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If I ever MUST put a digital timer on my doomsday device, I will buy one free from quantum mechanical anomalies. So many brands on the market keep perfectly good time while you're looking at them, but whenever you turn away for a couple minutes then turn back, you find that the countdown has progressed by only a few seconds. — Rule #215 of The Evil Overlord List
The big red readout counting down to any kind of horrible event seems to know when it's Being Watched, and cheats accordingly.
For instance, you might be looking at a time bomb which reads 00:27, 00:26, 00:25...
... Then the show cuts to the fight between Good Guy Who Wants to Stop the Explosion and Bad Guy Who Set the Bomb in the First Place. They kick and punch and wrestle and clobber each other for easily twenty seconds.
Then cut back to the bomb, which now reads 00:20, 00:19, 00:18...
This can be done subtly, to stretch things out a bit without the audience really noticing, but as a general rule it's stunningly obvious. There have been times, in fact, when literally no time passes at all while the countdown's out of shot.
Sometimes the reverse effect takes place — the character has a good forty seconds to stop or get out of the way of the destruction, then six seconds later the timer starts counting down from ten, which is a fairly cheap way of ratcheting up the suspense.
This doesn't have to involve an actually displayed timer. Sometimes a character will just yell that "There's only ten seconds left!" and the heroes will prevent the calamity 25 seconds later.
A variation is the fuse or a trail of gasoline which burns slower or faster when the camera's not on it.
This can be handwaved by saying that part of the fight scene (since rarely are there splitscreens showing the fight and the timer) started when or before the last shot of the timer was shown, thus, the fight and the countdown are happening at the same time.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- In the Naruto OVA Battle at Hidden Falls. I Am the Hero!, Shibuki is told he has 10 seconds to reveal his location before Suien kills a villager. Naruto's short speech about bravery takes considerably longer.
- During her fight with Sasori in Naruto Shippuden, Sakura counts down the time left before her antidote wears off. Apparently one entire episode is just under two minutes.
- On Dragon Ball Z, during the final fight between Goku and Frieza during the Namek saga, the planet Namek was minutes away from collapse for 10 episodes. Ridiculously, one episode actually says "two minutes" at the beginning and "one minute" at the end.
- In episode 139 of Bleach (which was titled "Ichigo vs Grimmjow, the 11 Second Battle"), Ichigo can remain a Hollow for 11 seconds. Just the scenes with Ichigo as a Hollow already take up about a minute, so even assuming everything's simultaneous doesn't explain it. The concept of events happening at extremely high speed is rather stretched.
- Why is it stretched? Moving at extremely high speed is basically all Ichigo does.
- Factoring in all ecstatic collapses, dramatic slow-motion door-opening, and lengthy yet vital inner expository monologues, the forty seconds in the Death Note finale are inflated by approximately 850%.
- In the anime at least the inner expository of Light is justified, as every other movement is shown to stop. So his thoughts actually happen "instantly".
Films
- The inverse variety occurs in the movie Apollo 13. The loss of communications during re-entry is said to last 4-1/2 minutes, but actually takes about 3 minutes of movie. Given how tense that scene is watching the movie, knowing how it comes out, one can imagine how tense it was in real life, taking half again as long.
- But the 14 second manual course correction burn of the LM engine takes 39 seconds of screen time.
- Goldfinger: During the countdown to the detonation of the nuclear bomb in Fort Knox. It manages to get stopped at 007, too. Imagine that.
- Octopussy, another James Bond movie, uses it in a detonator instead of an entire bomb (and since Science Marches On, the counter is digital).
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service features a detonator set for 5 minutes. Then the camera cuts to other characters talking for 10 seconds. When we cut back to the detonator, only 10 seconds have passed. Cut to a fight scene for 10 more seconds. OK, now 2 minutes have passed on the detonator. Cut to another 10 second scene. Now the detonator has 10 seconds left before detonating. Cut to a character counting down 5,4,3,2,1. Cut to both Bond and Blofeld jumping out of the building scheduled to blow up. Only a good 20 seconds after the countdown is supposed to be over does the explosion actually happen.
- Independence Day: "Can you get us out of here in 30 seconds?" More like two minutes. Yet cut back to the bomb, which still has five seconds on it.
