"I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 1:17 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation." —Evil Overlord List, #15

In many cases, for whatever reason—be it the alignment of planets, a scheduled public event to sabotage, a "you have one hour to comply or..." threat, or just a plain oldTime Bomb—the villain's plot is time sensitive: It will succeed at a given moment and not one second sooner. The hero has until that moment to stop the villain.

Naturally, things will go down to the wire and the hero will foil the evil scheme at thelast possible second. It's especially powerful when combined withReal Time... even if it takes aMagic Countdown to line things up properly. This is a frequently used but still effective method of adding more tension to the story. CompareWhen the Clock Strikes Twelve andRight on the Tick.

One variant is that a specific time isn't the point of success; the villain must instead be stopped before he collects all thePlot Coupons or kills all of his intended victims. In this case, the hero will stopthe last, and only the last, step in the evil plan. This sucks in the case of victims, since all but the last victim are still dead, but hey, at least the villain didn'twin...

In other cases, time itself is the foe with the help of somerandom coincidences that impede the hero's progress. Interestingly, the audience will probably buy these coincidences since they come off, if done well, as an application ofFinagle's Law. Usually, such a sequence will serve as a dramatic finale.

The video game equivalent is theTimed Mission. The video gamesubversion isTake Your Time, where theytell you that it's aRace Against the Clock, but you're not penalized for going at your own pace.

A rather specific subtrope isYou Have 48 Hours.

As anEnding Trope,Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Anime andManga

• The wholeSaint Seiya series is based on this for every single one of its arcs. In the first one the heroes have to reach the Pope after having to go through 12 temples protected by fierce warriors in less than 12 hours or else their Goddess would die. In the second arc of the anime, the heroes have to gather 7 saphirs to break the spell on the filler's baddy before dusk or else their Goddess would die. In the third arc, they need to break the pillars of the 7 seas before the world gets completely flooded and before their Goddess turned human pillar drowns or else their Goddess would die (and the world would be turned intoWaterworld). In the final arc, they need to defeat Hades and rescue their Goddess before the alignment of the planets or else their Goddess would die. Notice a regular pattern? Finally, in the new manga Next Dimension, they have 3 days to go to the past and break Hades' sword or else... the hero would die (but their Goddess too just for good measure).
• A subplot inCaptain Tsubasa has Ken "Karate Keeper" Wakashimazu defying his parents because he wants to play soccer and not become theHeir to the Dojo. In the original manga and old series, his father gives him one year to reach the championship with the Toho team; if not, he'll have to come back home and inherit the dojo. When Ken fulfills his word, Mr. Wakashimazu gives him his blessings.
• InGlass Mask, Tsukikage gives her pupil Maya Kitajima two years to win an award as prestigious as one that her rival Ayumi Himekawa has just won, or else Ayumi gets the "Crimson Goddess" role without further contest.
• In theDigimon MovieOur War Game, a virus called Diablomon has caused a nuclear missile to launch, somewhere in the world. Diablomon sends a menacing but childish email to them, asking, "which one has the clock?". They then have ten minutes to destroy the various copies he's making of himself, finding the one with the clock that controls the missile. Could be considered aTime Bomb.
• InFuture War 198X Wataru has only one hour of oxygen left up in outer space and must find some way to stop the Communists from pressing theBig Red Button and destroying the world with nukes.
• InOto x Maho, Kanata imposes a race against the clock on HIMSELF, transforming to start fighting, then telling the student council president on the other side of the door to the roof to count to 10, then open the door. If he does not kill the enemy in 10 seconds, then transform back to his normal form, his job as aMagicalGirl will be exposed.
• Yugi, Judai and Yusei inYu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time need to defeat Paradox before Pegasus arrives at Domino City for his event afterthe Crimson Dragon gave them another chance to stop Paradox from destroying Domino City and killing Pegasus and everyone else in the city. Not to mention stopping Paradox from destroying reality as they know it.
• The second half ofSteins;Gate features Okabe trying to get enough clues as to how to undo the changes he previously did to the past beforeMayuri dies, always at 8 PM. Every time he succeeds, the deadline gets delayed for 24 more hours.

