Arc Number

Go ahead, guess.

Gajeel: So both dragons vanished 7 years ago, Year 777, on the 7th day of the 7th month...
Natsu: GAH!! What's with all the 7s, huh?!
Gajeel: How should I know?!

— Fairy Tail

This is the number that pops up over and over again in a given work, often in seemingly unrelated contexts. In a fantasy world whose arc number is 12, there might be 12 deadly sins, 12 levels of hell, and an ice cream chain that sells 12 flavors at a time. Sometimes the number really is significant; sometimes, it's just an in-joke, Stock Shout Out, or an obvious sign of a Milestone Celebration. That is, it's the numeric equivalent of Arc Words.

For discussions of the significance of certain numbers across multiple works, see Numerological Motif. Also, a sufficiently influential work may be the Trope Maker for a Numerological Motif involving its Arc Number. Subtropes include Rule of Three and Rule of Seven.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Betterman has 26 as an arc number.
• Bleach:
  • The number 5 keeps cropping up.
    • Every time the protagonists need to engage in a rescue there are always five members. The Soul Society arc had five Ryouka (Ichigo, Orihime, Sado, Uryuu and Yoruichi). The Arrancar arc had five invaders (Ichigo, Uryuu, Sado, Renji and Rukia). In response to an effort by Urahara, Isshin and Rukia during the Lost Agent arc, the Shinigami sent five representatives to rescue Ichigo (Byakuya, Renji, Kenpachi, Ikkaku and Hitsugaya). In the Thousand Year Blood War Arc, the Royal Guard is sent to pick up the pieces of a demolished Gotei 13, and sure enough, there are five members in total (Ichibei, Senjumaru, Ouetsu, Kirio and Tenjirou).
    • The Quincies are dominated by the number 5. Their cross motif is a five-pointed cross that can appear in both pentacle and pentagram formation. There are also special attacks that utilise five Seele Schneiders to pull off. Later on, they reveal they've designated five Special War Potentials that they take very great interest in (Ichigo, Kenpachi and Aizen are quickly confirmed, Yamamoto is quickly excluded, the identities of the remaining two- Ichibe and Urahara- are not revealed for a long time). Tite Kubo also admitted the Quincy name partially derives from the Latin word for "five".
  • The number 9 also keeps cropping up, especially in the Thousand Year Blood War arc. Yhwach seems to function in relation to the number nine: he was sealed for 999 years. After 900 years, he regained a heartbeat. After 90 years, he regained his ability to reason. After 9 years, he regained his power. And apparently after 9 days, he'll regain the world.
• Case Closed has "4869," the Goroawase Number for "Sherlock." It's been used frequently as a password for various devices and as code numbers and even, in the anime, as a license plate (before that was retconned). It's associated both with the protagonist, Kudou Shinichi (fittingly a modern adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes archetype), and with the main antagonists, the Karasuma Group, who developed a drug with those serial numbers that they used as a poison and subsequently dubbed it "the Experimental Detective." In a twist of irony, their first human test subject for the 4869 batch was, by complete coincidence, Kudou Shinichi.
• In Darker than Black the number 201 (Hei's Contractor Messier Code) tends to find its way into everything.
• Because Four Is Death, Death Note has 4×10ⁿ. 40 seconds after writing a name in the Note, the person dies. 400 seconds is the amount of time a Kira has to write circumstances surrounding a death after they've written in a cause of death.
• "4423" from Den-noh Coil. What could it be? A time? A date? A telephone number? A hospital room number/patient number? A really weird pun?
• According to official stats, Doraemon is 129.3 cm tall and weighs 129.3 kg, his head and body are both 129.3 cm in circumference, his legs are 129.3 mm long, he produces 129.3 horsepower, he can jump his own height and run at 129.3 km/h when frightened by a mouse, and his birthday is 2112/9/3. This number was apparently chosen because 129.3 cm was the average height of a Japanese fourth grader when the manga was written. (Ironically, Doraemon is drawn to be shorter than the main human characters, who are actual fourth graders.)
• Dragon Ball has 7 in a lot of places. There's the 7 Dragon Balls that were the focus of the first saga, and 7 major story arcs in the manga. By the end of the manga, there are only 7 Saiyans left (Goku, Vegeta, and the hybrids Gohan, Goten, Trunks, Bra, and Pan.). The tournaments that were major events in the first part of the series all took place on the seventh. To top it all off, the entire series takes place in Universe 7.
• "21" shows up more than any other number in the appropriately named Eyeshield 21. It was Sena's number for the Deimon entrance exam. Sena's birth date is December 21. It was Hiruma's winning number from blackjack, earning them enough money to return home from America. Even Yamato's prediction of 42-0 for the Deimon-Teikoku game could be interpreted as 2 * 21 = 42. When Hiruma and Agon combined for the Dragon Fly, their jersey numbers are 1 and 2 respectively. Also Yamato before the Japan-America game confronts Mr Don at a casino and bets on red. The ball lands on Red 21.
• Fairy Tail has 7 as its arc number.
  • The dragons all disappeared in the year X777 on the 7th of July (the 7th month of the year), 7 years before the series begins; it was also the same year Lucy's mother died. There is also a 7-year Time Skip in the middle of the series. Later, during the Grand Magic Games, 7 guilds are chosen to participate in the tournament with a total of eight teams (Fairy Tail has two). After the tournament, 7 dragons are brought from the past and fought by 7 Dragon Slayers (Natsu, Gajeel, Wendy, Laxus, Cobra, Sting, and Rogue). By the final arc, the 7 Dragon Slayers left standing do battle with Acnologia, the Dragon King.
  • In the prequel manga Fairy Tail ZERØ, there is a 7-year Time Skip between the opening scenes of the story, set in the year X679, and the main story, set in X686.
• Future GPX Cyber Formula: The number 11 plays a part in the Double-One arc. The story takes place during the 11th CF Grand Prix, Asurada has been upgraded into the Super Asurada AKF-11, and it is also the title for 2 consecutive championship wins in CF. In addition, the first episode of the OVA came out in November of 1992.
• "2501" in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Interestingly, in the first movie, the significance of this number is explained immediately, but because of what happens during that movie, its sudden presence in the sequel is not immediately explainable. It means that the Major, who has merged with and become one being with the Puppetmaster (aka Project 2501), is keeping an eye on Batou from the net.
• Hamtaro's arc number is 86. For example, Hamtaro is 8.6 centimeters, and his birthday is on August 6, or 8/6 ^note which is also Cappy's birthday.
• In Haruhi Suzumiya's Endless Eight arc, there are 8 parts and it takes place during August (the broadcast of this ended at the beginning of August as well). A bit less obviously, turning an 8 sideways gives you the infinity symbol.
• The number 12 is everywhere in Juni Taisen: Zodiac War: The War happens every twelve years (on December 12th, no less), there are twelve participants, twelve Beast Gems to collect, and twelve hours to win it all before the poison in their bodies kills them. Even this year's host is named Duodecuple (12 in Latin).
• Kagerou Project has a minor one with 107, which was both the number of the room Kido, Kano, and Seto shared back at the orphanage, as well as number on the door of their current apartment.
• The number 12 is prevalent in Katanagatari. There are twelve swords. The story takes place roughly over twelve months and comprises twelve episodes/volumes. Also, there are twelve Maniwani leaders and twelve Shogunate guards.
• Macross:
  • The number 25 appears all over the place in Macross Frontier - it's the 25th migration fleet, the Macross-class ship is called the Macross Quarter (=25 percent!), the hero mecha are VF-25, one of the characters is a quarter alien, etc. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Macross Frontier celebrates the 25th anniversary of the franchise.
  • Similarly, the number seven crops up all over Macross 7, to the point that they withheld 3 episodes from broadcast so that the series would be 49 episodes (7 squared) long.
• In Monster, Johan's hospital room number is 402; Eva stays at a hotel in room 402. For good measure, the number of people poisoned at the Red Rose Mansion is 42, and the apartment of the "Thursday boy" is 204.
• 7 also crops up very frequently in Nana.
• The number 95 in Penguindrum. It is a reference to the earthquake in Kobe and the Tokyo sarin gas attack, both of these events took place in 1995, in which Momoka Oginome was a victim of the gas attacks.
• Queen Millennia: There's a notable amount of nines in the estimated collision date: 9/9/1999 00:09:09. 9 meteor fragments land on Earth in the first chapter. Hajime's uncle has a family of nine. One of the Millennial Thieves' helicopters is labeled 99. La-Metal's diameter is 9 times of Earth's. La-Metal has been on its current orbit for 99999 years, and it's orbiting period is 999 years and 9 months.
• The number 7 is one for Reborn! (2004). 7 Vongola Guardians, 7 Arcobaleno, 7 Real Funeral Wreaths, 7 Flames of the Sky and Earth each, etc. The most important one is the Tri-ni-set, or 7³, which are made up of 3 sets of 7 rings: the 7 Vongola Rings, the 7 Mare Rings and the 7 Arcobaleno Pacifiers. 7³ is also said to be foundation of the world.
• In Soul Eater, the number 42 shows up a lot with things related to Death, Death the Kid, or Death City. This is a pun on how in Japanese "4-2" is pronounced "shi-ni", which sounds like "death".
• Speed Racer has 5s in many places; in one episode, Speed applied for some big testing program and was by total coincidence assigned the applicant number 555. (This is unsurprising, considering the Punny Name given the series in Japanese.)

Asian Animation

• Throughout Season 10 of Happy Heroes, the number 4451 is seen on electronic screens often, with Careful S. being the only one to see them. The number is being transmitted to him by Kalo, and it's related to Big M. and Little M. bringing in an ultimate weapon that could devastate the welfare of Planet Xing.

Comic Books

• The number 52 appeared throughout The DCU for a year between 2006 and 2007, hinting at the mystery surrounding the weekly series 52. While eventually the title was explained (it referred to the 52 parallel Earths that had been newly created) why the number itself kept popping up in the unlikeliest places never was. The real reason was that the writers were told to salt their stories with "52" references, with the expectation that it would become meaningful later on. Most writers treated it as an oncoming cataclysmic event, with characters randomly spouting the number (or even having aliens scream the number in phonetic English). In hindsight, reading such references in context rarely yields anything remotely related to parallel Earths. Note that it still exists as an arc number, with the post-Flashpoint reboot lineup having 52 new titles.
• In V for Vendetta, 5 is a recurring number. "V" is even the Roman numeral 5. V (who tends to speak in iambic pentameter) was patient number 5, in a room marked with the Roman numeral "V". V's motto: Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici (V.V.V.V.V.).
• JLA (1997) #19 & #20: Odd things keep happening around the world, all related to the number 7. It turns out, this synchronicity was the result of 7 split photons trying to re-connect through "spooky action" and sending out messages to the universe in the form of warped probabilities, and the only hero who can stop the craziness is The Atom, who was the 7th person to join the JLA in its history.
• The number 196833 pops up a lot in Planetary.
• 7 in the Scott Pilgrim saga. It becomes more readily apparent when Scott finally reaches Gideon, Ramona's 7th and final evil ex. There's only 6 books in the series however, because two of her exes (a pair of twins) are defeated simultaneously in the 5th book. There are also mini-arc numbers for each ex; most wear their numbers, and coincidentally have them around them. Except for, again, 5 and 6, who get the number "11" (which is 5+6). Scott Pilgrim himself is usually connected with the number 0.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • The regular Beagle Boys from Disney comics all have prison numbers consisting of two groups of three digits and those three digits are always 1, 6 and 7. Do the math and you discover that there are no more than 36 Beagle Boys, except that there is an endless supply of the Specialist Beagle Boys (the only regularly used Specialist in the stories being Intellectual-176, or I-176 on his prison uniform).
  • This has varied over the years. Originally, the Beagle Boys all had numbers starting 617-, followed by a second combination of 1, 6 and 7. That meant that there were only 6 possible numbers, but as there were usually only 3 or 4 Beagle Boys in any story, it wasn't a problem. Later, the 617 prefix was kept, but the individual number became less restricted; for instance, there was at least one story featuring Beagle Boys 617-001, -002 and -003. Other variations have appeared.
  • Issues 2500 and 3000 of the Italian Mickey Mouse comic magazine hve all the stories inside circulating around the respective number. The former features plots such as Scrooge McDuck celebrating his 2500th billion of dollars and sending Donald 2500 leagues under the sea to get a coin he once lost, or Casey trying to get what's wrong in a fake bill but noticing only at the end that there is no such thing as a 2500 dollars bill, while the latter features Goofy finding 3000 copies of an apparently rare issue 1 of an old comic, the Beagle Boys making a big reunion of all 3000 members around the world and a young Donald Duck trying to contact someone from the year 3000 by modifying an old radio.
• Pinky and Pepper Forever has the number 6. The comic flashes back to six months ago after the opening in hell, showing how Pinky and Pepper ended up in hell. Pinky appeared to Pepper in her dream six weeks after she killed herself, tempting her to die. Pepper has to endure six years of torture at Pinky's hands before being able to join her as a trainee grim reaper, and they are finally released back into the mortal realm to begin reaping 666 years later, if the subtitle is meant to be taken literally.
• 8 in The Multiversity. Exaggerated in Pax Americana #1, which even replaces Watchmen's 3x3 grid with a 2x4 one.
  • Overall, the numbers seven and eight are a recurring theme in Grant Morrison's work, most obviously Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005), in which it's a major plot point that the titular team has an eighth member.
• 6 in Circles. There are 6 men who are a rating of 6 on the Kinsey scale and they all live under the address of 6 Kinsey Circle.
• The French comic series Sept (7) is a collection of stories with wildly different themes, stories, artists and writers, with the only link being that they feature 7 protagonists. And when we say wildly different, here's a few:
  • Seven Psychopaths: An assortment of mental patients is put together to kill Hitler. They succeed, but it turns out the real Hitler died in a bombing in 1942, and the disguise expert on the team is condemned to spend the rest of his life as Adolf.
  • Seven Warrior Women: 7 Action Girls are to accompany a prince (the last of his bloodline) out of his besieged capital. His mother ensured they were all impregnated by him beforehand in case he died, which turned out to be the case.
  • Seven Thieves is a High Fantasy where 7 mercenaries are hired to steal a dwarven artifact during a succession crisis. This one led to the creation of a Spin-Off called Wollodrin.
  • Seven Missionaries: 7 monks (one prideful, one envious, one furious, one lustful, one lazy, one avaricious, one gluttonous) are sent to convert the Vikings after word of their un-monastic lifestyle gets out. They succeed, sort of; the last panel shows the Vikings standing before their temple before they go raiding like the beginning, except now it's a crucifix instead of Odin. Probably helped that Brother Conan broke his bonds and saved the Vikings by slaughtering his way through a rival clan shouting "GOD IS LOVE!"
• In Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Nny lives in house 777, and at one point wears a shirt that proclaims this "# of the Moose." See also Invader Zim below.
• Doctor Who (Titan): The Many Lives of Doctor Who is a series of short stories, one for each Doctor from 1 to 12, which each involve the number 13 in some way. In some cases this is deeply hidden, such as an alien race whose biology is based on aluminium (which, not mentioned in the story, is atomic number of 13) but it's always there.
• Eight Billion Genies uses 8 as a meta arc number. The story tracks the effects of the genies in multiples of eight — eight seconds, eight minutes, eight hours, eight days, and so on. The series is eight issues long.

Fan Works

• The Discworld fics written by A.A. Pessimal exploit the (fan-derived) arc number 57 and it crops up a lot more than you'd expect to see. Numbers leak over from the Roundworld too, like 5, 17 and 23. Not to mention from stranger corners of interstellar space, like 42.
• In Good Night:
  • 7349 pops up quite a bit, though doesn't play an important role during its time.
  • The second arc builds upon it with 826, though based on the last one...
• Every story in The Lion King Adventures has seven chapters.
• Code: Pony Evolution has the arc number of 12
• Mutant has two arc numbers. 42 and 77
• The Saki doujin, "Neutral Position" (NSFW) suggests that there is one in play for Saki Achiga-hen.
  "Ah, yes, Shizu can go up to 100 gears, Toki can see 100 turns ahead ^note After being hospitalized during the semi-finals Awaawa is in Grade 100, and the distance between Uryuugari and Shindouji is over 100 km."
• Zany To The Max and nearly anything else by the same author usually have two arc numbers: 26 and 99.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures Class Of 2009 has an obscure reference to the number 26 in its first episode: the Zlappy SQ6 (Makko's computer). The name is written on the computer in cursive, and the cursive Q looks like a 2, making it look like a 26. The series has yet to have a 99 appear.
  • Even the author's Get Smart/The Time Machine crossover has a reference to the number 99 that's not a reference to Agent 99!
  • The references to 99 are lampshaded in "Flopsy's Missing Suitcase" when Mr. Scatterbrain shows Peter Rabbit and his sisters to their room: Room 990.
    "Here you go," said Mr. Scatterbrain. "Room 990." "Naturally," said Hopsy under her breath.
  • Exploited in the same story by the Author Avatar, Mr. Dudeman, who says that Room 990 was the most obvious room to look in for the rabbits. He and Hopsy discuss the trope right after, as well as throw in some Get Smart references.
• Soul Eater: Troubled Souls has the number 2.
• The author of Warverse seems to really love 612. Lampshaded at one point, when Christopher McGraw tells Benezia "Remind me to talk to you about the cult of six-one-two, fun story, that".
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Six, or multiples thereof, appears a great deal. Word of God is that ponies have come to view it as a sacred number.
• Where Talent Goes to Die:
  • The number four. There are sixteen students in the class (4x4), four of whom survive. There are four murders in the course of the story, plus an Accidental Murder and a case in which a student asked another student to kill her. In Chapter III, the students take four-hour shifts guarding the gun that could be used as a murder weapon.
  • There's also the number three. The fic stars the 33rd class of Talent High School. Three students refuse to vote for Mitamura. The first killing takes place on the third night. The second and fifth motives have deadlines that are three days after their introduction. Three students also have highly unusual talents.
• Where Talent Goes on Vacation has the number 33. The fic is set to last 33 days in-universe and have 33 installments. As mentioned above, Talent High School had 33 classes, and there are 33 characters from the school (16 students from Class 33, 16 more from Class 32 and their teacher).
• Fittingly for an Odd Squad fanfic, Ships Ahoy! has 43 chapters.
• True Potential: Three. Naruto, Hinata, and Shikamaru form Team 3, there's a lot of emphasis on legendary trios such as Hiruzen, Homura, and Koharu, and the Legendary Sannin (with Team 3 becoming the next legends of their generation), and Naruto's Genin Team is Team 9, which is 3 squared.

