"At least the World will end, an event anticipated with great joy by many. It will end very soon, but not in the year 2000, which has come and gone. From that I conclude that God Almighty is not heavily into Numerology."
— Eugene Debs Hartke, Hocus Pocus
Since mankind began to count, they've wanted to assign importance to numbers. This might be due to the desire to assign significance to everything. This might be to make it easier to have common threads in stories. Maybe it's just to look cool.
Regardless of reason, numbers are often given significance in stories, and mention of a number in a story can indicate a meaning beyond just counting out items. Equally often, people will interpret these numbers to see significance where none exists.
See also Arc Number and Number Obsession.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Quite a few of the girlfriends are introduced in a way that reflects the number of their debut chapter or their ranking in the harem:
- Girlfriend #13 is a reverse Occidental Otaku.
- Chapter 69 introduces a girlfriend with a Skinship Grope fetish.
- Chapter 108 introduces a girlfriend crippled with kleshas.
- Chapter 123 introduces a girlfriend with a Number Obsession. Said chapter was also published in January (the 1st month of the year) 2023. Said girlfriend's surname is the kanji form of the same numerals.
- Digimon:
- Digimon Tamers: Three:
- This is the third television season of Digimon.
- There are three main human Tamers.
- There are three backup human Tamers before and after Leomon's death (And Ryo).
- There are three core members of Hypnos.
- Yuggoth is conceptualized as three interlinked spheres.
- The Devas all have three horns on their heads.
- The three main Tamers and their digimon take on Mihiramon, one team at a time. Takato and WarGrowlmon go last, and they win.
- Beelzemon has three eyes.
- The three main Digimon have a team attack called Trinity Burst.
- The Crystal Matrix on Calumon's forehead and Rapidmon's Tribeam attack are both triangles. Not to mention the triangular shape of the Digital Hazard symbol on the chest of Guilmon et al.
- Digimon V-Tamer 01: Zero and one are from which everything in the Digimon World is made up, so they get referenced frequently. The main characters for example also form the 01 in the title, Zeromaru and Taichi.
- Digimon Tamers: Three:
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: Jotaro Kujo, The Hero, is 17 when he first acquires his Stand; Star Platinum, which is represented by the seventeenth tarot, The Star.
- Stone Ocean: As Pucci is making his way towards Cape Canaveral, he comes across numerous signs pertaining to the number 3. After arriving at a nearby hospital where three men are brought in at once with one of their belongings moving towards them, seeing three shooting stars makes Pucci realize they're the sons of DIO.
- The Jojolands: Jodio Joestar is associated with 9, as the protagonist of the ninth part whose stand includes the word Novem (Latin for Nine). Likewise, the main antagonist of the part, Hacca Howler, is associated with 8, being the eighth head of his family line and having the stand Eclipse Eight.
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Satoru Gojo's Limitless effects are usually described with mathematical phenomena concerning infinity manifesting into reality. He's even featured with it on the cover of Chapter 89.
- Mashin Hero Wataru: Seven. The series revolves around rainbow and Big Dipper motifs, leading our heroes in need to go through seven Adventure Towns to save the worlds under the guidance of seven dragon deities for each series. The 30th anniversary project also has the theme of "Seven Spirits".
- Metal Fight Beyblade: Masamune Kadoya is always associated with the number one. He constantly calls himself the number one Blader, his Goal in Life is to be the number one Blader, his Bey's motif is a Unicorn, his special move relies on the principle of focusing all power on one point, and his status as Gan Gan Galaxy's vanguard means he usually has the first battle in tournaments.
- Odd Taxi: Odokawa's medical chart in Episode 7 shows that he was born on May (month 5) 25th (5x5) of 1980 (Showa 55). It also shows his current age, which is 41 (4+1=5) years and 5 months.
- One Piece:
- Several birthdays of characters are references to the characters' names. Certain bounty values have digit combinations that are often a reference to a character's name, birthday, Devil Fruit or crew.
- 56 is a Goroawase Number play for "Gomu", in reference to the Gomu Gomu no Mi (Gum-Gum Fruit), and has often been used to associate with Monkey D. Luffy, the current ability user of that Devil Fruit. He's sometimes shown to wear or had worn shirts with that number on it. His Grand Fleet starts out with over 5,600 members. Charlotte Katakuri has a bounty of 1,057,000,000 berries and serves as a wall for Luffy to overcome. Gol D. Roger had a bounty of 5,564,800,000 berries, signifying both that Luffy is going to succeed him, and it also implies that he will surpass his bounty with a 5.6 billion value.
