Magic Countdown: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Any kind of stated time limit or countdown in fiction seems to know when it's [[Being Watched]], and will cheat accordingly for maximum drama. This phenomenon tends to occur especially as a countdown starts approaching zero.

 

Often occurs because [[Talking Is a Free Action]].

{{examples}}

== Played Straight ==

* In the ''[[Naruto]]'' OVA ''Battle at Hidden Falls. I Am the Hero!'', Shibuki is told he has 10 seconds to reveal his location before Suien kills a villager. Naruto's short speech about bravery takes considerably longer.

** During her fight with Sasori in ''[[Naruto]] Shippuden'', Sakura counts down the time left before her antidote wears off. Apparently one entire episode is just under two minutes.

* On ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', during the final fight between Goku and Frieza during the Namek saga, the planet Namek was minutes away from collapse for ''[[Inaction Sequence|10 episodes]]''. Ridiculously, one episode actually says "two minutes" at the beginning and "one minute" at the end.

** Lampshaded later by the fact that Freiza flat-out admits he screwed up the whole "destroying Namek" thing, and it was supposed to explode '''instantly'''... [[I Meant to Do That|he just made up the "five minutes left" thing to not look like an idiot]].

** A lot of this sort of thing on the show is implicitly explained as the fight being slowed down so that the audience can actually follow it. As early as the battles with the Saibamen, the already superhuman Gohan expresses trouble following the action, implying that every major fight that happens afterwards would be too fast for the human eye.

** In a later episode, they even comment on this when Goku needs time to regather his energy and asks Vegeta to stall Kid-Buu for one minute. Vegeta comments that this is a really long time for a fight against Buu and the minute does last at least an episode.

* Also occurs in the original ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' series, during Yugi and Jounouchi's (Joey) duel, while Malik (Marik) has Jounouchi brainwashed. The duel is set to take no more than 40 minutes or both would be [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?|dragged to the bottom of the ocean by the anchor to which they are tied]], but it actually takes 3-4 episodes of non-stop [[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|children's card games]], which totals 60–80 minutes.

 

* ''[[DC Challenge]] #2'' (1985). The bomb, which is far away, is about to detonate in 8 seconds. Batman is confronting the villain at a power plant. [[Talking Is a Free Action|The following exchange takes place:]]

{{quote|'''Villain:''' Now do you believe me, Batman? You can't radio for help because I'm jamming all the channels -- and all the phones are dead as well, so you cannot contact your butler!

::At this point we see the bomb again, and it's down to 5 seconds left. (Batman does disarm the faraway bomb, by cutting the power at the power plant.)

 

* The inverse variety occurs in the movie ''[[Apollo 13]]''. The loss of communications during re-entry is said to last 4-1/2 minutes, but actually takes about 3 minutes of movie. Given how tense that scene is watching the movie, [[Foregone Conclusion|knowing how it comes out]], one can imagine how tense it was in real life, taking half again as long.

* ''[[Goldfinger]]'': During the countdown to the detonation of the nuclear bomb in Fort Knox. It manages to get stopped at 007, too. Imagine that.

** ''[[Octopussy]]'', another ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]'' movie, uses it in a detonator instead of an entire bomb (and since [[Science Marches On]], the counter is digital).

** ''[[The World Is Not Enough]]'': The needle on the reactor at the end is moving towards the red zone... as long as the viewer is watching. It even moves back when out of sight.

* ''[[Independence Day]]'': "Can you get us out of here in 30 seconds?" More like two minutes. Yet cut back to the bomb, which still has five seconds on it.

* The film ''[[Stargate (film)|Stargate]]'' (the original one). When O'Neil sets the timer on the nuke, it also beeps constantly in all the scenes. In most scenes, counting the beeps is pretty accurate between timer shots, but the time between beeps varies widely between shots. In one scene, it counts down normally, in another it's almost rapid fire.

* ''[[Star Wars]]'': From "The Rebel base will be in range in thirty minutes" (not seconds as visibly ''seen''), through the power-up of the Death Star's superlaser, to the destruction of the Death Star at least ''feels'' like it takes five minutes—when before, the Death Star could power up and blow the shit out of Alderaan in less than a minute.

