Can You Hear Me Now/Playing With

Basic Trope: Fictional cellphones are either more unreliable than Real Life cellphones, or fictional characters are less likely to possess them than in the real world.
 * Straight: Alice is trying to contact Bob but he is in the middle of a forest and thus out of reach of a cellphone tower.
 * Exaggerated: Alice is trying to contact Bob using a cellphone but cannot find a signal, despite the fact that they are both in downtown New York.
 * Justified: Bob is in an out-of-reach location where it genuinely is difficult to get a cellphone signal (such as a basement, the middle of a desert or Antarctica).
 * Inverted:
 * Alice's cellphone is so powerful it is capable of doing things no cellphone should be able to do.
 * Alice has a satellite phone.
 * Subverted: Despite being out of an urban area, Bob is still within cellphone range and Alice's call gets through.
 * Doubly Subverted: The line is unclear, however, and cuts out before Alice can impart her message to Bob.
 * Parodied: Despite the fact that they all have working cellphones, in an emergency none of the characters even thinks about using them to contact any of the others.
 * Deconstructed: The uselessness of cellphones in general means many companies go bankrupt and millions of workers are put out of jobs.
 * Reconstructed: The uselessness of cellphones in general puts pressure on cellphone companies to finally improve service by building more powerful towers. Those that do not go bankrupt.
 * Zig Zagged: Bob repeatedly goes into areas of bad phone service.
 * Averted: Fictional cellphones are exactly as reliable and widely-possessed as they are in Real Life.
 * Lampshaded: "Damn, the reception out here is terrible."
 * Invoked: Bob intentionally gives Alice a malfunctioning cellphone so that she will not be able to contact anyone in an emergency.
 * Defied:
 * Alice is Crazy Prepared and always has a working phone with her. She might even carry several.
 * Alternately, Alice has a satellite phone which always works.
 * Or, Alice and Bob have radios and know how to use them.
 * Discussed: "Don't you have a cell phone?" "Yeah, but all the cellphone towers around here can't get a signal if you're more than two feet away!"
 * Conversed: "Wow, the cellphone service providers these characters have suck."

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