- 16 is often used in connection to Celestial Dragons and the World Government. In goroawase, Imu's name can be read as 1 and 6. The destruction of Lulusia happened in chapter 1060 and there are 16 rays depicted in that scene. In Doflamingo's flashback, one mob character cried out how his two young sons had been shot by a Celestial Dragon 16 times. Doflamingo's final attack, God Thread, is alternatively called "16 Holy Assassin's Bullets". Luffy rang the Ox Bell 16 times, which the Marines interpreted as a message of him declaring war to the World Government.
Blogs
- The Eleventh Hour Trilogy: Cynthia mentions several times in her blog entries and comments the number eleven. This is taken a step further as her blog is actually named The Eleventh Hour.
Fan Works
- Avengers: Endgame (Dragonis Prime): Three. The Reality Stone occupies the third knuckle on the Infinity Gauntlet, Peter Parker talks about being a normal teenager three years ago, the timeskip is three years long, and there are three Snaps made with the completed Infinity Gauntlet.
- A Dip in the Inkwell: The results that the gadget gives Odd Todd are random amounts of random things. However, all of the amounts are odd numbers.
- The Heart Trilogy: When Bilbo calls himself the Lucky Number, Smaug deduces it to mean that the hobbit is a member of a group of fourteen individuals.
- Kaleidoscopic Katamari: For Foomin, it's the number two:
- Her distinctively U-shaped head gives her two towers, each topped with an antenna, and she tends to double up on any headgear, putting one on each prong.
- She has a Downplayed Verbal Tic where she repeats the same word twice. Greeting others with "Hey-hey~!", for instance, or saying "Sure, sure."
- She likes her drinks having two distinct flavors, like lemon-lime or lemonade/limeade mixed with strawberry, blueberry or raspberry.
- She has two basements in her house, with two fridges and freezers to ensure she can stay stocked up for all the slumber parties and other gatherings she hosts.
- She prefers having at least two copies of all her favorite shirts, wanting to have backups in case the designs go out of print.
- Oblivion (Gabriel Seraph): Braig has one with the number two. His last name is a combination of the Greek prefix and Spanish word for two, he's bi, he has one side of his face scarred, and he's second-in-command to Ansem, as company president.
- The Phantom Riders Club:
- 3 is a recurring number to Miu Kazashiro like in her show. Aside from being named after Shiro Kazami (aka Kamen Rider V3) and her three-member Girl Posse, her Persona has three faces and a body based off a tri-fold mirror.
- As usual, The Beatles are associated with the number 4. Their nicknames are "The Fab Four" and "Four-Headed Monster", the four main shareholders, and the group (Paul and Ringo along with Yoko and Olivia) make appearances in Chapter 40 (which is also the number associated with Fourze).
- Savior of Demons: Bulma gives Frieza a capsule containing his father's body, which is labeled with the number 49, symbolizing 'painful death'.
- A Second Chance: In No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Lynn and Lana find an opossum with ten babies, the same amount of children as the Loud family. While Lynn initially doesn't want to help the animals out, her guilt over the trouble she and her siblings have caused their parents over the years helps sway her to Lana's side.
- The Weaver Option: Since this is Warhammer, you get the expected Sacred Numbers — 9 for Tzeentch, 8 for Khorne, 7 for Nurgle, 6 for Slaanesh, 11 for Malal and the Skaven, 12 for the Mechanicus and 10 for the Emperor. In addition, the Necrons are also given a Sacred Number, 15, though nobody can understand why they consider it important; the explanation given is that, although not a prime number, at some "higher levels of quantum resonance the energy transfers enter dimension-symbiosis". Nobody but them understands what that means.
Films — Animation
- Son of the White Horse, based on ancient myths and folklore, constantly references the numbers 3, 7 and 12, with 4 occasionally thrown in. There's three brothers with 3, 7 and 12 prominent locks of hair, representing three times of the day (morning, evening and midday, respectively). They form a 3-way blood bond. When their forebearers were killed, their heads were smashed into 3, 7 and 12 pieces. Three princesses need to be rescued, representing spring, autumn and summer from three dragons with 3, 7 and 12 heads who live in three castles with 3, 7 and 12 towers. Each task has to be attempted 3 times to succeed. The griffin demands 12 oxen to eat and 12 barrels of wine to drink. The brothers' mother, the White Mare represents the 4th season, winter. There is also a snake composed of 77 chain-links.