** This was because the Death Star had to orbit the planet Yavin in order to destroy the moon of Yavin IV, and a gas giant was likely too large for the Death Star to destroy(and would have not been able to destroy Yavin IV without recharging anyway).

* In ''[[Star Trek III: The Search For Spock]]'', Kirk et al. activate the Enterprise's 60-second auto-destruct sequence and then go down to the transporter room where they beam off the ship. The Klingons then beam onto the ship and cautiously make their way to the bridge, where they find the countdown nearly complete and promptly get blowed up real good. But of course, roughly 100 seconds of film have elapsed between the beginning and the end of the 60-second countdown, and even at that, the trips to and from the transporter room have obviously been compressed.

* In ''[[The Manhattan Project]]'', a nuclear bomb's timer is damaged by radiation, causing it to start the timer... With 999 hours until detonation. It seems the army have more than a month to deal with it, until they discover that {{spoiler|the timer counts down exponentially, to the point that it eventually counts down several hours per second}}. Might be a [[Justified Trope|justification]] or outright parody.

* ''[[Future War]]'' is probably the only example where the countdown goes faster than reality ''on screen''.

* ''[[Superman II]]''. The H-bomb is supposed to have a 1 minute timer. It takes at least 1 minute 24 seconds to detonate after the timer starts.

* In ''[[Time Cop]]'', there's a bomb in the protagonist's house with a mere 10 seconds left on the clock. Even though the scene is going in slow motion, he somehow manages to make it from the second story to the outside the house while carrying his wife in both arms. He isn't even running down the steps, either.

 

* A ''literal'' example in the climax of ''[[Artemis Fowl]]: the Lost Colony''. Due to the decaying of a spell that kept an island of demons out of time in Limbo, the timer on a bomb in a suitcase moves forward at differing speeds for different periods of time and at one point goes ''backwards'' a short time, all on a constant loop. {{spoiler|Artemis is able use this indicator to save Holly's life by [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|firing a bullet into the past and preventing her death from happening in the first place.]]}}

 

* Funnily enough, ''[[24]]'' has some examples of this: sometimes an episode ends with something important (like an explosion) and the next episode begins with the timer exactly following, but the events ahead—the emergency units have already arrived, etc.

** The title screen, [["Previously On..."]] segments, and "The following takes place..." take about 2 minutes. Only once in Season 1 (1:00am–2:00am aka episode 2) does it show the clock immediately after "The following takes place...".

* ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'' episode "While Gotham City Burns". Batman and Chief O'Hara have only a minute to drive to a church and save Robin from being killed in the Bookworm's [[Death Trap]]. The minute is shown on a clock dial on the screen, with a series of scenes showing their progress. There's no way that they could have done it within a minute. Batman even takes time out to explain something unimportant to Chief O'Hara.

 

* In the recent Met performance of ''Doctor Atomic'', about Dr. Oppenheimer and the Trinity nuclear test, a voice announces five minutes to the test firing. Eight minutes later, the two minute buzzer sounds. Eight minutes later, the bomb goes off.

 

* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'' has a truly bizarre example. All the gameplay countdowns do this, but during one of them, there's a codec conversation in which {{spoiler|a bomb is announced to have less than thirty seconds left on the clock. Twenty-odd seconds later, it blows up, averting the trope}} while the other countdown is frozen until you reach the next area.

* In the first mission of ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', the bomb timer is set at 10 minutes. Now, the timer keeps perfect time through battles, menus, and passages from one area to the next. The magic countdown effect becomes present right as your party reaches the exit. [[Always Close|No matter how much time is left on the timer when it's last displayed, the bomb explodes right as your party leaves the reactor]].

