allow the Power Trio to inquire about anything. Each boy contacts five friends that aren't mutual to the group, with each contact promptly doing the same. According to Jupiter, this lets them "contact thousands of boys without speaking to them directly".
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who:
- "A Good Man Goes To War" is all about this, with the Doctor calling in several favours to raise an army to rescue Amy and her baby.
- "The Wedding of River Song": River, Amy, and Rory construct a device to send a distress signal outside the collapsing Alternate Universe they're trapped in, asking the whole universe for help, as the Doctor is about to die. Literally, billions of races across the universe agree to help. While this doesn't actively do anything, it breaks the Doctor out of his Heroic BSoD and reminds him that however much death and destruction he leaves in his wake, he's still a hero, and his life is worth something.
- The Nanny: When Fran gets engaged, she calls her mom, who puts her on hold to talk to someone else. She tells them. They call someone else, and so on, and so on, and so on. Each time, a picture of that person is added to the screen. By the time Mom gets back online to Fran, everyone knows.
- Servant of the People: The infrastructure minister sends out Vasiliy's orders down the bureaucratic chain. When said minister gets sacked for failing to deliver on the roadworks project, the next guys down the chain get promoted in his place, and all of them eventually receive the pink slip over increasingly absurd acts of embezzlement.
Music
- Tracy Lawrence: In the music video of "Find Out Who Your Friends Are", a redneck's truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He places one cell call to a friend before his phone fails, and he then gives up. Fortunately for him, his friend has friends, and those friends have friends... until a giant convoy of friends is seen converging on him, in everything from a tractor to a Jeep to a Corvette.
Theater
- Bye Bye Birdie: The teenagers of Sweet Apple Ohio are seen doing a tree in "The Telephone Hour". In this case, there's no particular help needed, they're just spreading the news that Hugo and Kim are now an item, and there's one poor sap (Harvey Johnson) who's trying to get a date.
Video Games
- Telefang: Ubiquitous thanks to the summon-monsters-by-phoning-them mechanic.
Web Animation
- There she is!!: In its final episode, Nabi the cat desperately tries to get to the airport before his girlfriend Doki leaves. All the friends and relatives who have been with them since episode 2 pitch in and help get him there, including calling forward to help stop Doki so Nabi has his chance to get there.
Web Comics
- El Goonish Shive: After Hedge kidnaps Elliot.
Web Videos
- mikeburnfire: In Episode 100, Mike and Zach gain the support of all their companions in the fight against Malcolm Clones (after they free them from prison).
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: In "Loyalty to the King", this is how the princesses find out about Nice King's arrival, complete with multiple little pictures of them spreading across the screen.
- Beverly Hills Teens: If someone wants to get everybody together, they tell Switchboard, and pretend it's a secret.
- The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy sends a message over the internet requesting help from all the kids in the world.
- Justice League Unlimited: The Grand Finale, "Destroyer", doesn't go tree-style, but they do summon every single member for the final fight, even allowing the bad guys to fight to save the world.
- Kim Possible: Whenever Kim has to travel to some remote location, Kim can always count on someone she has helped before to provide free transportation.
- Ruby Gloom: In "Broken Records", Skull Boy calls Misery —who is with Scaredy, Frank, and Len— for a brainstorming session to help Iris and Ruby reconcile. After Misery & company exchange awkward glances, Skull Boy picks up again to tell them they are invited too.
- The Simpsons: In "G.I. (Annoyed Grunt)", Marge Simpson rallies everyone in Springfield for her plan to get rid of the U.S. army's occupation of Springfield. She even has a diagram of this, which starts with her calling Ned Flanders and Helen Lovejoy, who call two more peoplenote , who each call two more peoplenote , and from that point forward it's eight solid chains, which includes Nelson Muntz calling Mr. Burns, and Krusty the Clown calling Ralph Wiggum and telling him to call Lindsay Naegle, who didn't get the message as Ralph had put the phone down and she wasn't present at the reservoir to put Marge's plan into action.
- On school field trips, there's a very large web of people that would be contacted in case of an emergency. If something happens to a student, cue the telecom.
- Flash Mobs are created through ever-widening circles of text messaging.
- A man was arrested in a foreign country. He posted one message to Twitter, and the resulting response web alerted his bosses and got the problem resolved with the foreign authorities.
- Several companies with multiple retail locations have a phone tree set up with each store in a given area responsible for calling one other pre-designated store, so that (for instance) if an unsuccessful shoplifter successfully flees note , other locations can be quickly forewarned.
