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{{trope}}
[[File:
A giant timepiece, visible throughout its locale. Beloved of hunchbacks, of villains who need their capes to billow dramatically, and of snipers with poor tactical sense. Can be used as a background detail, though most examples not [[The Eiffel Tower Effect|in London]] (and plenty that are) end up involved in the plot in some way. One may be used to increase the suspense in a [[Race Against the Clock|Clock Tower Finale]], act as the home or base for the main characters, or become the stage for a [[Fight Scene]] or [[Climbing Climax]].
Scenes on a
* Characters nervously perching on the ledge invariably located above the clock face. For whatever reason, escaped parrots are also like to perch here. Odds are good somebody will fall, in which case...
* A character grabs onto and hangs desperately from one of the clock hands. Bonus points for the movement of the hands being used for dramatic tension as they slowly tick into a position that would dump the hero off to his doom. Sometimes this effect is used by the villain as a deathtrap. Villains in this position may be [[Save the Villain|saved]] by the hero in a [[Take My Hand]] moment.
* If inside, there will be plenty of gears and other mechanisms, or at least a rope to ring the bell. Expect a stadium sized chamber full of spur gears the size of Volkswagens, on and about which the hero and villain [[Cathedral Climax|will climb and clamber as they fight]]. When the gears are invariably jammed with an [[Throw the Sword|errant sword]] or wrench, expect the whole thing to tear itself apart as the designers conveniently forgot to include any sort of clutch, disconnect, or even an emergency "off" switch. Alternately, it might [[Incredibly Lame Pun|stop the clock]] on somebody about to be crushed, but only until the wrench breaks. (The mechanism inside ''real'' clock towers is often much smaller than in fiction. The workings of the Custom House Tower clock in Boston, for example, are about the size of a file cabinet; those of Big Ben, though weighing about five tonnes, cover the same sort of area as a large table.)
The Palace of Westminster
This trope is extremely prevalent in [[Real Life]]. Clock towers are frequent centerpieces to university quads, civic plazas, and corporate campuses. Used mostly for aesthetic appeal in modern times. Please list only the famous ones under the [[Real Life]] section above.
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Aka [[Cathedral Climax]], a subtrope of [[Climbing Climax]]. If someone climbs up one of these with a weapon in real life, duck. See also [[For Doom the Bell Tolls]].
::''Not to be confused with the video game series [[Clock Tower (
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== [[Anime]] ==
* Sylvia was once tied to the hands of a clock tower in the ''[[Viewtiful Joe]]'' anime.
* The clock tower in the city in ''[[
* ''[[The
* Chapter 3 of [[Ann Cassandra]] features a clock tower as both a crowning achievement for the man who built it and the site of a{{spoiler|n almost}} disaster.
* ''[[Yes! Pretty Cure 5]] GoGo'' has one in which Syrup lives with Mailpo until episode 25, and ''[[Suite Pretty Cure]]'' has another as Siren and Trio the Minor's base.
* In ''[[
* Features prominently in ''[[
* And in another CLAMP work, ''[[CLAMP School Detectives]]'', the clock tower is big enough that the villain and heroes can be inside it at the same time and not know where each other are.
* Appears mostly as a backdrop in ''[[Princess Tutu]]'' at first. It's in the town, and Drosselmeyer's realm has a bunch of gears around. Curious. At the moment of climax, though, {{spoiler|we find out this is where the device that Drosselmeyer uses to write from the afterlife lives}}.
* The Campanile in ''[[Aria (manga)|Aria]]'', based on the Real Life [[w:St Mark's Campanile|St Mark's Campanile]], is a landmark in Neo-Venezia. It's the setting of the climax of the OAV ''Arietta''.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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== [[Fan Works]] ==
* In ''[[
* Focan in ''[[
== [[Film]] ==
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** And in all of them it's the ''same'' clock tower, just in different time periods.
* In the film [[In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It|Lemony Snicket's]] ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'', the [[Lemony Narrator]] hides out in a pretty fantastical-looking [[Steampunk]] clock tower, visible only in silhouette.