* Occurs in the [[Final Boss]] fight of ''[[Portal 2]]''. You're given six minutes to defeat the boss before the entire Enrichment Center explodes in an atomic fireball due to a reactor meltdown. However, the battle is conducted in three stages that are independently timed, giving you as much as twelve minutes to beat it. For example, whether you take one minute or five to beat the first stage, the second stage starts the reactor countdown timer at four minutes. You can beat that stage with as little as one second left, but the third stage starts over at precisely two minutes, and even after you finish that, the conclusion is a [[Take Your Time]]. You could go eat lunch and the place will still be about to explode. There is a subtle [[Lampshade Hanging]] of this when the automated announcer declares after the second stage that the reactor explosion timer has been destroyed. Not the explosion itself, mind you, the ''timer'' for the explosion.

** Of course, this being Aperture, the second timer<ref>Activated by the 'Reactor explosion uncertainty emergency preemption protocol'</ref> is a self-destruction timer to prevent the uncertainty that would result if they didn't know exactly ''when'' they were going to die.

 

** And furthermore, the timer beeped with every passing second, even when it was offscreen, but the beeps didn't correspond to how much time had passed. At the 20-seconds mark, it plainly beeped more times than there were seconds remaining.

** Happens again in another episode while Mark contemplates whether or not to destroy the Earth with a Time Bomb. He's clearly taking more than a few seconds to do this, while the timer counts down about 5 seconds. Of course, being [[Fairly Oddparents]] and all, the timer in question might have actually been magic.

* This happens all the time in ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' Season 2 and 3 with the countdown before hitting the key to avoid the reconfiguration of Sector 5. It is supposed to be 3 minutes, but it jumps forward, and sometimes backward, quite haphazardly.

* In the opening of ''[[Sonic Sat AM|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', the timer Sally sets actually counts down ''faster'' when it's not on-screen. Potentially justified in that a few seconds could have been skipped between some of the camera changes (though that would be odd).

* In ''[[The Simpsons]]'', when [[It Makes Sense in Context|Homer is waiting to deliberately take a cannonball to the stomach that he knows will kill him]], the fuse on the cannon is shown burning most of the way from beginning to end several times between shots of something else.

 

* Attempt any file transfer in any version of Windows and watch the time remaining jump about like a nervous salmon in a particularly fast river. ''[[Lucky Star]]'' poked at this.

** The same principle applies to file downloading, especially a torrent, since the estimate for time remaining assumes that the current speeds will remain constant, which is almost never true.

*** Similarly, the "less than a minute" at the very end of the installation usually takes a couple of minutes.

** While Windows is pretty much a poster-child case, almost any OS can be guilty of this because predicting a transfer time is, for the most part, nondeterministic. The initial guess the OS gives you may just be how fast the files are transferring now with how big the total transfer is. However, file transfer times are not based on how fast the hard drive can actually work, but how many files it has to write. It's actually '''much''' faster to transfer a 4GB file than 10,000 files that equal 4GB. Coupled with the fact that the hard drive you're using is probably the only one and it's constantly in use because of things like swap file and caching etc., it's basically a good idea to never trust any file transfer timer regardless of the OS, file system, etc.

 

== Exceptions ==

* Averted in one ''[[Fist of the North Star|Hokuto no Ken]]'' episode, in which Kenshiro used the Zan Kai Ken on the [[King Mook]] [[Monster of the Week|of the Week]]. After explaining the Mook he would die seven seconds after being released (3 in the manga ITTRC), he removes his thumbs from the mook's temples. A counter appears on the bottom on the screen, and the mook suffers a painful and gruesome death at the near-exact moment the counter reaches zero. [[Badass]] indeed.

* On ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', in the episode "Both of You, Dance Like You Want To Win!", the timer that counts down until the EVA units run out of power is actually shown on screen as the action sequence is played out.

* In the ''[[Digimon]]'' (a kids' show!) movie "Our War Game", a virus called Diaboromon has launched a missile somewhere in the world. Diaboromon sends a menacing but childish email to them, asking, "which one has the clock?". They then have ''ten minutes'' to destroy him and the '''million''' copies he's made of himself. Despite not actually showing the clock constantly, it keeps counting with perfect accuracy. When the missile crashes in full view of their ''window'', they find that they prevented the detonation of a '''[[Nuclear Weapons Taboo|nuclear warhead]]''' by less than a second. Justified because it took ten minutes for the missile to reach ''Odaiba, Tokyo'' from the US.

