History Main / ClockKing

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': The murderer in "[[Recap/ColumboS07E01 Try and Catch Me]]" plans the murder down to the last second, even carrying a stopwatch while they commit the crime.

* London bobbies in the early days had to walk a precise beat at a strictly regimented pace (including length of stride). This was because there were no telephones and few police stations in those days, so any citizen who'd witnessed a crime in progress would have to know where to go at a particular time of day to be certain of finding a policeman.

* Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder was famous for this. He won wars because he was good at manipulating railroads.

** The Japanese strict adherence to the timetables may have indirectly caused the April 25, 2005 derailment of a speeding train on a curve near Amagasaki station that killed 107 people. The motorman operating the train had overshot a platform and run a red signal in the half-hour prior to the derailment, and he was subsequently operating the train at a much higher rate of speed than normal to make up for lost time. A ''Series/SecondsFromDisaster'' special suggested that the motorman was also thinking about the inevitable penalties he was going to face from rail company JR West[[note]]A retraining program called "Nikkin Kyoiku". While said to be a re-education program, it really consisted of violent verbal abuse, forcing the employees to repent by writing extensive reports. Also, during these times, drivers were forced to perform menial tasks, particularly involving cleaning, instead of their normal jobs. Many saw the process of "Nikkin Kyoiku" as a punishment and psychological torture, and not as driver retraining. The motorman of the train that crashed at Amagasaki had previously spent time in Nikkin Kyoiku for overshooting a platform by 100 meters the year before the derailment.[[/note]] and wasn't thinking about how his train was going dangerously faster than was safe. Thus, the train ended up hitting a curve with a 43 mph speed limit at a speed of 72 mph and went off the tracks.

* While any well-run public transport system follows this trope, the Japanese rail system features trains not only being timed down to the second but many commuters relying on extremely close connections to get to and from work every morning. Because a delay of even 30 seconds can cause many riders to [[ForWantOfANail miss their connecting trains]] the railway companies are known to severely punish drivers for the slightest deviation from the schedules. This can result in unsafe operating practices and, occasionally, a worker being DrivenToSuicide.

He has such millimetric precision and obsessive attention to detail that he will frequently [[SmugSnake boast]] of being "23 seconds ahead of schedule", or berate lackeys with "You're 17 seconds late". Expect the Clock King to always carry a pocketwatch and chain, or a very expensive looking wristwatch with more hands than Shiva. For some reason, they dislike digital clocks. Maybe they feel those lack [[EvilIsCool (villainous)]] [[ComplexityAddiction personality?]] Also, it's worth noting most Clock Kings and Queens are villains. It's not that heroes can't be this [[CrazyPrepared obsessive]] at planning... they just tend to go with IndyPloy instead. There's also the larger idea that the villains plan and scheme in secret ahead of time, and the heroes have to [[VillainsActHeroesReact react to what villains initiate]].

* Giovanni shows shades of this in ''Manga/PokemonAdventures'' during his battle with Red. He knows down to the second how long it takes his pokemon to attack and how long it would take Red to counterattack, emphasising his experience compared to his much newer opponent. He tries to use this information to make Red forfeit, believing his position to be unwinnable, but his assumption that he has all of the information turns out to be his undoing. Red uses the insulated gloves he took from Lt. Surge to allow his pikachu to safely charge up electricity while still in his pokeball, allowing them to counterattack faster than Giovanni was prepared for, winning Red the battle.

* ''Comicbook/FantasticFour'': The main shtick of the Mad Thinker, predictive genius included. He once set a timebomb based on how quickly the Fantastic Four would fly into space (where he's never been), attack an alien base (that he's never seen), rescue a hostage (who he's never personally met), spend time arguing over personal matters (none of which the FF have made public), and return to Earth's atmosphere (just in time for the bomb to go off). His SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome. Another part of his shtick though, is that there is almost always ''one little thing'' he doesn't take into account that derails his carefully thought out plans. In one of his schemes, he failed to account for the Fantastic Four's ''mailman''. In early stories his disadvantages were his over-reliance on robot henchmen like the Awesome Android, which could follow his plans to the letter but couldn't think creatively enough to handle the plan failing, and his inability to account for "the human element". One early ''[[Comicbook/TheAvengers Avengers]]'' story has him trying to overcome this weakness by employing human henchmen.