Films — Live-Action
- Inseminoid: 2. The planet the story takes place on orbits a binary star system, and the extinct civilization that once existed on it was ruled by a pair of twins, seemingly throughout generations as some sort of tradition. During Sandy's rampage, only two researchers survive. During the course of the movie, Sandy gives birth to alien twins.
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum: 7. If people are found to have helped John, they have seven days to leave town or pledge fealty and this very obvious with the Bowery King, who gives John a gun with seven bullets and gets seven cuts under the Adjudicator's orders. This is also a bit of Irony, as, getting "lucky" in this film isn't the most lucky thing to happen.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thanos is always associated with the number two. He plans to leave half the population of any given location alive while killing the other, has two primary "daughters" in the form of Gamora and Nebula, a pair of Co-Dragons (Loki, Ronan) who both betrayed him at different points, owned a double-bladed switchblade and double-bladed sword, has two main kinds of outfits (his armor and "streamlined" look), uses two different Infinity Gauntlets by the end of his arc, and dies twice in Endgame.
- The Matrix Resurrections: The number two crops up a lot: Thomas Anderson is working on a game called Binary. IO resembles 10, which is how 2 is represented in binary. At the end of the movie, two people, Neo and Trinity, have the powers of The One, and 2 is the average of 1 (Neo) and 3 (Trinity). The Neo/Trinity and Neo/Smith relationships are both central to the functioning of the new Matrix. And the literary motif is not Alice in Wonderland but Through the Looking Glass, the 2nd of Lewis Carroll's books about Alice.
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World:
- Scott and each of the Evil Exes has their rank number featured during their respective scenes:
- 0: Scott. Drinks Coke Zero and wears a shirt with "Zero" on it. Gideon refers to him by saying "you're zero, you're nothing!" in the final fight.
- 1: Matthew Patel. Identifies himself as "first", has his one eye covered by his emover, keeps pointing with one finger. Has a single chevron on his sleeve. Poses with one arm in the air, looking like the number one. Wallace also refers to him as "It's that one guy!"
- 1 1/2. Ramona claims that she went out with Matthew Patel (#1) for "a week and a half". Her next boyfriend was Lucas Lee (#2). She dyes her hair a different color every week and a half. Scott tells Wallace that he got to "first and a half base" with Ramona.
- 2: Lucas Lee. Just prior to his scene, Scott and Ramona pass two "X crossing" signs, and a crosswalk sign that counts down from 2. During the scene proper, the number appears on a prop car, as a tattoo on his neck, and on a trailer. Lee notes that Scott must be "seeing double," and that it will take "two minutes... to kick your ass" (which he says twice). Lee punches Scott twice to knock him out before the fight. The woman who sprays Lee's fist does so twice. Lee's ringtone is two beeps. Wallace notes that the stunt doubles get Lee's "sloppy seconds." Lee points at Scott with two fingers, and has two X's on his belt buckle. "2" is tattooed on his neck. In the "Cold Call" film-within-the-film we see, Lee's character refers to the two clicks his opponent will hear. Ramona dated Lucas in the 9th grade, two years after Patel. Lee claims there are "like, two hundred steps" on the grind rail. Before facing Lee, Scott learns the bassline to Final Fantasy II.
- 3: Todd Ingram. The Clash At Demonhead has 3 members. Wears the number on his shirt; has three stripes on each sleeve; has three stripes on each wristband; there's a particularly noticeable three on the wall of the dressing room; hurls Scott through three walls; Scott is thrown into a number of garbage cans with multiple 3's spray-painted on them; the words "Bass Battle" flash three times on screen; both Scott and Todd one-up each other three times before the end of the bass battle. Envy wears a shirt with three stripes as well. Also had three strikes against Vegan Law. Although oddly, he says "You'll be dust in two seconds."
4: Roxy Richter. The fight takes place in a club simply called "4". The club itself is full of four-bulb light fixtures. Also, instead of being called "Roxie" like in the books, her name was changed to "Roxy" to have four letters. Her battle(s) with Scott is in four parts (in the snow, versus Ramona alone, versus Ramona-Scott, and versus Scott alone). The two girls are/were bisexual (2x2). The DVD trivia track points out she has four tears in her lace tights. Additionally the floor, disco ball, and Roxy's weapon are comprised of squares. - 4 1/2. Scott is wearing a t-shirt featuring the Fantastic Four's "4" logo with an additional "1/2" doodled on it, halfway between battles 4 and 5. Ramona had also just told him "You're just another evil ex waiting to happen."
