Basic Trope: Owning a cell phone (or a certain kind of cell phone) is a symbol of wealth and status.
- Straight: Bob, the CEO of a Fiction 500 company, is the only character with a cell phone.
- Exaggerated:
- Anyone below a certain income bracket is forbidden by law from owning a cell phone.
- Bob is the only one who has any kind of telephone.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is the only character who owns a smartphone.
- Everyone owns a cell phone, but Bob's immense wealth means he can get a replacement near-instantly if his breaks. The other characters can't.
- Justified:
- The story is set in a time or place where only a relative few (usually wealthy, high-ranking businesspeople) owned cell phones.
- Bob is a Fish out of Temporal Water, and people think his unfamiliar cell phone/pager/etc. mark him as a god.
- The fascist government of the setting forbids cellphones to anyone who isn't a business leader, important government official, or anyone else who isn't a loyal, high ranking Party member; considering them both a privilege and an easy way of spreading dissedency.
- Bob's recently purchased DynaTAC may be worthless as a cellphone nowadays, but as an antique?
- Inverted: Bob, the CEO of a Fiction 500 company, is the only character who doesn't have a cell phone.
- Subverted: Bob seems like a wealthy yuppie, but he turns out to be pretending to be one with a cheap phone from a flea market.
- Double Subverted: The phone may not be expensive, but Bob turns out to be a genuinely wealthy businessman.
- Parodied: Bob gets In Da Club just by holding a cell phone up to his ear. Charles, on the other hand, is rejected by the bouncer.
- Zig Zagged: Some characters own cell phones, others do not. Sometimes the phone-owning characters are shown to be rich, other times not.
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't have a cell phone.
- Bob isn't rich or powerful.
- Cell phones don't exist in this setting.
- Enforced: The story takes place late in The '80s or early in The '90s, when only an elite few having cell phones was Truth in Television, or in a developing country where that was or is true.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Bob finds that now that he's rich and powerful, he can afford new tech-toys few others can.
- Exploited: Bob borrows a cell phone to make it seem like he's wealthier than he actually is, when he moves to a wealthy community.
- Defied: No one thinks Bob is special for owning a cell phone.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Bob is mugged at gunpoint specifically because the cell phone he was chatting on marked him as a good target.
Back to Status Cell Phone
