Extremely Short Timespan: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

Then there's the story where everything happens in just a few hours: Introduction, conflict, character development, dramatic climax, denouement, done!.

A sub-trope of this is [[Real Time]], where everything happens within a minute-to-minute ratio between in-universe and real-life production.

{{examples|Examples: }}

* ''[[Bleach]]'' is ''notorious'' for this:

** The Soul Society Arc revolves around an execution to take place at the end of a week. This took two years and 14 volumes.

** The Hueco Mundo Arc took eight volumes to cover a single day.

** The two arcs after top the above with a single day covered in 11 volumes.

* [[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]. While the series as a whole covers a few years, the last sixteen or so episodes (minus the epilogue) seem to span only a couple days.

* The Festival [[Arc]] in ''[[Negima]]'' was exactly 3 days June 20-22, 2003 ([[Time Travel]] was involved) that covered half the manga up to that point (9 Volumes).

== Comicbooks ==

* ''[[Sin City]]'' has ''Silent Night'' and ''Just Another Saturday Night'' which, as the titles imply, take place in a single night. The ''Big Fat Kill'' is a major storyline that only takes place over the course of a single night as well.

* Many comic book arcs take maybe a day or two to tell the story. A six-issue ''[[Batman]]'' arc, for instance, may take one night to tell, which allows the character to (at least somewhat) realistically appear in four or five books at the same time.

* ''[[The Great Mouse Detective]]'', especially if you consider that the movie's events take place at night, and not once is the sun ever shown.

* ''[[Monsters, Inc.]]'' takes place over three very hectic days.

* The screen adaption of ''[[The Crimson Rivers]]'' manages to pack ''a lot'' of plot into mere 24 hours. In fact, it is only confirmed by [[Word of God]] in a post-release commentary.

* The movie ''[[Clue (film)|Clue]]'' takes place in a single evening, with no flash-backs.

** ''[[Murder By Death]]'' is similar, on many levels.

* ''[[12 Angry Men]]'' in one afternoon

** Also in [[Real Time]]

* ''[[Cellular]]''

* ''[[Ferris Bueller's Day Off|Ferris Buellers Day Off]]'' in less than 12 hours.

* ''[[The Terminator]]''

* ''[[88 Minutes]]'' (actually a liitle more than 88 minutes)

* From the perspective of its protagonist, ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'' seems to take place in the course of two very busy days, at most. Otherwise, it took about sixty years. Your choice.

** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Doc when they go back to 1955.

{{quote|'''Marty''': ''This is heavy, Doc! It feels like I was here yesterday!''

'''Doc''': ''You WERE here yesterday, Marty! You were!'' }}

*** It's certainly no less than three days, as there are two distinct sunsets and subsequent dawns depicted on Tatooine, which has a 23-hour rotation.

* ''[[The House of Yes]]'' mostly takes place over a single, Thanksgiving night.

* So far in the [[Marvel Cinematic Universe]] has three movies taking place at the same time. ''[[The Incredible Hulk (film)|The Incredible Hulk]]'', ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man 2]]'', and ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'' all take place roughly within the span of the same week.

* ''[[Margin Call]]'' takes place in a 24-hour period

* ''[[Eleven Minutes Ago]]'' takes place over the course of the wedding reception. The main character, on the other hand, is experiencing it in eleven minute chunks over the course of years. It's a little [[Timey-Wimey Ball|Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey]].

* The Lihuauan film ''The Girl and the Echo'' takes place within one day. This is mirrored in its alternative title, ''"Paskutine Apostogu Diena"'' ("Last day of Holydays").

* ''[[Bad Day At Black Rock]]''. The 'Day' of the title is literal, with the events of the movie encompassing about 24 hours.

* Each of the ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' books take place in three days, if not less. Although in the Lost Colony {{spoiler|three years pass for the rest of the world while the trip in Hybras only lasted minutes for Artemis. Also, time was flowing differently there so it passed differently for their minds and bodies. As Artemis figured out: An hour per second for a count of forty, followed by a deceleration to thirty minutes per second for a count of eighteen, then a slight jump backwards in time, one minute per second back for a count of two. Then it repeats.}}

* ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]''. The protagonists go from total strangers to couple to married to worm food in just a couple days.

* Lot's of [[Dean Koontz]] novels are like this, while others are a bit longer.

* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the first half of series 1, 3, 4 and 5 (from the companions introduction to the episode where they reunite them with their parents or fiancé) take place pretty much over three, maybe four days from the Doctor and companion's viewpoint with little or no off-screen adventuring.

** Prior to the [[Time Skip]], the Harold Saxon arc encompassing series 3 occurs over a couple of days (from Saxon and his cronies' viewpoint).

*** From the Doctor's perspective, everything from stepping out of the TARDIS on the Oodsphere in ''The End of Time'', to leaving the War Rooms with Amy in "Victory of the Daleks" probably takes less than a week, as ''The End of Time'', "The Eleventh Hour", "The Beast Below" and "Victory of the Daleks" all lead straight into each other.

* Spoofed in the ''[[Golden Girls]]'', where Dorothy mentions not having read [[Apartment 3 G]] in over twenty years and Blanche, who reads it every day offers to fill her in on what's happened since. Although her exposition is interrupted it starts with "Well, it's later that day..."

* Though the main plot of ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' has taken place over several year, the framing device (Older Ted telling the story of how he met their mother to his kids) is implied to be taking place in a very short period. The kids don't age, change clothes or move from their spots on the sofa so it's likely this is all taking place over one very long afternoon.

* Aristotle wrote in his ''[[Poetics]]'' that tragedy tends to take place over a short period of time (no more than a day), as contrasted with epic poetry which generally takes place over a much longer period. In the Renaissance, this was taken by many dramatists to be a hard-and-fast rule (the "[[wikipedia:Classical unities|classical unity of time]]") though Aristotle seems not to have intended it as such. As a result, virtually all Renaissance drama from continental Europe is an example of this trope; English drama developed independently, and as a result is less likely to follow the unities especially in its earlier forms.

* [[Lampshaded]] and parodied in [[Niccolo Machiavelli]]'s satire ''Mandragola''. It takes place over the course of ''two'' days, so it apparently violates the classical Unity of Time rule; however, Machiavelli inserts a monologue in which he explains that none of the characters are actually going to sleep that night, so it doesn't ''really'' violate it.

* ''[[Luigi's Mansion|Luigis Mansion]]'', which apparently took place over the course of just a single night according to the ending. The mansion itself vanishes as well.

* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' takes place over one helluva night.

* Everything in ''[[King's Quest IV]]'' takes place in 24 hours.

* ''[[Psychonauts]]'' has the first cutscene at night, and the game starts the morning after. By the final cutscene, it's the ''next'' morning.

* Both the ''[[When They Cry|When]] [[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni|they]] [[Umineko no Naku Koro ni|cry]]'' series uses this, combined with use of a [[Groundhog Day Loop]].

* The first ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]]'' game took place over the course of three nights (although it includes a flashback to three years prior to that). The sequel lasts about the same amount of time.