* ''Film/AvalancheSharks'' Randy, the ski resorts shuttle driver, is introduced when a couple of guests mule over his schedule for the trip out there, where he's gone to great lengths to list every possible thing that they'll be doing, which covers incredibly minute and barely distinct things that will only take about a minute. About the only time he can relax more and avoid this obsession with punctuality is when he's trying to impress pretty girls.

* In ''Film/TheBigClock'', publishing magnate Earl Janoth is obsessed with times and clocks, and runs his life planned down to the second, and insists that all of his employees do the same. He even has all of the clocks in the building synced to the eponymous big clock, which not only shows local time, but the time in every time zone in the world.

* ''Film/{{Clockwise}}'': Headmaster Stimpson takes punctuality [[SeriousBusiness more seriously than anything else]], and at the beginning of the film is seen chiding a teacher for being late [[{{Jerkass}} even though it was due to circumstances beyond his control]]. Naturally, when the cosmos conspire to make him even a ''second'' late for his important speech, he frantically does everything in his power to get there on time. [[spoiler:In a truly epic moment at the film's climax, after an entire movie's worth of chicanery he arrives literally ''exactly'' on the hour, or in other words the last possible second before he would have been late]].

* Sickan, one of the main characters in the Swedish ''Jönssonligan'' series of films, who plans each one of his crimes "In i minsta detalj" (down to the tiniest detail)

* Creator/WaltDisney's ''Film/MaryPoppins'' gives us Admiral Boom, a man who keeps his house 'ship-shape'. He fires off a cannon at very specific times, so much that his neighbors can plan accordingly.

* Captain Vidal in ''Film/PansLabyrinth'' was obsessed with time, especially since his pocketwatch belonged to his late father. He purposely repaired it and kept it in perfect condition to spite his father's memory, who broke the watch to stop it at the time of his death so his son "would know how a brave man dies." [[spoiler:When he is about to be executed by the rebels, he calmly requests that his son be told what time he died only for Mercedes to cut him off and say that his son "won't even know [his] name" followed by her brother shooting him in the head.]]

* Frank Martin from the first ''Film/TheTransporter'' movie does a little of this. For instance, while working a freelance job as a GetawayDriver, he knows exactly how long every street and turn will take and how quickly the cops will respond down to the second. He is also very good with the measurements of weights. He initially refuses to play along when the robbers bring another crew member with them, which will affect their getaway as he calculated for a specific number of passengers. The robbers have to [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness dispose of that member]] before Frank will comply--and he still evades the cops succesfully!

* Phileas Fogg from ''Literature/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays''. He knows exactly how many steps it is from his favorite haunt to his home. He follows the same daily routine meticulously, expecting the hired help to do the same; he even fires a servant for giving him shaving water that was two degrees too cold. After betting his fortune on being able to carry out the titular feat, he plans out a route that will take him ''exactly'' 80 days to complete. Phileas Fogg is the UnbuiltTrope: published at 1872, his case is the TropeMaker but also explores all the ramifications about that trope: Being a MysteriousStranger, the readers never know any of his BackStory, and only in the very last chapters the reader realizes that Fogg’s extreme reserve was not an EvilBrit case, but only a severe case of BritishStuffiness. Unlike all his imitators, Fogg is very good at XanatosSpeedChess and the IndyPloy, because that’s the only way he can win TheBet. Fogg’s plan didn’t work, but it didn’t work ''in his favor'': the Universe rewards him granting him almost an extra day. And the one obsessed with his clock was not him, but his employee, Jean Passepartout. His servant later points out to him that he ''could'' have done it with time to spare if had they not gone through India; Fogg admits that he's right, but if they had done that, Fogg would have not rescued Aouda, fallen in love and married her; his point is, some things are more important than being punctual.

* ''Literature/RepentHarlequinSaidTheTicktockman'', a short story by Creator/HarlanEllison, has the titular Ticktockman, more formally known as the Master Timekeeper. His job is to keep the world running on schedule. And if you get late one time too many, well. You will be turned off on monday, please get your affairs in order. When an underling fearfully informs the Ticktockman that he is running late that day, he brushes it off, since it's obviously impossible. [[spoiler:Making the Ticktockman run late is the only thing the protagonist's rebellion achieved. There's nothing funny about that.]]

