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A wick check for Exactly Exty Years Ago to see if it is exhibiting the same misuse that used to be present in Exty Years from Publication. Additionally, the description is somewhat confused, a first saying that it's about the tendency to use nice, round numbers for the time between events in a story, but then saying that the time might be divisible by 3, 5, 7, 10, or 12.

Total wicks: 56

Wicks checked: 51/50

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     Wicks to be checked 

     Correct use: time between events is a conveniently round number, 28/51, 55% 
  • Prelude to Foundation: The story begins just after the Decennial Celebration, which happens every ten years on Trantor. This Decennial Celebration takes place in 12020 G.E., making Seldon thirty-two (because he was born 10,000 years after the book's publication, in 11988 G.E.).
  • Time Skip: Longer time skips tend to be a round number of years.
  • The Ugly Little Boy: The company has been manufacturing Chronoscopes by analyzing mesons and building Time Machines in preparation for this grand experiment; they will take a child from forty thousand years ago.
  • Dracula A.D. 1972: Dracula is staked in 1872, and brought back in 1972.
  • Tears of Steel: It's been 40 years since Thom and Celia broke up.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: The story is set in Year 90 of the new calendar, that started when Iceland closed its borders because of the Rash.
  • John Saul: The prologue to nearly every Saul book is a scene from 20, 30, 50, or 100 years ago explaining the origins of the evil to follow (the prologue is often even labelled "X Years Ago"). The book then jumps to the present.
  • Exty Years from Publication
  • Drift Compatible: So ten years after the first planetary war, when the Decepticons return to Earth to exact their revenge
  • Tropes E to J: Twenty years have passed since the outbreak.
  • Half-Life 2: 20 years have passed since the events of Half-Life.
  • Half Past Adventure: Half Past Adventure with Macy and Robin, is a Adventure Time Fanfic by Pablo360 set 30 years after the finale
  • The Awakening of a Magus: Dumbledore started getting premonitions about a Magus awakening in his time on July 21, 1895. Exactly a hundred years in advance.
  • Adaptation Deviation: Nightfall (2000): Aside from the characters changing almost completely (two characters use names from the original, but really aren't the same at all), this adaptation adds in Psychic Powers and changes the cycle to last 1,000 years instead of 2,049 years.
  • Empath: The Luckiest Smurf - Where The Wind Carries You: Handy judges from the sides of the volcano that it erupts only every 500 years, which gives Brainy a sense of security until they feel the volcano rumbling beneath them. Handy then makes a bunch of calculations and realizes that the last time the volcano erupted was exactly 500 years ago that day.
  • Scarily Specific Story: For extra scary points, it also might have happened on this day, Exactly Exty Years Ago.
  • Blood Rage: All over the place. Even ten years ago in 1974!
  • Behind the Attic Wall: There she wanders the empty halls and abandoned classrooms of what was once a girls' school, until a tragic accident 100 years ago killed the school's founders
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: It's been a thousand years since the door was last opened, and ten years since Koops' father, Koopley, left for Hooktail Castle.
  • Frequency (2016): The two timelines are exactly 20 years apart. Similar to the movie version which worked on a 30 years gap.
  • The Flash 2014 Season 2:
    • In the Flash-Arrow Crossover, we learn that the Hawks (Hawkgirl and Hawkman, currently Cisco's girlfriend Kendra, and a guy named Carter) have been reincarnated 207 times in roughly 4000 years, and are murdered brutally in each life. This puts their average lifespan at around 19 years old.
    • This may fall into Exactly Exty Years Ago. The Real Life Khufu actually lived a little over 4500 years ago; if they lived almost the same amount of time in each life, they would have lived to around 23 years. Not much better, but better. However, they probably didn't live the same amount in each life. Continued directly below.
  • Secrets of Sulphur Springs: The portal allows Griffin and Harper to travel back in time exactly 30 years from 2020 to 1990. In "As Time Goes By" they travel back a further 30 years from 1990 to 1960. In "No Time Like the Present" this is subverted, as they figure out who to control the portal and travel to other years like 1962 and 2011.
  • The Smurfs (1981): As in "it erupts once every 500 years, and erupted exactly 500 years ago, to the day
  • The Call (2020): Seo-yeon and Young-sook are separated by exactly 20 years of time.
  • Mary Downing Hahn: It's amazing how often the main characters stumble onto an event that happened exactly thirty, fifty, or 100 years prior.
  • Beauty and the Beast: According to Lumiere, the curse has lasted for ten years. Since the curse is in its final stages, this also means the Enchantress gave the Beast roughly ten years to break it.
  • Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: According to the title track, "it was twenty years ago today / That Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play."
  • Web Video/Nightfall: The news anchor in this adaptation reports that the astronomers have identified the eclipse as occurring every two millennium, rather than the more precisely accurate 2049 years. Probably a deliberate In-Universe invocation to play up the importance of the broadcast and keep things simple for their audience.

