http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveFiveFive

Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show "Act now. This offer is completely fictitious. Call 555-FAKE-NUMBER. That's 555-FAKE-NUMBER."

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Virtually all US phone numbers on fictional programs are made up of the following:

Area Code  555  four random digits note Or in works set before the Turn of the Millennium, 555  four random digits, as at that time, it was not necessary to dial the area code before making a local phone call. In the late '90s to early 2000s, the area code requirement was tacked on to avoid confusion, as long-distance calling technology improved, and as more and more people got long-distance plans bundled into their standard phone bills.

"555" is an exchange number commonly thought to be reserved by the phone companies for use by TV and movies in order to prevent prank phone calls to real people. In fact, only 555-0100 through 555-0199 are now specifically reserved for fictional use, and the other numbers have been released for actual assignment. The 555 exchange was originally useful for this purpose because under the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), which includes the United States, Canada, and several other nearby countries, it was reserved for various internal phone company service numbers, so calling one of the 555 numbers would not have reached an actual customer. In particular, in most areas in North America (AREA CODE)-555-1212 connects with directory assistance.

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Another fake number used back in the 1950s through the 1970s when most of Southern California was entirely one area code, 213, was to reserve the extension 1 plus the prefix in every prefix, so that the number 462-1462 or 733-1733 was never a working number. Eventually the 714 area code would be split off from 213 in 1953 and later 818 would split from 213 in the early 1980s, but Pacific Telephone continued the practice of reserving the prefix-1-prefix number in every exchange as a non-working number. A number of TV shows and made-for-tv movies took advantage of this fictional number feature.

Still another fake number, used into the 1970s, was possible because under the original NANP, the second digit of a seven-digit local number was not allowed to be 0 or 1, whereas the second digit of an area code was limited to 0 or 1. This allowed fictional telephone numbers such as 606-0842 in the eponymous song by The B-52s. However, because of the need for additional prefixes and eventually additional area codes, this limitation was eliminated in certain large cities in the eighties and early nineties and throughout the NANP area in 1995.

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Some movies and TV shows have taken advantage of a technical requirement of NANP telephone numbers, that the first digit of the seven digit local number cannot be 0 or 1. So they'll give a number like 818-162-1353 or 213-079-1611.

As it happens, if the area code is "800", "888", "877", "866", "855", "844", or "833" (the NANP area codes for toll-free dialing), "555" is a valid prefix. So 1-800-555-(four digits) could be a real phone number. Not everyone knows that.

A variation of this is IP addresses; media will commonly use addresses such as 127.0.0.1 (which refers to the local computer) or impossible addresses (an address in the most commonly used protocol, IPv4, is essentially a 4-digit number in base-256, so any address with a "digit" 256 or greater is fake). Similarly, any hexadecimal character higher than F is fake (Hex only uses the characters 0-9 and A-F). And to top it off, there are certain IP addresses that are reserved for private networks and will never be assigned to internet-facing machines (see Real Life section for more info).

Another variation is street addresses. A work may be set at an address that is (or was at the time of writing) outside of the range of possible address numbers for the given street.

Manga and anime in general often use symbols like the letter X and triangles in place of some of the phone numbers displayed outside a business, on an address book or cell phone. This can apply to license plates too.

Works set during an era when exchanges were commonly specified as names (say, during World War II) may use the exchange name "KLondike (or KLamath)" (followed, or not, by a 5 depending on the exact time period), which works out to the same thing. Works actually from those eras normally don't; the songs "Beechwood 4-5789" and "PEnnsylvania 6-5000" are examples.

Compare to Jenny's Number, which is also commonly used as a phone number. See also Logging onto the Fourth Wall for the website equivalent. Whatever you do, don't confuse this with 666, though bonus points for works where that's the area code for The Devil.

Examples:

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Advertising

A liquor brand once ran a series of billboards that resembled personal ads, complete with real phone numbers. Those who called heard a recorded message about the product.

There was a television ad in the 1980s about an old guy who drove a very old, reliable car. The point was that this brand of car would last forever if you serviced it fastidiously. If you didn't believe that, you were invited to call the old guy at his real phone number.