* In ''Literature/StarTrekDepartmentOfTemporalInvestigations'', we see that Lucsly is one of these, which makes him the best human DTI agent in the eyes of his superiors. The DTI doesn't ''like'' any adventures or time travel, so someone who is quite routine and orderly is right in their wheelhouse in making sure that temporal shenanigans ''don't'' occur, as well as putting things back the way they're "supposed" to be if things ''do'' go OffTheRails. His partner, Dulmur, isn't quite as fastidious, but we see that he still knows things down to the second, even if he doesn't ''say'' them out loud like Lucsly does.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The Doctor is prone to this on occasion when he's particular annoyed/in the mood to show off.

* It's hard to think of any ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' group which ''hasn't'' done this at one point. Everything, from the layout of the building to how many insects invade the facility on a regular basis, is carefully and overwhelmingly mapped out and planned, to the point where you'd expect your average 'runner to time herself on the composition of a [[MundaneMadeAwesome peanut butter and jelly sandwich]] made to exact specification. Not that it's likely to help; the actual run will, in a best-case scenario, turn into XanatosSpeedChess. More often, it'll devolve straight into an IndyPloy. That is, if you even ''had'' a plan in the first place. The 5e supplement book, ''Run Faster'' includes the "Perfect Time" quality, allowing players to potentially become this trope mechanically by giving them a flawless perception of the passage time (as long as they're conscious).

** Like in the ''Majora's Mask'' example above, anyone who wants to get OneHundredPercentCompletion in ''VideoGame/RadiataStories'' has to be this. Because the game takes place with an ongoing calendar in which plot events are guaranteed to happen at certain milestones, time is a finite resource which must be managed carefully. Spend too long on a dungeon and you could miss your one window to recruit one of the game's 170 recruitable characters. Borderline impossible without a guide, even with one it takes a dedicated memory, an intimate knowledge of the game world map, and a near preternatural awareness of the in-game clock and calendar.

** Mael Stronghart, the Chief Justice of England in ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney''. He always consults his pocketwatch and gives the amount of time remaining before he has to leave down to the seconds, and his giant office is located inside a surprisingly-quiet ClockTower. While he is quite the ScheduleFanatic when it comes to holding other people accountable, [[HypocriticalHumor he sees no problem with showing up hours late himself]].

* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': When Linda commented it's been a long time ever since she and Lawrence went out together, he said it was 13 days, 22 hours and 17 minutes. When asked how he knew it to such precision, he explained it was thanks to a device on his cell phone.

* ''WesternAnimation/VoltronForce'': Sky Marshal Wade does everything by the clock. Including using the bathroom. Lance uses this to the Voltron Force advantage.

* Any decent military commander in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI was required to be good with their clocks, since portable communication devices did not exist at the time, and if maneuvers such as the walking artillery barrage that would pound the area ahead of friendly troops as they advanced and continued to move up with them were even slightly mistimed, shells would end up falling amongst their own troops. Or, if their clocks were off in the other direction, it gave the enemy troops time to climb out of their bunkers and man the trenches, with similarly bad results.
* London bobbies in the early days had to walk a precise beat at a strictly regimented pace (including length of stride). This was because there were no telephones and few police stations in those days, so any citizen who'd witnessed a crime-in-progress would have to know where to go at a particular time of day to be certain of finding a policeman.
* Before remote signalling was invented, railroads in the UK and US forced standardization of times and time zones to allow uniform train schedules. Trains were kept apart purely by synchronized schedules on telegraphed "train orders" -- the first signals actually were at stations, to indicate whether train orders needed to be picked up. Even slight mistakes caused catastrophic collisions, so ''every'' railroad dispatcher had to be super punctual.

* If you're in a class where every student doesn't take the exact same courses a Clock King is useful for two reasons. First of all, this person will know where his or her classmates are and secondly because he or she knows where you're supposed to be at the very moment.