Films — Animation

• "A113" is an inside joke amongst a number of animators who graduated from the California Institute for the Arts, with it being the classroom where character animation classes were held for decades. The number has appeared in countless films and television series produced/directed by CalArts alumni, but is most commonly associated with Pixar films. Though it wasn't until Pixar's WALL•E that this number had any purpose in the narrative; it was the directive given to all Autopilots of the Buy N Large starcruisers to never return to Earth.
• 13 Is Unlucky is played in Frozen (2013). It takes the sisters 13 years to rekindle their relationship, and their separation begins when they are ages 5 and 8 (13 when added together). Hans is also the thirteenth in line for his kingdom's throne, and turns out to be Evil All Along, motivated by this standing to marry into Arendelle's much smaller royal family and then murder his way into becoming king.
• Shane Acker's 9 makes heavy use of... Well, take a wild guess. It's the name of the hero; there are nine stitchpunks; the Fabrication Machine's eye has nine sides; 1's clock tower is stuck at 9:09; and many more examples besides.
• 42 appears a lot in the Spider-Man: Spider-Verse film series.
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: 42 is the lottery number that got Miles into the school, 42 is the number present on the spider that bit him, 2 numbers that spell out 42 are present after Miles falls off a building, and 4+2 makes 6, the number of main Spider-People we see as part of the Spider-Gang. According to the director, it's a reference to Jackie Robinson, "a barrier-smashing black superhero" like Miles.
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: In a plot twist, it's revealed that the spider that bit Miles came from another universe, appropriately titled "Earth-42". After Miles uses the Go Home machine towards the end, he is sent to Earth-42 due to the spider DNA in him, leaving that universe without a Spider-Man, which only traveled to Earth-1610B as a result of Kingpin's collider tests.
• In Turning Red, four is a significant number. The boyband in the movie is named 4*Town and they use the number frequently. Counting is always done to or from four, the bands logo is a stylised four. They cross their legs to resemble the number when they rise off the ground during their performance. Also there are four members of Mei's friend group to start and Four Is Death in Chinese culture is referenced.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is all about Puss being on his last life, so naturally, it features the number eight prominently. The film's opening features a battle against a giant with a large bell being used as a weapon, tolling seven times throughout the battle, with the eighth toll being when it crushed Puss in the aftermath, ending his eighth life. At the tavern, a clock chime can subtly be heard in the background. On the eighth chime, the candles suddenly go out as the wolf arrives, and Puss has eight empty glasses in front of him. There are eight characters seeking the wishing star, Puss, Kitty, Perrito, Big Jack Horner, and Goldilocks and the three bears.

Films — Live-Action

• The plot of Darren Aronofsky's movie π is driven by the search for a 216 digit number that can do anything from predict the stock market to revealing the true name of God.
• The Jim Carrey movie The Number 23 is built on this concept, based off of an Urban Legend/conspiracy theory that the number 23 appears in a lot of historical disasters.
• The number 1138 pops up a lot in George Lucas' work, as a tribute to his first film, THX 1138. As does 327, for reasons unknown. Star Wars Legends adds a third: 1977, the year the original movie was released.
• The number 60659 in Cube 2: Hypercube, which the characters encounter written on one of the walls and suspect may be a clue to finding their way out of the death maze. It's the time period in minutes until the hypercube collapses in on itself and the dimensional portal from the physical world closes.
• 37 is Kevin Smith's favorite number, and it pops up quite a bit in The View Askewniverse.
• Stanley Kubrick frequently used the serial number CRM114 or phonetic variations thereof (e.g. "Serum 114" in A Clockwork Orange).
• Magnolia uses the numbers 8 and 2 often in conjunction, leading to a quote of Exodus 8:2 and the plague of frogs it describes.
• 666 shows up a lot in The Doom Generation, most often in the form of some purchase or another costing 6 dollars and 66 cents.
• In Donnie Darko, Frank the Bunny tells Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. Donnie then writes these numbers on his arm to remember them.
• In Lucid, a 2005 Canadian film, the number 209 comes up frequently; clocks display 2:09, the group therapy group is group 209, etc. This is because, except for the beginning, it was All Just A Dream. The main character is dreaming, staring at a digital clock, and it is 2:09 in the morning.
• In Inception, Cobb forces Fisher to tell him the first six numbers that come into his mind, claiming that his father might have given him the code to his safe without Fisher knowing it was a code. Held at gunpoint, Fisher comes up with 528491. Since it is all a dream in which all the details are filled in by the dreamers, this number becomes the code for all further locks they later encounter in the dreams. Even the rooms in the Hotel have the numbers 528 and 491, even though one is supposed to be the one right below the other.^note Since hotels are built on repetitive floorplans, and the first room on the fifth floor is number 501, room 528 would be right above room 428 in an actual hotel.
• In the Alfred Hitchcock film The 39 Steps, the numbers 3 and 5 appear quite frequently. A couple examples include the numbers 5 and 10 (5 x 2) appearing in the corners of the film, the title being "39" (3 and 3 x 9, or 3 x 13), and the scenes being roughly 3 - 5 minutes in length. The significance is not present in the film itself, but a theme of bread and fish is seen throughout the film as an alleged reference to The Bible, where Jesus Christ takes 3 fish and loaves of bread to feed 5,000 people.
• 47 in Inland Empire.
• The numbers 180 and 23 crop up a lot in the Final Destination series, usually when a character is about to be killed and also as The Reveal in Final Destination 5.
• Where the Heart Is has recurring 5s as a plot point.
• Holocaust 2000 has the Number of The Antichrist, 30.397368 = 2√231, which looks like "IESVS" spelled upside-down.
• 5 in Edward Scissorhands, which subtly reminds the audience of the titular character's lack of fingers. A disproportionately high numbers of characters in the film have either five-letter names or names that begin with "E" (the fifth letter of the alphabet), a pivotal scene has Edward donning a black baseball cap emblazoned with a "V" (the Roman numeral for five), Edward's iconic scissor-blades are almost always arranged in V-formation, Edward becomes the fifth member of the Boggs family when Peggy takes him in, and there are five women in Peg's regular group of friends ^note  Joyce, Marge, Helen, Tinka and Cissy.
• Beyond the Pyramids: Legend of the White Lion utilizes ten dollars to link beginning, middle, and end. In this world, Tswana tells Maria money can't buy her access to the hidden gate within the pyramid when she offers him the ten dollars she has on her. In the other world, Tswana agrees to be the group's third for half the money in Moja's pouch. Though the audience isn't told how much that is, an earlier scene has Moja earn twenty dollars by selling a spear to tourists, making Tswana's price ten dollars and Moja's effective earnings ten dollars. Back in this world at the film's end, Maria buys a spear from Moja for ten dollars (the ones Tswana wouldn't accept) to remember him by.
• Seven comes up a lot throughout SHAZAM! (2019).
  • Sivana is working with the literal manifestations of the Seven Deadly Sins.
  • The Council of Seven Wizards and their seven thrones.
  • By the end of the film, we have been exposed to seven Champions, Billy and his five siblings as well as the Fallen Champion.
  • There are seven symbols needed to enter the Rock of Eternity and it must be repeated seven times.
  • When Billy, as Shazam, and Freddy went to a home realtor office to try to purchase a lair, the realtor asks how many rooms they'll need. Billy wants one room while Freddy wants seven.
  • When Billy meets his mother at her apartment, she lives on the seventh floor and her room number is 707.
  • Mister Mind mentions the Seven Realms to Sivana.
  • Meta example: the film happens to be the seventh DCEU film to be released.
• The number 11 appears everywhere in Us. The scripture Jeremiah 11:11 appears on a cardboard sign seen twice, as well as on a alarm clock, on a baseball scoreboard, and the rabbit cages are in rows of 11.
• The number 614, often accompanied by the letters "Gen", appears frequently early on in Evan Almighty, which the titular Evan Baxter takes notice of. His General Electric-brand alarm clock starts to go off at 6:14 AM despite being set for 7:00 AM. He receives a shipment of lumber from Go-4-Wood meant for an address that starts with 614, with the purchase order number 0006-14. His co-worker has a new phone extension of 614, and another staffer's new baby boy weighs in at, as Evan anticipated, 6 pounds, 14 ounces. His new license plates read "GEN 614". This all leads up to him meeting God, who asks him to be the new Noah and build an ark, just like how Noah was instructed to build an arc in Genesis 6:14.
• The Summer of Sangaile: 17. It's Sangaile's age, plus recurring in several other ways.
• The Deadly Numbers Anthology Film is based around twenty segments all with an arc number between one and twenty. For example, in the Disembodied Hitman segment, the number is seventeen; there are seventeen victims, the killer defines himself by the religious significance of the number, and even the title itself is exactly seventeen characters. The 7 Days segment likewise is defined by seven days in the protagonists' lives.
• The Postman: 8. The Holnists have 8 harsh laws they abide by, and every member is branded with the number on their arm. In the finale, it becomes a plot point when Shakespeare shows he was also forcibly inducted this way, with the right as a result to challenge Bethlehem for the leadership under those laws.
• Zack Snyder's Justice League: Minor example, but 100,000. Steppenwolf and Darkseid both state that Apokolips has conquered a hundred thousand planets, and Cyborg hacks an ATM to give a Struggling Single Mother $100,000.
• Midsommar has nine, and its multiples. The festival occurs every ninety years, lasts nine days, and the ritual requires nine sacrifices. This is true to real Scandinavian paganism, as nine is a sacred number in Norse Mythology.
• The Rule of Three comes up a lot throughout Spider-Man: No Way Home:
  • This is the MCU's third standalone Spider-Man film.
  • The movie features three Spider-Men.
  • Peter's friendship with Michelle Jones and Ned Leeds is the film's backbone.
  • Peter wears three new suits throughout the film.
  • There are three primary antagonists (Green Goblin, Lizard, and Electro)
  • Three of the five returning villains came Back from the Dead (Norman Osborn, Doc Ock, Electro).
  • The movie is an Intra-Franchise Crossover featuring three visiting film franchises^SPOILERSSpider-Man Trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man Series, and Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
  • The ending theme is titled "The Magic Number" by De La Soul, a three man Hip-Hop group and the song comes from the album 3 Feet High and Still Rising.
• Five in Sucker Punch. There are five heroines and five items to find; the number 5 is also painted on all vehicles Amber steers.