Shell Oil did this back in the 1980s, having someone tell how much better its oil was in their car, and if people didn't believe him, were instructed to call the person's number. One of these ads had a number that turned out to be a local number, and it was a recording where the same guy tells that it really is better.

LifeLock, a company offering identity theft protection, not only offered a $1,000,000 guarantee that your identity would not be stolen, but also dared thieves to do so in its advertising. Todd Davis, the owner, placed his real Social Security number (457-55-5462) in commercials, averting this trope. Inevitably, within days of the commercial airing, someone was able to take out a $500 payday loan in his name. In fact, his identity was stolen 13 times over three years.

In fact, his identity was stolen 13 times over three years. A Rogers commercial had a woman start off saying, 'Hi. This is our family — and that's our home number.' They cut to a shot of the number...which was a 555 number.

In the 1940s, the Woolworth dime store chain was introducing a new wallet, and wanted to put an example of things you could put in it, so they included a replica of a Social Security Card, with the number 078-05-1120 which was the actual number of the woman who was in charge of the project. The number got so much use from people who either thought that they should use that number or did so to hide that they didn't have one that the Social Security Administration issued that woman a different number and "retired" it. Even into the 2000s, employers of several thousand people are still paying Social Security taxes for the account of that number.

A movie theater had one of these shown before the movie, with the phone number 555-FILM being shown on a black background. Moviefone, the creator of the 555-FILM phone number, aired this commercial at certain movie theaters.

Anime and Manga

In Initial D Fourth Stage, the URL of the racing team Project D is "http://project.d". ".d" is not a valid real-life top-level domain.

Another web-based example: Detective Conan has an e-mail address with a "#", which the author points out as invalid on the first page where we see it.

Comedy

Monty Python's Flying Circus did a BBC album of some of their TV sketches in 1970, with the "Mouse Problem" sketch among them. What was added that wasn't on TV was the telephone number of Mr. A. ("Although his real name is George Jackson, 32A Milton Avenue, Hounslow, Middlesex. Telephone 01-246-2847.")

Dave Chappelle: Say you're watchin' a movie, and one character says to another, "Uh, what's your number, man?" What's the other character always say? FIVE FIVE FIVE, FIVE FIVE FIVE FIVE. You know why we gotta do that? Because stupid-ass people go to the movies, and then go home and try to call the characters that they just saw. "HELLO? IS INDIANA JONES HERE?"

Mitch Hedberg threw in a few jokes about this: ''I was at the Double Tree [hotel] and the lady at the front desk gave me her number — it's zero! I tried to call her from here and some other woman answered. 'You sound older!'"

Prank-call artists The Jerky Boys occasionally gave their targets a 555 callback number (or, at least, the calls recorded on their albums were edited to make it sound like they did).

Comic Books

In the "Sam Spayed" story in Garfield: His 9 Lives, he once has to call the number 555-1234. (He's not good at remembering numbers.)

During John Byrne's run on Fantastic Four, the team's phone number is revealed to be, aptly enough, 555-4444.

Stunt Dawgs: In the comic, Airball grabs some papers off Needham's desk. One of them reads "Call Vanessa Vavoom, 555-2439".

Scooby Apocalypse: Thaumatrope Mining Co. has the phone number 555-7234.

The Flintstones: A newspaper ad at Issue #9 reads "Call 555-cave — cave renovations!".

A Pinky and the Brain story in the Animaniacs comics features High Bar Kindergarten School's ad with the phone number 555-ACME.

Comic Strips

In the Big Nate story arc where Nate dates Kelly, her number is 555-2832.

Dilbert: One story line was about a "Date-a-Dilbert" service. The cartoonist thought it needed a real phone number, so he put his own number in the strip. It got hundreds of calls, mostly from women who really wanted to date a Dilbert. In one strip , Dogbert got a job as network administrator. The only ways to contact him were e-mail (which would obviously be impossible if the network failed) and a pager "number" that included a tilde.

In Ginger Meggs, one of Ginger's friends has a poster up saying "Missing since 4:00PM Ph: XXXX XXX XXX". The phone number is of a colleague of the cartoonist.