- The film Stargate (the original one). When O'Neil sets the timer on the nuke, it also beeps constantly in all the scenes. Subverted slighty, in that in most scenes, counting the beeps is pretty accurate between timer shots. Played painfully straight though, in that the time between beeps varies widely between shots. In one scene, it counts down normally, in another it's almost rapid fire.
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan features the title character counting down 60 seconds to the Enterprise crew before he does something really nasty. Naturally, this takes a good deal longer than 60 seconds, giving our heroes enough time to come up with a bluff.
- Somewhat justified as this was a character counting, not a timer. There's plenty of precedent for a counting person who doesn't really want to reach 0 to slow the counting somewhat. (Think parents counting down to a punishment. "One... Two... Two and a half... Two and three-quarters...")
- The "60 seconds" is roughly only two whole minutes, starting from when Khan turns his back and when the info is first sent.
- However, the Genesis countdown later in the movie takes longer than its advertised four minutes. Not by much, interestingly enough, and one could justify it by saying that the events in different cuts were happening at the same time.
- This troper seems to remember the countdown actually resetting slightly — in one shot the countdown stood at somewhere around two minutes, and then went back to 3:30.
- This troper had a very hard time with that scene until he realized that they were counting up, not down.
- Star Wars: From "The Rebel base will be in range in thirty minutes" (not seconds as visibly seen), through the power-up of the Death Star's superlaser, to the destruction of the Death Star at least feels like it takes five minutes — when before, the Death Star could power up and blow the shit out of Alderaan in less than a minute.
- The planet was in the way. It was taking that long to move into place to get a clear shot. (Instead of, y'know, shooting the planet Yavin and then shooting Yavin Four, or just going faster, considering how fast the Death Star has to be able to go to get anywhere since space is big. So, not much less problematic...)
- The opening credits of the GI Joe movie have Cobra attempting to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Duke moves the bomb from the statue to their airship, taking about 20 seconds longer than the clock should have allowed.
- Happens in Van Helsing: it sure takes that clock a long time to strike twelve.
- The Mask: the countdown to the detonation of the conventional explosives in the club.
- The 30 seconds that Grandpa Seth freezes time for in Troll 2 must be some of the slowest seconds in the history of the world.
- The "one minute" it takes for the DeLorean in Back To The Future to reappear is actually about one minute and twenty seconds.
- Also, in the third movie time runs very slowly after the engine and time machine crash through the sign marking the last half mile of track. Covering the remaining distance at 88 mph should not take more than 20 seconds, but the engine takes the plunge much later.
- Sports version: Space Jam.
- Played both ways in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: when the nuclear bomb is about to go off, an announcement says "one minute to zero time." The first 45 seconds take 30 seconds, and then the last 15 seconds take another 30 seconds.
- "Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!" A movie magazine worked out that the difference between the time stated and the time it appears to take would mean a 57-hour day.
Live Action TV
- In the first episode of Power Rangers In Space, Dark Specter has captured Zordon in a jar, which gradually fills up with a lava-like substance. When it is full, Dark Specter will have drained all of Zordon's power. At the rate that jar is filling up, Zordon ought to be history before that episode was up, yet somehow he held out until the end of the season.
- In the last episode, Zordon's tube goes from half-full at the beginning to empty at the end.
- In Power Rangers Ninja Storm, the rangers have a more agile alternate mode for their Humongous Mecha which can only be maintained for sixty seconds. The first time it's used, it stays transformed for precisely sixty seconds in the end, though Cam's countdown is often wildly off. Almost every use after that, though, had battles carry on for much longer than one minute.
- In Power Rangers RPM, one Monster Of The Week throws bombs as his whole schtick. The bombs have no visible timer but beep faster and faster leading up to kaboom. At one point, when the monster throws a bomb, the beeping accelerates... and then stops when a Ranger catches the bomb. It starts over when the Ranger throws it back.
- The Makai Knights in Garo can only remain in armour for 100 seconds. This is enforced in most episodes, but once in a while it is blatantly broken with no explanation.
- In the Lost episode "The Other Woman", Daniel is attempting to neutralize poison gas. "Forty seconds to contamination," the computer says. Forty seconds later, it says, "Twenty seconds to contamination."
- Doctor Who, episode "Destiny of the Daleks". The countdown runs at normal speed when demoed, but too slowly when Romana is actually in peril from the bomb.