Literature

• A Series of Unfortunate Events:
  • 13. There are 13 books, each of which have 13 chapters. Averted in the final installment, however, thanks to the additional "Chapter Fourteen" which is treated as a separate book despite consisting of a single chapter.
  • 667 Dark Street and Kit Snicket's page is 667.
• In Always Coming Home, the Kesh divide everything into Nine Houses. The Five Houses of Earth represent corporal things like Earth, human beings, domestic animals and plants. The Four Houses of the Sky include things like generic groups, the dead, the unborn, and the fictional. All three numbers are therefore frequent in the book.
• In the Dragaera books, everything related to the Dragaeran Empire comes in 17, or in powers of 17. All novels in the series have 17 or 34 chapters, a custom that began by accident.
• Discworld:
  • All significant numbers gravitate towards 8. There's an 8th colour in the spectrum, being the 8th son of an 8th son makes you a wizard (and a wizard's 8th son is a sourcerer), Box 5 from The Phantom of the Opera becomes Box 8 in Maskerade, and so on. Plus, it's considered very bad among wizards to speak the word "eight" out loud. For instance, the dorms at Unseen University have Room 7, Room 7-A, Room 9...
  • It has been suggested that Terry Pratchett gave the number fifty-seven a special significance. It certainly crops up a lot when otherwise randomly selected accretions of things need to have a numerical value assigned to them.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Three. There are three prominent Vampire Courts (Red, White, and Black), three types of fae (Winter, Summer, and Wyld), three Sidhe Queens for each Court, thirty (three times ten) pieces of silver containing Fallen Angels, and three Swords of the Cross created by the three nails that pierced Christ at the Crucifixion.
  • Five. The Denarians, for whatever reason, only show up in series entries that are multiples of five - Death Masks (the fifth), Small Favor (the tenth), and Skin Game (the fifteenth).
  • Seven. There are seven members of the Senior Council and Seven Laws of Magic. Harry Dresden was also Driven to Suicide by one of the Fallen lying to him with seven words, and the Archangel Uriel serves as a Hope Bringer to Harry by giving him seven words of utter truth after he comes Back from the Dead.
• Illuminatus! does this with 5 and 23, and to a slightly lesser extent 17. 5 is mostly associated with the Bavarian Illuminati and 23 with the Discordians (though there are exceptions in both directions). It specifically adds two extra elements to the Hegelian triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis: parenthesis and paralysis.
• Harry Potter: 7 is a traditionally magical number. There are 7 books, 7 years at Hogwarts, 7 children in the Weasley family, Harry takes 7 classes from his first to third year, Hogwarts has 7 floors, 7 Quidditch players on a team, Wolfsbane potion must be drunk over the course of 7 days to prevent a transformed werewolf from losing his mind... The Harry Potter wiki has an extensive list on uses of the number 7 in the series. Voldemort knowingly invokes this when he decides to split his soul into 7 pieces by making 6 horcruxes. Unfortunately for him, he accidentally creates a 7th horcrux, which ultimately leads to his downfall.
• 42, the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's what you get when you multiply 6x9. In reality though, this was because 6x9 was the distorted version of the real question imprinted on Arthur Dent's brainwaves, due to the fact that he was not actually the race meant to live on earth. The real question, "what is 6x7?", would have been the reveal if the original human race had not been accidentally replaced. Note that it actually does equal 42 in base 13 math. People asked the author if this was intentional:
  Douglas Adams: I don't make jokes in base 13. No one makes jokes in base 13.
• 9 in Hollow Places, mostly due to its association with the Nine-Eyed Fish.
• The number 19, in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. Notable for the characters catching onto it, including Eddie figuring out a password in the nick of time because he knew 19 was in there somewhere. The number 99 becomes a lesser arc number, which is the result of King getting nearly killed in the year 1999 (on June 19, no less).
• Humorist Dave Barry seems to have a thing for the number 2038. This likely has to do with the "Chuckletrousers Incident" (partially recounted in Dave Barry In Cyberspace), in which Dave Barry accidentally sent a profanity-filled message to his Usenet fan group instead of by e-mail to Michael Bywater, whom he was replying to. Michael Bywater subsequently claimed to have received 2,038 forwarded copies of the message. It may or may not also have something to do with the 2038 Problem.
• The Cosmere: Each of the 16 original Shards of Adonalsium appears to have their own number associated with them.
  • The number 16 in the Mistborn trilogy. (Especially in Hero of Ages.) It's also a meta-Arc Number for all Brandon Sanderson's adult fantasy works, although it's less obvious in the others.
  • The Stormlight Archive:
    • 10 is important throughout the series. There are 10 Heralds we meet at the beginning of the first book, 10 orders of Knights Radiant, 10 forms of surgebinding, 10 levels of voidbinding, the 10 Fools, 10 original Silver Kingdoms, 10 major gemstones, 10 trait combinations. This turns out to be because it is the number most associated with Honor.
    • Odium is associated with the number 9, and especially 10 things with one missing. There are 9 Unmade, Odium's champion has 9 shadows, the Everstorm comes every 9 days, 9 of the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact (leaving behind 9 Honorblades), the Fused are created in batches of 9, and there are 9 different variations of Fused.
    • Cultivation, on the other hand, seems to be associated with threes. 3 Gods, 3 Bondsmiths, 3 personal interventions (Lift, Dalanar, Taravangian).
  • Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: Virtuosity seems to have been associated with the number thirteen: there are a lot of thirteens in Yumi's rituals, while a nightmare requires thirteen feedings to achieve full stability, and there are thirteen yoki-hijo plus Yumi.
• Katherine Neville novels:
  • The Eight has an Arc Number. Guess which one.
  • The Fire has 64, for the number of squares in a chessboard.
• J. R. R. Tolkien juggled around a whole bunch of neat numbers that kept cropping up, but this seems less intended to mean something and more characteristic of fairy-tales and mythology in general.
  • The Lord of the Rings uses the number Nine. There are 9 Nazgûl, who wield the 9 Rings for Mortal Men. There are 9 in the Fellowship, because Elrond chose them to match the Nazgûl. Sauron has 9 fingers. Frodo also has 9 fingers, at the end. There were 9 people who touched the One Ring (Sauron, Isildur, Déagol, Sméagol, Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Tom Bombadil, Sam). In Real Life, 9 was an Arc Number both in Norse Mythology and popular Medieval Christianized astrology (where it represented perfection, a "trinity of trinities") - both of which influenced Tolkien immensely.
  • Magic rings come in sets of 3, 7, 9, or 1. There are 5 wizards. The Hobbit has 13 dwarves (plus one hobbit, picked for the lucky number). The Silmarillion has 7 gods plus 7 goddesses, and 3 Silmarilli. Tolkien sure liked odd numbers.
  "7 stars and 7 stones / And 1 white tree."
  • According to the appendices, elves actually tended to use six and its multiples as an arc number—for example, their weeks are six days long, they divide the year into six seasons, had twelve months, and often measured long periods with a yén, which was 144 (12 x 12) years.
• Both 12 and 13 (and their multiples) in Midnighters.
• In A Void by Perec, a book written without the letter 'e', the two numbers are 26 and (always referring to the fifth out of all the 26 things being missing) the other is 25. (Meta: referring to the missing 'e'. Which really only works in the original French because there's no 'e' in 'vingt' (twenty in French).)
• The number 7 in Septimus Heap, "Septimus" means seventh in Latin. The books are about a seventh son of a seventh son, who will have amazing Magykal powers. Let's just say that if it has to do with magic and/or wizards, and it isn't somehow related to the number 7, it's because it's related to the number 49 (7x7)
• 64 in My Favorite Band Does Not Exist: Idea believes that he will die in Chapter 64 and Reacher has written a song called "Chapter 64."
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • The number 7 is everywhere, particularly in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros (Really 7 provinces). There are Seven members of the Kingsguard, Seven gates to King's Landing, and most importantly, Seven gods that are the main religion of Westeros.
  • The number 3 also pops up a lot throughout Daenerys Targaryen's storyline. She is explicitly told "The dragon (in her family sigil) has three heads" as a key prophecy. She is the youngest of three children, given three dragon eggs for her wedding gift which later hatch into three dragons. Her husband, Drogo, has three bloodriders (bodyguards) and she has three handmaidens, and later three bloodriders of her own. In later books, she conquers three cities in Slaver's Bay.
  • The number 9 is used elsewhere; with the 9 Free Cities in Essos, as well as the nine point of view characters in the first book in the series.
• A lot of things in The 39 Clues come in groups of 7, and ironically the number 39 is completely meaningless.
• Each Deltora Quest series has a different Arc Number related to the number of Plot Coupons the characters are looking for: 7 in Deltora Quest, 3 in Shadowlands and 4 in Dragons Of Deltora.
• The numbers 7 and 77 seem to be a recurring motif for the Djinn in Children Of The Lamp.
• In Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex, Artemis becomes obsessed with the belief that the number 5 is good and the number 4 is evil, and goes to great lengths to use 5s and avoid 4s as much as possible, which is one of the first signs that he's going insane.
• The Hunger Games:
  • 12 and relatedly 24 and 6. 12 districts, 24 tributes (who become eligible at age 12), training scores of up to 12, 12 arrows in the quiver in the arena, 12 houses in the Victor's Village, 24 wedding dresses designed for Katniss, then voted down to 6, and lightning strikes at midnight and noon in a certain section of the Quarter Quell arena, which later becomes important to the plot. Also, in the first book, Prim and Rue were 12 years old, and Rue was one of 6 siblings. In Mockingjay: there's 12 ft ×12 ft apartment in District 13. And of course, the main characters are from District 12.
  • For District 13: 1. Unity is extremely important there.
• The Power of Five: Five, of course.
• Emily the Strange: The Lost Days: Lists in the main character's journals always go to 13—except when Molly writes one list.
• Midnight's Children has 1001. Most obviously, it's the number of the titular children, but it occurs in other contexts as well, mostly in Saleem's musings.
• The Oracle Trilogy has one in the number nine. Nine priestesses, nine days in each book, nine... it goes on.
• The Tygrine Cat and its sequel have 3. Each book has three parts, and in-story there are the Three Pillars of Tygrine philosophy (instinct, judgment, and spirit), and three gates at the heart of Fiåney leading to realms that represent each of the pillars. The protagonist also ends up becoming part of a Power Trio in the sequel.
• 42 is an arc number in The Hunting of the Snark.
• In R. a. Lafferty's "The Six Fingers of Time", 60 (the "number of time") recurs. At the end, the protagonist dies, having lived ~60 years in a few months.
• 11 recurs often in the Paranormal Curio series. The Affix is a gem with 11-sided symmetry that warps causality, and the number 11 shows up with greater frequency later in the series.
• Places, events and people in the Dread Empire series have a tendency to be grouped in nines. The fact that the Ancient Conspiracy pulling everyone's strings is organized in cells of nine is doubtless not coincidental.
• Fablehaven: Five is used quite a lot. There are five magical artifacts that were created to serve as the keys to Zzyzx, and five vaults were built to house them. The Fairy Queen is stated to have five children. There are five Great Monarchs and crowns. There are also five books in the Fablehaven series, and Dragonwatch is set to be five books long as well.
• Treasure Island: Number three is used several times throughout the novel. "Admiral Benbow" is visited three times by the pirates: first its Black Dog, then Blind Pew, and then Pew and Dog with the rest of their gang; there are three major adult characters and Jim's friends: Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney and Captain Smollett; as their evil counterpart there are three major mutineers: John Silver, Israel Hands and George Merry; Squire takes on the journey three of his servants (all of whom end up dead); there are three secret locations on the island where Flint hid his treasure, as indicated by the map; there are three major mountain tops on Treasure Island (named respectively after three types of masts); the "pointing arrow", which shows direction to the treasure is situated near three big trees; Ben Gunn spent three years marooned on the island; all the major action on the island happens on the course of three (and a half) days; at the end there are three surviving pirates left on the island; Ben Gunn spent all of his share in three weeks time.
• Cursed World: In the first novel, Initial Sparks, a great number of things are said to have happened "five years ago," some related, some not so much.
• Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang: Why, two of course. Why, two of course. Jacob is two plus two plus two years old. He has two older brothers and two older sisters. He says everything twice, because as the littlest, nobody hears him the first time. He has two eyes and two arms and two arms and two legs and two feet and two shoes.
• The Last Horizon: Seven is a very important number in magic, so it shows up quite often in multiple contexts. In Varic's ritual, if everything went perfectly he would have gained the experience of seven lives total (they were expecting four, hoping for five, and got six), and Horizon's eyes are seven-pointed stars.
• My Sweet Audrina: The number 9 comes up a lot and is generally associated with bad things. The first Audrina's birthday is September 9th (the ninth day of the ninth month), and she dies on her ninth birthday. The second Audrina's birthday is also September 9th, and she was born nine years after the first Audrina died. The second Audrina's sister, Sylvia, is born on her ninth birthday while their mother dies that same day.
• Men in Black: The Green Saliva Blues: Brought up repeatedly throughout the book — a healthy Zahurian adult has 208 branches, making 208 a sacred number to their kind. Consequently, when Zahurians are transported to another planet to feed, it's in a group of 208 at a time (though when they come to Earth, they're typically dropped off in smaller batches, some distance away from one another). The Men in Black aren't aware of the exact significance (due to the Zahurians seeing all non-Zahurians as food only and being unwilling to communicate with them as a result), just that 208 is important to the Zahurians somehow.
• A Practical Guide to Evil: As a story where the kinds of patterns that stories follow provide actual power to those following them, this is used, played with, discussed, and exploited:
  • 3: This initially seen in the concept of Patterns of Three, which are a loss/victory over a rival, followed by a draw against them and a guaranteed victory/loss against them, but other forms of Rule of Three are seen, such as three factions fighting at both First Liesse and the Battle of Keter. (The Yonder version adds three legendary swords of Callow.)
  • 5: Bands of Five, which provide a significant boost of power to the five Named that form one. Five companies fight at the War College, and Keter has five guest palaces.
  • The series also has a variant on the trope: the expression "X and one." It most commonly takes the form of "seven and one", but other values of X are used as well—e.g. the War of Thirteen Tyrants and One, The Battle of Four Armies and One. It's discussed in-story that the "one" in the pattern exists to shape it—for example, the Gray Pilgrim's sacrifice of his "crown" alongside seven Proceran princes' crowns shaped the nascent Twilight Ways into his image: a peaceful eternal evening lit by the Pilgrim's Star, despite having been a borderline hellscape less than three hours beforehand. The pattern as a whole was apparently started by the Titans, when one Titan opposed seven who tried to alter the story.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Seven (which is a trope in its own right), but also one-fifth or variations thereof: if someone cites a statistic or a probability, it's almost invariably a one-in-five chance.
  • According to Esmeralda's opening remarks to the Sword Roses' freshman class in volume 1 (the anime's pilot episode), one of every five students who matriculate to Kimberly will not survive to graduate. There being six main characters, the odds are against them all making it out of the series alive (Oliver is already known to be Secretly Dying because his Unique Protagonist Asset is Cast from Lifespan).
  • Nanao cites a similar statistic in volume 3 (episode 12) to dissuade Guy from a half-baked plan to go into the labyrinth in search of Pete after Ophelia kidnaps him: in her days as a samurai, when comrades of hers went missing on the battlefield, only one in five ever turned up alive. This is also the odds that Miligan gives for Pete surviving if no one goes to get him, but a rescue attempt with the help of an upperclassman like herself might raise that to a 21% chance.
  • On a somewhat lighter note, Chela also says in volume 4 while giving The Talk to the other Sword Roses that statistically four out of five Kimberly students will have their first sexual experience at the school—meaning one in five won't.

Live-Action TV

• The titular number for The 100 is the number of delinquents originally planned to be sent down to Earth. Also, the series ultimately ended with a total of 100 episodes. The number 100 is featured again in season 4, with there being 100 slots for survivors of the upcoming nuclear deathwave in Arkadia, and then 100 spots in the bunker apiece for each of the twelve clans.
• J. J. Abrams and his writers apparently tried their hardest to get the number 47 to appear in every single episode of Alias.
• Arrowverse:
  • Much like the comics, Arrow and The Flash (2014) tend to feature the number 52 rather frequently. Just like the comics, it references the number of Alternate Universes... barring one.
  • Five is a significant number in Arrow:
    • Oliver spent five years in hell before he went back home.
    • It's in the fifth episode, "Damaged", that Oliver stops doing his crusade solo and becomes accompanied by a partner (Diggle, in this case).
    • Starting with Season 2, Team Arrow consists of five members most of the time. Whenever a member leaves, someone else joins (e.g. in Season 3, Sara dies and Laurel joins, while later, Roy leaves and Thea joins), and if the count is more than five, you can bet that someone will leave shortly (one of the three New Recruits from Season 5, Evelyn, is revealed to be a traitor). It isn't until Dinah Drake joins midway through Season 5, carrying on the Black Canary legacy after Laurel's death, that the membership becomes more fluid.
    • Oliver met five women during his five years in hell whom he became acquainted and, with the exception of one, developed a romantic attraction with: Shado, Sara Lance,^note While Oliver knew and was romantically attached with Sara before, he really came to know her during their experiences in Lian Yu and the Amazo. Tatsu Yamashiro, Taiana Venediktova, and Talia al Ghul.
    • Season 5 is the last in the series to feature a dual narrative of the present and the past, culminating in the Season 5 finale, a recreation of the pilot's first scene. The season's running theme is Oliver's past ten years (the five years in hell, and the five years of his vigilantism in Star City) coming back to haunt him, the Big Bad being someone whose father was killed during his crusade. By the season finale, Oliver learns only by forgiving himself can help him move on from his darkness, hence from that point onwards, the show deemphasizes his past in favor of the present and the future.
    • Five women have donned the Canary mantle throughout the show; Sara Lance, Laurel Lance, Dinah Drake, Rene Ramirez's daughter in the Bad Future storyline, and finally, the Earth-2 Laurel Lance.
  • 503, the number of people killed during the Undertaking, is mentioned a lot in Arrow Season 2.
• Barely an episode of the third season of Ashes to Ashes (2008) goes by without 6-6-2-0 showing up. It turns out to be the collar number Gene was wearing when he was killed.
• The number 12 on Battlestar Galactica (2003) appears quite often. The number 13 also appears with nearly as much frequency. Usually the 13th member of a group is somewhat different than their 12 predecessors and usually meets an unfortunate end. There's also 33, which is central to the mythology of the first episode then never turns up again in any significant way. Why? Because even Ron Moore doesn't give a shit, that's why.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • 730, appearing first in the season 3 finale, and later reappearing in the season 4 finale where it's said to be "late ... completely wrong". The season 3 finale was scheduled to air exactly 730 days before the season 5 finale, in which Buffy dies.
  • 314 in Season 4, who is otherwise known as Adam.
• On Classic Concentration, contestants who picked square #22 were reminded that that is host Alex Trebek's lucky number.
• During the fourth season of CSI: NY, the number 333 popped up in a lot of episodes (Mac would be called at 3:33 am, or there'd be a murder on the 3 train at the 33rd St station).
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Shakespeare Code" has 14, which is the number of stars in the star cluster the antagonists come from.
  • "The Eleventh Hour": The Doctor invokes this by writing a computer virus that causes every digital device on the planet to switch to the number 0, in order to signal the location of Prisoner Zero to the Atraxi.
  • In series 7, specifically once Clara becomes a companion, a few numbers start cropping up. First, "Eleven" remains from since the beginning of series 7 (since this is the eleventh Doctor), but also the number twenty-three. Clara, for some odd reason, doesn't seem to acknowledge the existence of the number; she mistypes a "123" password as "124", and in a diary she's had since she was a kid, she has her age listed for every age except 23, which she skips. The date 23rd of November (i.e. 23/11) also crops up a lot, for obvious reasons.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Used in-universe in the Seven Kingdoms with the Faith of the Seven, worshiped primarily in the south. There are seven gods, seven Kingsguards, seven hells, etc. Perhaps by coincidence, the soundtrack to the second season trailer is "Seven Devils" by Florence and the Machine.
  • Rule of Three: Daenerys is the third-born, hatches three dragons, dispatches three scouts while Crossing the Desert, and conquers three cities.
• Ghostwriter: The number 4 shows up a lot. There are 4 episodes per story arc, 4 founding Ghostwriter Team members, 4 Sixth Rangers, the story arc "Four Days of the Cockatoo", 4 THABTOs, 4 Thunder Heads, 4 husbands of Lana Barnes, 4 parts of the Hoodman contest, etc.
• On that note, Heroes has the number 9. We still don't know why it's relevant, but it was on a bus that Isaac painted. It was also Maury's apartment number in Volume 2.
• JAG: In "Brig Break", the number 7 is repeated throughout the episode in various contexts. The keycode to disable the nuclear bomb has a 7 in it, Austin mentions at one point that they have 7 minutes left, and finally they disable the bomb with 7 seconds left.
• Kamen Rider:
  • The OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Riders movie has the number 40, relating to the franchise's 40-year birthday.
  • Kamen Rider Kuuga also uses the number 2000 a lot, which just happens to be the year the Kamen Rider franchise returned after an 11-year hiatus.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Rule of Three. Season 1 presents 3 candidates who could be Sauron in disguise: Adar, the Stranger and Halbrand, there are the 3 priestesses of Sauron from Rhun, and the first 3 rings of power that are made at the end of the season, Narya, Nenya and Vilya.
• Lost has six numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42, which recur both individually and together. As well as 108, the sum of the other numbers.
  Hurley: The numbers are bad!
• Manifest uses 828 a lot in the early seasons. The plane was Flight 828, Romans 8:28 is often (mis)quoted, variations of it (414, 5328, 2414, etc.) are used for street addresses, and it even shows up as a time span (828 hours) at one point. Downplayed in later seasons as they switch to different kinds of symbolism.
• Odd Squad: The number 43 pops up numerous times in Season 1 as Easter Eggs. Although it's the badge number of Olive's former partner Odd Todd, it's also a reference to Mathnet from Square One TV, which the show takes inspiration from.
• The upcoming miniseries The Pentaverate is deeply concerned with the number five, as you might cues from the name, the marketing, and its Meaningful Release Date of May 5, 2022.
• Sense8. You can probably guess what number it is. Eight main characters, in eight different locations, all born on August 8th... etc.
• The number 11 crops up so often in Shoebox Zoo that it almost becomes irritating.
  Michael Scot: Your dark days are numbered.
  Toledo: In 11s, I presume?
• Square One TV: How appropriate for a show about math!
  • In Kate Monday / Pat Tuesday's voiceover narrations for Mathnet, the times mentioned are always 43 minutes past the hour.
  • The Mathnet police procedural also has the number 313 appear now and then: tow truck numbers, apartment numbers, made-up crime codes, etc.
• Star Trek:
  • 47 appears an awful lot in Star Trek. Many joke that it's "42 adjusted for inflation," and many sci-fi shows, notably Stargate SG-1, also see 47 cropping up frequently, most likely in tribute. It's become something of a Numerological Motif and/or in-joke in the sci-fi community at large. Trek's 47s were started by writer Joe Menosky, a graduate of Pomona College, which is the origin of the "47 Society," a group proclaiming that 47 is the quintessential random number. In the 1960s, a Pomona professor named Donald Bentley produced a "proof" showing that all numbers are equal to 47. Just for fun, one of the main libraries on the campus is named "The Borg" in part as tribute to this connection between the school and the show/movies
  • Star Trek has a more compressed example in the TNG's "Cause and Effect," featuring a "Groundhog Day" Loop in which the Enterprise is repeatedly destroyed. On the final iteration, the characters keep encountering the number 3, and discover that it's a message from themselves in the previous go-round telling them how to avoid destruction.
• Every episode of Touch (2012) has its own arc number, which is usually first shown written by Jacob in his notebook. The number of the episode appears throughout: as everything from times to dates to addresses to phone numbers to ....
• Truth Seekers: 1-5-9-7 appears frequently, most obviously as the output of the Numbers Station Gus listens to, but in several other places, including the model number of the burning washer/dryer in Astrid's visions.
• The X-Files frequently uses arc numbers with the most common being 1013 (series creator Chris Carter's birthday and the name of his production company) and 1121 (Carter's wife's birthday). Use as times (10:13) and dates (November 21st) being particularly common.