If you want to get rid of clastrophobia in the world of U.S. Acres, you'd have to call 555-4296.

in the world of U.S. Acres, you'd have to call 555-4296. For a lark, Charles Schultz of Peanuts once put Bill Melendez (animator of the Peanuts Christmas special) on a strip as Lucy's phone number. Apparently, the first person to pick up a call from a reader was his young daughter, and the person on the other end ended up dropping the phone in shock. There's also the Peanuts character 5, which is actually short for 555. But it's not the phone prefix; his last name is the family ZIP code, 95472. (He has older sisters named 333 and 444, so 555 was simply next in sequence.)

FoxTrot had a strip where Jason and Marcus are surfing the Web by entering site's IP addresses rather than the domain names (no challenge in that!). All of the IP addresses are invalid (with a number over 256), except for one — which is (or at least was at the time) the address for foxtrot.com.

Garfield: Jon's ad looking for a date has a phone number that starts with 555.

Fanfiction

Films  Animation

Films  Live-Action

Literature

Junie B. Jones on Telephone Numbers: "Its name is 555-5555. It's hard to remember, because I keep forgetting the 5."

Warren Ellis's novel Crooked Little Vein: When told to call (555) 555-5555 for help, Mike demonstrates his detective skills by pointing out that the number won't work, as it's only used by Hollywood. To which the Chief of Staff responds, "We gave it to them. It works for us."

Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street. This was a fake London address at the time of writing, but since then the street has been expanded and now 221 Baker Street is a real address and a Sherlock Holmes Museum/Gift Shop.

Nero Wolfe lived on West 35th Street, Manhattan; the number varied, but consistently put his house in the river.

The Baby Sitters Club could be reached at KL5-3231.

Harry Dresden's phone number, shown in a picture of his phone book entry in the game, is (312) 555-4-WIZ.

The front cover of the Goosebumps book Calling All Creeps has the tagline that says " Just dial 555-CREEP ".

". An address example (sort of): Harry Potter boards the Hogwarts Express at a real train station, but the fictional Platform 9¾.

This is used with the main character's phone number in Stuart J. Murphy's Freda is Found, a children's picture book about what to do and things to know in case you get lost. It's probably used in a number of such books about this topic as well.

In Curveball, all e-mail addresses seen so far end in ".ttl", which is a non-existent Top Level Domain for a country that doesn't exist in the real world.

Judy Moody: Girl Detective: When a police-dog-in-training goes missing, the number to report information is given as 1-800-MR-CHIPS. Later in the book, however, a 555 number is given as being seen on a van for a plumbing company.

In Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Sticky-Fingers Cure, Penelope the parrot recites the advertising jingle "''Call five-five-five-two-two-three-oh, and see your dentist now. Say goodbye to cavities!" while under the influence of a magical illness known as the Winter Effluvia.

Miracle Creek has Potomac Mutual Insurance, which has the number 800-555-0199.

In Saving Max, one of Jonas's doctors has 555-4600.

Live-Action TV

Magazines

A dating columnist once put her real phone number on the cover of a magazine.

Nickelodeon Magazine has a format for E-mail addresses and domain names for their pranks: they use the .not suffix as an Incredibly Lame Pun on .net, e.g., whatever@wherever.not or www.fakecompany.not.

Rail magazine's humorous column "The Diary of Derek the Diesel" gave Derek the number 47548 — in real life, number 548 was never carried by a Class 47 locomotive, with the sequence skipping from 547 to 549.

Music

Renowned Russian rocker Boris Grebenschikov has a song about the phone number 2-12-85-06, which was a fake number... until the Russian area code system was changed and "2-" was added to a lot of numbers. There is now a washhouse in St. Petersburg that keeps getting calls from B.G. fans all over the country.

Soulja Boy's song "Kiss Me Thru The Phone", starts off by reading out a number. In the US, this number called a relevant recorded message. Fans in the UK were just bothering an innocent family .

. AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" might seem like an example because its lyrics mention the phone number 36-24-36. However, it's a real number: The band are Australian, and phone numbers in towns outside the capital cities there were actually six numbers instead of seven back in the 1970s.