Comic Books

• InFinal Crisis, the Guardians of the Universe tellHal Jordan and his fellow Green Lanterns that: "You have 24 hours to save the universe."
• This was a vital plot point in the four-part "Countdown" series ofThe Incredible Hulk. At the time, Banner would turn into the Hulk (as in, Grey Hulk, where he was smarter but not quite as strong as the Green Hulk) at sundown and turn back to Banner at sunrise. The story starts immediately after sunset, right after a mysterious villain poisons Banner. While the Hulk cannot be hurt by this poison (as he's invulnerable, obviously) turning back into Banner will kill him instantly, giving him until sunrise (the time measured by a caption with a clock counting down through the whole 4-part story) to find a cure.

Fan Works

• Calvin and Hobbes: The Series has a non-lethal variation in "Eggs for Calvin": the titular protagonist has to find five eggs hidden throughout town or else Hobbes andresident prankster Socrates will prank him.He manages to unwittingly jail two crooks in the process.
  • A more serious example would be much later, in "Our Solemn Hour";Holographic Retro sets up an extremely hazardous maze that Calvin and Hobbes must escape from within an hour, or else they'll be crushed by the ceiling.They just barely make it, and then Calvin and Retro have their showdown...

Film

• InAliens the "Big Computer That Controls Everything" announces that the coolant system has shut down and the reactors will overheat and explode. Bishop estimates that they have approximately four hours before that, and later on the computer inside the reactor starts giving them a precise countdown.
• The latter type of Race Against the Clock happens inBack to The Future, which is often described as being a chase scene despite its lack of pursuers. (The film's villain had already been defeated by that point.)
  • Part III has one as well, set up very similarly to the first movie, with at least three elements working against the heroes.
• Most versions of "Cinderella". TheDisney version adds an actual chase for good measure.
• Lampshaded inGalaxy Quest when Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver fight their way through numerous obstacles to the "Big Red Button" which stops the explosion and press it with 17 seconds left ... only to see it continue to count down, eventually to stop with one second left ... because that was a requirement of this trope.
• The ending ofFerris Bueller's Day Off involves Ferris running through a series ofobstacles as he tries to beat his family back to his house.
• Outland. In the space-mining colony on Io, a large digital clock is in the bar showing the exact time-till-arrival of the weekly supply shuttle. When word gets out that two hitmen are arriving on the12:00 shuttle to kill the protagonist, the clock takes on the role of the Ticking Countdown of Doom. The protagonist has actually completed his preparations hours before; the deadline only serves to rack up his (and the audience's) tension.
• "You havethirteen hours in which to solve theLabyrinth before your baby brother...becomes one of us forever. Such a pity..."
• A variation is used in the filmGodzilla vs. Destoroyah. In the film, Godzilla himself becomes something of a tickingnuclear time bomb as he's quickly going to explode/meltdown as soon as his heart reaches critical mass. The human characters even measure how high his body temperature is before he goes critical.
  • Of course, it's partially subverted in a sense that the human protagonists FAIL in stopping Godzilla from reaching critical mass. Luckily,Godzilla Jr. absorbs the majority of radiation his "father" gives off and is brought back to life, growing into an adult Godzilla.
• Too many romantic comedies to count end with a Race to the ChurchBefore Your True Love Marries Someone Wrong scene.
  • Or aRace to the Airport before the plane leaves.
    • Both often subverted these days, in that the deadline is missed but the Love Interest decided not to go through with it.
• Run Lola Run. Lola's boyfriend Manny has a meeting with some mobsters, and he just lost the money he was supposed to hand off to them. The meeting's in twenty minutes, so Lola and Manny have that long to get the money back.
• Used in numerousJames Bond films - the Connery films often had the counter finishing at 0-0-7; by the Moore era the producers pushed it to the limit by having Bond disable the weapon right on 0-0-0.
• Seven Days in May. The US President believes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is plotting a military coup under cover of a mobilisation exercise to be held in seven days. Because the general is highly popular, the President can't dismiss him without proof, so his staff have that long to find evidence of the conspiracy.
• Bill and Ted only have a day to travel back in time to get various historical figures for their history report, or Ted will be shipped off to military school in Alaska. And thanks toSan Dimas Time, they can't use theirTime Traveling phone booth to get more time to do it in.
• InMidnight Run, bounty hunterRobert De Niro has to get fugitiveCharles Grodin back to Los Angeles by midnight on Friday or bondsmanJoe Pantoliano loses the bond.
• In a twist it is the heroes' unfortunate actions inL: Change the World that are time sensitive. Maki is the one who injected herself with a lethal virus to begin with, and it has to be cured before it becomes active or she could kill innocent bystanders. L likewise has one more week to live after writing his own name in theDeath Note to catch Kira and has to get thenew problem solved before he dies.

