Someone's putting entirely too much thought into
the digital clock from 24.
And that's how I stumbled onto this weird pattern: The clock never shows a 0 turning into a 1, and it never shows a 1 turning into a 2. (There are some very rare exceptions, which I explain below.) Check it out the next time you watch the show, if you watch it. The clock will display a sequence like "04:42:24, 04:42:25, 04:42:26, 04:42:27, 04:42:28," then stop, or "04:21:16, 04:21:17, 04:21:18, 04:21:19," then stop. I've only been watching for this pattern for six or eight episodes, so I don't know if it's been like this since the first episode of the first season—but I'm betting that's the case. The onscreen time sequences are dictated partly by the typographic limitations of the clock font.I'd noticed the serifs on the 1 before, but then I moved on.