Comments on: Do “555″ Numbers on TV Bother You Too?

By: Mr. Salk

Mr. Salk — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:24:09 +0000

As reality invoking as the movie 555 numbers are, at least I’m used to them. I’m so conditioned that if I saw a real phone number I would spend the next several minutes pondering their absence.

By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:39:55 +0000

Jeff, there are some movies and TV shows (the TV show 24 most notably) which have given real phone numbers issued to members of their staff. This phone number is then used basically to advertise the show.

By: jeffsdeepthoughts

jeffsdeepthoughts — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:27:53 +0000

I was watching “Sky High” with my kids the other day. The bus driver in the movie passes his business card to the main character. Interestingly, they had his thumb positioned over the prefix of the phone number, presumably to avoid that annoying jolt of noticing the 555… Ironically, I was still jolted out of my suspension of disbelief by noticing how they avoided showing the number.
I wonder if anybody has thought about commercializing this… There must be somebody who’d pay to have their phone number play some crucial roll in a movie and then hope for prank calls so that they can try and sell stuff to the callers.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 03:23:10 +0000

Yeah, there’s really just nothing they can do. I seem to recall that they wound up with a real number as the number that God used to page Bruce in Bruce Almighty, and I remember it being a story where someone got harassed because of it.

I suppose it would work better if they could reserve certain numbers across a number of exchanges over all area codes, but, too late for that now.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:07:07 +0000

I’m sorry Micah. I realize how many phone things are annoying for you. ;)

I wonder, though, how many people called 867-5309 and asked for Jenny….

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By: Christine

Christine — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:08:59 +0000

Bell owns all of the “555″ numbers. That’s because back when people couldn’t be trusted to remember more than five digits at a time, they would be given phone numbers like “Greenfields 14157.” That would actually be 971-4157, with the 9-7 being the G-r of “Greenfields”. The letters on the 5 are J, K, and L. Since not too many English placenames start with those letters in succession, Bell appropriated “555″ for its own use.

I am given to understand that you can always reach someone (ie, a Bell person) by dialing a 555 number, although I have not tried it myself. So you can just pretend that everyone in TV land moonlights at the phone company, if that makes things easier for you.