Always Close/Playing With
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 second.
- Justified: What happened during the cutscene reduced the time to failure.
- Inverted: You have one second left on the timer. The escape cutscene lasts 10 minutes, and only at the end, everything blows up
- Subverted: 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: 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.
- 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.
- 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 makers want a dramatic ending, and not one where the hero escapes and the bomb doesn't go off.
- 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 triger the explosion earlier than scheduled then!" *Press the switch*
- Defied: The bombmaker 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 I escaped as quickly as possible, how the hell is the bomb just behind me?" "Rule of Drama, dude. Move on".
"Two minutes before self-destruction." Here's the link! *KABOOM*