Monthly Archives: February 2022

Best Telecom Easter Egg in a TV Show – Amazon’s “Reacher”

The winner for best telecom Easter egg in a show is – Reacher!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m always on the lookout for real telephone numbers in TV shows and movies. So I was delighted to find five telephony Easter Eggs in the new show “Reacher” on Amazon.

At one point, the police detective holds up a scrap of paper with a real telephone number on it. Of course I paused and called it right away.

I was treated to someone’s voicemail. I was asked to leave a message, but there was no beep and the call hung up. Sure enough – in the next scene we found out who this was, but it allowed us to be one step ahead of the investigation!

Much later, we saw the rest of the note, which contained three more valid numbers!

Each of these numbers ties into the story. Two of them are voiced by characters that never actually make an appearance in the show. Do they get credit for appearing in Reacher? There’s no mention in IMDB.

And finally at the end, we get a tender scene with a telephone number hand-off. This one, like the others, is tantalizingly obviously supposed to be called by us, the viewer.

This time I waited until the end of the show before calling it, and it was like a sweet post-credit scene. Well done, Amazon!

If Amazon changes these scenes, or if they’ve disconnected the numbers by the time you read this, or if you are not in the US and do not want to incur international telecom fees, here is the audio associated with each of these numbers:


229-474-3308


609-337-2601


646-568-5111

901-654-0115


229-785-8132


The “rate centers” of the telephone numbers match the story line, so someone knew what they were doing. I checked the callerid name for these numbers, and three of them say “SKYDANCE”, which is the name of the production company for Reacher. It appears that Skydance has a great telecommunications consultant on this! Whoever you are, we appreciate you!

On an interesting side note, Amazon has recently released a telecommunications product called Amazon Connect for call centers. From the information I could find, I don’t think these numbers are part of Amazon connect. So Skydance Media is paying some monthly fee to host these numbers somewhere. Hopefully indefinitely.

The carrier associated with three of these numbers match the carrier for the telephone number in Don’t Look Up – ONVOY LLC. It could be Onvoy is a partner of Twilio. Peerless is the carrier for the remaining two. They are also a large business-to-business carrier and likely a partner with Twilio. I only mention Twilio because they’re the go-to place for telephone number hosting. But the telecom team at Skydance could be hosting it themselves – perhaps using this as another point of engagement with their productions. I sure hope so! And perhaps they should let people leave messages so we could express our appreciation!

So, to the Skydance telecom team – we salute you! I’m sure there’s a great story behind this. I’d love to hear it if you’re able to talk about it. If you’re a big telecom geek like me, you’re hoping someone noticed these hidden gems and you’re occasionally searching Google for mention of them. Please respond! We’ve noticed and we’re huge fans!

For reference, and to help the Skydance team find this posting, here’s the public North American Numbering Plan information for these five numbers as of 2022-02-13:

Information about number 12294743308:
CNAM: SKYDANCE
LRN: 12298008993
State: GA
Ratecenter: ALBANY
CLLI: ALBYGAMA3MD
LATA: 444
OCN: 067D
Company: ONVOY, LLC – GA
Prefix_Type: CLEC

Information about number 16465685111:
CNAM: SKYDANCE
LRN: 19143509900
State: NY
Ratecenter: CHAPPAQUA
CLLI: NYCMNYZRDBS
LATA: 132
OCN: 155E
Company: PEERLESS NETWORK OF NEW YORK,
Prefix_Type: CLEC

Information about number 19016540115:
CNAM: SKYDANCE
LRN: 19012030000
State: TN
Ratecenter: MEMPHIS
CLLI: MMPHTNMADS7
LATA: 468
OCN: 276F
Company: PEERLESS NETWORK OF TENNESSEE,
Prefix_Type: CLEC

Information about number 16093372601:
CNAM: TRENTON NJ
LRN: 18569550993
State: NJ
Ratecenter: CAMDEN
CLLI: CMDNNJCEX8Z
LATA: 222
OCN: 637C
Company: ONVOY, LLC – NJ
Prefix_Type: CLEC

Information about number 12297858132:
CNAM: MOULTRIE GA
LRN: 12299222993
State: GA
Ratecenter: FITZGERALD
CLLI: FTZGGAXALMD
LATA: 444
OCN: 067D
Company: ONVOY, LLC – GA
Prefix_Type: CLEC

 

Telephony Easter Eggs in Movies

Note – this is a re-posting of an identical blog post on jollyrogertelephone.com, and LinkedIn. But I wanted to mention a couple more that I recently discovered, so I’ll use this blog posting here to update regularly as I found them – and hopefully to engage with you as you discover them too!