- 5 & 6: Katayanagi Twins. he Twins turn the dial on their music up to eleven (though the numbers are in Japanese).The first two notes they play on their keyboards are an E (the fifth letter after A) and a Bb, a tritone (or 6 half-steps) above E. Additionally their names and last name start with K, the eleventh letter of the alphabet (5 + 6 = 11).
- In addition, each Ex's number briefly flashes in the background when their respective actor's name is listed in the opening credits sequence.
- The score for defeating each ex is the proper multiple of 1000, at least till the very end. Played twice after the battle with the Katayanagi Twins, where the score starts at 5000 and slowly climbs to 6000. Defeating Gideon the first time earns 7000 points, and for the final time earns 7 billion (!) points, which may include the multipliers Scott earned after using his 1-UP. His minions are all worth 700 points when defeated, and minor boosts during the scene result in half that (350).
- Scott and each of the Evil Exes has their rank number featured during their respective scenes:
Literature
- All the World's a Stage: The theatre troupe's book keeps getting updated with cryptic messages saying that there are so many "1s" until the benefit performance. Fandorin is stumped, until the end, when he realizes it's a reference to the moment where there will be eleven ones in the time and date: 11:11, 11-11-1911. That's when Nonarikin — Nonarikin being the "nine" in that date — will explode his bomb.
- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Three. Lucy Gray kills three other tributes, Arlo Chance kills three people in the mines, and Snow is responsible for the deaths of three people before the epilogue.
- The Bone Season Series: The number seven crops up a lot, being strongly associated with the supernatural and the divine: there are seven Seals, seven orders of clairvoyance, seven books in the series, and seven tarot cards predicting Paige's future. The arch-traitor of Bone Season XVIII was XVIII-39-7. Also, Paige's London gang is based in Seven Dials, where seven roads converge on a sundial pillar.
- Cold Days: Twelve pops up, although the exact reason why isn't known. The Well leading to the prison cells on Demonreach has a staircase of seventeen hundred and twenty-eight, or twelve cubed, stairs, and there are twelve tunnels. Merlin must have held some reason for this.
- The Cosmere: Each of the sixteen Shards of Adonalsium seems to have a specific number associated with it. As might be expected, sixteen shows up across the Cosmere as well.
- Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: The number sixteen has a habit of showing up a lot, especially in the third book. The most obvious example of this motif is Allomancy, which is organized into four sets of four related metals. Those sixteen metals have uses in all three systems (we just don't know all of them). Also, exactly sixteen percent of people exposed to the Mists during book 3 fall ill, and they "snap" and become Mistings. Sixteen percent of those fall ill far longer than others, and they become Atium Mistings. It's explained that the number sixteen was used as Preservation's way of showing that he was giving them a hand after he died, basically a big sign saying "this number is not natural, pay attention when it comes up!"
- The Stormlight Archive: Honor is strongly associated with the number 10 (Ten orders of Knights Radiant, ten Surges, ten Heralds, ten Silver Kingdoms of humanity, etc.), while Odium seems to be associated with the number nine (nine Unmade, nine brands of Fused, nine days between Everstorms, etc). These motifs are often combined in a group of ten things of which nine are broken or corrupted (ten Heralds, nine of which broke their Oaths while one stayed true; ten orders of Knights, of which nine dissolved at the Recreance while one remained intact, ten Silver Kingdoms, of which nine betrayed humanity's original agreement with the singers while the tenth held to it; ten Alethi princedoms, of which one follows the Codes of War while the other nine abandoned them, and so on).
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: Virtuosity seems to have been associated with the number thirteen: there are a lot of thirteens in Yumi's rituals, while a nightmare requires thirteen feedings to achieve full stability, and there are thirteen yoki-hijo plus Yumi.
- The Dark is Rising: Six signs, six sleepers, seven trees in the Lost Land, four Things of Power, three from the Circle and three from the track... there also seems to be a repetition of things happening twice, or only being able to occur twice: the number of times the grail appears in the series, how many times the cipher manuscript can be read, the appearance of the carnival head and Herne the Hunter, the number of times the horn is blown, the number of times the harp of gold is played...
- The Divine Comedy: The Divine Comedy as a whole is structured around the number 100. Each section has 33 cantos, with the exception of Inferno, which has 34; the extra one serves as a general prologue for the entire poem.
- The Faerie Queene: There's a flurry of references to Christian numerology in the description of Alma's castle. The castle is shaped like a circle and a triangle simultaneously (representing God's perfection and the three-persons of the Trinity) that is also somehow proportioned off the numbers three and nine.