Literature

• Jules Verne'sAround the World in Eighty Days. The original novel, the multiple film adaptations, theMichael Palin travelogue in which Palin attempts to duplicate Phileas Fogg's trip.
• Brewster's Millions, a novel twice adapted into films, in which the protagonist will inherit a large sum of money, but only if he can completely waste a smaller amount of money in thirty days (spend thirty million to inherit three hundred million in the laterRichard Pryor film adaptation).
• InHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemortgives Harry an hour to turn himself in so as to stop the fighting, during the Final Battle at Hogwarts.
  • Whereas inHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry is told he only has an hour to complete the Second Task of the tournament—and afterward, everyone laughs at him for having taken that part of the instructions seriously.
• InGone , Sam and Caine have eleven days to figure out how to not disappear when they turn fifteen.

Live-Action TV

• 24.Always.
• Inverted in theStar Trek: The Original Series episode "The Corbomite Maneuver" where the good guys essentially gave the bad guys an ultimatum; "Back off or we blow ourselves -- and you -- to smithereens" and then start the clock ticking.
• Lampshaded in an episode onNCIS where a group of marines in a training exercise find an armed bomb with about 3 minutes left on the clock. 10 seconds later the bomb goes off and the Gunnery Sgt. reminds them of Evil Overlord Rule #15: Never assume a bomb's timer is accurate.
• Robin Hood features an episode where the Sheriff goes missing, and must be found by sunset or Nottingham will be destroyed.
• TheReal Time episode ofM*A*S*H, "Life Time": the surgeons have to perform a critical operation in the time frame of the episode. This is further dramatized by a ticking clock counter superposed on the lower right corner of the screen.
• Used very often inMacGyver. Of course, the timer is sometimes set by our hero himself.
• InLost, according to Ms. Hawking, Ben has only 70 hours to reunite the Oceanic 6 and (presumably) return to the island or "God help us all."
• Happens in an episode ofthe originalBattlestar Galactica. Strangely, the writers got confused and the meaning of the timer changed mid-plot.
  • The first episode (post-miniseries-pilot) ofthe new series featured a recurring countdown of exactly 33 minutes between Cylon attacks on the colonial fleet.
• In the episode "Endgame" ofBabylon 5 the liberation fleet must destroy the Earth orbital defense system redirected at the planet's surface by the insane president before it opens fire.
• This is a key aspect of the premise ofStargate Universe - the main cast does not have full control of theDestiny, and it only stops at a given location for a few hours at a time before jumping back intoFTL. Anyone not on board the ship at this time is left behind.
• OnPrison Break, they're usually racing against a season-long clock and a tinier clock in a number of episodes.
• In the episode 'Ability' in season 1 ofFringe, Olivia disarms a timed bomb on the top of a skyscraper by turning out a set of small lights only by staring at them, succeeding with two seconds left on the timer.
• Lampshaded in the troperiffic 200th episode ofStargate SG-1 when theCloudcuckoolander movie producer takes a sarcastic comment about having a ticking clock on the screen seriously.
• Game Shows: Although game shows don't have actual villains—unless you count the producers who may deny a contestant a prize—many give contestants very short time limits (usually 30 seconds or less) to complete a task. Other game shows require a contestant to complete a task in less time than the shortest time posted by a previous contestant. Some examples:
  • Whew actually did have a Gauntlet of Villains for it's end game against the clock.
  • Beat the Clock (duh!)
  • Jeopardy! (The light bars above the contestants' podiums, and that annoying music they play during Final Jeopardy)
  • The Price Is Right has several games with actual ticking clocks.
  • Truth or Consequences also had many ticking clock games and contests.
• Reality TV (aka, game shows on steroids): A few reality TV shows have contestants (or teams of contestants) race against the times of their competitors:
  • The Amazing Race—although the race in general isn't timed, some segments of it are. (And remember, the last team to arrivemay be eliminated.)
  • Fear Factor
  • Wipeout 2008