* While any well run public transport system follows this trope, the Japanese rail system features trains not only being timed down to the second, but many commuters relying on extremely close connections to get to and from work every morning. Because a delay of even 30 seconds can cause many riders to [[ForWantOfANail miss their connecting trains]] the railway companies are known to severely punish drivers for the slightest deviation from the schedules. This can result in unsafe operating practices and, occasionally, a worker being DrivenToSuicide.

* Space missions require that many events be timed down to ''fractions of a second'', to ensure that trajectory adjustments and communications signals are precisely aligned. The slightest discrepancy in timing can throw a remote-piloted probe or satellite wildly off-course, or cause a narrow-band transmission to miss its destination altogether. This necessary obsessiveness about timing also carries over to human activities: with limited resources and innumerable maintenance tasks, it's crucial that astronauts not waste a minute of working-time on missions. During the Mercury and Apollo programs, task lists would designate specific one- or two-minute intervals at which astronauts would ''look out the window'' in between their other, equally precision-timed activities.

* ''Literature/RepentHarlequinSaidTheTicktockman'', a short story by Creator/HarlanEllison, has the titular Ticktockman, more formally known as the Master Timekeeper. His job is to keep the world running on schedule. And if you get late one time too many, well. You will be turned off on monday, please get your affairs in order. When an underling fearfully informs the Ticktockman that he is running late that day, he brushes it off, since it's obviously impossible. [[spoiler: Making the Ticktockman run late is the only thing the protagonist's rebellion achieved. There's nothing funny about that.]]

-->"Three minutes, forty seconds... Sorry, Colonel Manton, I lied - three minutes, forty-two seconds." (On how long it would take/ended up taking the Eleventh Doctor to completely take over the base at Demon's Run and disband the army.)

--->'''Sisko''': You mean you don't know it to the minute?\\
'''Solok''': Of course I do. But humans are often irked by such precision.

* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' campaign, the [[ArtifactOfDoom Timepiece of Klorr]] came about because of a clockmaker who was obsessed with time, so obsessed that he struggled to control the one timepiece he could not set to perfect synchronization: his own heart. Research into dark magic and unspecified entities led him to create this pocket watch, which did indeed cause his heart to beat in perfect time, and also made him immortal, along with giving him access to several time-related powers (in game terms, the watch's spell-like abilities include Haste, Hold Person, and even Time Stop) but with a terrible price. The user must murder --''not'' just kill-- sentient beings to pay for this effect, or the watch takes his life, which is what presumably happened to its creator.

* What makes Yuuki Terumi of ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' fame fit this trope is that it is at the core of his {{deconstruction}} of [[GambitIndex gambiteering]], and this trope is deconstructed, too. He does fancy himself a [[{{Chessmaster}} Chessmaster]]-cum-MagnificentBastard due to his ability to seemingly effortlessly {{troll}} the cast for his own benefit, but when one looks at the series at large, it quickly becomes clear that such is a result of "repeating this worthless comedy more times than [he] can count" - as an instrument of [[spoiler:Izanami and ]]Takamagahara's agenda, he was allowed to witness multiple instances of the same century and, through Phantom, multiple possibilities of the continuum shift. When one takes that away, it becomes clear that he really doesn't understand the cast at all; [[spoiler:not only does he fail to predict in ''Chronophantasma'' Arcade that Taokaka's interaction with Noel moved her away from the trap he set for the latter, but]] he so utterly fails to understand [[spoiler:his own lieutenant]] that he cannot predict [[spoiler:her]] movements without aforementioned assistance, all of which is completely nulled after ''Continuum Shift''. Combine this with Rachel and Kokonoe adapting to his tricks and developing counters of their own, as well as Kagura joining the chess club, and it's easy to see how he ends ''Chronophantasma'': [[spoiler:Izanami [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness leaving him at the station]] for his [[OutGambitted one-way ride on the Time Killer express]], [[KilledOffForReal destination six feet under]].]]

* Before remote signalling was invented, railroads in the UK and US forced standardization of times and time zones to allow uniform train schedules. Trains were kept apart purely by synchronized schedules on telegraphed "train orders" - the first signals actually were at stations, to indicate whether train orders needed to be picked up. Even slight mistakes caused catastrophic collisions, so ''every'' railroad dispatcher had to be super punctual.

