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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39937
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I do have to comment that your first example is getting kinda laughable in it's ability to cause a sense of Urgency... we all know it will be the last possible second that the bomb will be defused, especially in the climax and the heroes are present. A better example would be a Hitchcock bomb where the unaware party is discussing a mundane topic while the scene keeps cutting to the countdown of the bomb. The tension of the scene is built by the audience's exclusive knowledge of the bomb's presance, not the defusing of a bomb.

Another good example is the use of the device from the Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man" where two men are locked in the room with a bomb and the situation is developed in such a way that one man is ready to die, but will release the other if and only if a certain condition unknown to both the audience and the second man is met.

A ticking bomb that must be defused, rarely does this job because, we all know the blast will be stopped at 0:01 on a digital clock. The best way to subvert the expectation is to have a 15 minute count down stopped at 10:00... then cut to an office party at HQ to celebrate the Spy Agencies newest record for bomb disarmament by the hero. With Cake and Punch.

The one story example I saw with a good subversion of the countdown was in Disney's Basil of Baker Street where the titular hero realizes that the only way out of the deathtrap (with a countdown) is to trigger the whole device prematurely at the right moment, and cause a cascading chain reactions of failures.

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