This index is for tropes having to do with all sorts of timepieces. Clocks, watches, even sundials or hourglasses. Tropes about clockworks also go here.
Tropes:
- 24-Hour Trope Clock: Ways that time—whether it be the hour of the day, or its passage—are portrayed in a work.
- Clock Discrepancy: An event does not happen when someone says it did.
- Clock of Power: A timepiece that has superpower or grants superpower to its user / inhabitant.
- Clock Punk: Steampunk with particular emphasis on clock mechanisms.
- Clock Tampering: Messing with a clock for your benefit.
- Clock Tower: A clock tower of particular importance to the plot or setting.
- Clocks of Control: Strict, order-obsessed characters have a certain clock motif.
- Clockwork Creature: Mechanical creatures that have their clockwork parts visible, such as cogs or wind-up pins.
- Clockworks Area: A factory, clocktower, or similar space is filled with large, moving mechanisms that characters use to move.
- Cuckoo Clock Gag: A cuckoo clock's tendencies are played for comedy.
- Cue O'Clock: Clock dial numbers are replaced by a non-time-related cue or nonsense.
- Death's Hourglass: A physical representation showing how much time a character has to live.
- Doomsday Clock: A clock counting down to nuclear doomsday.
- Exact Time to Failure: You have exactly this much time to live.
- Floating Clocks: During a time-travel sequence, floating clocks appear as a visual cue.
- Race Against the Clock: The heroes have to do something to stop the countdown, or else the consequences will be catastrophic.
- Right on the Tick: An event happens at an exact time.
- Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!: Someone attacks their alarm clock to stop it from ringing.
- Spinning Clock Hands: Clock hands speed around to show the passage of time.
- Stock Clock Hand Hang: Holding on for life on the hands of a clocktower clock.
- Stopped Clock: A broken clock as proof of a disaster or catastrophic event.
- Tick Tock Terror: The tick-tock of a clock used to make an eerie, tense atmosphere.
- Tick Tock Tune: Clock sounds used as part of a work's score.
- The Watchmaker: A (likely mysterious) noteworthy character is a watchmaker.
- Westminster Chimes: The most common type of tune given by clocks. It consists of four sets of four notes, followed by a different note struck the same amount of times as the current hour.
- When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Characters have until midnight to accomplish their task.