 

* Notably averted in ''[[Alien (franchise)|Aliens]]''. When the computer announces how much time there is until the place goes up, that's ''exactly'' how much in-movie time it takes for the place to blow up.

* Somewhat averted in ''[[Virtuosity]]'', because Sid's last bomb speeds up the countdown whenever it detects countermeasures... and then breaks down.

* Averted in ''[[Battle Beyond the Stars]]'' by having [[Sapient Ship]] Nell malfunctioning due to battle damage, so she keeps messing up the [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]]'s countdown.

 

* Averted in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Forest of the Dead." {{spoiler|River Song takes The Doctor's place when he intends to use his brain for storage to restore the "saved" humans in the Library's memory core. During a 2 minute countdown (that actually takes 2 minutes) she says a tearful farewell to him.}} Great scene... and exactly on time.

** Mostly averted in the episode "42" of the new series. After the initial setup scenes, the counter and the depicted events happen in real time, as much as possible.

* In the ''[[Babylon 5]]'' 1st season episode "Survivors", the climactic 30 second countdown lasts 29 seconds, ending with 1 second to spare.

 

* Nicely averted in the ''[[Thunderbirds]]'' episode "The Perils of Penelope". Near the end, it is said that 3 minutes are left until Penelope is hit by the monorail. It takes exactly 3 minutes for the train to come (they save her at the last second).

 

* Very subtly averted in [[Stephen Sondheim]]'s ''Into the Woods''. If you check the complete vocal score, you'll discover that there are actually twelve chimes that lead up to each midnight, and that they're timed and written into the underscore.

 

* Averted in ''[[Super Smash Brothers]]: Brawl'' with the first Subspace bomb. When the picture cuts away from the bomb, it has 7 seconds to go. Exactly 5 seconds later, the timer is at 2 seconds.

** On the other hand, there are several situations where, within moments, it will jump from almost 3 minutes to ''less than 5 seconds.''

* Averted in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]''. After Snake {{spoiler|plants the C3 to blow up the Shagohod}}, a timer starts which can be checked in the following cut-scene by looking at a hidden countdown. It's promptly played straight, though for the mid- and post-{{spoiler|Volgin}} battle cutscenes.

* Mostly averted in ''[[Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door]]''. After {{spoiler|Crump sets the timer to destroy the tree}}, it's possible for the timer to expire during a dialogue scene.

* Many sports games will have a clock that starts with the same amount of time as a real life game, but the clock will run at very fast speed ''except'' at the beginning of each play, and for the last minute or so. This results in oddities in some games, such as EA's line of NHL games that, on top of the above examples, also slows down during penalties (so the speed of the penalty clock matches that of the game clock); a game with more penalties will actually last longer.

 

 

* Played with heavily in ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'': In "Wild Cards" the Joker has hid 25 bombs throughout Las Vegas and he's televising the Justice League's attempts to stop it. He even has the timer in the lower right corner that stays consistent throughout the episode. Subverted when Batman disables the first bomb. The timer stops, then drops to 3 seconds and starts again (it was a fake bomb).

** It ''better'' be accurate. The timer runs on a metronome!

* In the ''[[Space Ghost Coast to Coast]]'' episode "Waiting For Edward", Moltar pulls a lever to initiate the destruction of the planet, mostly because he just feels like it (and he's holding a sale!). The timer appears on his viewscreen and is visible any time the action cuts back to him. This being Space Ghost, it's all but forgotten until the end of the episode when the planet blows up exactly when the timer said it would, in real time.

* A segment of ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', named appropriately "Five Minute Warning," has Garfield needing to avoid eating for five minutes to receive a cake. When the countdown starts, a timer appears in the corner of the screen and counts down in real time.

* In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', Rainbow Dash says she can clear the clouds in "ten seconds flat." It indeed takes only ten seconds in real time.

 

== Parodies ==

* Spoofed in ''[[Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo]]'': Denbo-Chan can only stay for... two hours.