- Foucault's Pendulum: Lia gives Casaubon a talk about the meanings of numbers. The number one is special because every human is, well, one human and has one head, heart, nose, mouth, genital area, etc.; two is special because two people make a couple, and humans generally have two hands, feet, eyes, ears etc.; three, on the other hand, is so special because our bodies don't have three of anything (but man + woman + child make a family); etc.
- Gaunt's Ghosts: Nine is an important number to Saint Sabbat and her followers, being the number of wounds inflicted when she was martyred. It shows up a lot in the Saint arc, and it's almost never a good sign.
- Gentleman Bastard: Thirteen, the total number of gods in the most popular pantheon, including the Crooked Warden, who is not recognized outside of the underworld.
- Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi: The number three is featured a few times in the story. For example:
- 13 years of Wei Wuxian being dead.
- 33' whip marks.
- When Wei Wuxian is thrown into the Burial Mounds, he's stuck there for 'three' months.
- The Venerated Triad.
- 'Three characters of the Yi City arc lost their sight, with Xue Yang playing a role in it.
- Part of Jiang Cheng's title (Sandu Shengshou), which is also the name of his sword (Sandu), translates to "three poisons".
- Yu Ziyuan is also known as "Third Lady Yu" due to being the third-born child of the Yu Clan of Meishan.
- The novel itself has 113 chapters with 13 additional chapters.
- Jetlag Travel Guides: Exaggerated and parodied. Phaic Tăn has three very lucky numbers (12, 57, 4189), over 300 lucky numbers, a "mildly auspicious" number (4993), and two unlucky numbers (3 and 6). An entire appendix is needed to list them all.
- Mistress Masham's Repose: Numbers with calendrical significance recur throughout the description of the manor and grounds (for example, the manor has 365 windows, 52 state bedrooms, and 12 company rooms).
- Relic Master: There are seven Makers and seven moons, and the Sekoi have seven fingers per hand.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events: The number thirteen is everywhere. The main series consists of thirteen books, each with thirteen chapters. The thirteenth book has a "hidden" fourteenth chapter which serves as an epilogue, bringing the main series total to one hundred seventy chapters rather than one hundred sixty-nine.
- The Spider (1908): The numbers 3, 5, 6, and 7 are a recurring element in the story. Between five and six o'clock is when the suicides take place, and Bracquemont is found dead at five past six. As well, the events occur within the sixth arrondissement of Paris. Rule of Three goes because there's three victims when the story commences and Clarimonde's flat is said to have three windows. Rule of Seven goes because there's seven days between the suicide hours and the suicides happen in room #7.
- Tairen Soul: Five. Five Elemental Powers, five Fey warriors in a quintet, five-fold weaves, five books in the series, etc.
- Wiro Sableng: The number 212 means that everything in the world comes in opposing pairs that ultimately came from one divine being.
Live-Action TV
- Kamen Rider Fourze: Shun Daimonji is associated with the number 2. It's the number on his football jersey, he gives off a two finger salute, when he's shown in the opening, he's associated with the second Astroswitch, and his Shout-Out Theme Naming for past Kamen Riders is based on Hayato Ichimonji, aka Kamen Rider 2.
- Odd Squad: As this is a show about math, many, many of its villains are based on numbers or other mathematical concepts.
- Tommy Twosie is based on the number two. He wears two shirts, two hats, and two fanny packs.
- The Total Zeroes are a pair of siblings who subtract, add and multiply anything by zero.
- Crazy Eights, formerly Sister Zero, can multiply anything by eight.
- Frieda Fiver loves the number five, and she wears five necklaces.
- Odd Todd isn't themed around number 43, but he still uses it as his calling card as it was his badge number when he was a former Odd Squad agent.
- Squid Game: The numbers donned by the major important players are chosen to highlight their characters:
- Seong Gi-hun is numbered 456, indicating he's the last of the 456 players to be recruited into the game. Director Hwang Dong-hyuk has stated in a video by Vanity Fair
that his number being dead last is meant to represent his rock-bottom status in life. The number also reflects his status in the Squid Games: as the winner, he is the last one standing by the end of the games. Additionally, he dons Player 001's jacket after Il-nam was eliminated to highlight his protagonist status and how he would later be declared the winner of the 2020 Squid Games.
- Cho Sang-woo is numbered 218. As stated by Hwang in the same Vanity Fair video, the number in Korean sounds very similar to the Korean word "ssibal", a profanity which roughly translates to "fuck" or "fucker". Sang-woo accordingly becomes a villain who cruelly kills several other characters just to increase the odds that he'll get a huge payout.
