Basic Trope: No matter how many time is left on the timer, you always escape just in time.
- Straight: When you trigger the cutscene with 3 minutes on the timer, it considers you have just a few seconds left for it.
- Exaggerated: You have two in game years left to finish the game. When you trigger the end cutscene, you made it in the last millisecond.
- Downplayed: When you trigger a cutscene after escaping an area with toxic air, the characters will always act sick and weak no matter how much time you had left.
- Justified:
- What happened during the cutscene reduced the time to failure. Say, using a seismic generator to collapse a wall when escaping from an unstable power core about to overload...
- The time was just a rough estimate, and the bomb went off/supports collapsed/villains arrived earlier than expected.
- Inverted: You have one second left on the timer. The game somehow treats it as you having gone at least 10 minutes before leaving, with many characters congratulating you on being so fast as to get out.
- Subverted:
- In an otherwise straight example, an "[X AMOUNT OF TIME] later..." subtitle or other explicit Time Skip cuts to the moment the bomb blows up.
- The countdown keeps ticking even while the cutscene plays, and the bomb may explode before you escape if you did not have enough time left.
- 3 minutes left on the timer. During the escape cutscene, everybody acts like they just make it in time. Then, the cutscene focuses on the bomb, displaying the accurate gameplay time remaining...
- Double Subverted:
- However, that was just an out-of-universe gag, as other characters mention to you that you barely made it, much to the confusion of your character.
- Well, the bomb actually explodes once you get out, even if you didn't have enough time left.
- ...And blowing up early.
- Parodied:
- Every single timer in the world works the same way - an egg timer will go off as soon as the person who sets it leaves the room.
- (along with invoked) You actually have to wait for the timer to be on the last 10 seconds, even if you've made it to the exit 5 minutes ago. It's not like there's an obstacle in the way; your player character just does it for theatrics, much to the chagrin of others.
- Zig Zagged: The bomb is set for three minutes, you escape and it goes off after twenty seconds. Then they discover that was only a secondary bomb, and the main bomb is still ticking. Then ten seconds later it almost explodes but it malfunctions, causing it to keep on running. When someone re-enters it immediately jumps to ten seconds, forcing a Wire Dilemma.
- Averted:
- The characters reacts as you would expect considering how much time is left on the timer, and the event happens when the timer goes to 0.
- The bomb doesn't have a timer attached.
- Enforced: The game was made in a pretty old time; Being able to make a cutscene that actually shows how much time was left on the bomb's clock depending on the actual time limit would've been outright revolutionary in that time.
- Lampshaded: "And so our heroes have escaped the bomb just in time! Wait, just in time...?"
- Invoked: "You have escaped the place? Good! I'll trigger the explosion earlier than scheduled then!" *Press the switch*
- Exploited: The heroes, knowing that the building will explode the moment they leave, rely on the explosion to kill the baddies as soon as they leave.
- Defied: The demolitionist specifically designed the bomb so nothing could make it explode before the scheduled time.
- Discussed: "So why do bombs always explode early around us?" "Just our bad luck, I guess."
- Conversed: "Wait; the heroes escaped as quickly as possible, how the hell is the bomb just behind them?" "Rule of Drama, dude. Move on".
- Deconstructed: The timer is set for a long time, and behind the hero are a group of workers moving the Statue of Souls slowly down the corridor. As you leave the explosion is triggered, killing the workers and destroying the MacGuffin.
- Reconstructed: The bomb only goes off once everyone within the radius is clear, not just the hero.
"Two minutes before self-destruction." Here's the link! *KABOOM*