** Played straight, however, with Mr. Bo-Jiggler and Patchbobo.

* Spoofed in ''[[Keroro Gunsou]]'' episode 23. Kururu shows a countdown that shows Keroro has 72 minutes until [[Me's a Crowd|he and all the clones he made of himself]] [[Phlebotinum Breakdown|fade out from the Kero Ball overloading]]... then, after Angol Moa makes a relatively brief phone call to her father in an attempt to find a solution, Kururu announces 70 minutes have passed.

 

* Spoofed in the film ''[[Spaceballs]]'', with the countdown on Mega-Maid's [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]]:

{{quote|'''Computer:''' Ten... nine... eight... six...

* Invoked in the movie ''[[Galaxy Quest]]'', where the self-destruct bomb is disarmed well before it goes off, but the timer continues counting down until it reaches one second. This happened because the alien race that made the bomb was imitating a sci-fi TV show.

* Parodied in ''[[Monsters vs. Aliens]]'' when the countdown ends with nothing happening. The computer starts saying that it must have made a mistake... then the spaceship blows up anyway.

* The second ''[[Austin Powers]]'' film has Dr. Evil stopping Frau from the usual ten second countdown to his rocket blasting off, as he won't be able to get inside in time. He has her start over at thirty, but this leaves quite some time to go after everything's ready. Finally he tells her to just say "Go" when the doors close.

 

* Parodied in the book and game ''[[Starship Titanic]]'', wherein a nuclear bomb (voiced by John Cleese) can be made to forget its place during the countdown, at which point it starts counting down from one thousand again.

* Brutally subverted in the ''[[Freehold]]'' novel. A trainee is trying to disarm a bomb with a timer. He takes a moment of respite, as there's plenty of time left... then the (fake) bomb goes off. [[An Aesop]] on how bad guys in the ''Freehold'' future have read the [[Evil Overlord List]].

{{quote|'''Chiun:''' ''Of course'' it's still ticking. I destroyed the ''bomb'', not the clock.}}

 

* Subtly spoofed in an episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', where Xander is having a [[Circling Monologue]] with the bad guy as a nearby bomb timer is counting down. It switches between them and the bomb, and the timer seems to jump around at random, gaining and losing time, until it is of course stopped at 1 second left.

* Each installment of the ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch ''MacGruber'', a parody of ''[[MacGyver]]'', involves a countdown (usually of twenty seconds) before a bomb goes off. The twenty seconds tend to last about a minute.

* In the ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' episode "Bodyswap", the self-destruct is accidentally set off. Kryten's plan to stop the countdown fails, and everyone braces themselves for the explosion...which never comes. Turns out Holly threw out the bomb months ago.

 

* ''[[Sesame Street]]'''s parody of ''[[24]]'' was supposedly a program that took place in 24 seconds per episode, but the counter which appeared on-screen throughout clearly counted down at a rather slower rate than one per second.

 

* Spoofed in ''[[Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal]]'':

{{quote|'''Biobliterator CPU:''' 60 seconds untill core implosion.

'''Dr. Nefarious:''' What? That wasn't even ''close'' to 60 seconds!

'''Biobliterator CPU:''' Bye-bye! ''(explodes)'' }}

 

* ''[[Evil, Inc.]]'' has time bombs with oversized LED countdown [http://evil-inc.com/comic/geoffrey-barnes-6/ for sale]. There's a twist...

 

* Spoofed in the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode "A Tale of Two Santas", in which Bender, arrested for being Robot Santa Claus, is sentenced to death by being torn apart by electromagnets when a random number generator reaches zero. Added fun for negative numbers popping up. It also repeats numbers, leading to the possibility that they would be waiting forever.

** [[Truth in Television]]. The [[wikipedia:Linear feedback shift register#Uses as counters|LFSR]], a common random number generator, makes a better counter than normal counting.

'''Squidward:''' [[Crosses the Line Twice|Twooooooo]]! }}

* [[The Simpsons (animation)|FIVE-hy-ay-ay, FOUR-hy-ay-ay...]]

 

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[[Category:Just in Time Tropes]]

[[Category:Bomb Disposal]]