* In the ''[[Harry Potter (
* In Chaplin's ''[[The Great Dictator]]'' there's a scene where Hynkel shows off an ornate clocktower to Napoloni and Napoloni claims that it's inaccurate.
* [[Harold Lloyd]]'s ''Safety Last'' has him dangling from a clockface on the side of a skyscraper, though that's not actually a clock tower as such.
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* Speaking of homages to ''Safety Last'', [[Jackie Chan]] payed another homage to that movie in his earlier movie ''Project A''. In it, there's a fight sequence inside a clock tower and later a dangerous stunt involving him falling off the top of the clock tower.
* ''[[The Hudsucker Proxy]]'' does this one from the inside.
* The 1978 adaptation of ''[[The Thirty
* [[Orson Welles]]'s 1946 film ''The Stranger'' culminates in the Welles's character {{spoiler|being impaled by a clockwork figure}} in a clock tower.
* In ''[[
* The never-named Albert Clock in Carol Reed's Ulster Noir, ''Odd Man Out''.
** Used to connect the two points of view as the film makes its surreal way to the climax at midnight.
* Dr. Ramzi in ''[[
* Half of the climax of ''[[Cars]] 2'' takes place inside Big Ben.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Garry Kilworth's ''[[Welkin Weasels]]: Gaslight Geezers'' features Maudlin and Scruff, the hero's sidekicks, crashing a hot air balloon into Ringing Roger, the Big Ben-analogue clocktower, below which just happens to be a statue of King Redfur holding a very sharp upward-pointing lance. They catch the hands of the clock. It's quarter-past-nine, Scruff catches the hour hand and Maudlin catches the minute hand:
{{quote|
"You might be. Your hand's going upwards. Mine's going down." }}
* Not a clocktower, but the climax of ''[[Redwall]]'' takes place in the Abbey belltower.
* Gideon Defoe's ''The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'' has a climactic scene in the Big Ben tower, {{spoiler|where the evil Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce has hidden his diabolical device which sucks the youthful life-force out of young ladies. He also tied Charles Darwin's brother Erasmus between two of the clock's cogs, planning to leave him to be crushed if Darwin didn't cancel his lecture tour.}}
* Charles Todd's [[Inspector Rutledge]] novel ''A Long Shadow'' includes a suspenseful climb up the clocktower on the local church. It also inspires one of the series' very rare comic exchanges. The shell-shocked Rutledge is talking to Hamish, the ''dead'' soldier (really, the voice of his subconscious) he constantly hallucinates:
{{quote|
"Then stay here." }}
* Ayn Rand's ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'' prominently features a calendar
== [[Live Action TV]]
* One episode of ''[[Monk]]'' had someone fall off a clock tower. Monk knew that she was murdered by a coworker, but couldn't work out how he could have done it when he was across the school with many witnesses at the time she fell. {{spoiler|He bludgeoned her to death with a plank, then put her ''on one of the hands'', knowing that she would fall when a certain amount of time had passed.}}
* The final fight in the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode "Hush" took place inside a clock tower.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* One stands at the center of Clock Town in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* ''[[
* The [[Gay Paree|Parisian]] level in ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 2]]''. In the console version, the time corresponds to your system clock.
* There's two clocktowers in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' - one in the London section of Neverland in the first game, and one in Twilight Town in the second. The first is the location of that world's [[Cosmic Keystone|Keyhole]] and a [[Bonus Boss]], while the second is a hangout of Roxas's - {{spoiler|in both his real life with the Organization and his life in the digital Twilight Town}}.
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* There's at least one level in each of the ''[[Castlevania]]'' games that takes place inside a clock tower, complete with moving gears, pendulums, and [[Goddamned Bats|medusa heads]].
* Zasalamel's stage in ''[[Soul Calibur]] III'' is located inside a clock tower.
* [[Exactly What It Says
* The Garal Clock Tower in ''[[Treasure of the Rudras]]'' {{spoiler|The Clock Tower is a countdown timer for [[The End of the World
* Spagonia from ''[[
* Gondolir, the main human city in ''Eternum Online'', has a clock tower in its center.