- Number 001 is given to two characters within the first two seasons of the show, and it reflects the true nature of both people in the games. Season 1's Player 001 is Oh Il-nam, who is numbered 001 to reflect his status as the creator and mastermind behind the deathly games. In Season 2, the Front Man, the number one authority in the games after Il-nam's death, dons the 001 jacket while infiltrating the games as a player like Oh Il-nam did before him, and even selects the alias "Oh Young-il", which he himself points out is pronounced similarly to "001" in Korean. The Front Man even uses radio channel #1 on his walkie-talkie when communicating with his staff.
- Seong Gi-hun is numbered 456, indicating he's the last of the 456 players to be recruited into the game. Director Hwang Dong-hyuk has stated in a video by Vanity Fair
Manhua
- Parodied in Old Master Q when Chin and Big Potato goes to a restaurant. Chin made his orders: "One main dish. Two bowls of rice. Three-course chicken. Four chopsticks."
Music
- Blue Man Group:
- Except for the original Blue Man Group performance, "The Funeral for the Eighties", there are always three Blue Men. This is because this is the smallest number for minorities and majorities to form, which many of their acts and sketches revolve around.
- Each of their studio albums contain 14 tracks. The Complex actually contains 15 songs, but "Mandelbrot No. 4" is a hidden song after "Exhibit 13" on the 14th track.
- NCT: NCT 127 is so named because it's based in Seoul, Korea, which has a longitude coordinate of 127. It signifies that even though this is their home base, they will eventually branch out and conquer the music industry all over the world.
- Renata Flores: Her album's title, Isqun, translates as nine in Quechua. In the traditional pre-Columbian Andean worldview, nine is the triad of triads and, therefore, the reflection of the soul.
- Sleeping at Last: Atlas: Enneagram is based around The Enneagram. Each song is titled after a number (from One to Nine) and is sung from the perspective of someone fitting that personality type.
Mythology & Religion
- Celtic Mythology: The number three tends to show up a lot, from the triple goddess motif to the trilateral symmetrical knotwork used in decorations.
- Christian scripture tends to focus on motifs centered around three (the trinity of God) and seven (the days of Creation). Roman-era numerology later came to focus on six-hundred-and-sixty-six, the Number of the Beast.
- Threes tend to crop up a lot in the New Testament, such as Jesus dying at the age of 33 and being one of three prisoners executed on Golgotha, or Peter denying Jesus three times. Later Christian iconography tended to feature a lot of triangles for this reason.
- Out of Jesus' many miracles, the Gospel of John focuses only on seven, the number of perfection.
- Judaism: In certain schools of Rabbinical Judaism, the world is thought to be held up by 36 righteous people known as the Tzadikim Nistarim (Hidden Righteous Ones) at all times. They are perfectly good and virtuous, and their essential purpose is justifying the continued existence of mankind in the eyes of God. If even one of these thirty-six would be missing, the world would end.
- Serer Mythology:
- Three represents femininity while four represents masculinity. Together they form seven, which is the complete being.
- Five is shared between the five-pointed star and the human form with limbs outstretched. The four points are the cardinal directions while the fifth is Roog.
Tabletop Games
- Eberron: Thirteen-minus-one crops up a lot.
- Of thirteen Dragonmarked Houses, one (House Thuranni) split off from another one (House Phiarlan).
- Of thirteen Dragonmarks, one (the Mark of Death) has been eradicated.
- Of the thirteen nations recognized under the treaty of Thronehold, one was destroyed (Cyre).
- Of thirteen dwarven clans, one (Clan Noldrun) was lost.
- Of thirteen moons, one (Crya) was destroyed, resulting one of thirteen planes (Dal Quor) being inaccessible.
- M.A.G.U.S.: The Kyr (and any culture they fathered) had/have an obsession with odd numbers. Even numbers are either considered unlucky or are pretended to not exist.
Video Games
- The Cabinets of Doctor Arcana: Thirteen. There are thirteen primary rooms in the house, not counting the entrance foyer; these are entered by finding thirteen colorful gemstones scattered throughout the manor; and there are thirteen skeleton keys to be found, each locked inside one of thirteen cabinets.
- Call of Duty: Zombies: 115, the number of the mysterious space element that is used to make just about everything advanced in the game, and 935, the group that Richtofen and Maxis worked in. It appears everywhere, from the shadows of rockets to clocks.