Music

• Music theory is heavily rooted in mathematics, resulting in nigh everything having a specific number associated with it. Of particular note...
  • 4/4, a time signature so ubiquitous that it has garnered the name "Common Time"
  • The Diatonic Scale, which includes Major, Minor, and the other modes such as Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Locrian, as well as some permutations of it like Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, and all their associated modes, have 7 notes.
  • The 12th root of 2 (which is approximately 1.059463) is significant as it is the frequency ratio between 2 semitones. In the same vein, 12 is significant as it is the number of distinct, named tones in Western Music.
• 128 for House Music as a whole. That is, 128BPM. There is, of course, significant variance, but they never stray too far. Most electronic genres are similarly centered on a particular tempo.
• The number "39" is sometimes used for things related to Hatsune Miku, because the digits 3 and 9 can be read as "mi" and "ku" in Japanese.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic has the number 27 appear a number of times in various songs, album covers, specials etc.
• The 27 Club, which includes any popular musician who dies at the age of 27, such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse.
• Blue Öyster Cult use the number three as arc number in the song Shooting Shark. Sevens crop up too; Seven Screaming Disbusters, Hot Rails to Hell, Perfect Water...
• Godley & Creme's triple-disc concept album Consequences has 17 referenced throughout the script, though the meaning of it isn't quite clear.
• In the Gorillaz-verse, the number 23 seems to come up an awful lot, as noted in the "autobiography" Demon Days.
• The number 9 for Slipknot.
• Marilyn Manson with 15 (which is Manson's birthday - January 5, the Devil's card in Tarot, and also the last two numbers of his tenth album's year of release).
• John Lennon loved the number 9 ("Revolution 9", "#9 Dream"), and was born on the 9th of October. It can even be seen as an Arc Number for The Beatles as a whole, given such numerology as their Rock Band game being released on 9/9/2009 and their SiriusXM station being channel 18 (9+9), both of which are a reference to the "Number nine..." motif of "Revolution 9".
• Taylor Swift's lucky number is 13. She would often be seen writing the number on her hand during concerts and her Fearless album had 13 tracks.
• 99 Luftballoons uses the number repeatedly.
• The number 23 for The KLF. Note that one of the many names used by The KLF is the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, named for a Discordian cult in Illuminatus!. The number 23 is also an Arc Number in Discordianism, and the band's work contains many references to both Discordianism and Illuminatus!.
• Sound Horizon's Märchen makes mention of or alludes to the number 7 numerous times, examples from which range from obvious (it's based on 7 fairy tales and Seven Deadly Sins; it starts off and ends with a countdown from the number 7), to obscure (Snow White is said to have become the "fairest of them all" at age 7 in the original fairy tale; the "bonus track" is a collection of 29 (3x7) sound snippets, each 7 seconds in length.)
• The number 70 is referenced in a lot of Boards of Canada songs, "The Smallest Weird Number" being named after one of 70's properties. Most of the time the number is called "Sixtyten," in reference to the number's name in French. Furthermore, their independent record label is called Music 70.
• Several of Dream Theater's studio albums have arc numbers based on their order in the band's discography:
  • 6 is for Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, with six songs and the title track being sixth in line, chronicling six mental disorders.
  • 7 is for Train of Thought, which contains seven tracks, and "T" is written as "7" in Leet Speak.
  • 8 is for Octavarium and its title track, which revolves around the idea that "everything ends where it began", using uses the number 8 and the octave (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C) as an example. What's more is that it's the eighth track on their eighth album and its length in minutes (twenty-four) is divisible by eight. Various other elements in the song also allude to cycles and/or the number 8, including each song ascending the F Lydian scale with their key signature ("The Root of all Evil" and "Octavarium" are both in F, and each song in between fills in appropriately).
  • It took the band 12 albums to release a Self-Titled Album, and the numerology of Dream Theater is abundant. The band's name (and hence the album's name) is twelve letters long, and a chromatic scale contains twelve notes.
  • The band even uses a non-integer arc number, namely the ratio of 8:5, inspired by the number of white and black keys respectively which cover an octave on a piano. This was first exhibited in the aforementioned Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, with five songs on the first disc and the title suite divided into eight tracks on the second disc. Octavarium has five ambient interludes woven in between the eight proper songs, which complete the chromatic octave of key signatures. Dream Theater contains eight songs under eight minutes, followed by "Illumination Theory" which is 22 minutes and contains five movements. The theme of the octave in Octavarium was even inspired by Mike Portnoy realizing they were about to work on their eighth studio album having just released their fifth live album.
    • Dream Theater's spinoff group, Liquid Tension Experiment, also exercised the 8:5 ratio on the deluxe version of Liquid Tension Experiment 3. It's a Distinct Double Album, with the first disc containing the eight composed tracks of the album proper, while the second disc, "A Night at the Improv", contains five extended improvisation jams.
• Ever since it became the title of their breakthrough album, Rush (Band) has loved the number 2112. It's been the key to unlocking a DVD Easter Egg, the source of many video jokes on their Time Machine Tour, and represents one possible time on the Clockwork Angels clockface (2112 = 9:12 PM in military time).
  • There was also 30 during the R30 tour, which was in honor of their debut album turning 30 in 2004. While it's been more or less confirmed by the band that there won't be an R40 tour in 2014 since the band is taking a year or two off after wrapping up the 2012-2013 tour in support of Clockwork Angels, some fans have latched onto the idea of an R42 tour (though there have been rumors that the band will be returning to the stage as early as January 2015), and thus have made "42" a significant number in the fandom. Remind you of anything?
  • "R42" (2016) would also mark the 40th anniversary of the aforementioned 2112, so all the arcs, anniversaries and jokes could be converging together in one nice tour.
  • The R40 tour took place in the late spring and summer of 2015. As predicted, 40 and the usual suspect 2112 became arc numbers.
• Alban Berg was very preoccupied with the number 23, which turns up in all sorts of musical and mathematical codes in his works. He died (officially) on Christmas Eve 1935, but some of his friends insisted that his death really occurred on the 23rd hour of the 23rd day.
• Thirty Seconds to Mars has the number 6277 appearing in their music videos and other promotional material. Numerically, it spells out MARS.
• Rhapsody of Fire's The Dark Secret Saga has 7. Seven demons, seven books, seven towers, seven wizards - apparently a reflection on the seven deadly sins.
• SiIvaGunner uses the number 7 often. 7 is related to Grand Dad, a character who often appears in rips accompanied by The Flintstones theme.
  • The King for Another Day tournament features Jack and Elmo, who are associated with the number 8, a reference to the eight sides of an octagon.
• The number 25 appears often in The Mars Volta's Frances the Mute, most notably in "Cassandra Gemini".
• The number 2808 pops up a fair amount in Nero's music and promotional material
• A certain number is repeatedly used throughout "74" by Itoki Hana and Toby Fox. It's actually 73, for some reason. 73 months locked in the tower, 73 floors high, 73 knights who've tried and failed to save her so far. Until the end of the song reveals why they've all failed. "The door swings open and my / Breath of fire fills the / Seventy-four."
• Jack White, formerly of The White Stripes, is obsessed with the number three, and the number appears frequently across his body of work. Many of his songs are composed in thirds, has a song titled "The Big Three Killed My Baby," he refers to himself as "the third man" on "Ball and Biscuit," his record label is named Third Man Records, and he even draws a 3 on the ground at the end of the "Conquest" video.

Myths & Religion

• Classical Mythology had number 12 as a sacred number and its all over the place, without even sporting a duodecimal system. 12 Gods in Olympus (although not only 12 supernatural beings dwelt there), 12 hours in a day - 12 hours in a night, 12 labours of Hercules, 12 months in a year, and many more. Especially the latter seems to have been forced to be 12; a month, as its name suggests, is a full circle of the moon (29.5 days), however the ancient Greek calendar had 365 days. Their chosen system was to have twelve months alternating between 29 and 30 and have an extra 11 days not assigned to any month so they would remain 12. The same number was sacred in Egypt and probably originated from Mesopotamia. 11 and 12 are special words in Greek, not resembling the format of other numbers in the teen region. The same is true in Germanic languages and possibly other languages of the Indo-European family.
• The Bible:
  • 40 appears in The Old Testament quite a bit. (So do 7 and 12, but they also show up frequently in other works from that time...) Examples include Noah's Flood (it rained for 40 days and 40 nights), the Exodus (which lasted 40 years), and the amount of time Moses spent on Mt. Sinai (40 days and 40 nights). It also pops up in the New Testament, when Jesus fasts for 40 days and is tempted by Satan.
  • 7 tends to represent an endless or uncountable amount.
  • By Jesus' day "77" or "70x7" had a similar use. Adjusted for inflation?
  • 3:
    • The Bible does the Rule of Three a lot, but the New Testament identifies it with God (as in the Trinity). Also, Seraphim have 3 sets of wings.
    • To the ancient Hebrews, 3 represented consistency. Thus the prophet Isaiah's freakout when he found himself in the throne room of God with angels saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” because it meant that God was consistently holy while Isaiah . . . wasn't.^note  That line is considered so important to Judaism that it is chanted twice or more per day during the Kedusha prayer. Keeping this in mind, we also know that 7 represented the "perfect number" to many cultures at the time, including the Jews. The number 6, therefore, was short of perfection; so the number 666 represented consistent imperfection. ^note Ironically, mathematicians consider 6 a perfect number - the smallest such number, being an integer which is the sum of its own factors (other than itself) - 1 + 2 + 3 = 6.
  • 4: Usually identified with the created world: "The 4 winds of the Earth", "the 4 corners of the Earth", and the 4 beasts who stand before the Throne which show up in both Testaments. Also, there are 4 Gospels. Additionally, 4 often corresponds to a political/cosmological model that includes four kingdoms/regimes. Interpretations of history in prophetic and apocalyptic literature are often massaged to delineate four kingdoms, even when it isn't entirely accurate. For example, in Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue includes the Medes as one of the "world empires" even though they were a small, unimportant vassal state (but their inclusion made the motif work).
  • 7: Applied to time and refer to completion. 7 days in a week, and the 7th is the Sabbath. Likewise, every 7 years was a Sabbath Year when the fields were supposed to lie fallow, and the 50th year (7x7+1) was the Year of Jubilee, when all debts were cancelled, Jewish slaves were set free, and land reverted back to its original owner. 7 also shows up in prophecies about the end of the world: Daniel's "7 Weeks" and there's a whole host of 7s in the Revelation of John (7 seals, 7 bowls, 7 trumpets, 7 heads on the Beast, just to name a few.) This was aided by the fact that the Real Life city of Rome is renowned for having 7 hills. The Revelation was likely referring to Rome when it said "The 7 heads are 7 hills" to get past the Roman censors.
  • 12: The Human Race. There were 12 sons of Jacob, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 stones representing them on the High Priest's garments, 12 gates in the New Jerusalem, and 12 disciples. The disciples didn't think it was a coincidence, either: after Judas hanged himself, they drew lots for a replacement.
  • Apocalyptic prophecies, such as Daniel and Revelation, have a lot of references to a specific period of time variously rendered three and a half years, 42 months, 1260 days, and "time, times, and half a time," which is usually interpreted to be the length of the reign of a terrible end-of-the-world dictator.
• Judaism:
  • In rabbinic and modern Judaism, the number 13 has special spiritual significance. With the 13 attributes of God, originally from Exodus 32 but made prominent in Rabbinic Judaism), Maimonides' 13 principles of faith, generally considered the closest thing rabbinic Judaism has to a creed, Rabbi Ishmael's 13 rules of textual analysis, the most prominent tools used to analyze Jewish texts, and of course the 13 years before the bar mitzvah, it's not hard to see why Judaism considers thirteen to be a powerfully lucky number.
  • Also 18. In Hebrew, every letter can also represent a number; words have a value of their letters added together. Since the word for living, חי, (pronounced chai) equals 18, it's considered lucky. Gifts of money, either as presents or charity, are often give in multiples of 18 for this reason.
  • The Jewish holiday Passover uses the number 4 a lot in its traditions and commandments during a seder. This includes:
    • Drinking 4 cups of wine at a seder.
    • Asking the 4 questions about Passover.
    • Telling a story about 4 sons, who each have different personalities and different methods of questioning.
    • Recalling the 4 promises God made to Moses in Egypt.
  Exodus 6:6-8: "I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you — and I will take you to be My people."
• Norse Mythology has the number 9 all over it. There are 9 Worlds in the worldtree Yggdrasil (which is spellt with 9 letters), Odin learns "9 runes and 18(2x9) charms", Odin hung from Yggdrasil during 9 nights to learn the runes, the ring Draupnir produces 8 new rings (for a total of 9) every ninth night, Hel was given power over 9 worlds by Odin, Freyr is obliged to wait 9 nights to consummate his union with Gerd, Ægir & Ran has 9 daughters, Heimdall has 9 mothers, Hermod rode Sleipnir for 9 nights on his quest to free Baldur from Helheim, the Valknut symbol has 9 points and at Ragnarok, Thor will slay the Midgard Serpent but be poisoned by its dying breath, and stagger back 9 steps before falling dead himself.
• In Native American Mythology, at least in North America, the number 4 shows up a lot. Mayan Mythology also used the number 13, while plains mythologies liked the number 7. 28 (4 x 7) is also important in Lakota culture, with there being 28 days in a month, 28 rib bones in a buffalo, and 28 feathers in a war bonnet.
• 23 and 5 (= 2 + 3) are significant in Discordianism.

Pinball

• Bally's Playboy pinball has the number five as a recurring motif — there are five keys to Hugh Hefner's grotto, five knockdown targets to hit, and five Playmates to collect.
• A meta example: spelling "J-A-R J-A-R" in the last revision of Star Wars Episode I awards you 19,992,510 points, which represents the day Williams left the pinball industry: October 25th, 1999.
• Stern Pinball's Indiana Jones uses the number four: there are four movies to complete, each of which has four steps.
• Austin Powers also uses four shots to activate each of the game's modes.
• Space Jam makes frequent use of 23, the jersey number for Michael Jordan. It is both a playfield Spelling Bonus and the number of seconds available for several Timed Mission modes.
• The Beatles is themed after the group's first appearance in America in 1964, and thus the year serves as a recurring motif. In addition to the 1-9-6-4 drop targets, the game itself was limited to a run of 1,964 units.
• Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity: The number 27, a recurring motif in Al's music, appears several times in the game. This Week in Pinball's Deep Dive states that destroying 27 objects is the sole prerequisite for starting Hardware Store Multiball, as well as the fact that the limited edition package is restricted to 227 copies.