Whenever I watch a movie, I’m always on the lookout for telephone numbers.

By now, I think we all know the 555 prefix is used for fake Hollywood numbers. I learned recently that not all 555 numbers are available for fake usage. Some of you may remember you could call information in another area by dialing NPA-555-1212, so Los Angeles was 213-555-1212, New York 212-555-1212, etc. But in the last 20 years or so, all 411 is pretty much nationwide, and with smartphones, who uses 411 anymore anyway? According to ATIS (the authority in this matter), only 555-0100 through 0199 are reserved for “entertainment and advertising purposes”. The rest of the numbers (other than 555-1212) are reserved for future use. The intention is for a 555-XXXX number to route to the same place regardless of areacode. This gives the industry tremendous flexibility someday to have a nationwide 7-digit telephone number. Although all the telephone companies will have to comply somehow. And the whole industry is moving towards 10-digit dialing anyway.

But someday perhaps this Ghostbusters telephone number will work nation-wide.

Ghostbusters – We’re ready to believe you!

Ghostbusters was made prior to the guidelines set in 1994 to use 555-0100 through 555-0199. This is how we know Veronica Mars was made after 1994. In that show, telephone numbers are displayed frequently, and all are in the allowed range of 555-01xx.

Veronica Mars phones

For the longest time, it was common for telephone system administrators to block calls to 555-XXXX or XXX-555-XXXX. You typically didn’t want your users dialing long-distance to “information”, and XXX-555-1212 was the only valid number. I remember sometime in 2013 or so, I got a call from a manager because he couldn’t call his BMW dealer. It turns out the dealer had an 800-555-XXXX number, which I found interesting. So I had to program the telephone system to allow calls to all of the tollfree area codes (800, 888, 877, etc.) with the 555 prefix. If you manage a telephone system, you probably had to do this also (or you will eventually – you might want to check).

Anyway, back to Hollywood telephone Easter Eggs. I recently saw this “hotline” number in the movie Don’t Look Up.

Don’t Look Up – BASH Hotline

Of course, I immediately paused the movie and called the number (I recommend you finish the movie before doing this), and discovered a delightful series of hold announcements to compliment the movie. This is not something we could do back when we saw movies in the theater, but it’s fun to do it when streaming movies in our homes or on our devices. I recommend you call the number so the show’s producers can track engagement. But if the number is dead, here is the audio. It ends with a very convincing disconnect message at 15 minutes. I don’t know where they got it, but it sounds Genuine Telco.

You’ll notice this is NOT a tollfree number. The IMDB trivia mentions a different hotline number with a tollfree number that routes to an adult chat line service. I’m not sure how this was allowed to happen – Netflix made a similar mistake with the Squid Game when a real telephone number appeared in a scene. But in Don’t Look Up, they apparently procured a telephone number and edited the scene by the time I saw it, otherwise I would have called that chat line also! The new number, a vanity number ending in COMET, fits nicely with the tone of the movie. And the telephone announcements are perfect as well. This must have been rushed, or else they would have included it originally, yes? I noticed they got the same voice talent they used in the movie. The “BASH Narrator” is Liev Schreiber, according to IMDB. What fun to have him record a bunch of goofy on-hold announcements for a fake call center.

And, as an Easter Egg within an Easter Egg, the rate center for 254-632-6638 is Waco, TX, home of the Waco Siege. If you’ve seen the movie, I think that was intentional.

Speaking of more fake numbers, apparently, the Baby Sitter’s Club mentioned a real number intentionally as well. Alas, when I call it now, I just get a fast busy. This makes me wonder about the funding for these Easter Eggs. Does the marketing and promotions budget pay for these? And if so, is it temporary? These movies have a long shelf-life. I assume I will be able to watch the Baby Sitter’s Club many years from now. What happens if some unsuspecting subscriber is assigned that number in the future? Also, if the show is successful, there might be a considerable amount of inbound traffic. This can be a problem if the telephone number is hosted by a VoIP company that charges for inbound traffic (as most do). Don’t Look Up is in Netflix’s top 10 right now. I assume that telephone number is pretty busy. What happens when Marketing pulls the plug on the budget?