- Undertale uses repeating sixes (sometimes including the Number of the Beast) and seventeen for Dr. W.D. Gaster. He doesn't have any assets for a battle, but internal data gives him nonsensical stats made entirely of sixes. A save can trigger the "mysteryman" Random Event with a Fun Value of 66, while his followers and theme song are available for 61, 62, 63, and 65. His theme song is seventeen seconds long and most of the text probably from Gaster is in the normally-inaccessible Entry #17, which has a wingding font indexed to 666. Both numbers show up in Deltarune in connection to the Voice: their text is likewise indexed to 666 and taking over the game's social media displayed their name as six blanks. Mysteriously, the shelter bunker at the forest uses the room ID 17 and plays a muffled version of the "garbage noise" from Entry #17 at 15% speed (i.e. the duration is multiplied by 20/3 = 6.6...).
- Fall from Heaven: Twenty-one gods, twenty-one civilizations, twenty-one Magic Spheres.
- Final Fantasy:
- Recurring monster, Tonberry, frequently has the numbers four, six and nine appear in its stats. Given that the Tonberry has achieved an outright memetic reputation as a meta status The Dreaded, with an average encounter against one of them typically eating through your revival items faster than most bosses can chew through your healing potions, these specific numbers make perfect sense.
- Final Fantasy VIII: The number eight recurs throughout the game. The Galbadian soldiers have 08 on their armour, the heroes have to catch a number 8 bus at one point, and there are eight playable characters (including the two Guest Star Party Members) in the present.
- Final Fantasy XIV has the Garlean Empire, in which every Legatus (leader of a military division) has traits that echo the game that matches their Legion's number. Examples include the first Legatus of the VIIth Legion wanting to drop a moon (meteor) on Eorzea, the Legatus of the VIth Legion being a Noble Demon like General Leo, the IVth Legion's deciding to go rogue against his nation, or the second Legatus of the VIIth Legion being a Hate Sink Mad Scientist responsible for Humongous Mecha versions of the WEAPONs.
- Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel has a puzzle in the library which requires you to rearrange seven books on a shelf based on the numbers in the titles to trigger a hidden mechanism for you to escape. You obtain a copy of The Three Musketeers first, and later sees six books arranged in random order - Seven Deadly Sins, The Bermuda Triangle, 6 years, A Tale of Two Cities, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Slaughterhouse-Five, with an empty slot where Musketeer should be placed. There's also a clever detail hidden in this puzzle - Bermuda Triangle is the third book in order while Three Musketeers is the fourth, because the latter book actually contains four musketeers (Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, Aramis)
- Groove Coaster: The track "零式", which officially translates to "TYPE-ZERO". The kanji for "zero", 零, as well as the Arabic numeral 0 in an LCD-counter font, appear throughout the track's visuals.
- Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: This game introduces the concept of the diametrically opposed seven guardians of light and thirteen seekers of darkness.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Ocarina of Time: In the latter half of the game, Link awakens after seven years and is tasked with rescuing the Seven Sages.
- The Minish Cap: The number 4. The four Elements, the Four Sword.
- LISA: The Pointless: As it resembles the infinity sign rotated 90 degrees, the Infinity Franchise is associated with the number 8. Members have "88" emblazoned on their jerseys, and only those who have killed at least 8 other people are permitted to join.
- Live A Live: Many chapters have some feature that involves doing something 100 times. In the Prehistory chapter, examining a specific object 100 times will get you a powerful accessory. The maximum number of kills you can get in the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter is 100. In the Near-Future chapter, examining the TV in the orphanage 100 times will get you a short Easter Egg scene. In the final chapter, retreating from battle 100 times will trigger a fight with Optional Boss Death Prophet; defeating it will give you a piece of the Cosmic equipment.
- Metroid Prime Pinball: The Artifact Temple heavily emphasizes 12. You're awarded 1,200 points per floor symbol touched, 120,000 points for shooting the board's saucer at the start and the 12 totems, and 1,200,000 points for shooting the saucer at the end.
- Persona 5: Yusuke has somewhat of an association with the number 5. He is the fifth party member to join the team; both Goemon and Gorokichi have the number "5" on their apparel (which is pronounced "Go" in Japanese); and their Arcana is the Emperor, which is numbered "IV" but is fifth in order when counting up from the Fool (0).
- Realms of the Haunting: Seven Seals, seven serpent statues, seven gems in Raysiel's Tower.