Podcasts

• 'Find Us Alive'': 32. The "Groundhog Day" Loop lasts 32 days, 32 minutes and 32 seconds, and effects of SCP-6320 such as the formation of Dash One rifts and Dash Two monsters always take "32 something" units of time to complete.
• Kakos Industries has a list of random numbers at the end of each episode that are not meant to be heard or remembered by the listeners. Among them, the most reacurring is the number four. As it turns out, the episodes with the most devastating events happen around the forties.

Pro Wrestling

• 19 in Ice Ribbon, due to their "sub promotion's" web show starting at 7 PM, or 19 o'clock.
• "The Perfect 10" Tye Dillinger.

Radio

• The Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama Forty-Five, made to celebrate the show's 45th aniversary is a series of short adventures in which the Seventh Doctor keeps encountering the number ... oh, you guessed. It turns out to be a sign that the Word Lord Nobody No-One is near.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978): "42."

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder: Three in this case: 9, 0, and 1. There were nine Anti-Godmodder Ancestors, nine members of Limbo's Council of Nine, and nine members of the Chosen Few that created the Void. 0 and 1 pop up frequently with regards to Project Binary, Binary Prime, and The Employer, since they're all made out of binary coding. In addition, "901" is used many times as well in random circumstances simply because 9/01 (September 1st) was the day Destroy the Godmodder 2 started. It is likely that this usage was inspired by Homestuck.

Tabletop Games

• Eberron: 12+ 1, a Baker's dozen. The guy who designed Eberron is named Keith Baker, although by Word of God he didn't realise the "Baker's dozen" connection until the setting was already nearly done. There are lots of examples where you get 12 obvious things and a 13th hidden one. 12 dragonmarked houses — and the eradicated (apart from one lich, who can't use it, and some non-canonical novels) 13th dragonmark of Death. 12 Planes — and the sealed 13th Plane of Dal Quor. 12 moons — plus the 13th dark moon, which disappeared with the sealing of the 13th plane. 12 nations in the Khorvaire continent, plus Cyre... the 13th nation, which is now the D&D equivalent of Fallout. It was made especially blatant in "Faiths of Eberron", which states that the Silver Flame celebrates 13 holidays, including one that seems to have nothing to do with anything and is just about eating pastries, and which is on its way out. The name of the fading holiday? Baker's Night.
  • Taken further, most likely by accident, in 5th edition. The Player's Handbook in 5e contains 12 classes. The 13th class, Artificer, was introduced in the edition's first Eberron sourcebook.
• Each Chaos God in Warhammer 40,000 has a favorite number that tends to show up in connection with them (6 for Slaanesh, 7 for Nurgle, 8 for Khorne, and 9 for Tzeentch). Even shows up in the rules, with a Bloodsthirster costing 888 points, a Lord of Change 999... Please don't think about how the numbers are counting down. The Imperium tends to prefer things be in units of 10— but that's not numerological, it just makes the accountants' lives easier.
  
  Unsurprisingly, the number 40,000 crops up a lot, as well, such as the number of Tyranids infesting the space hulk Sin of Damnation and one of the casualty figures given for the Dropsite Massacre during the Horus Heresy.
• Mocked, like so much else, in the Planescape setting for AD&D. According to the Rule Of 3, everything always appears in sets of 3. Since reality is very much defined by what people believe, this remarkably often proves to be true. Though some cynics quite rightfully point out that it works with every number if you just look long enough.
• Almost everything in Exalted is based around the number 5.
  • This is even the case when it looks like it isn't; there are 7 types of Exalt - Solar, Lunar, Terrestrial, Sidereal, Alchemical, Abyssal and Infernal - but since the last 2 are based on corrupted Solar shards... (However, third edition breaks this by introducing several new Exalted types.)
  • There are only 3 Lunar castes... But there used to be 5.
  • 7 also appears, usually with mystic connotations. Again with the Lunars - their source book suggests you can consider the Lunars to have 7 castes as well as 3 or 5: the 5 original castes, the casteless, and chimerae.
• New World of Darkness:
  • The 3 main settings are also based around the number 5. Vampire: The Requiem has 5 Clans & 5 Covenants, Mage: The Awakening has its Paths & Orders, Werewolf: The Forsaken has Auspices & Tribes. The limited gamelines, however, cheerfully break the pattern.
  • Limited gameline Demon: The Descent is of particular note, being based around the number 4.
• The Old World of Darkness did something similar with 13, although not quite as much. Thirteen Clans in Vampire: The Masquerade, thirteen extant Tribes in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, thirteen major Guilds in Wraith: The Oblivion, etc.
  • Mage: The Ascension does something similar with the number nine. There are nine Spheres which correspond to the fundamental underpinnings of reality, along with the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions, with each of the said Traditions specializing in one particular Sphere.
• 333 in Unknown Armies.
• 5 in Magic: The Gathering. There's a reason: There are 5 colors of magic, each with 2 enemies and 2 allies (as illustrated on the card backs) so the creators often do the same thing with a variation for each color. 10 pops up just as much, since that's how many two- and three- color combinations can be made, and most sets have a full "cycle" of ten cards that represent how each color pair works in that set.
  • The horror-focused Innistrad block had a slight 13 theme due to the number's superstitious stigma. Included were a card that made 13 creature tokens, a card that gave a creature -13/-13 (and one that gave a creature -13/-0), several cards that dealt 13 damage, a toughness 13 creature, and a couple of 13/13 creatures. Alas, there were less than 13 cards in this subtheme. Shadows over Innistrad, the block's sequel, continued this theme, with the main antagonist Emrakul, the Promised End even being a 13/13 for 13 mana, and one of the block's more infamous cards taking this running theme to its logical conclusion
• 13th Age, so called because default games take place during the 13th Age of its setting, has 13 Icons - major NPCs who the players start out with some connection to. The most powerful monsters in the corebook - Balor and Huge Red Dragon - come in at level 13 threats, and the game as a whole is (C) 2013. The "13 True Ways" sourcebook adds yet more to this, by containing 13 inns, 13 dungeons and 13 flying realms.
• Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine tosses around the number 8 a lot. There are eight colors of arc, eight genres, characters get 8 each of skill points, Will, and perk slots, and the default setting (Town) has 8 regions.
• Traveller has 6 as an arc number. There are 6 major races, jump drives go up to 6 parsecs, maneuver drives provide up to 6G acceleration, and the Droyne are completely obsessed with the number 6. It probably has something to do with most versions of the game only using 6-sided dice.
• Five comes up a lot in Sentinels of the Multiverse. The main superteams all have five core members (the Freedom Five are self-explanatory, there are five Prime Wardens, and a total of five people are in the Dark Watch, although Nightmist and Harpy don't have much overlap; the big exception are the Sentinels/Void Guard, with four). The game is designed for a maximum of five hero decks, and, in team villain mode, five villain decks as well. Most actual decks have a multiple of five cards in them (40 for heroes, 25 for villains, 20 for team villains and 15 for environments). Obliv Aeon has ten Scions, and five of them have unique shields.

Toys

• Because BIONICLE canister sets are released in waves of six, this number pops up often in the story. Six heroes, six elements (at first), six maoki stones, etc.
• Across the Transformers franchise, the number thirteen pops up frequently: there are thirteen original Primes, and The Transformers: Robots in Disguise takes it further by establishing thirteen Cybertronian colonies seeded with thirteen super-powerful ores.

Theatre

• Hamilton has numerous references to the number 10, that being the denomination of the money Hamilton is on (ten-dollar founding Father). Counting to ten also references dueling—that his son Philip does so in a childhood exercise is significant.
• In Les Misérables, the number 24601 (Jean Val Jean's prison number) is repeatedly referenced, mainly in his struggles with Javert.
• In RENT the song seasons of love turns around the repetition of 525600, the number of minutes in a year, as a way to emphasize the shortness of life and all that can be accomplished in that time, harkening to the broad themes of the show.
• Romeo and Juliet: Juliet is between the ages of 13 through 14 years old in the story. This fact is put on emphasis during the play, from Juliet being the 13th character to appear on stage, to Romeo calling her name 14 times. This suggests that the play was putting importance on Juliet's surprising wisdom in spite of her age and youth to emphasize her immaturity.