- Also, in "The Daleks", a Dalek suddenly stops counting down when it became clear to the director that the action sequence would take much longer than the countdown.
- Lampshaded by the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the episode Time Chasers:
Tom Servo: Eight, seven, six, five — no wait, SEVEN, six, five, four, three — no, SIX!, five, four, three, two, one — FOUR!, THREE, TWO, ONE — THREE...
- On the children's TV show The Big Comfy Couch, one of the usual devices employed in every episode was that Lunette would look around for items inside the couch while making a mess, and then at the end of the episode she would clean the mess up in a "ten-second tidy". Usually these would last over a minute. Very likely this was done under the assumption that children can't count.
- Knight Rider(2008) "Knight Fever": Trying to abort the destruction of a recently nanovirus-infected command center, Carrie and Alex find that the security device has malfunctioned and won't read their handprints. It repairs itself just in time to stop when the countdown reaches 1 second.
Theatre
- In the recent Met performance of Doctor Atomic, about Dr. Oppenheimer and the Trinity nuclear test, a voice announces five minutes to the test firing. Eight minutes later, the two minute buzzer sounds. Eight minutes later, the bomb goes off.
Video Games
- Fairly egregious example in Sonic Adventure 2. Eggman explicitly instructs that a bomb be set to blow in fifteen minutes. In between, there are three stages with time limits (5, 8 and 10 minutes respectively), two boss fights and several cutscenes. Intriguingly, the original plan was for a 30-minute timer, so it could be explained by saying Rouge ignored the change of plan. Also, to appreciate how long it actually takes one must play both stories.
- Metal Gear Solid 2 - Fatman's bombs do it, as does Emma's countdown.
Western Animation
- A variant of the fast burning fuse is seen in Batman The Animated Series. In "Dreams in Darkness", the Scarecrow has a huge machine mixing fear inducing chemicals to dump in Gotham's water supply. Batman shuts it off, stopping the big clock at 01:45. Scarecrow starts it up with the backup controls and the clock begins counting down again, from 20 seconds.
- This isn't event he worst part (if that even counts as "magic" to begin with) — the timer beeped with every passing second, even when it was offscreen, but the beeps didn't correspond to how much time had passed. At the 20-seconds mark, it plainly beeped more times than there were seconds remaining.
- This Troper distinctly remembers the episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, "Invasion of the Secret Santas!", where, after noticing a doll is a bomb with a 10 second timer, Batman exclaims, "Its a Bomb!" for 5 seconds, before cutting to a commercial break.
- Happens in an episode of The Fairly OddParents where roaches have taken over and are going to destroy the world. Cosmo and Timmy plead with Wanda to help save them as the clock ticks down ten seconds, which takes more like thirty.
- This happens all the time in Code Lyoko Season 2 and 3 with the countdown before hitting the key to avoid the reconfiguration of Sector 5. It is supposed to be 3 minutes, but it jumps forward, and sometimes backward, quite haphazardly.
- And in episode "The Secret", where a detonator for a series of charges set to destroy the Factory has a digital clock. Once, it advanced only 15 seconds while almost 2 minutes went by. Afterward, it seemed to have hurried back and caught up exactly with the lapsed time... but then it jumped forward 45 seconds while William and Ulrich were speaking, that is with no jump-scene in-between, only a change of focus.
- In the Captain N The Game Master episode where Simon is marrying Mother Brain, Mega Man and Kid Icarus have 30 seconds to shoot Simon with an antidote arrow before the spell becomes permanent. It takes them one minute and 17 seconds to hit him.
Real Life
- Attempt any file transfer in any version of Windows and watch the time remaining jump about like a nervous salmon in a particularly fast river. Lucky Star poked at this.
- The same principle applies to file downloading, especially a torrent, since the estimate for time remaining assumes that the current speeds will remain constant, which is almost never true.
Exceptions
Anime and Manga
- Averted in one Hokuto no Ken episode. in which Kenshiro used the Zan Kai Ken on the King Mook of the Week. After explaining the Mook he would die seven seconds after being released (3 in the manga ITTRC), he removes his thumbs from the mook's temples. A counter appears on the bottom on the screen, and the mook suffers a painful and gruesome death at the near-exact moment the counter reaches zero. Bad Ass indeed.