* The player character in the [[Game Boy Advance]] version of ''[[The Sims]]'' lives for a short while in a clock tower.
* One of the levels in ''[[Thief|Thief 3]]'' takes place inside a clock tower.
* Many iterations of the game series ''[[Clock Tower (
** The clock towers don't show up for quite a while in some games. [http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/ClockTower3/ This LP] of ''Clock Tower 3'' uses the lack of a
* Also featured in ''[[Resident Evil]]'' 2 on top of the R.P.D. and 3 & 4 as just stand alone towers.
* There is one in the Neighborhood in ''[[Backyard Sports|Backyard Skateboarding]]''.
* The playable introductory scene to ''[[Bayonetta]]'' is a fight that takes place on the face of a smashed clock tower as it plummets down a seemingly endless cliff.
* In ''[[Deadly Premonition]]'', the Community Center has a large clock tower, which serves as the site for two of the three final boss battles.
* The Scarlet Devil Mansion from ''[[Touhou
* The teaser trailer for ''[[
* Hibikino High's place of legend in the 2nd game of the ''[[Tokimeki Memorial]]'' series is a clock tower named "the Legendary Bell". Its bells are normally broken and can't ring, [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|but it's sort of magical]] and will ring to give its blessings and grant eternal happiness to couples making their [[Love Confession]] near it on Graduation Day.
* In ''[[Persona 2]]'', Seven Sisters High's Clock Tower is used as the first boss battle setting.
* The city of Stormwind in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' features a very resilient clock tower. Even after said tower is partially melted during the Cataclysm, it still chimes every hour, on the hour.
* The [[PC 98]] ''Castlevania'' clone ''Rusty'' has the obligatory stage taking place inside a clock tower, which in this case is also an [[Auto
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* With as much [https://web.archive.org/web/20130501112339/http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Weird_Time_Shit weird time shit] that goes on in [[
** It ''does'', however, {{spoiler|become [[Weaponized Landmark|a sniper cannon.]]}}
== [[Western Animation]]
* Dr. Doofenschmirtz of ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' plans to steal Big Ben because the numbers on his watch are too small for him to read...
* An ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]'' video had Dylan fetch a parrot.
* A Christmas episode of ''[[Futurama]]'' also had a parrot-fetching; parodied by using a giant ''digital'' clock, complete with Fry falling off of and grabbing onto the darkened segments.
* In the ''[[Batman: The Animated Series
** An episode of ''[[
* The title characters in ''[[
* A ''[[
* The [[Classic Disney Short]] ''[[Clock Cleaners]]''.
* This appears in Disney's version of ''[[Peter Pan]]'' - as well as the sequel, ''Return to Neverland''.
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* In ''[[The Backyardigans]]'', a James Bond-themed episode has the villain Lady in Pink scrambling to the edge of a clock tower's hand to retrieve a bottle of chocolate syrup. Pink falls off, but Agent Secret swoops in to save her in time.
* Big Bentley from ''[[Cars|Cars 2]]''.
* One episode of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987
== [[Web Original]] ==
* Though not a Clock Tower, per se, the BIOCOM tower in ''[[Broken Saints]]'' pretty much acts as
== [[Real Life]] ==
* That clock tower everyone calls Big Ben, actually the Palace of Westminster clock tower in London - renamed "[[w:Elizabeth Tower|Elizabeth Tower]]" in 2012 on the occasion of [[Elizabeth II]]'s Diamond Jubilee.
** Big Ben is the bell that sounds the hour.
* The Kremlin clock tower, more properly called Spasskaya Tower, in Moscow.
* The Custom House Tower, with its four clock faces, was the tallest building in Boston (by law!) for most of the 20th century.
** Many cities have or had laws that specify the clock tower is the tallest building in town. For many decades after it was built, no building in Ottawa, Canada was taller than the Peace Tower.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:The Tower]]
[[Category:Settings]]
[[Category:Building Tropes]]
[[Category:Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity]]
[[Category:
▲[[Category:Clock Tower]]
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