Music

• A rare music example - Madonna's song "4 Minutes", andits accompanying video, both center around having "4 minutes to save the world"—with the video even having a countdown clock as a backdrop. (Never mind, of course, that the song lasts four seconds too long...)

Tabletop Games

• In theYu-Gi-Oh! card game, there is a card called Final Countdown that will end the game making the user the winner in 20 turns after being used, it can even be sped up by 1 turn by using the Pyro Clock of Destiny Trap Card. So it turns out to be a Race Against the Clock to defeat the opponent before the 20th turn is reached.
  • TheMagic: The Gathering card Darksteel Reactor has the exact same effect. Since it uses charge counters to mark how many turns have passed and comes from a block in which charge counters are a major mechanic, there are many ways to speed it up. (For example, Energy Chamber puts a charge counter on any of your artifacts once each turn, thus functionally cutting the Reactor's "clock" in half.)

Video Games

• A number of video games, particularly theGrand Theft Auto games orWide Open Sandbox Racing games, feature missions that are little more than pretty decorations for "get from Point A to Point B fast".
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: You have three days to save the world! At least you have the ability to go back in time, but at expense of some of your achievements.
  • It also has a race against the clockbeginning, where you have to get to theOcarina of Time (atop a clock tower no less) in order toreset time before the moon falls. Afterwards you can reset time as much as you want.
• Dead Rising - Although it's self-imposed by the main character, who requests his pilot to come for him in 72 hours.
• Metroid: Almost every game.Prime starts out with a seven minute evacuation deadline after the first boss is killed (and falls into the power generator, which goes KABOOM!). Zero Mission has two, after killing Mother Brain and Mecha Ridley. Fusion has 3 (a lot for a game that can be completed in 4 hours or less), when the Core-X holding the Wide Beam appears (you only have to get there and kill it PLUS stop an overheat in the boiler room... in 6 minutes. Later, when you send a section of the station plummeting to the planet, you have a minute or so to escape... through a rather long path and finally, when you throw the station to the ground, you have approximately 3 minutes to get to the hangar, kill the final boss, wait for your ship, board it and fly away... which can easily take more time than given (killing the final boss can take a long time...)
• InTouhou Imperishable Night, the heroines all, by some unique means, stop the sun from rising, and race to find the cause of the corrupted moon before 5:00 AM.
• In theMass Effect 2 DLC mission "The Arrival", you have only 2 days, and later 2 hours, to destroy a gateway that will let theEldritch Abomination /Starfish Aliens known as the Reapers reach the galaxy. Unlike a lot of time sensitive video game plots, you have a live timer for this, and you get a special game over if it reaches zero.
• The Gigantic inNine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors sinks after the nominal9 hours expires.Except it turns out that the characters weren't on the Gigantic at all.
• Actually, a lot of video games from the golden and silver ages in general had a countdown timer. It was seen as strange in 1995 whenSuper Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island came out that there was no timer counting down from 400 or 300, which gamers were used to by this point.
• Automated Simulations/Epyx'sRescue at Rigel. "Sudden" Smith has 60 minutes to rescue 10 captives from an asteroid. The current time (counting up from 1) is always on the screen.
• You carry a watch throughoutAssault On Vampire Island and aim to finish the game before the night finishes.