     Correct use: time between events is divisible by 3, 5, 7, or 12, 4/51, 8% 
  • Macross Delta: All the implied problems for the Windermere Empire happened seven years before the show, during a war for independence that ended when a dimensional weapon was fired by Hayate's father, resulting in the Windermerans declaring revenge against the New United Nations for the repercussions of the weapon's deployment.
  • Hive Mind (2016): Several backstory events happened a multiple-of-five years ago, but it's unclear if those numbers are meant to be exact or approximate. York's Lottery was thirty years ago, Sapphire's (and Fran's) was twenty-five years ago, and an unnamed telepath told Morton why telepaths can't meet twenty years ago.
  • How to Train Your Dragon 2: The film is set 5 years after How to Train Your Dragon, and 20 years after Hiccup's mother went missing.
  • Ancienverse: Lots of mentions are made to something having happened in Alola 6 years ago, which resulted in the death of the Poni Island Kahuna and Nanu having a Cynicism Catalyst. Divisible by 3

     Misuse: An event happened at an unclear time in the past, 4/51, 8% 

     Misuse: An event has been ongoing for a conveniently round number of years, 1/51, 2% 
  • Child of Glass: The film is set in late 1970s, the time of the film's release (which also makes it convenient for Inez to have been haunting the place for exactly 100 years). Few would suspect that the original book was set in the 1910s.

     Misuse: Time exists, 8/51, 16% 
  • The Epiplectic Bicycle: The end of the book has a mysterious obelisk that apparently arose from the childrens' home 173 years ago, around the time they embraced on their quest.
  • Shin Megami Tensei V: Downplayed. The false Tokyo was created 18 years ago, but some NPCs round it up to 20.
  • Forward the Foundation: The story begins eight years after the events of Prelude to Foundation, so that Hari Seldon is 40 years old, exactly. Each Time Skip between the parts is ten years long, causing Seldon to be fifty, sixty, and seventy. During "Dors Venabili", they throw him a birthday party.
  • Dashed Plot Line: Forward the Foundation: The first part, "Eto Demerzel", starts eight years after the end of Prelude to Foundation, when Department Head Seldon is 40 years old. The next part, "Cleon I", is ten years after that, when First Minister Seldon is 50. The third part, "Dors Venabili", takes place during Professor Seldon's 60th birthday.
  • Nightfall (2000): Gnomen is again talking to people about the destruction of civilization that last happened almost 1,000 years ago.
  • Mega Man: The games really seem to like the one-century timespan. Classic and Battle Network both take place in 20XX, X in 21XX, and Zero and Star Force in 22XX, and refer to one another in single century units. There's no way to know if they take place exactly 100 years from each other.
  • Skulduggery Pleasant: It took the Engineer "nearly three decades" to get bored of doing its job.
  • Tropes A to H: Booker says that it "must have been 20 years" since he attended the baptism after wounded knee. No indication that it was exactly 20 years instead of roughly 20 years

     Unclear/misc. misuse, 2/51, 4% 
  • Tears Of Steel: Phantom wick
  • Hive Mind (2016): Averted for Morton and Celandine; Morton came out of Lottery over forty years ago, and the Celandine incident was nearly forty years ago. I don't think this is a notable aversion.
  • The Cloak Society: The battle. ZCE

     Indexes, 3/51, 6% 

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