Spinning Clock Hands

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"Powerful images for the passage of time: A clock's hands, sweeping past 12!" —T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics, "i do my best"

A relative of the Exploding Calendar, the passage of time is shown by speeding up the hands of a clock while showing the montage of a character performing a task.

Can also be seen as a gag where after the hands of the clock start spinning, one character says "Stupid clock's broken again!" and fixes it.

Since showing the hands actually spinning has become a bit of a Dead Horse Trope outside comedy, a more common variation is to focus in on the clock and gradually fade or cut from it reading one time to it reading another. In video games they often accompany the Fast Forward Mechanic.

Compare Spinning Newspaper.

Subversions

Film

• The Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie uses a variant of this by showing rapidly clockwise-spinning hands when time actually is going forward rapidly, and then rapidly counterclockwise-spinning hands when time is going backward rapidly.
• At the end of Beetlejuice, during the "Jump in the Line" musical number a cuckoo clock's hands are seen spinning quickly forward (clockwise).
• In the 2002 adaptation of The Time Machine, the first sign Professor Hartdegen is travelling into the past is when the hands on his collection of pocket watches slow down, then reverse, speeding up as he travels further back.
• Used briefly in Mindhunters, to show time's passage when everyone is knocked out by the drugged coffee. As the camera is watching the clock, we don't get to see the killer's activities during this interlude.

Live Action TV

• Used in Kamen Rider Decade's Den-O arc when time becoming disjointed during Decade and Den-O's fight is represented by a clock (sitting inexplicably in the middle of the BBC Quarry in which they're fighting) doing this.
• Even Stevens plays with the gag version where a cuckoo clock's hands start spinning rapidly.
• Occurs in The Basil Brush Show while Basil, Dave and Stephen are spending time worrying about the safety of a millionaire whom they hope to get some cash off. Near the end of the montage, Basil looks at the Spinning Clock Hands and comments "We really should fix that clock".
  • Done similarly in an episode of Home Improvement.
• In a Mr. Bean episode, first a bunch of mechanisms to wake up Mr. Bean are seen. He effectively ignores them. Then the clock is shown spinning to show that Mr. Bean ended up waking up late.
• Done in The Young Ones, with Vyvyan noting that the clock is broken.

Video Games

• In Romancing SaGa 3 when the spell Quick Time is cast, a clock face appears and clock hands spin rapidly until the hands reach 12 and the clock face disappears along with the hands. Quick Time allows the character to always get the first hit in regardless of the enemies speed.
  • In SaGa Frontier the spell Chaos Stream has the enemies spun around on clock hands, while the spell Overdrive has your characters standing on a clock face while fighting.
• In the Flash game MARDEK RPG, the effect for the Status Buff Haste is an orange clock face whose hands start out still but then spin up into a blur.

Web Original

• This was used to let the Global Guardians that the villainous Chronos had sent them on a (supposedly) one-way trip into the future against their wills.

Western Animation

• Parodied in a Kim Possible episode, where Kim is in detention. The clock hands start to indicate passing time and begin accelerating rapidly, whereupon Barkin hits the clock face, muttering, "Stupid clock's busted again..." and resets it, indicating a grand total of... five minutes have passed.
• The Simpsons episode "Two Dozen And One Greyhounds" has a spinning clock hand when the last puppies are born.
• Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Op. A.W.A.R.D.S.". It turns out to be just Numbuh Four playing with his watch.