Clockworks Area

When a character enters a factory or, more often, a Clock Tower, it usually results in the character riding on the moving gears and other machines to get through it.

May overlap with Clock Punk and Eternal Engine. May also be related to No OSHA Compliance if it involves workers riding around on the gears.

Examples of this trope

Anime and Manga

• In The Castle of Cagliostro, The Count and his men pursue Lupin, up the castle's clock tower, as he attempts to escape with Clarisse.

Film

• The Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times
• The climax of The Great Mouse Detective.
• Near the end of Cars 2, the Lemons all trap Mater, Finn McMissile, and Holly Shiftwell inside Big Bentley as an attempt to kill them all while they succeed in their evil plans. They eventually escape, however.

Literature

• In Witches Abroad, Nanny Ogg and the dwarf romeo Casanunder sabotage the clock tower to prevent "Cinderella" hearing the chimes of midnight. There is also the cat Greebo's memory of chasing a mouse into a working windmill and realising he is in a place of danger where one paw put in the wrong place will drag him to doom among all the turning gears and grinding wheels.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons has the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, where everything is on an orderly array of gears. Here the gears are representing the efficiency and rigidness of law. And apparently its over-complicated nature, since the gears extend in all directions, infinitely or nearly so, and range from portable to large-continent-sized. Some of those latter host the whole divine realms that don't need to be concerned with this gear thing.

Video Games

• Tick Tock Clock in Super Mario 64, which can be tweaked based on the time that a player jumps through the wall.
  • The level returns as a racecourse in Mario Kart DS.
• Also, some of the castles from New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
• The level in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse where you meet Grant. The music on this level is aptly named "Clockwork".
  • Then again, Clock Tower levels have been a staple in the Castlevania series ever since the original. Most notably Super Castlevanis IV's stage "A" and Symphony of the Night.
• Metal Man's stage in Mega Man 2.
  • Time Man's stage in Mega Man Powered Up is this, in an actual Clock Tower.
• In Ninja Gaiden II, near the end of Chapter 8, Ryu must climb a Clock Tower to reach the Greater Fiend Zedonius.
• Okami had a dungeon and a boss fight based on this theme.
• Various levels in Epic Mickey.
• Ultimecia's castle in Final Fantasy VIII, especially its Dissidia Final Fantasy iteration.
• Sunsoft's Batman game on NES has one of these as its final level. Players had to walljump between moving gears in order to ascend the bell tower of the Gotham City cathedral.
• Scrap Brain Zone from the original Sonic the Hedgehog game. Its Working Title was even "The Clockwork Zone" (or "Clock Ork" as the W wasn't programmed into the title card).
  • Sonic Unleashed features Rooftop Run, which has a clock tower, but only the night stage has a major clockworks area, as the daytime stage is outside. This level returned in Sonic Generations, and both Sonics go up the outside of the tower this time.
• The final level of Clock Tower 3 is a climb up the titular Clock Tower, including the gears.
• Banjo-Kazooie had an area in Rusty Bucket Bay that involved a switch puzzle to control rotating gears. Falling off results in death by boiling oil.
• Tales of Vesperia has Ghasfrast: the Tower of Gears as one of its dungeons. The party must use the sorceror's ring to restore power to the non-moving gears in order to reach the top of the tower, where Barbros awaits.
• In Ragnarok Online, there is a dungeon which is actually called and is a Clock Tower, which features such gears as a motif in the entire dungeon.
• In Sands of Destruction, Lacertus Rex hangs out in a clockwork mansion. You have to literally cross a giant clock to get to Lacertus Rex himself.
• Temporal Tower in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Darkness.
• The level "The Shrunk Machine" in Duke Nukem Forever sees the Duke crawl through a electricity generator while shrunken to minuscule size.

Western Animation

• One episode of The Batman had Batman fighting Catwoman and Ragdoll in the gears of a giant clocktower.
  • An episode of Batman the Animated Series had Batman fighting the Clock King like this, in a clock tower.
• The climax of "The Dog and Piggy Show" in Jackie Chan Adventures features Jackie, Jade, Uncle, and Hak Foo climbing the gears in a clocktower to get the Pig Talisman.