- On Neon Genesis Evangelion, in the episode "Both of You, Dance Like You Want To Win!", the timer that counts down until the EVA units run out of power is actually shown on screen as the action sequence is played out.
- The timer counts down starting from 30 milliseconds, though.
Films
- Notably averted in Aliens. When the computer announces how much time there is until the place goes up, that's exactly how much in-movie time it takes for the place to blow up.
- Somewhat averted in Virtuosity, because Sid's last bomb speeds up the countdown whenever it detects countermeasures... and then breaks down.
Live Action TV
Theatre
- Very subtly averted in StephenSondheim's Into The Woods. If you check the complete vocal score, you'll discover that there are actually twelve chimes that lead up to each midnight, and that they're timed and written into the underscore.
Video Games
- Averted in Super Smash Brothers: Brawl with the first Subspace bomb. When the picture cuts away from the bomb, it has 7 seconds to go. Exactly 5 seconds later, the timer is at 2 seconds. This Troper checked.
- Averted in Resident Evil 4: during the final escape scene, the three minutes countdown takes cinematics into account. Skipping said cinematics will NOT give you three full minutes.
- Averted in Metal Gear Solid 3. After Snake plants the C3 to blow up the Shagohod, a timer starts which can be checked in the following cut-scene by looking at a hidden countdown. It's promptly played straight, though for the mid- and post-Volgin battle cutscenes.
- Mostly averted in Paper Mario 2. After Crump sets the timer to destroy the tree, it's possible for the timer to expire of a dialogue scene.
Western Animation
- Averted, Subverted and whatevered in Justice League Unlimited: In "Wild Cards" the Joker has hid 25 bombs throughout Las Vegas and he's televising the Justice League's attempts to stop it. He even has the timer in the lower right corner that stays consistent throughout the episode. Subverted when Batman disables the first bomb. The timer stops, then drops to 3 seconds and starts again (it was a fake bomb).
Parodies
Anime and Manga
- Spoofed in Bobobo-bo Bo-Bobo: Denbo-Chan can only stay for... two hours.
- Spoofed in Keroro Gunsou episode 23. Kururu shows a countdown that has 72 minutes left... then, a few minutes later, he announces 70 minutes have passed.
Films
Live Action TV
- Subtly spoofed in an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, where Xander is having a Circle Of Extinction with the bad guy as a nearby bomb timer is counting down. It switches between them and the bomb, and the timer seems to jump around at random, gaining and losing time, until it is of course stopped at 1 second left.
- Each installment of the Saturday Night Live sketch MacGruber, a parody of Mac Gyver, involves a countdown (usually of twenty seconds) before a bomb goes off. The twenty seconds tend to last about a minute.
Literature
Video Games
- Spoofed in Ratchet And Clank 3:
Biobliterator CPU: 60 seconds untill core implosion.
Dr. Nefarious: Lawrence, engage the teleporter.
Lawrence: Would you care to specify a destination sir?
Dr. Nefarious: Who cares? Just get us out of here!
Biobliterator CPU: Time's up!
Dr. Nefarious: What? That wasn't even close to 60 seconds!
Biobliterator CPU: Bye-bye! (explodes)
- In the timed bonus levels of Gauntlet (the original), the narrator's voice (you know, the Wizard Needs Food Badly guy) would count down the last ten seconds before you failed to clear the level and get the bonus. Sometimes he'd mix up the numbers as a joke.
Western Animation
- Spoofed in the Futurama episode "A Tale of Two Santas", where a random number generator is used instead of a timer. Added fun for negative numbers popping up.
- Also spoofed in the episode "A Big Piece of Garbage": The crew is sent to destroy a giant ball of garbage heading directly towards the Earth along with an explosive set to detonate after 25 minutes. Once they activate it, the digital timer counts down "25...15...05...bh" to the crew's surprise. The reason? The timer was upside down and thus set to 52 seconds. Way to go, Farnsworth.
- Truth In Television. The LFSR
 , a common random number generator, makes a better counter than normal counting.
- Subverted on South Park in the episode "The Snuke": In a parody of 24, a bomb is set to go off when a digital clock with the requisite seven-segment display reaches 1:00. With just minutes to go, the authorities cut the power... and when it comes back, the digital clock controlling the detonator is flashing 12:00.
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