I seem to recall a scene in Fletch when Fletch is looking up some medical records of Alan Stanwyk and a telephone number could briefly be seen. I don’t know who has that number today. I wonder if anyone ever calls it? Fletch was made before the North American Numbering Plan Administration reserved fake numbers for movies. Although, Ghostbusters used 555, so I’m not sure why Fletch didn’t. I cannot seem to stream Fletch at the moment, so I cannot verify. I do have the DVD somewhere.

Honorable Mention!

Although it’s not movie-related, I did want to mention my favorite telephony Easter Egg is from a game called Kentucky Route Zero. The game was published in five “episodes”. At one point, the developer, Cardboard Computers, published an “interlude” to the game with a telephone number of 270-301-5797. The CNAM says Gracey, KY but the ratecenter for 270-301 is Madison. Regardless, this telephone number connects you to the most amazing IVR I’ve ever heard. It DEFINITELY fits the mood of the game. The voice and content are absolutely perfect. I applaud the creative team involved in this. If you call it, you’ll understand why I have not provided audio. At some point, perhaps I’ll try to crawl this IVR and record it, but I have not tried. I believe it was set up in 2013 or so, and at the time I write this in early 2022, it is still active. I hope the developers never pull it down. But call it now just in case.

Kentucky Route Zero – Bureau of Secret Tourism

But back to movies…

And, if you are a child of the 80s like me, you may remember that telephone numbers featured prominently in Wargames. In one scene, David Lightman speaks with an operator and requests the local prefixes for Sunnyvale, CA. He then sets up a wardialer to call every number in that area. For this case, the writers could not just use the single prefix of ‘555’. So they fudged the area code when displaying the wardialer at work. The real area code for Sunnyvale, CA was 408 in 1983. But the screenshots show area code 311, which is an invalid code and impossible to call.

Wargames – Impossible area code 311

I’m not sure what the guidelines would be today if a movie needed to show a long list of non-555 telephone numbers. Probably something similar to this – using an invalid area code. For now, area codes cannot start with 0 or 1, nor end in 11. Prior to 1995, the middle digit had to be a 0 or 1, but this is no longer the case. So if Hollywood needs to show fake telephone numbers and wants to avoid the jarringly fake 555, then invalid area codes are the way to go.

But I love the approach that Don’t Look Up has taken – why not hide an Easter Egg in your movie?

So Hollywood – I’d like to make an offer. At the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, we have an extensive inventory of telephone numbers and access to many more. If you’re considering including a telephony Easter Egg in your show or movie, please let me help! Most of our numbers include unlimited inbound calls. Or, if you want a vanity number, we can find one and port it into our network. The rules have changed over the years for telephone number formats, so if you’re making a period piece, I can help you find a telephone number that fits the time. And I can make an AI robot of anyone in your cast of the movie, so your viewers could call into the number and speak with a character from your movie. In the case of Don’t Look Up, callers could speak with President Orlean, or Dr. Randall Mindy, or perhaps funniest of all, Jason Orlean. And as a lover of telecommunications, I will take good care of these numbers and the associated robots as a museum curator takes care of a beloved collection. Stop using the boring and obvious 555 prefix! Let’s hide some Easter Eggs and engage with your audience!

In the meantime, please let me know if you remember or notice any telephony-related Easter Eggs as you watch these shows! Also, for those of you outside the US, what does your entertainment industry do for fake telephone numbers?

Thank you all!
Roger Anderson
(roger@rogerthephoneguy.com)


Update 2/13/2022 – The Italian Job

I’m a fan of heist movies, so I’m not sure how I missed The Italian Job for so many years. But shortly after writing this I saw a tollfree 555 number on the NetCom van. As I mentioned above, the npa/nxx of 800-555 is actually assigned, so compliance is important. Here we see 800-555-0199. I remember an internet service provider in the 90s called Netcom. I guess the name was available for use in this movie?

The Italian Job – NetCom van

The winner for best telecom Easter egg in a show is – Reacher!

The best Telecom Easter Egg I have found so far was in the Amazon show “Reacher”. I have posted a specific entry about that here.