De La Soul's "Ring Ring Ring" averts this: "You wanna call me? Take my number down. It's 222-2222. I've got an answering machine that will talk to you." The number is usually blanked out in TV and radio broadcasts of the song and its music video, because it's actually used by the Chicago Tribune, among others.

The video for Genesis's song "Jesus He Knows Me" featured the (parodied) televangelist's contribution hotline as '1-555-GEN-ESIS'. Area code 555 is reserved for directory assistance purposes, though Wikipedia is rather unclear as to what those are.

The incomplete form used for a website name in the Animaniacs song "LA Dot" "You can find me on my webpage spot: w w w dot dot dot"

"You can find me on my webpage spot: w w w dot dot dot" Glenn Miller's song "PEnnsylvania 6-5000" was the number of a hotel the band had performed at - the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, which continues to use the number to this day.

in New York City, which continues to use the number to this day. "BEechwood 4-5789" by the Marvelettes. Song co-writer Mickey Stevenson later admitted that, while they did check if the number was not in use, they only checked in the Detroit area, which supposedly resulted in a slew of calls asking for the Marvelettes to people who really had BE4-5789 as their phone number. Coincidentally, the number is one digit away from the below-mentioned "634-5789".

Of course, there's "867-5309/Jenny", the 1981 smash hit from power pop band Tommy Tutone. Which is still a bane to anyone in the US with this number. A few scans of the number in every area code have been made: this one-man effort in 2004, this collaborative effort in 2007 and an attempt at a wiki whose last sign of life goes back to 2010. All three have found that most were disconnected (for obvious reasons), but most that worked went to voicemail, and most of those made some reference to the song (ie, "...and no, Jenny is not here." or sometimes "Hi! This is Jenny, leave a message.") At least one extension of the number is held by the company Retrofitness, a chain of fitness gyms. It uses the number for potential franchisees. Two extensions in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts are owned (and trademarked!) by local plumbing company Gem Plumbing & Heating. Their television and radio commercials prominently feature the number, but they aren't allowed to use the Tommy Tutone song or even a soundalike (their jingle that uses the number sounds like it was intentionally written to sound as little like "Jenny" as possible). Gem even sued a national plumbing outfit for using the same number for their toll free line. That case made national news and greatly annoyed Tommy Tutone singer Tommy Heath, who called the whole thing ridiculous (courts ultimately found for Gem, since they had the trademark). Rumor has it that attracting crank calls was the purpose of the song: it was written to get back at the singer's ex.

in 2004, this collaborative effort in 2007 and an attempt at a wiki whose last sign of life goes back to 2010. All three have found that most were disconnected (for obvious reasons), but most that worked went to voicemail, and most of those made some reference to the song (ie, "...and no, Jenny is not here." or sometimes "Hi! This is Jenny, leave a message.") At least one extension of the number is held by the company Retrofitness, a chain of fitness gyms. It uses the number for potential franchisees. Despite what "Baby Got Back" tells you, dialing 1-900-MIX-A-LOT just gets you a disconnected number. During the song's release, it was a working number and you could hear Mix say pre-recorded messages for 99 cents a minute. When he let the number go, several companies attempted to use it when it went back into circulation (mostly phone sex lines); it eventually was retired from the 900 pool because of the song and people calling looking to talk to Mix. (And, eventually, most of the 900 numbers going the way of the dodo anyway, thanks to changes in both laws governing them and technology.)

"Light" by KMFDM instructs you to call 1-800-ACCEPT-NO-IMITATION, which is probably far too many digits for a phone number anywhere, but is valid in the U.S. and Canada only because the switching system ignores all digits after the seventh. Dialing the number in the song is interpreted as 1-800-ACCEPT-N. note It's not unknown for a company to use words that have more than seven letters for marketing purposesfor example, the U.S. toll-free number for the Discover credit card is advertised as 1-800-DISCOVER (though when dialing it, the "R" [7] is ignored.)

Chuck Berry asked the operator to get him "Norfolk, Virginia, TIdewater Four Ten Oh Nine" in "Promised Land". At the time the song was originally written and recorded in 1964, that would make the full number (703) 844-1009. By the time of Elvis Presley's famous cover in 1974 the area code had shifted to 804, and Norfolk is now served by area code 757.