* Both versions of [[TropeNamer Clock King]] in Franchise/TheDCU; one is William Tockman, InsufferableGenius with a peerless ability to judge time to the second and use this to his advantage; the other is the current Clock King, with actual time-based powers.

* The main shtick of the ''Comicbook/FantasticFour's'' Mad Thinker, predictive genius included. He once set a timebomb based on how quickly the Fantastic Four would fly into space (where he's never been), attack an alien base (that he's never seen), rescue a hostage (who he's never personally met), spend time arguing over personal matters (none of which the FF have made public), and return to Earth's atmosphere (just in time for the bomb to go off). His SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome. Another part of his shtick though, is that there is almost always ''one little thing'' he doesn't take into account that derails his carefully thought out plans. In one of his schemes, he failed to account for the Fantastic Four's ''mailman''. In early stories his disadvantages were his over-reliance on robot henchmen like the Awesome Android, which could follow his plans to the letter but couldn't think creatively enough to handle the plan failing, and his inability to account for "the human element". One early ''[[Comicbook/TheAvengers Avengers]]'' story has him trying to overcome this weakness by employing human henchmen.
* Depending on the writer, ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'''s Black Cat is one of these, planning events so it looked like anyone going after her was having terrible luck. Later on, she develops powers that let her do this for real with just probability alteration.
* Herr Kleiser and Loki from ''ComicBook/TheUltimates''; both pull off complex plans and deceive the heroes into moving according to their wishes without a hitch (and in Loki's case, [[RealityWarper warping reality to accommodate his plans]])...until the hitch comes, at which time they're both caught completely flat-footed.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Violine}}'', the chauffeur who drives Violine around talks in numbers and measurements, and divides larger units into smaller ones in conversation. Violine herself also has shades of this.

* Temple Fugate, the ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' version of the Clock King, was quite an example. This is the guy who stoically stepped off a bridge because [[TrainEscape he knew the train was always a little early]]. In fact, his extraordinary timing abilities coupled with his analysis of hours of recorded footage of Franchise/{{Batman}} in combat allows him to dodge his every move, making him one of the few people Batman has never defeated in hand to hand combat. His name even sounds like the Latin phrase "tempus fugit"-- meaning "time flies".
** He later reappeared as one of the {{Boxed Crook}}s in the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "Task Force X". His plan allowed the non-powered members of the Task Force to successfully infiltrate the Watchtower and steal an artifact from the Justice League.
** His meticulous timing and scheduling is explained in his back story; he owned a business efficiency company that was being sued, and the day of the hearing, the future mayor Hamilton Hill suggested he break schedule and take his coffee break earlier, so as to look more relaxed and presentable to the court. MurphysLaw kicked in: he ended up running late, his appeal was thrown out, ruining him, and the end result can be summed up thusly:
---> '''Batman''': Give it up, Fugate. Hill committed no crime against you.\\
'''Fugate''': He did worse! He made me ''late''!

* ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'' had a variation on this with Francis Grey, a pudgy guy who can rewind time to [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking fix his mistakes, allowing him to effortlessly dodge Batman's punches, high-speed traffic, and undo his embarrassing attempts at banter]]. Unlike most examples of this trope, he doesn't really plan ahead of time, but he knows what's going to happen because he's been there before.

* In ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries,'' Jackson Weele used precision timing both to conduct highly efficient robbery to the actual Clock King's level of precision, as well as making his devices work, especially the Big Wheel tank, which also required precise timing (presumably, because its weapons are in proper firing position for a fraction of a second at a time, but frequently enough that with proper timing you can use them.) The Big Wheel also exists in the comics, as CListFodder, but the timing obsession is unique to the series (as is his being an actually dangerous opponent.)

* Sickan, one of the main characters in the Swedish ''Jönssonligan'' series of films, who plans each one of his crimes "[[CatchPhrase In i minsta detalj]]" (down to the tiniest detail)

* Mr. Hines from ''Theatre/ThePajamaGame'' is a comical version. He even gets a song about his obsession, titled "Think of the Time I Save."

** In an example of the stunt casting the DCAU was famous for, Fugate was played by Alan Rachins, then best known for playing the punctilious managing partner Douglas Brachman on ''Series/LALaw'' -- a clock watcher's clock watcher.