Public Telephone

Tommy Vercetti recieving instructions from Mr. Black from a payphone in Grand Theft Auto:Vice City.

The public telephone where Wade "The Fixer" Johnson's assassination missions are started.

Public telephones, also known as Payphones and Pay Phones, is a recurring communication device/machine in the Grand Theft Auto series. They have appeared in every single Grand Theft Auto game to date. They are, in both Grand Theft Auto 1 and Grand Theft Auto 2, a crucial mode of communication between the player and various criminals, as verbal and face-to-face mission bosses didn't exist that time. Ringing in various portions of cities, players are issued orders by said party to perform a string of missions, simply by walking in front of the marked telephone booths. The system was employed more extensively in GTA 2, where individual missions are trigger each time the player walks up to a ringing public phone.

Emphasis on face-to-face meetings with individuals in Grand Theft Auto III resulted in fewer occurrences of public telephones as a means to issue missions to the player. Only a handful of characters in games after GTA 2 are known to use public telephones to address the player, including El Burro, King Courtney, D-Ice and Marty Chonks from GTA III, Mr. Black from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and The Fixer from Grand Theft Auto IV.

In Grand Theft Auto IV, payphones are used by normal NPC's. They are seen standing next to them with the phone in their hands, talking about different things. If they are pushed by the player, they will drop the phone to the floor.

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  A public telephone in GTA 1.

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  A public telephone in GTA London 1969 and GTA London 1961, which uses red telephone boxes formerly common in the United Kingdom.

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  A public telephone in GTA 2.

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  A ringing public telephone fronted by a halo in GTA III. This phone activates El Burro missions.

Trivia

• Grand Theft Auto III has the most payphone mission givers out of every Grand Theft Auto game after Grand Theft Auto 2.