- Shadowverse: The design theme of the titular Omens in Omen of the Ten. Mjerrabaine, the first Omen, only works if you run single copies of every other card in the deck and control only one follower; Lishenna, the second Omen, sets up a combo around her two statues; Rulenye is a 3pp 3/3 that raises the cost of enemy spells by 3 at the cost of 3 shadows; Marwynn is a 4pp 4/4 that gives four distinct boons to both players; Izudia, the sixth Omen, sets the opponent's maximum health to 6, and so on.
- Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3: The true villains of the game are the 23 Society, an Expy of the Illuminati. The game mentions their name is a reference to the twenty-three phenomena, but, due to their focus on genetic engineering to create augmented humans, it also references humans' twenty-three chromosome pairs.
- Street Fighter V: The number 5 within Japanese wordplay and culture shares the same pronunciation as karma or destiny, being go. A lot of the game's thematic scheming is based on destiny and fate, as evidenced greatly by sense of change much of the cast presents in the story and their character. Storywise, V comes to tie up loose ends and wrap up the Alpha/Zero, II and IV era, showing where life will now take everyone into the future. When it comes to III, everyone is beginning to pop out of the woodwork as well, helping to also emphasize its installment's theme of "Fight for the future". Additionally, the game wrapped up its post-launch support with its fifth season (fittingly called Season V).
Visual Novels
- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: The Nonary Game itself comprises of 9 victims, 9 hours to escape, numbered doors from 1 to 9, 9 seconds before the numbered doors close when they open them, and 81 seconds (nine squared, and 81 has a digital root of 9) to find the detonator-deactivation-scanner once inside. Even the name of the game itself, as the word "nonary" means base-9 number system.
- In Tavern Talk, Baya is 555 years old, and according to the Lorebook, she made all 555 spa coupons by herself.
Web Comics
- Desu Nyan Fucking Shit: The 4444444 Kingdom is composed of a native race of horses (as in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) and is one of the biggest threats around.
- Homestuck:
- As the comic first released on March 13th, 4/13 and 413 tend to show up a lot — timers often count down from 413 units, Terezi uses the numeral 1, 3 and 4 in her leetspeak, and so on. Later, 628 (314 doubled) also begins to turn up.
- Duality and bifurcation in general turn up a lot — the paired troll and human universes, each with a pre- and post-Scratch session; the halving of each player group between Derse and Prospit dreamers; the bifurcation of Act 5, Sollux's duality theme...
- Several trolls have number motifs related to their other zodiacal and animal themes:
- Sollux, the Gemini troll, has a thing with duality and the number two. He's got twice the usual amount of horns, his guardian monster has two heads, and when typing he replaces "s" with "2" and doubles instances of "i".
- Terezi types with "the numerals of the blind prophets" — i.e., she substitutes I with 1, E with 3 and A with 4.
- Vriska is associated with eight. Her sign is Scorpio and her guardian monster a Giant Spider, giving her an association with the eight-legged arachnids, and her left eye has seven pupils for a total of eight. When typing, she replaces "b" with "8", uses eight-eyed emoticons (i.e. "::::)"), and repeats letters and question and exclamation marks eight times when excited or making a point.
- Equius is associated with 100. He's named after a Zoroastrian mythological villain whose other name means "He who owns 10,000 horses", he uses "100" and "001" to replace instances of "loo" and "ool" when typing, and uses percent signs to replace the letter x.
- Kill la Kill AU: Apparently, six is not a lucky number, in that Ragyo was hit by car when she turned six, and, six years after her assumed death, we have Ryuuko who became a delinquent and was almost sent to a supposed Boarding School of Horrors so she could go to the same school as her sisters. It should also be noted that Ragyo ended up in the hospital, subsequently being placed on life support when she was six and six years ago, when Ryuuko was two, she was also placed on life support.
Western Animation
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Horde Prime has four eyes, four dreadlocks sitting in clips on his chest, and his throne room has four paths leading out.
- South Park: Post Covid: Victor Chaos' cell number in the asylum is 41002-66. This represents the date (4/10/2002) and episode (Season 6 Episode 6) Professor Chaos debuted on the show.
- Young Justice (2010): A sixteen-member Justice League, the setting is Earth-16, Miss Martian is 16 by Martian years, Superboy is 16 weeks old, Wally is woken up on his sixteenth birthday at sixteen minutes past the hour, the first season finale began at 00:16 hours on December 31st (and continues after the end of the opening exactly seven hours later at 07:16), and the end of the episode comes with the revelation that six members of the League, including the Big Three, were missing for 16 hours. The second season, which opens five years after the first, starts at 16:16, in the year 2016note When asked about it, Weisman's only response was "<chuckles evilly>." He gave that response on August 16.