Video Games

• Kirby has 86, as it is the Goroawase Number for HAL Laboratory.
  • Kirby's Dream Collection: Special Edition, being a celebration of the series' 20th anniversary, frequently features the number 20 throughout the game. The intro cutscene has some Waddle Dees building a giant number 20 out of golden Star Blocks, the game's logo prominently features the number 20, and the Smash Combat Chamber levels end with Star Blocks in the shape of the number 20 that the player can destroy to collect the coins hidden inside.
• Square Enix loves doing this. Most of their games have multiple Arc Numbers, but the Trope Codifier for Video Games has to be Final Fantasy. If the number is in the title of the game, it is most likely an Arc Number.
  • Final Fantasy: There is Final Fantasy IV (and its sequel), Final Fantasy VII (including the Compilation), Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XIII, Dissidia, and possibly more. Interestingly, the number II is mentioned enough on This Very Wiki and the Final Fantasy pages to make it an Arc Number (for example, VII has II in it, Final Fantasy VIII's page mentions II as an influence, and XII's page is a combination of the two). And in Final Fantasy V, there are five protagonists, with five-letter names, five characters for the power-up before the final boss battle, five battle themes, and it was also released five years after the first game.
    • In Final Fantasy XI, monthly campaigns start on the 11th (Japan time) and a big celebration for the month of November. There were originally 11 jobs in its first release, now expanded to 22 (11*2). Corsair, a job with Blackjack-style gambling mechanics, gets the highest stat bonus rolling up to 11 and busts at 12. Vorseals, stat bonuses available in some zones, cap at 11 for each category except for a few of them.
  • The World Ends with You repeats the number 7—each game lasts a week (7 days), there's a character named 777, when Joshua says Makoto has done a 180, Neku corrects that to 7 times 180.
    • And then we have 4 shown blatantly throughout the game. You have 4 major bosses, 4 locations to fight those bosses, 4 controllable characters....the list goes on. It's even in ''Shi''buya and the original Japanese title itself.
  • The Kingdom Hearts series tends to make heavy use of the numbers 3, 7, and 13, though the first two are played more subtly.
    • A more subtle one: Xemnas, the final boss of Kingdom Hearts II, is the number 1 of the Organization; Marluxia, the final boss of Chain of Memories^note In Sora's story, anyway., is number 11 - double one. The final boss in 358/2 Days is Xion, AKA: no.i...an imaginary number whose algebraic square is -1.
    • They managed to get two arc numbers into the recipe for Ultima Weapon in KH2. Without the mandatory Energy Crystal (which cuts crafting requirements in half), it requires 13 pieces of Orichalcum+ to forge (which is more than the amount that exists in the game). With the Energy Crystal, though, the game rounds up to 7.
    • Then they took it to an even greater extreme with the Updated Re-release of the games on PS3/PS4 and Kingdom Hearts III. Adding up every "numbered" Kingdom Hearts game (1, 2, 1.5, 2.5, 2.8, 0.2, and 3) comes out to, you guessed it, 13.
    • There are also 7 letters in "Kingdom" and 6 in "Hearts". The total amount of letters in "Kingdom Hearts"? That's right, 13.
    • Furthermore, in what may or may not be a coincidence,the first release window for Kingdom Hearts III was in 2018, it will have been 13 years since the release of Kingdom Hearts II (which was in 2005). However, it's subverted when the game was pushed back to January 2019.... which, if you want to be technical, is the 13th month of 2018. That being said, however, 2019 is the 13th anniversary of the Western release of Kingdom Hearts II, so it may well be a Double Subversion.
    • Even Sora's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as the game's last DLC fighter has brought along some 13s. Sora was announced on October 5, 2021, and his release date was October 18, 2021, 13 days later, as well as 13 days before Halloween. That update brings the game to version 13.0.0. In addition, including Piranha Plant and counting Pyra and Mythra seperately, Sora is the 13th DLC fighter.
  • Octopath Traveler: As the title suggests, the number 8 is important here.
    • There are eight playable characters, each with their own storyline (hence the title). Each of these characters has one of eight unique basic job classes (and can dual-class). In addition, each one of these jobs plus the four secret ones has eight skills to be learned.
    • The continent the game takes place in is divided into eight geographical regions (Frostlands, Flatlands, Coastlands, etc.) and the playable characters each start their journey in a different one of these regions.
    • Olberic lost his king and his city-state of Hornburg eight years ago.
    • Eight warring clans used to inhabit the Flatlands, before uniting against an opposing army and founding the city-state of Atlasdam.
    • There are eight three-part sidequests to take part in, one for each of Orsterra's regions.
    • Out of the 24 towns in the game, eight of them have unique music^note They are: Flamesgrace, Atlasdam, Cobbleston, Sunshade, Clearbrook, Victors Hollow, Grandport, and Orewell. One of these towns can be found in each of the eight geographical regions.
    • The Steam version of the game has 88 achievements.
    • At the end of his story, Cyrus is seen teaching a class of eight students.
    • The song that plays during the credits is eight minutes long.
    • During the second phase of the True Final Boss fight, Lyblac, the Blade of the Fallen, and the Abyssal Maw all have eight different attacks.
• Riven is all in units of 5.
  • The D'ni culture (which you first get glimpses of in Riven, and pick up through every other game and novel) has a base 25 numbering system. The little toy in the classroom in Riven does a good job of showing you the basics; it uses only 4 symbols plus a 0 (the '5' is just the '1' turned on its side, and a '6' is a '5' with a '1', and so on). The only tricky part is numbers with more than one digit: while they arrange things in 5s, their numbers go up to 25 (5x5) before you see another character.
  • The name Riven is 5 characters long.
  • The title Riven: The Sequel to Myst is 5 words long.
  • Pentagonal architecture and pentagrams are prevalent in the game world.
  • The original CD-ROM version came on 5 discs. The download package from GOG.com (for Mac, at least) is 5.5 GB.
  • There are 5 islands, 5 entrances to the Big Bad's lair (one per island), a series of 5 associated color-symbol puzzles to unlock them, and a 5-step code to get in.
  • There is a 5-step code to enter the Rebel age.
  • The submarine on Jungle Island has 5 stops.
  • Knocking 5 times on the door of one of the Jungle Island dwellings will elicit a response from the people living inside.
• 7 appears to be an Arc Number for Bungie Studios in general: many of their games' event dates, character names, etc. feature the number 7 or multiples of 7, with the Marathon trilogy and Halo being notable examples. Even their fan club (The 7th Column) does it!
  • One particularly noteworthy example; Halo has a character named 343 Guilty Spark^note 343 is equal to 7x7x7. The studio Microsoft set up to continue the franchise after Bungie's departure is called 343 Industries.
• Kingdom of Loathing:
  • There's a strong implication implies the number 12 is evil, what with the Sinister Dodecahedron, fuzzy dice killing you if they get boxcars, the level 12 quest being to start a war, etc. This may or may not be related to Jick's apparent hatred of the number 13. Look at the object numbers carefully.
  • And there's so many references to the number 11 in the game, it's ridiculous. It's not even funny.
  • And of course, the number 23FNORD
  • That and using/attaining 37 ("In a row?!") of anything is always funny.
• The number '451' (often rendered as '0451') pops up in a lot of Immersive Sims: both Deus Ex and System Shock (both of which were Warren Spector's brainchildren), their sequels, as well as BioShock (the Spiritual Successor to System Shock), its direct sequel BioShock 2 and the follow-up BioShock Infinite (where it is literally the only keycode in the game). It also pops up in Dishonored and Dishonored 2 (which are spiritual successors to both Thief and Deus Ex, made by one of the original developers of Deus Ex). This a reference to the office door code for Looking Glass Software (developer of the original System Shock and Thief games), which is in turn a reference to a certain other dystopian society written about by Ray Bradbury.
• Infocom games have 69105 as the traditional answer whenever something needs to be counted.
• Suda51 includes the number "51" in most games he makes. For instance:
  • No More Heroes has a clothing store named Area 51. Also, leading up to the first game's release, the game's Japanese website featured 51 gameplay clips.
  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle has Travis starting over in the UAA rankings from rank 51^note Which doesn't mean he actually fights 51 assassins. For example, he climbs halfway up the rankings after facing the second boss in the game, whose cheerleader underlings are ranked along with him. Also, the clothing store is renamed Airport 51.
  • Flower, Sun and Rain: to unlock everything, the player must take 510,000 steps.
  • Lollipop Chainsaw 's platinum trophy for the PS3 is entitled "JULIET 51". It is also the 51st achievement in the game.
  • Killer is Dead has a stage set in "Area 151". Also, the DLC level is labeled as "Episode 51".
• 2-1-6 is important in Fallout 3.
  • It's introduced at the very beginning of the game as the chapter and verse of the PC's mother's favorite Bible passage, Revelation 21:6. It's mentioned a few times during gameplay. Fully 20 years later, at the very end of the game, it recurs as the keycode to the MacGuffin — 2-1-6. The importance of this sequence is NEVER explicitly told to the player by anyone who would know it, but it does show up as one of the response options when the player is interrogated for the code (providing the closest thing to a direct clue in the game as to what the code might actually be).
  • Also in Fallout 3, the number 2 scrawled on the walls of nearly every building with a heavy Raider presence.
  • 87 residents of Vault 87 died from "unexplained" causes.
  • Vaults 101 and 108, the latter of which is also half of 216.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has 6. 6 Couriers, 6 items, 6 destinations. You can also find a canyon wall full of graffiti telling Courier 6 to come home, which turns out to be the path to The Divide.
• New Vegas also has 21, as befitting the setting. Your first jumpsuit and the doctor who saved you from death and gives it to you is from Vault 21, when captured in the Dead Money DLC you are actually Collar 21, Festus calls it the "magic number", although that's more about his variant of Blackjack than anything else, and lastly should you be supporting an Independent Vegas, Ulysses will give you a duster emblazoned with a 21 at the end of Lonesome Road.
  • Vault 13 from the first game, which is plagued by many misfortunate events, from the water chip malfunctioning to the possible takeover by the Super Mutants.
• The number 7 has a cropped up constantly in many of Nasu Kinoko's works. Examples include the 7 Servants of the Holy Grail War, Ciel being the 7th agent of the Burial Agency (which is, of course, made up of 7 members), the 7th Holy Scripture (Nanako), the 17 Piece Dissection (Shiki's 'signature move'), the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors and so on. It is explained in Tsukihime that the number 7 is considered "the most perfect number".
• Several Silent Hill games use at least one Arc Number to add to the creepy factor; in Homecoming, for instance, every clock in the town of Shepherd's Glen is stopped dead at exactly 2:06. This later becomes the solution to several puzzles. Cutscenes and scattered documents imply that "206" was Alex's room number during his horrific stay at Alchemilla Hospital; in the cutscene before the final boss fight it is also revealed that 2:06 is the time when his little brother Joshua died.
• The magic number in Half-Minute Hero, as one might guess, is 30. Each of the 4 main modes is 30 stages long, and also 30 seconds long, barring any attempts to turn back the clock.
• Pi in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots shows up on number plates on cars, posters on walls, and in the lyrics to a song, amongst other places, probably to symbolise how Ouroboros-shaped the plot is. To a much lesser extent is 893 - both part of Drebin's name, and the maximum number of bullets you can carry for any given caliber. Also, certain radio frequencies pop up in nearly every game after they're introduced and are nearly always used for the same thing - your commanding officer is near-always at 140.85, saving your game is near-always done by calling 140.96, and so on.
• There are 27 levels in the main dungeon of Dungeon Crawl, the maximum level of a character is 27, and skill levels are also capped at 27.
• Grand Theft Auto has 69 popping around in many places, from the number of a fire truck to a military base.
• 11 in Billy vs. SNAKEMAN. For instance, the game's webmaster and creator goes by the name of the "Eleventy Billionth Hokage", and multiples of 11 are frequently used in bonus multipliers and some of the mini-games ("Over 11000", anyone?)
• Hellsinker has 771.
• 8492 in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War. Towards the end of the game, it is revealed to be the the callsign of the Belkan aggressor squadron, which doesn't officially exist but acts as a shadowy nemesis of the Wardogs/Razgriz.
• Similar to the Silent Hill example above, Eternal Darkness seems to really like 3:33. Alex is woken up at 3:33. The clock in the main hall of the mansion? Stopped at 3:33. And it should come as no surprise that when you find a puzzle involving a clock, it has to be set to... yep, 3:33.
• In Achron, the AI Echo is fond of repeating the number 76013, which is ultimately revealed to be the number of time loop iterations so far.
• The Elder Scrolls series has the number 9, most often expressed as a form of "8+1". There are 9 Divines in the Imperial religion, comprising 8 conventional gods and 1 human who became a god. There are traditionally 9 provinces in the Cyrodiilic Empire (Cyrodiil itself and 8 others), and 9 districts and principal cities in the provinces of Skyrim and Cyrodiil (both the capital plus 8 others). The Amulet of Kings has 8 small jewels and 1 large jewel. There are eight 'Towers' sustaining the barriers between the realms, and one 'zeroth stone' that is the origin of their power. Even the universe itself is said to be shaped like a wheel with 8 spokes, the '+1' being the solid line made when viewed on it's side.
• The Submachine series uses 32 a lot: In Sub 2, Mur plans to leave the lighthouse in the next "32 days"; in Sub 4 it took "32 years" to explore the Subnet, including "32 chambers filled with sand" (which you get to explore in a Gaiden Game called 32 Chambers); in Sub 7 the Winter Palace was built in "1832" etc. This may or may not be a reference to Discordianism.
• The number 7 shows up a lot in Fallen London, especially in connection with a certain thankless quest known for bringing only misery and loss to whoever undertakes it. But it crops up quite a bit elsewhere, as well. Seven is the Number, as they say.
• The Armored Core series has the number 9 which first appeared with the fandoms memetic final boss Nineball/Hustler One, now every time you see something with the 9 you'll be shitting your pants due to them being a badass. The most notable example is White Glint from For Answer who is rank #9 and the game says that there better than the rank suggest. And before you ask, the jokes with Cirno have been made
• Nightmare has the number 26 appear repeatedly. It's the room the player needs to get to as a goal, the plot-important car accident took place on route 26 and the TV needs to be set to 26 to proceed.
• BEMANI musician DJ YOSHITAKA composed a large number of songs that are specifically 185 BPM.
• 12 seems to pop up in several places in Azrael's Tear. There were 12 Templar Knights sent to guard the Grail, 12 ships were sent to supply Aeternis before the aforementioned Guardians sealed it against the outside world, and the protagonist enters during the 12th month of 2012, among other things.
• 115 is a common reoccurring number in Treyarch-made Callof Duty games, most notably World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops.
• The Five Nights at Freddy's franchise has the number 1987, referring to an... incident that happens in the timeline.
• In Quest Fantasy, 7874.
• The works of indie developer CC & SH use the number 714. It first appeared on Funky Jeff's shoes in Bam 'n' Jam. Most of the time, it ends up being the number of times a player must perform an action in a row, in order to activate some super small reward.
• The Saints Row franchise claims 'Anything important is always connected to a 31.' Code numbers will always be a series of 3s and 1s, Johnny Gat was imprisoned for 2 years and 31 days, Shaundi has you steal police equipment from Precinct 31, and Channel 13 shows news about the Saints, and later their shows. The third game features a wrestling tournament named Murderbrawl 31. The fourth game sees the player character put into the 13th Lotus-Eater Machine, which takes them to "Simulation 31".
• The number 11 in Minecraft. The music disc "11" plays a person running away from someone, or something, with their fate unknown (presumably death). This disc's ID is 11, and is 1:11 in length. Minecraft 1.0 was also going to be released on 11/11/11. ^note  It was delayed by a week to avoid competition with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released on the 11th. Similarly, the fan-made creepypasta Herobrine, referenced in the game's changelog, has been removed repeatedly. However, the usual 'Removed Herobrine' joke entry was skipped in the 1.1 update changelong.
• The Ultimate Haunted House has 13. There are 13 rooms in the house, the player has to find 13 keys by 13 o' clock, the house is located at 1313 Mourning Lane.
• The number 2056 pops up quite a bit in Portal Stories: Mel and even has an achievement for finding a room full of scrawlings of that number. This is a reference to the online handle of one of the developers, LoneWolf2056.
• The Rare Replay compilation has a lot of focus towards the number 30, since it's a 30 game collection released for Rare's 30th anniversary that retailed for $30.
• Nazi Zombies has the number 115, the element that was used in creating the zombies and enhancing weapons. Even has its own song.
• POPGOES is focused on the number 6. There are six initial animatronics, six pieces to the Blackrabbit animatronic along with the six 3-D printers needed to make them, and six vent cameras.
• Duke Nukem Forever has the number 69. Duke's penthouse is on the 69th floor of the casino, the Devastator holds 69 rockets, and as of the ending, Duke is running for 69th President.
• Nintendo is very fond of using 120 as the magic number for the type of MacGuffin you collect in various games. There's 120 stars in Super Mario 64, 120 shine sprites in Super Mario Sunshine, 120 stars (not counting the green stars) in Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, 120 available slots for created and/or downloaded levels in Super Mario Maker, 120 shrines in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ^note  The Champion's Ballad DLC increases the shrine count to 136, 120 Treasure Chests in Kirby: Squeak Squad and 120 Energy Spheres in Kirby's Return to Dream Land.
• 256 in Super Paper Mario. It's the number of Catch Cards in the game, Dimentio's Dimension D makes its inhabitants 256 times stronger, and in Chapter 5, Monzo and Hornfels crew say they have heard about Flint Cragley fighting Rainbowzilla 256 times.
• Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future likes the number three. 3 Bad Futures that need to be averted, 3 castes in the Man's Nightmare segment, 3 dolphin groups ^note Clan, Outcast, and Resistance in the Dolphin's Nightmare segment, 3 bosses in the "Hanging Waters" levels, 3 dominant species on Earth, 3 attacks needed to defeat the Crayfish boss, etc.
• No Man's Sky has the number 16 continually cropping up in strange places, and discovering the significance of that number eventually becomes the focus of the main plot. It's because Atlas, the AI running the computer simulation the game takes place in, only has sixteen minutes left before it shuts down, and its obsession with its impending death causes the number to appear everywhere.
• Trails Series uses the number 7 prominently throughout the various arcs.
• In most of Bandai Namco's games, the number 765 will pop up somewhere, as that number's kanji can also spell out Namco.
• Dicey Dungeons uses 6 as its magic number. There are six playable characters, who are all transformed into six-sided dice, with six challenges through six levels of Lady Luck's dungeons, and so on.
• In AI: The Somnium Files, it's 6. Date can remain in a somnium for six minutes, he lost his left eye and memories of the past six years ago, and many characters' ages are a multiple of six ^note specifically, Mizuki (12), Iris (18), Ota (24), Date (30), Pewter, Shoko and Mama (36), Boss and Hayato (42), Moma (48), Mayumi (54), and So (60).
• Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion heavily features the number 8, with references to the number ranging from obvious to obscure. To share just a few of them: the campaign features an Octoling going by the codename Agent 8 and has 80 main levels, with the hub areas stylized after a 1980s aesthetic. Some of the levels task you with guiding a giant 8-ball to the goal, while others will have you collecting 8 data points. The poems for Mem cakes follow a three line, imabic octometer structure. The audio files in Marina's chat room are .mp8 files. The new "Off the Hook" music tracks from the Octo Expansion are numbered 80 through 84 in Squid Beatz 2. If you add up the numbers from the titles of every Dedf1sh song played during campaign and divide them by how many there are, you get 8. After beating the final boss, the Turf War meter that appears goes up to 888.8%, and the Optional Boss of the expansion is unlocked by opening the locker marked #8 in Deepsea Central Station.
• For some odd reason, the number 5 in Warcraft. Five playable factions in Warcraft III, World of Warcraft shipped with five playable races per faction (and five hub racial cities, although only four starting zones), many players have theorized there were originally five old gods (though one was perhaps split in two by an experiment gone wrong), and most recently the mysterious whisper of Ilgynoth "five keys to open the way, five torches to light our path". The Shadowlands expansion has five zones. Revendreth has five Princes, Ardenweald has five major groves, Bastion has five temples and Maldraxxus has five Houses. Both Mists of Pandaria and Cataclysm also added five zones: and The Burning Crusade added five new starting zones (two for the Draenei race, three for the Blood Elf race). Also, pieces of rare and epic gear have five distinct stats: usually, two main stats and three secondary stats. Most classes have five buttons to press in their rotation as well, most of the time. There is also the classical four elements plus spirit, which many players theorize are the elemental forces: though this is unconfirmed in canon lore. Also, after the Legion expansion there are now five factions of elves: the Kaldorei, Shal'dorei, Sin'dorei, Quel'dorei and Ren'dorei (Night Elf, Nightbourne, Blood Elf, High Elf and Void elf). Most dungeons also have five bosses or boss fights. There are five Titans in the Titan Pantheon, and thus five Pillars of Creation: artifacts which they left behind. Thus the Legion expansion also had five questing zones. Also, the five floors of Icecrown, the five wings of Ulduar and the five ships that make up Tempest Keep.
  • The games also really like the numbers four, six and seven. Four dragonflights. Seven nations in the Alliance of Lordaeron prior to Warcraft III(Lordaeron, Stormwind, Gilneas, Dalaran, Kul Tiras, Ironforge and Quel'thalas). Both the Burning Crusade and Warlords of Draenor expansions featured six zones on the planet Draenor, and the orcs were divided into six major clans before the formation of the First Horde. The Exodar has six sections, Silvermoon City has seven districts. There are usually six or seven bosses per raid (though some had as many as eleven: another number that tends to show up a lot in these games). A filler raid is usually four bosses (although sometimes it's just one). There were originally seven Titans, and seven Titan facilities on Azeroth. There are the traditional European Four Elements, and four druid specializations. There are technically speaking four roles in the gameplay: with melée and ranged damage being very different due to how fight mechanics tend to work. There are four Titan Keepers in Ulduar, though there are actually seven Titan Keepers in total (counting Ra-Den, Tyr and Odyn). To name just a few examples of these numbers occurring.
• The number 24 appears quite a bit in the Puyo Puyo series, as it's the Goroawase Number for "puyo". Puyo Pop Fever was released on the 24th of a month for its various ports, and later games often have 24 playable characters in them.
• Zote of Hollow Knight is associated with the number 57. He's got 57 written precepts, and 57 is the number of Zotelings you must kill during the Eternal Ordeal to unlock the Zote-themed title screen.
• In Ōkami, the number 8 comes up a lot, being a game based on the legend of Orochi, the eight-headed snake. The first major boss is the Spider Queen, her shadowed form even briefly appearing like Orochi, and she has 8 vulnerable points inside her abdomen-flowers. There are 8 Satomi Canine Warriors and during the boss fight with Crimson Helm, the 8 protection orbs given by the Warriors appear to protect Amaterasu. The door leading to Orochi's temple is marked with an infinity symbol (a 8 turned on its side) and to gain entry to his chambers, Amaterasu has to ring the Bell eight times. The sake used to get Orochi drunk is purified eight times and poured into eight vats. During the fight with Ninetails, eight tails must be cut off first.
• The Legend of Zelda series as a whole places a strong emphasis on threes: three creator Goddesses, three pieces of the Triforce, three different timelines, three main recurring characters (Link, Zelda, and Ganon/Ganondorf), three key attributes (Courage, Wisdom, and Power), and many games additionally require Link to gather three MacGuffins or complete three dungeons to progress through each major stage of the plot. However, four is just as likely to pop up, with later games especially leaning into this number despite retaining some instances of Rule of Three.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the number four revolves around the Champions, most likely to invoke Four Is Death and the past's tragedy regarding them. There are four major non-Hylian races with major quest arcs, four dead Champions, each from the four races and four Divine Beasts once plioted by the Champions. The Champions represent the four weapon types in the game. There are four Blights corrupting the Divine Beasts and four powers to be gained from the Champions' freed spirits. Even the runes and upgrades rely on fours. There are four main rune shrines at the beginning of the game. There are four Great Fairies to upgrade armor and clothing up to four times. The Goddess Hylia statues's price for health or stamina is four spirit orbs.
  • This emphasis on fours carries over into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with the return of the four main races, the four Great Fairies, and the requirement that MacGuffins be redeemed for upgrades in sets of four, among other things. However, the story also carries a strong emphasis on the number five. The Zonai are introduced as a fifth major race, there are five Sages, a major story setpiece has five main parts, each major dungeon has a five-part lock or mechanism that needs to be dealt with (though one part is Already Done for You), Phantom Ganon splits into five during its boss fight, the Final Boss summons five phantom copies of himself during his second phase, and at the climax of the game, there are five dragons in Hyrule's skies — the three from Breath of the Wild plus the Light Dragon and Demon Dragon.
• In Horizon Zero Dawn, every important event in Aloy's life occurs in a multiple of six. When she was six months old, she was named; when she was six years old, she found her Focus; when she turned eighteen (3 x 6), she was made a Seeker. Also, Word of God confirms that six months in-universe passed between the end of the first game and the sequel.
• Nimdok's chapter of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream has the arc number 1945, which Nimdok doesn't remember the significance of. It turns out that it was the year he sold out his own parents to Those Wacky Nazis to save his own skin.
  Nimdok: The truth is that, for me, it will always be 1945.
• Deltarune: 1997 is a number predominantly associated with Spamton in Chapter 2, though some other characters also use the number. One of Virovirokun's battle phrases is "Happy new year 1997!", Spamton introduces himself as "Number 1 Rated Salesman1997", randomly through his first battle he'll mumble the number to himself, the slogan he spits at you when telling you the whereabouts of what becomes his NEO form is copyrighted 1997, on the Weird Route he sells you the ThornRing for 1997 KROMER, and then during his Spamton NEO fight at the end of the Weird Route he states he sold you the ring at the price of "[his] Favorite Year".
• The Hex: Six is the arc number. The Six Pint Inn. Six guests at the inn. Six gameplay segments. Six sides on a hexagon. Sado's spider form has six legs instead of eight.
• OMORI: 143 subtly appears as an arc number throughout the game. The internal variable for the WTF Value is set at 143, Something In The Dark will deal 143 damage as its final attack if you don't defeat it in time, Something In The Wind will inflict 143 damage on its first turn, and there's a secret entrance to Black Space 2 only attainable by waiting 143 seconds in a certain area. There are many more examples and the game's wiki has pretty much all of them catalogued.
• In Everhood, 8, the upturned infinity. It appears in numerous circumstances throughout the game, such as the Endless Corridor having 888 rooms, the Magic 8 Ball, and other locations.
• Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City fittingly has 23, Jordan's longtime jersey number in the NBA, appears throughout the game. Most occurences grant a 1UP or a special ability, or even incorporate it in cheat codes.
• The 2023 Toxic Crusaders game does it subtly, by having 7 playable characters (the original Crusaders plus Yvonne and Mrs. Junko) and 7 levels to clear in total.
• Pac-Man 256 is a game based on a famous glitch from Pac-Man that causes the game to crash on level 256. Additionally, if Pac-Man can eat 256 dots in a row without missing any, he activates a Smart Bomb that wipes out all the ghosts on-screen.
• The lore-important characters in the Cookie Run series generally feature groups of 5 as a motif: the Five Dragons, Five Ancient Heroes, and Five Elemental Legendaries (arguably, if you consider Frost Queen or Stardust to be part of the original LINE legendaries' group). There's also the 5 protagonists of Cookie Run Kingdom (namely Gingerbrave, Strawberry, Wizard, Chili Pepper, and Custard III).
• My Singing Monsters: Magical Nexus seems to be associated with the number 18, with that being the level you need to unlock it, and also the level the monsters needed to be to travel to it, among other things.
• Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning: The number 99 appears a lot in the franchise; some examples of this being all of the blue doors having this number, rarely encountering a cropped 99 upon Baldi catching you which can jumpscare you again before the game quits by itself, and if you keep breaking the rules in Here School, the Principal of the Thing can send you into 99 seconds of detention.