Web Comics

• Homestuck:Nearly every time you see a countdown clock, you can be sure thata meteor is heading towards that clock, which is a pretty big impetus to get the hell out of wherever you are by whatever means necessary. The game seems to like throwing meteors at things.
  • Oh, and there's thatone countdown to the destruction ofan entire universe and the creation of a sun the size of two of them.

Western Animation

• Identified explicitly inSouth Park as "the ticking clock" by the candy store owner, who notes that it "works great in the movies". Another Trey Parker/Matt Stone production,Team America: World Police uses and calls attention to it (by Kim Jong Il, theGenre SavvyBig Bad of the film).
  • Lampshaded intheSouth Park movie when the Mole looks at his watch when they arrive at the USO show. Under the time is the label "Act Three: The Ticking Clock."
• Freakshow inDanny Phantom gives thePower Trio three days to getall the gems for his Infinity Gauntlet or their family dies. Why three days? Because it'sdramatic.
• Played with onThe Simpsons. Fat Tony gives Marge twenty-four hours to get the money she owes him. To prove that he's serious, she only has 12 hours.
  • Or this little exchange:

Mr. Burns [after having a conversation about something totally different]: Oh, and Simpson?You must find the Jade Monkey before the next full moon. Smithers: Uh, sir, we found the Jade Monkey. It was in your glove compartment.

• • InThe Simpsons Movie, a bomb is lowered into thegiant glass dome, which will blow up in exactly 15 minutes.
    • In the same movie, Homer kicks the bomb on the ground, making it fall over and causing the remaining time tohalve.
• Parodied onFuturama, in "Roswell That Ends Well".

Leela: No problem. The ship's fixed except for the cup holder and I think I can have that operational within 10 hours. Farnsworth: You've got 8!

• Family Guy. "Three days? That's tomorrow!"
• In theJonny Quest: The Real Adventures episode "Escape to Questworld," Jonny, Jessie and Hadji have to get Surd to deactivate the release of his nerve gas, because their parents' protective suits will lose their effectiveness in exactly 22 hours.
• InAvatar: The Last Airbender, we see an example of one of the longer races against time. There's a comet coming at the end of the summer- that will give the Fire Benders incredible powers, enough to completely burn down the Earth Kingdom. So, yeah, Aang, you got till then to defeat the Fire Nation. Good luck!
  • He loses the race, though he and his friends end up defeating the Fire Nation at the zenith of their power anyway.
• In an unfinished episode ofInvader Zim, appropriately named "Ten Minutes 'Till Doom", Dib manages to knock Zim's PAK off of him. This triggers a ten minute countdown which would have appeared in the top left corner of the screen for the rest of the episode. What's it for? Well, apparentlyZim can't live for longer than ten minutes without his PAK.
• In theJustice League episode "Wild Cards",The Joker rigs several bombs on the Las Vegas strip, televising a blatant challenge to the heroes to find them in all 22 minutes and 51 seconds. ("Oh, what were you expecting from me, round number?" he snarks.) Naturally, he has planted cameras all over Vegas, along with nasty booby-traps, and has the Royal Flush Gang there to hinder the heroes' efforts. This is, however, all aKansas City Shuffle to hide his true plan: to get everyone to watch his broadcast so he can employ his secret weapon - namely Ace, aCreepy Child with a lethal gaze.

• Trope
• Ending Tropes
• Race Against the Clock
• Chase Scene
• Plots