In Darkbuster's "Gurley's Cellphone Number", the chorus repeatedly gives out the actual cellphone number of their bassist (the "Gurley" of the title), and the lyrics even revolve around how much he would love receiving calls from strangers at all hours of the day.

"Red Frame/White Light" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was about a red telephone box the band used to organise their gigs in the late '70s. The pay phone's number, 6323003, was recited in the lyrics but without the Wirral area code that would put callers through to the actual box. Anybody dialing the number without it would just get through to someone near where the caller lived.

Mid-2000s rapper Mike Jones gave out his real phone number - (281) 330-8004 - on several of his hit songs. The gimmick helped him stand out, however briefly, amongst the crowd of Southern rappers in the era. At the height of his fame in 2005, the line would often be completely and hopelessly jammed (Jones' phone bill was nearly $50,000 a month because of the thousands of calls he got every day) but he would indeed chat with any fans that got through.

Logic, Alessia Cara and Khalid's "1-800-273-8255" is a real phone number — specifically, the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline . Since it is not a toll-free number outside North America, overseas releases add a disclaimer on international calling charges and may even list an equivalent local number.

. Since it is not a toll-free number outside North America, overseas releases add a disclaimer on international calling charges and may even list an equivalent local number. (619) 239-KING is Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper's special telephone number to report Elvis sightings. It's a San Diego number.

Pinball

Safe Cracker's backglass shows that to contact Bob's Getaway Rental, you'll have to call 555-FAST.

Starting a mode in Dialed In! causes the phone on the playfield to receive a call. Each of the numbers it displays begins with 555.

Radio

Douglas Adams used a seven-digit number for a measurement of probability in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Due to the Infinite Improbability Drive, the number turned out to also be the phone number of the Islington flat where Arthur met Trillian at a party. Unfortunately, Adams used the number of his own flat, also in Islington. The official script book contains a footnote that the tenant who lives there now has nothing to do with Hitchhiker, and doesn't appreciate prank calls. Between a couple of updates to the UK area code system, the introduction of commercial competitors to British Telecom and the increasing popularity of cellphones it's rather unlikely that the number still works. The movie, in addition to updating the number (now 020 79460347) to reflect said changes to area codes, replaced the number with a straight example - 020 79460XXX is the range that Ofcom blocked off for fictional London numbers. In some editions of the six-book trilogy, Adams writes about how the whole story came to be. The anecdote concludes with a section called "How To Leave Earth." Adams suggests calling (in order) NASA, The White House, The Kremlin, and The Vatican, giving working phone numbers for each. What they all think of prank calls from H2G2 fans is unrecorded.



Theatre

In The Complete History Of America Abridged, the Conspirator Guy's card says: "For more information dial 555-1212."

Video Games

Web Animation

Parodied in the Homestar Runner episode "Senor Mortgage " with the number 555-55-55855-55-5-SENOR-MORT-GAGE-TODAY. An early version of an early Homestar cartoon advertising a (fake, at the time) album of Strong Bad's greatest hits featured a real phone number, 1-800-BAD-SONG. The Brothers Chaps had assumed that no one would actually try to call it. They changed the cartoon shortly after a Brooklyn-based limo company complained that people were calling trying to purchase the album. The new phone number is 1-800-555-SBSINGS. Homestar Runner has used a number of real e-mail addresses for the characters (generally ending in @homestarrunner.com) but at least one of Bubs's buisness cards lists his e-mail address as bubs@bubs.bubs. Then there's the Web addresses, which they've been inconsistent about. A fake movie trailer listed www.whatthepfargtl.egg (a callback to an earlier episode in which Homestar believes the suffix for some site is "dot-egg, or dot-muffin or something") as its official site, but a later cartoon has Strong Bad registering virtualpizz.biz, a real domain that a fan snatched up quickly afterward and fortunately did not turn into anything untoward.

" with the number 555-55-55855-55-5-SENOR-MORT-GAGE-TODAY. In GEOWeasel, the number 1-555-000-0000 appears as part of an advertisement for an imaginary friend-killing gun.

Webcomics

Western Animation

Real Life