Visual Novels

• In Danganronpa, the number 11037 appears as a Dying Clue in the first game, as a password in the second (which was chosen in-universe as a deliberate reference to said Dying Clue), and as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the third where it makes up one small part of a ridiculously long password. Also in the third, the Hope's Peak Academy Monopad theme costs 11037 casino coins.
• The number 17 pops up a lot in Ever17. And if it isn't 17, it's somehow divisible by 17. The sequel, Remember11, builds on this in a lot of ways. There's two (1+1) protagonists, the game is set in 2011, 31 (the 11th prime) victims of the plane crash, and Yuni is 11 years old, among other things.
• The visual novel Sekien no Inganock: 41 Creatures who brought doom to Inganock, 41 Kikai standing behind someone's back and 41 people disappearing every year.
• Umineko: When They Cry has quite a few:
  • The plot before the core arcs questioned the existence of a 19th person, the events of the series were built up for 19 years, and the core arcs themselves revealed that the true age of a certain person who is heavily involved in the murders is 19. Lampshaded and invoked by Furfur and Zepar in Episode 6 in the fantasy duel, where the duelists are asked to walk 19 steps away from one another.
  • 07151129 was scrawled on the walls in Episode 3. It's also repeated ominously in a song on the VN soundtrack. It's the code to a safe, specifically, the code to the "Golden Land" which contains the liquidated gold from the island. Also, July 15th is Battler's birthday, and the 29th of November is the day "Yasu" solved the epitaph and became 'Beatrice'. Thus it is the combined birthdays of a pair of lovers.
  • For the When They Cry universe, we have 34. Miyo's name (as well as Lambdadelta's), can be read as 34, and the controversial file in Higurashi was called File No. 34. Less related is the fact that Shannon's real name can be read as 34.
• In YU-NO we frequently hear about 400 year periods of time, which turns out to be when Dela Grante and Earth make their closest causality based passes and thus travel between the 2 is somewhat possible.
• Zero Escape:
  • Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors:
    • From the game's title, 9 victims, 9 hours to escape, and 9 doors numbered from 1 to 9.
    • 9 seconds before the numbered doors close since they're opened, and 81 seconds (9x9) to find the detonator-deactivation-scanner once inside.
    • Another Nonary game happened 9 years ago, and 9 clovers were handed out by Snake.
    • A substance called ICE-9 is mentioned several times throughout the game, despite being a Shout-Out to Cat's Cradle.
    • The final puzzle is a Sudoku puzzle, which is all about sets of 9.
    • The incinerator incinerates after 18 minutes. 1+8=9 or 18/2=9
    • The digital root of all the known ages of the characters is a 9. Ace/Ichinomiya (50) + Snake/Niels (24) + Santa (24) + Clover/Yotsuba (18) + Junpei (21) + June/Murasaki (21) + Seven (45) + Lotus/Yashiro (40) = 243 = 2 + 4 + 3 = 9.
    • In the Captain's Quarters, after telling Clover about the bookmark Santa gave you, she takes 6 paces to the left, 6 paces to the right, then 6 paces to the left. 6+6+6=18 > 1+8=9. 18 is also 9x2.
    • A key aspect of the game revolves around the calculation of Digital Roots. Although not explicitly stated, calculating a Digital Root is mathematically equivalent to calculating the number modulo 9.
    • The passnumber to the safe and the coffin is 14383421. Multiply that number by 9, and you get 129450789: the actual numerical value of everyone's bracelets.
    • The characters themselves were based off The Enneagram, though their bracelet numbers don't necessarily correspond to the number they're based on.
  • Virtue's Last Reward has 9 players with the objective to obtain 9 points and become able to open the 9 door in the facility they're in. There are also 9 depictions of lions eating the sun all over the building.
  • Zero Time Dilemma continues the trend.
    • There are nine people who were living in Dcom and were abducted, as well as nine bodies for the robotic tenth player, Sean 729. Note that 729 = 9x9x9, referencing the triple nines of the first title. The AB Game makes a brief reappearance, and again the goal is to reach 9 points, though the fact that it's only for one section means the point values increase to allow it to occur with a single betrayal.
    • 10 also proves to be a recurring number. There are ten doors in the Monty Hall problem, ten total players, ten total lives trapped down in the shelter thanks to the presence of Team Pet Gab, and the escape door has an X, the Roman numeral for 10. Also, it's not a Nonary Game this time, it's the Decision Game.

Web Animation

• Battle for Dream Island has 2763, a number often used for how many times something has happened, the distance it will take to get somewhere, or other purposes. Word of God confirms that this is because of the amount of offspring within Cary and Michael Huang's family per generation. Specifically, Cary and Michael make two, their father is one of seven siblings, the father's father is one of six siblings, and that father is one of three siblings. Played with in episode 5 of TPOT, which instead uses the number 2762, which Coiny justifies as not everything always being the same distance away.
• TVTome Adventures has 1111, binary for fifteen. It's also the code that activates the D-Bug Virus and is also the date the remake was released.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Downplayed with the number 7, which is usually limited to just Mythology Gags related to the series' parent franchise of Halo. Some example include Sister's claiming that she's had seven abortions before the events of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, the Red Zealot of the Battle Creek Zealots stating that Caboose "the Anti-Flag" will rule over the Zealots for seven years, the Meta capturing seven different A.I.s before their defeat in Reconstruction, Grif being on the receiving end of seven different Groin Attacks from Tex during "This One Goes To Eleven," and both Alpha-Church and Epsilon-Church only each living for seven years In-Universe before they were destroyed.
  • On a more general level, the whole series has 57. Most fans seem to believe that it's related to the fact that the first alien to ever appear in the series appeared in Episode 57, the finale of Season 3. For instance, Recreation has Sarge saying that he has saved up 57 hours' worth of complaints for Grif to listen to in case he dies in battle. Season 15 also has Jax Jonez noting that Sarge's real name is "like 57 syllables."
  • invoked Notably, The Chorus Trilogy runs with the usage of 57, with it appearing everywhere. Hilariously enough, Word of God states that it was actually just a massive series of coincidences piling up to the point where the creators decided to keep throwing the number in just to screw with the fans.
    • "Manticore Blues," Freckles' main theme in The Chorus Trilogy, is 57 seconds long.
    • The Basebook pic of Freckles wearing a hat in Season 11 was 57% uploaded by the time Tucker destroyed the computer.
    • In Season 12, Caboose's lottery numbers at the gas station are 5 and 7.
    • Felix's Pelican thrusters were 57% damaged in "Prologue."
    • Counselor Aiden Price says that Carolina is 57% more likely to abandon her teammates when placed in a competitive scenario.
    • As of "Capital Assets", Matthews has thanked Grif a total of 57 times for him and the rest of the Reds and Blues stopping the Chorus Civil War.
    • Finally, there's the fact that if one counts the "Armonia" two-parter as one whole episode, then The Chorus Trilogy has 57 total episodes.
• RWBY: Four is an important recurring number. There are only four extant Kingdoms, each with a four-year academy. Academy teams consist of four people, each based on four main colors. There are four basic types of Dust, four Maidens representing the four seasons, four divine Relics being pursued by the Big Bad, and the story begins just before the 40th Vytal Festival. Four orbs appear when true magic manifests in its basic form, two of which represent the Gods of Light and Darkness. The reason why the four Academies create four-student teams is because of the founding King of Vale's love for an ancient fairy tale about a Hunter's four children who learn team-work is the key to protecting humanity from the Grimm; both the King of Vale and the fairy tale Hunter are heavily implied to be previous incarnations of Professor Ozpin. Also, the origin of the Forever War between the Big Bad and Big Good lies rooted in the tragic deaths of their four daughters.

In Algicosathlon Rises, 4. It was the number of artifacts of doom that Periwinkle produced and utilized, and also an algarism of Spraymatic 214 and the 4040 world. The show has also started on July 4th, of 2020, meaning both the day and the year of the premiere sum up to four.

Webcomics

• Gunnerkrigg Court has 113. The number is also something of an Author Catch Phrase for Tom Siddell; considering that the number has appeared in his artwork that predates and/or has nothing to do with Gunnerkrigg, it does seem more likely that the number has personal meaning for Mr. Siddell, rather than a meaning specific to the comic.
• In Koan of the Day, the number 40 occurs almost whenever numbers are mentioned, such as here and here.
• Homestuck of MS Paint Adventures gets a ton of mileage out of this trope.
  • First there's 413, corresponding to April 13, the date the comic began and when most of the comic takes place. It appears everywhere, (either as 413, 4-13 or 4-1-3) from the numbers on timers, to times, dates, the versions of computer programs, the numbers used in Terezi's typing quirk, sums of money, and more. Variations like 3-14, 1-43, 1-34 or 4-31 pop up as well. Also, the human kids all have 4 letter first names and 6/7 last. 6+7 makes 13, making more 413. It should also be noted that in playing cards, which are the Midnight Crew's motif, there are 4 suits of 13 cards each; and The Felt contains 17 (4+13) members - 15 pool balls plus Doc Scratch and Lord English. And to top it all off, the number of important characters grouped in fours is 52 - 4 pre-Scratch kids, 4 post-Scratch kids, 12 trolls, 12 post-Scratch trolls, 4 sprites, 4 post-Scratch sprites, 4 exiles, 4 Midnight Crew members/troll exiles, and the last group - Calliope, Caliborn/Lord English, Doc Scratch, and Andrew Hussie.
  • The number 612, or 6-12 (or 2-16), also appears, usually in relation to the Trolls, (June 12, 6:12 AM, 612 hours, 6 hours and 12 minutes...) often as a form of 12 divided into two groups of 6. It corresponds to Act 5's release date (June 12, 2010).
  • Later in Act 5 Act 2, 10-25 starts appearing as well, 1025 being 413+612.
  • In Act 6, the new Arc Number is 11, usually in groups. (November 11 2011, 11:11, 1:11 etc.) Just like 413 refers to the humans, 612 to the trolls, 11-11-11 refers to the cherubs.
  • All this even extends outside the comic itself: many of the music albums have costs, song lengths, and even time signatures based around these numbers.
  • Several characters have numbers that are associated with them, usually showing up in their typing quirks: Sollux with 2, Vriska with 8, Nepeta with 33, Karkat and Kankri/The Sufferer with 69^*And not the pun you're thinking of either, it's the Cancer sign, Equius with 100, Eridan with 311, Feferi with 38, Gamzee with 420
  • Kanaya uses 6. Her sign is the sixth in the zodiac, the sentence 'you are one of the few', which has six words, is repeated six times in her introduction, her lusus has three body segments with two legs each, she was the last and sixth to join the Red Team, and her aspect symbol has six arms. She also has a lot in common with the sixth element, carbon.
• In Narbonic, 5478 pops up occasionally. For example, Artie was originally Lab Test Subject RT-5478. In Real Life, it's the author's birthdate.
• Despite the title, Sarah Zero is brought to you by the number 28.
• 9 is an in universe example in Drowtales. The old world had 9 moons, the old religion worshipped 9 deities. The Chelian council has 9 seats, for the leaders of the 9 great clans. All student groups in the Orthorbae consist of 8 students so counting the teacher, there are always 9 people in a classroom during the courses. The school itself has only 8 towers though, which leads a number of characters to speculate that there had to be a 9th one at one point. There still is, the cavern's fake sky is covering it up.
• Synodic Reboot has 105. The character xylemTheologian also has peculiar inclus10n5 of the number in her messages, whenever the sequence "io" appears with an "s" either immediately after or only a few letters away.
• Schlock Mercenary: The arc "Mandatory Failure" has some discussion of Fobott'r traditional numerology. Each of the first thirteen numbers (they use Base 12 because they have twelve fingers) is a homonym for another word, giving some quick and easy symbolism. Finger, feet, hand, arms, head, self, crest, thing, strike, secret, magic, power, spare. Their names are typically combinations of these words/numbers that can have interesting meanings in context.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Three. Virtually all adventuring parties in this comic are groups of six people (three times two), and the Order of the Stick has six permanent members, three of whom are humans (Roy, Haley, and Elan), and three of whom are not (Vaarsuvius the elf, Belkar the halfling, and Durkon the dwarf). The Order also has three animal companions — Blackwing, Mr. Scruffy, and Bloodfeast the Extreme-inator. And looking beyond the Order, there are three extant pantheons limited to three continents and linked to three cardinal directions (North, South, and West). Team Evil also consists of three permanent members — Lord Xykon, Redcloak, and the Monster in the Darkness. The IFCC consists of three different entities from the Lower Planes, and their Faustian bargain with Vaarsuvius has the wizard gain a Soul Splice connected to three different spellcasters (for a total of four). And, of course, because this is a world based around Dungeons & Dragons, there are nine (three squared) possible Character Alignments that a person can have.
  • To a lesser extent, there's also four. There used to be four pantheons, and the rise of the Dark One's purple quiddity might mean that a fourth pantheon could come into existence permanently. Furthermore, there are seven main story arcs not counting the prequel tales (three plus four). And the Twelve Gods of the South consist of twelve gods (three times four).
• Archipelago and City of Somnus have six: six great spirits (Dragonfly, Raven, Crane, Weasel, Tortoise, Hare), six heroes who bound the Great Raven, six heirs to unbind him, five guards for a Majestan (making a group of six people). Also, Odette's visions form a honeycomb - a pattern of hexagons (her Animal Motif is a bee).

