Magic Countdown: Difference between revisions

For instance, the large digital readout on a [[Time Bomb]] may show thirty seconds to detonation, but after cutting to and from a climactic two-minute fight between [[The Hero]] and the [[Big Bad]], the clock somehow has ten seconds left for [[The Hero]] to defuse it before it goes off.

 

 

 

This doesn't have to involve an actually displayed timer. Sometimes a character will just yell that "There's only ten seconds left!" and the heroes will prevent the calamity 25 seconds later.

* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'' episode 3, Yusei is trying to escape through the maintenance shaft before trash from Neo Domino City comes rushing into Satellite like a tsunami. On the way, he duels Ushio, which in itself takes roughly 15 minutes. Yusei only has three minutes from entering the tunnel 'till the maintenance hatch closes. 10 minutes of the duel are spent in said tunnel.

** Furthermore, at one point, the timer says 1:40. 2 minutes later, it says 1:30.

 

 

* 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 Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'' features the title character counting down 60 seconds to the ''Enterprise'' crew before he does something ''really'' nasty. Naturally, this takes a good deal longer than 60 seconds, giving our heroes enough time to come up with a bluff.

** 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).

** [[Retcon]]: As of the ''[[Death Star]]'' novel, the [[The Atoner|gunner]] was [[Heroic Sacrifice|stalling with "stand by... stand by... stand by..." hoping someone would destroy the Death Star before he was forced to destroy Yavin 4]].

* The 30 seconds that Grandpa Seth freezes time for in ''[[Troll 2]]'' must be some of the slowest seconds in the history of the world.

* The "one minute" it takes for the DeLorean in ''[[Back to The Future]]'' to reappear is actually about one minute and twenty seconds.

* Played both ways in ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'': when the nuclear bomb is about to go off, an announcement says "one minute to zero time." The first 45 seconds take 30 seconds, and then the last 15 seconds take another 30 seconds.

* ''[[Flash Gordon (film)|Flash Gordon]]'' (1980). The countdown timer to the destruction of the Earth that Flash sets in War Rocket Ajax. It's blatantly clear at the very end, where the timer shows 14 seconds left but it takes Flash at least 30 seconds to kill Ming.

 

=== Live Action TV ===

** Also don't forget the credits for the previous episode as well, which take about 30 seconds

* In the first episode of ''[[Power Rangers in Space]]'', Dark Specter has captured Zordon in a jar, which gradually fills up with a lava-like substance. When it is full, Dark Specter will have drained all of Zordon's power. At the rate that jar is filling up, Zordon ought to be history before that episode was up, yet somehow he held out until the end of the season.

** A more traditional example occurs when Shadow reaches the bomb. The bomb bleeps to incidate when a second passes, even when the camera isn't facing it. There are more bleeps than there are seconds on the clock.

* 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.

* The timer until the ship's engines explode in [[Halo: Combat Evolved]] seems precise... but when it disappears for a scripted event, the timer actually pauses and doesn't restart until it appears on screen again. This is probably to let the player watch the scripted event without feeling the need to just drive straight past it (since driving past the event triggers the timer to restart earlier), but it's still a case of this trope.

 

** And in episode "The Secret", where a detonator for a series of charges set to destroy the Factory has a digital clock. Once, it advanced only 15 seconds while almost 2 minutes went by. Afterward, it seemed to have hurried back and caught up exactly with the lapsed time... but then it jumped forward 45 seconds ''while William and Ulrich were speaking'', that is with no jump-scene in-between, only a change of focus.

* In the ''[[Captain N: The Game Master]]'' episode where Simon is marrying Mother Brain, ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' and ''[[Kid Icarus]]'' have 30 seconds to shoot Simon with an antidote arrow before the spell becomes permanent. It takes them one minute and 17 seconds to hit him.

* An episode of ''[[Total Drama Action]]'' has the contestants being given the task of escaping a building set to blow up in 30 seconds. After 1 minute and 13 seconds, the timer is at 15 seconds. When the countdown ends, a total of 2 minutes and 10 seconds has passed.

** Some possible [[Fridge Brilliance]] : since that season's challenges were based on movies, of course it would follow this.

* 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.