Time Tropes

8 Following

Time passes. Often, this is significant to characters and plots alike.

Tropes:

• 10,000 Years
• Absurdly Long Wait
• Ab Urbe Condita
• Advance Notice Crime: A criminal announces what they plan to do before committing a crime.
• Age-Progression Song
• All of Time at Once
• Alternative Calendar: A calendar where the names of the months are different.
• Always Late
• Ambiguous Time Period: It is not clear what time period the story takes place.
• Anachronistic Clue
• Bait-and-Switch Time Skip: It seems like a long time has passed, but it's only been a little while.
• Belated Injury Realization
• Bizarre Seasons
• Bullet Time: A visual effect in which time is slowed down to show something really fast happening.
• Cartoonland Time
• Catastrophic Countdown
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: The heroes' reinforcements don't show up until after the villains have already been defeated.
• Celestial Deadline
• Charity Workplace Calendar: Posing for a workplace calendar to raise money.
• Christmas Epilogue
• Chronoscope
• Clock Discrepancy: The time of an event doesn't happen at the time it was said.
• Clock King: A person with the ability to keep precise track of time down to the very second.
• Clock of Power
• Clocks of Control
• Clock Tampering
• Clockwork Prediction
• Colour-Coded Timestop
• Cue O'Clock: Clock dial numbers are replaced by a non-time-related cue or nonsense.
• Delayed Until the Final Countdown: When you're on a distinct time limit, bad luck will always result in victory arriving only in the last few seconds.
• Distant Finale: The series' ending takes place many years in the future with the surviving characters much older.
• Event-Driven Clock: Time doesn't progress until the player progresses.
• Exactly Exty Years Ago
• Exploding Calendar: Calendar pages fall off to indicate the passage of time.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The story's entire events occur under a very short amount of time.
• Exty Years from Publication
• Fantastic Time Management
• Fast-Forward to Reunion
• Father Time: Anthropomorphic Personification of time.
• Five-Year Plan: An American series' fifth anniversary coincides with a milestone for its characters.
• Flashback B-Plot
• Flash Forward Fic
• Floating Clocks
• Fresh Clue
• Funny Flashback Haircut
• Go Wait Outside: Despite a Non-Player Character saying a commission will take a while, no out-of-universe time is needed to go retrieve it.
• Hating on Monday
• The Hidden Hour
• Implausible Synchrony: All clocks show the exact same time of day.
• In It for Life
• In-Universe Game Clock: Day and night pass freely in a video game.
• Just in Time
• Late to the Action
• Liminal Time
• Limited Destination Time: Each place has a time limit for how long you can stay.
• Limited Window of Vulnerability: A character has a time period of vulnerability before turning/returning to being invulnerable.
• Lineage Ladder: When describing a repetition of ancestors or descendants conveys age or time passage.
• Living Barometer: A character can predict the weather, often by aches and pains.
• Magic Countdown: Characters somehow have time to do something before the countdown ends when realistically the countdown should be over already.
• Meaningful Release Date: A work is released on a date that has some connection to the work itself.
• Microts: Fictional units of time.
• Move in the Frozen Time
• Overly Generous Time Limit: A Timed Mission where the amount of time given is much longer than the average player is expected to need.
• Patience Plot: A plot where characters wait for something to happen.
• Place Before Time: A universe that existed before the current one.
• The Present Day: The current period of time you're living in right now.
• Progressive Era Montage
• Race Against the Clock
• Race to Clean Up: A character tries to clean up a house/object before the owner of the house/object comes back, usually under a time limit.
• Real Time
• Right on the Tick: The association of important plot events with a specific time.
• A Rotten Time to Revert: A transformed character is forced to revert to their natural form at the worst possible time.
• Running Out The Clock: Trying to run down some sort of time limit for some purpose.
• Schedule Fanatic: A character is obsessed with scheduling everything.
• Scotty Time
• Seasonal Baggage
• Short-Term Love Interest
• Snail Mail
• Spinning Clock Hands
• Spinning Paper: Newspapers rotate into view with headlines relevant to the events of the story.
• Spring Is Late
• Standard Time Units
• Stopped Clock
• Sunday is Boring
• Take Your Time: A video game's plot establishes that the day must be saved within a time limit, but the actual game has no time limit and allows the player to take much longer to complete it if desired.
• Temporal Trio
• Thousand-Year Reign
• Time Abyss: A being who is much older than all recorded history.
• Time Bomb: A bomb set to automatically detonate after a countdown has ended.
• Time Capsule
• Time-Compression Montage
• Time Crash
• Time Dilation
• Timed Mission: A goal must be reached quickly!
• Time-Freeze Trolling Spree: Someone freezes time or takes advantage of time being frozen so they can play pranks on people without the risk of getting caught.
• Time Is Dangerous
• Time Master: Someone who has the power to manipulate time at will.
• Time-Passes Montage
• Time Skip: A sequel or continuation that takes place a specific amount of time after the original.
• Time Stands Still: Someone or something causes time to freeze and everyone around them to become motionless.
• Time Zones Do Not Exist: When a world logically should have different time zones, yet none are shown or mentioned.
• Time Zone Troubles: Characters being in different time zones or having to shift between time zones causes issues.
• Universal Universe Time
• Unnecessary Time Precision: Doing complicated time calculations just to say that the date requested is very recent.
• Weapon Running Time: A projectile's time to hit its target is long enough for things to happen.
• We Wait: Characters must wait for their enemy to fall into a trap.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve
• When the Planets Align
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The story ends by explaining what happened to the characters after the story's events.
• World in Standby: During special events, time in the outside world stops for all people.
• A Year and a Day
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: A long time in an alternate reality is only a short time in the regular universe.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: A short time in an alternate reality is much, much longer in the regular universe.
• Year X
• You Are Too Late