Web Original

• In Oktober, 636 seems to crop up a lot. None of the characters seem to know what it means; however, due to their extreme smartness, they've learned to note its importance.
• Phaeton has the number 6.
  • 6 Primary Elements
  • 6 Eternals
  • 6 Forbidden Spells
• Camdrome seems to have a thing for the number "11"- Camdrome had selected 11 executioners to help him at the start of the game. There were 11 people who received an image from Camdrome in the mail, with 11 specific pictures needed to form a full poster image. The number pops up multiple times in the source code for Camdrome's own website signifying important information.
• Find Us Alive: 32

Web Videos

• Ben Drowned: Also known as Haunted Majora's Mask Cartridge story, has 423 popping up in everything related to the story.
  • April 23rd or 4/23 is the date on which Ben drowned.
  • You shouldn't have done that... appears on screen in DROWNED.wmv at 4 minutes and 23 seconds in.
  • Ryukaki moved into Ben's old house on April 23rd
  • One of the login details, mhftt has been revealed by Jadusable to mean Matt Hubris four two three.
  • The last note in Discworld/TheTruth.rtf by Jadusable was written at 4:23PM.
  • The BEN file in the game was saved at an owl statue in the Stone Temple at 23:04.
  • One of the pages on the official website (Youshouldn'thavedonethat.net which is now down and redirects to the Within Hubris forum) had "for the fold number 3" written at the bottom of it. For = 4. the fold = 2 (folding in half) and number 3 is self explanatory.
  • The Jadusable video "2" is 43 seconds long.
• Similarly, any time the numbers 4 or 404 show up in Marble Hornets, it means bad news.
• A recurring gag in SlimKirby's Let's Plays is his hatred of the number 41. This is an in-joke referring to his friend, fellow Let's Player ShadowMarioXLI.
• 42 in Demo Reel. Rebecca has gone through 42 jobs in a very small space of time, and Donnie's age is 42. It can't be stressed enough about how much he doesn't look it.
• Downplayed when the Game Grumps take a look at the strange Miis contained on a used Wii Arin bought. Most of their names have "677" on them, and Jon thinks it's some sort of code. (Subverted in the end: the original owner explained it was the Wii contained on the store floor for people to try out, and thus many people made weird-looking Miis with bizarre names.)
• The Sharkasm Crew has a few:
  • 14, the date of June that is Kason's birthday.
  • 626, for adding up to 14.
  • 519, the area code that St. Marys resides in.
• The Nostalgia Critic regularly lampshades that he always does Top 11 lists instead of Top 10 lists "because I like to go one step beyond." This structure caught on with other members of the Channel Awesome site at the time, turning 11 into sort of a site-wide Arc Number (though he'll up it to 12 for Christmas Lists for obvious reasons).
• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared has 1906.
  • The date in all 5 shorts is June 19th, which in England is 19/06 since Europeans put the the day before the month.
  • The journey through time in the second is arranged so that each day the trio go to is on June 19th. Also during the Victorian Time sequence, you can see a wanted poster for Yellow Puppet, with the reward being $1,906.
  • The Kickstarter page after ominously stating "all will be revealed…" shows a picture of a calendar with June 19th on it, and the Kickstarter itself ended on June 19th.
  • In Episode 3, Mr. and Mrs. Dead both died in 1906, and the missing poster at the beginning says "last seen June 19th.".
  • In the fourth video, Colin shows the time as 19:06, and the newspaper's date is also 19/06.
  • The fridge in the fifth video has a note saying "ROY:011119067482".
  • In both the fourth and fifth videos, there is a poster of numbers in random. The numbers 19 and 06 are next to each other.
  • Word of God confirmed in a tweet that the significance of the date June 19th will be revealed by the end.
• The Sidemen have 19, due to the group forming on the nineteenth of October 2013. They have the number in Roman numeral form (XIX) underneath the Sidemen logo on much of their merchandise.
• Campaign two of Critical Role has the number 9. The main characters call themselves the Mighty Nein, there are three eyes on each of the three leviathan beasts depicted in Uk'otoa's temple, Molly has nine red eye tattoos on his body that he can't remember the origin of, Arc Villain Lucien's title is "The Nonagon" (a nine-sided shape), and he seeks to form a covenant with the Somnovem (also referred to as the Eyes of Nine), a group of nine ancient beings who command the living city of Cognouza. What's unique about this example is that, given the improvisational nature of the show, much of this was entirely coincidental — the Mighty Nein got their name because the cast kept rolling an unusual number of 9's early on, and one of their number has a pronounced German accent.
  • The side-story mini-campaign Exandria Unlimited: Calamity has 31 for Cerrit, Travis Willingham's character, a roll that GM Brennan Lee Mulligan takes time to note is Beyond the Impossible as a difficulty class. It's the first roll made in the campaign, an investigation check to examine the sanctum of Vespin Chloras (whom the audience knows kickstarted the titular Apocalypse How, just not the specifics). It's the last roll of the first episode, an iconic moment where Cerrit sees through an invisibility spell and kills an enemy before they even knew what happened, right before a Jump Scare courtesy of the aforementioned Vespin. It's also the final roll of the campaign, when Cerrit manages to flee the burning city of Avalir with the aid of his True Companions, the DC of which Brennan did indeed set at 30.
• In the Mandela Catalogue, the number 3 is used several times throughout the series, like Alternate attacks, according to recordings, taking place around 3 am, Mark being trapped in his room for three days, and the "woman" asking the BPS if they can stay for three nights. More overt examples like the 333 corruption that splices footage from unrelated videos. 3 in the Bible is typically associated with "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" adding further to the Religious Horror the Alternates bring.

Western Animation

• Ben 10: No points for guessing the arc number. At the start of the original series, Ben is 10 years old and has access to 10 alien forms that last 10 minutes before needing to recharge. His future self goes by "Ben 10,000", and even after gaining access to more alien forms, Ben is still universally referred to as "Ben 10". It also helps that his last name is Tennyson. In one episode it's mentioned this specific Ben (the one we have seen throughout the franchise until the reboot) is from Dimension 10.
• Parodied in Aqua Teen Hunger Force's 100th episode. It shouldn't take a century to figure out the number. I'll give you 'til 1:00.
• In Nickelodeon's Doug, the number 47 gets used a lot.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy seems obsessed with 62.
• Cotton Hill from King of the Hill constantly referred to the number 50 as an estimate, probably because of his favorite accomplishment during World War II, where he took out 50 Japanese enemy soldiers in an event that also cost him his shins.
• Rugrats: Lou Pickles, and his obsession with the number 15.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Virtually all major events in the fairies' lives, such as Cosmo's birth, Wanda meeting Cosmo, both becoming fairy godparents for the first time, etc. all happened exactly 10,000 years ago. As mind-boggling as it sounds, the fact that Wanda once said fairies have terrible memories makes these claims to the time of the events as unreliable.
• Young Justice has 16.
  • The series is set on Earth-16 of the DC multiverse, with 16-year-old Aqualad as its leader. Superboy and Miss Martian are aliens that are roughly equivalent to 16-year-old humans, with Superboy being a clone grown for 16 weeks prior to the first episode. Wally has his sixteenth birthday towards the end of the first season. Time stamps are often at 16 minutes or 16 hours. The second season is set in the year 2016, and its first episode begins at 16:00.
  • When co-creator Greg Weisman was asked on Ask Greg about the significance of the number 16 on the show, he replied with "<chuckles evily>". He answered that question on the sixteenth of the month.
  • The sixteenth episode of the second season and the final episode both aired on the sixteenth of the month, while the official soundtrack will also be released on the sixteenth of the month.
  • Season 3 continues it: among other things, Brion Markov is sixteen minutes younger than his older twin brother, Gregor; Victor Stone, the future Cyborg, is number 16 on his football team; and Gabrielle Daou was 16 years old when she took a bribe to let an assassin in to kill the king and queen of Markovia and was killed herself to cover any loose ends.
  • The first episode also has a sort of Mythology Gag Arc Number; Project Kr is on level 52.
  • "Leverage" opens with Beast Boy filming Space Trek. Episode 16, scene 16, take 16. He later says they had to do 52 takes.
• 618 appears quite a bit in Gravity Falls (for example, the street address of the Mystery Shack is 618 Gopher Road). This is because June 18th is creator Alex Hirsch's birthday. The more story-related one is the number 3: the story takes place over the three months of summer, there are three major story arcs^note Learning about the town and the journals, discovering the identity of the author, and dealing with the apocalypse (initially intended to be three seasons), something important happened 30 years ago (three rounds of ten), there are three journals, Stanford's underground laboratory has three floors, the show's Caesar Ciphers always use a key of three, and the main Arc Symbol seen throughout the series is a triangle.
• In The Legend of Korra, the number ten thousand is of particular significance, especially where the Avatar's history is concerned. It has been 10,000 years since the first Avatar, Avatar Wan^note In an example of a Meaningful Name, Wan actually means 10,000 in Chinese. The Harmonic Convergence, when the spirits Vaatu and Raava must do battle, occurs every 10,000 years. Vaatu boasts that he is older than humanity by 10,000 lifetimes. Carried over from the parent series, we have Wan Shi Tong, "He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things."
• In The Amazing World of Gumball, the number 700 frequently pops up.
• In Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, the Adversity Twins seem to have a thing with 12, coming in 12th place the first five times in a row, and placing twelfth in the contest overall. This may be a joke on a line Mickey gives in the first episode, insisting that they're not cursed, just "whatever's right before cursed." So they're one spot ahead of thirteen.
• Invader Zim continues the trend from Jhonen Vasquez's comic book by naming a character Prisoner 777.
• Green Eggs and Ham: The number 17 shows up or is mentioned many times during Season 1.
• The number 87 appears multiple times throughout the 2017 DuckTales series, whether it's DT-87, the McDuck Manor security system, or 87 cents that was stolen from Scrooge's money bin one day. This is a reference to when the original DuckTales series premiered in 1987. Webby is also known as experiment 87, codenamed April, created by F.O.W.L. using Scrooge's DNA.
• Season 10 of Arthur has at least one 10 featured in every episode. The season premier, "Happy Anniversary", features almost twenty of them.
• The numbers 27 and 42 appear frequently throughout Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum. Brad Meltzer has stated that 42 is for Jackie Robinson's uniform number, but has explicitly refused to state what the 27 stands for.

Real Life

• In Mathematics
  • 10, as the base of the most widely-used number system.
  • 12. It's a highly composite number, there's the fact that both a set of 12 and the number 144 (12²) have specific names (dozen and gross respectively) attached to them, there's 12 notes in the Western Chromatic Scale, and base-12 often referenced as a good choice for an alternative to base-10 due to its highly composite nature
  • Non-Integer Constants
    • Pi (π), or 3.14..., the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. There's also 2π, the ratio of a circle's radius to its circumference. There's a movement to start using that number (represented by Tau (τ)) instead. For example, e^iτ = 1, sine and cosine both have a period of τ, etc.
    • Euler's number e, or 2.718... is a number intricately tied to exponential growth, with the very useful property that the function e^x is its own derivative, making it a well known number to those well versed in calculus.
    • i, or the square root of -1, is the fundamental constant that is the heart of complex analysis, which is a conduit for other important mathematical items such as the Reimann Zeta Hypothesis and the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra. The relation e^iπ = -1, which is known as "Euler's Identity", is often called the most beautiful relation in mathematics.
    • 1.618..., otherwise known as Phi (Φ), the number at the heart of the Golden Ratio. The Golden Ratio (1.618... or (1+√5)/2) to 1) can be found everywhere in nature. It really is freaky when you learn more about it. Phi is the ratio where a portion of a line is to another portion as the whole is to the first portion, i.e. (Φ+1)/Φ=Φ. Additionally, Φ² =Φ+1 and Φ^-1 (or 1/Φ)=Φ-1.
    • The first Feigenbaum constant, 4.669 201 609(...). It turns up in all sorts of chaotic systems and fractals, for example in the ratio of diameters of circles in the well-known Mandelbrot set. The discovery of the number's universality was key in the development of chaos theory.
  • While none of these are specific numbers, these sets of numbers often show up across Mathematics
    • The Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...) appears just as much in nature as Phi (which makes sense seeing as they're related).
    • The Prime Numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19...) are some of the most important numbers in all mathematics. They are integers whose only factors are 1 and themselves, and show up in numerous circumstances, most notably in The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.
    • The Highly Composite Numbers (1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 24, 36...) are what one could consider "anti-prime" numbers. They have the special characteristic of having more divisors than any integer before them. They are often used in things such as timekeeping (e.g. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 mins in an hour, 24 hours in a day, which tends to get split into the 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. hours) and measurements (12 inches in a foot, 360 degrees in a circle). Then there were historical examples, 12 pennies in a shilling and the Ancient Babylonian Base 60 number system, and Plato specifically mentioning 5040 as a good number to choose for things that would often be split up into groups (land areas, populations, etc.)
• In Computer Science
  • Averted in programming, where repeatedly using a number whose significance may not be obvious is known as using "magic numbers" or "magic constants"; this is generally thought to be bad style, making code harder to understand. The alternative is to declare a constant, tying a unique name to the number that can be used in place of it.
  • Played straight with programing limits, where anyone who didn't know better would wonder why the numbers like 8, 256, and 1024 show up so much. The answer is since data is binary (1 or 0) the amount of data that can be stored in any given number of bits, n, is 2ⁿ. It also has the effect of causing numbers that are 2ⁿ -1 showing up a lot.^note The extra place is reserved for 0. And if one of the bits are being used as a sign bit, you also see -(2^n-1) and 2^n-1 -1 very often. Note that there are 8 bits in a byte, so n tends to be a multiple of 8. These numbers are most apparent in old RPGs where the limit to a stat would be 255 a lot.
  • While powers of 2 are extremely important to computers, one in particular — 64 — gets a lot of attention outside of its numeric meaning. A 32-bit addressing space is limited to only handling 4GB of data in total; 64 bits is the most practical next step and ups that limit to 16 exabytes ^note 17 million terabytes, although most systems only use the lower 48 bits, limiting them to a measly 256 terabytes, so it's an important milestone for any given computer architecture to cross. AMD put this into their branding, with the "AMD64" architecture and "Athlon 64" processors. Even today, modern PCs are often referred to as "amd64" or "x64" machines to differentiate them from the 32-bit processors of yore. ^note The Nintendo 64 got this number from the same place, but it really had no use for the addressing space and just wanted the marketing value of calling itself "64 bit".
  • Early PC CPUs were typically named something-86, after Intel's standard-setting 8086, which was followed by the 286, 386, and 486. While Intel stopped the trend officially with the first Pentiums, AMD and Cyrix continued the tradition for a while with "5x86" and "6x86" processors.
• Everyone even a bit versed in European history knows about the multitude of revolutions that broke out all across the continent in 1848. There's the one in Hungary that required not one but two superpowers to break down^note the country was under Habsburg control for quite some time and the revolution was aimed at changing this; taking advantage of the fact that most of the Habsburg forces were bogged down in the west, Hungary actually managed to fight off the local forces and gain independence... until the Russians entered the fray on behalf of the Habsburgs. At various points in modern history (especially after the world wars and during the 1956 revolution), oppressed Hungarians strived for reestablishing the 1848 government without success. Today the postal code of the Hungarian government is 1848.
• There's a reason one book on English history was titled 1066 and All That ("All That" being the rest of English history).
• 69 is a common meta-example. Hee hee, 69.
  • Likewise, 420 due to its associations with marijuana culture. Collectively, 69 and 420 get used so often that they've started being (dismissively) referred to as "the funny numbers". Sometimes 666 makes the list as well. For example...
  • And 1337 was popular among gamers because it's Leet Lingo for "Leet" itself.
• Thanks to the human brain's predisposition for seeing patterns, it's not uncommon to notice this in your own life. Usually, it only means something if you want it to. Here, for example, 2012hoax.org examines the claim that recurrence of the number 11 proves that the world will end in 2012.
• In shipyards, it's important to keep up with which parts belong to which ship either being built or serviced. Therefore, all ships are assigned a yard number (though letters can also be used, especially in yards that have been around a while), which are stamped onto the parts that belong to that ship. 401 can still be made out on one of RMS Titanic's propeller blades.^note 401 is also an error message seen frequently on the Internet - "Unauthorized - The request has not been applied because it lacks valid authentication credentials for the target resource." not as common as 404, but, still...
• 10^40, or ten thousand trillion trillion trillion. It's roughly the radius of the observable Universe in electron radii. It's also the ratio of the gravitational and electrical forces between a proton and an electron. Squared, ie 10^80, it's the number of protons in the observable Universe. Cubed, ie 10^120, it's the ratio between the observed value of the vacuum energy and its predicted value by quantum mechanics.
• Baseball loves the number 3 and its multiples: 3 strikes for a strikeout, 3 outs in an inning, 9 fielders per side (3 in the outfield and 6 in the infield), 9 innings in a (regulation) game, 3 bases plus home plate, 90 feet between the bases...
• Neo-Nazis use the numbers 14 and 88 a lot: 14 because "the 14 Words" are an inane yet popular neo-Nazi slogan, 88 to represent two letter H's for "Heil Hitler". This can come in very handy when it comes to, for example, populating one's Twitter blocklist; if someone shows up with "1488" in their username, they're probably not someone you want to talk to, unless you have a particularly high tolerance for racist nonsense.
• The number thirteen is all over the place in the national symbolism of the United States. The flag of the us has 13 stripes, the great seal of the United States has thirteen stars, a shield with thirteen stripes, thirteen arrows, a plant with thirteen leaves and thirteen berries, a motto with 13 letters ("e pluribus unum"), and a pyramid with thirteen layers. In addition numerous American states also incorporate the number thirteen into their official flags and seals. The number thirteen represents the number of states that the country had when it was originally founded.
  • Vermont has plenty of fourteen. The Vermont Republic that preceded its status as a U.S. state lasted for fourteen years (1777 to 1791), it was the fourteenth state in order of original Constitutional ratification (and one of its mottos translates from Latin as "May the fourteenth star shine bright"), and it has fourteen counties and a conifer with fourteen branches (the original thirteen colonies, plus Vermont) on its seal.
• Inverted by Roman numerals. One common question asked about numbers is how do you write zero in Roman numerals. They had no representation of a number equaling zero. Thus, zero is the newest number as it was the only one that had to be invented.
• The number 73 (- -... ...- - in Morse code) can be encountered all over the amateur radio hobby. It's an abbreviation for "Best regards".
• 1776 crops up in the United States quite a few times.

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