Just in Time: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Simmons, you get an F in efficiency, but I have to give you an A+ in dramatic timing!"''|'''Sarge''', ''[[Red vs. Blue]]''}}

 

 

 

Alternately, the [[Magnetic Hero|hero]] is in dire straits until [[The Cavalry]], his [[Character-Magnetic Team|ragtag band]] of [[Fire-Forged Friends|acquired friends]], arrives to save the day.

 

Contrast [[You Are Too Late]], [[Remembered Too Late]].

 

No relation to the eponymous time-traveller, '''Just in Time''' (which is just a pun on the term).

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Some varieties:

 

{{examples}}

* In one of the ''[[Appleseed]]'' movies, Deunan gets to the console that can shut down the rampaging mechas with more than a minute of time to spare before they are in position to fire their main guns. But this doesn't do her any good when {{spoiler|it happens that the keyboard of the console has been damaged in the fight and the M key isn't working to enter the password.}}

* This is common in ''[[Bleach]]''. One notable case is when Grimmjow's rampage gets interrupted twice in the same episode. Ichigo turns up at Rukia's execution to stop the supposedly unstoppable...giant magical bird that would destroy [[No Kill Like Overkill|even her soul]]. As soon as it's mentioned Ichigo can't ''possibly'' block it twice, Ukitake and Kyoraku blow the thing up, with the former apologising for being late.

* Done in episode 13 of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'': Judai duels a monkey named [[Fun with Acronyms|SAL]] to save one of Asuka's friends, and tells the scientist to promise that he'll set SAL free when he's done. In the end, Judai wins, [[I Lied|but the scientist refuses to let SAL go.]] Just when all hope is lost, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Daitokuji-sensei sics Pharaoh on the scientist's men and gives all of them a warning.]]

 

* Subverted in ''[[Watchmen]]'': {{spoiler|Rorschach and Nite Owl II arrive "just in time" to challenge Ozymandias; but it turns out he knew they were coming and set his plans irreversibly in motion [[You Are Too Late]].}}

 

== Films ==

* In ''[[Jurassic Park]]'', the Tyrannosaurs Rex appears and kills the velicoraptors before they can kill the humans.

* In ''[[Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life|Pokémon Arceus and The Jewel of Life]]'', Arceus uses Flamethrower at Ash and the gang and their new friends but Giratina appears and takes the flames for them. Good thing it's not very effective.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Around the World in Eighty Days]]'' ends the third to last chapter with Fogg concluding he has arrived too late and lost his bet, leaving him ruined. However, the penultimate chapter has him suddenly arriving just in time to win after all. As the surprised reader wonders how he pulled that off, the narrator explains that Fogg forgot to account for gaining a day after crossing the International Date Line, meaning he arrived early without knowing it and would never have realized his mistake in time if his love, Aouda, hadn't set off a chain of events that alerted Fogg he still had time to win the bet.

* Considered an actual duty by the Roving Reptilian Rescuers in Walter Moers' ''[[The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear|The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Bluebear]]''. Unless it's absolutely vital, they refuse to show up at any point before the last moment. [[Lampshade Hanging|One of them is actually named]] [[Deus Ex Machina|Deus X. "Mac" Machina]].

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "[[Xuthal of the Dusk|The Slithering Shadow]]", [[Conan the Barbarian]], running away from a [[Zerg Rush]], gets dropped through a [[Trap Door]] [[It's a Small World After All|to where Natala has been abducted]], just in time to save her from the [[Living Shadow]].

 

* ''[[Walker, Texas Ranger]]'': Regularly used, to varyingly degrees. A frequent use will be a split second before the villain is about to leave town, kill someone or carry out a particularly evil act (e.g., committ a huge bank robbery and kill hundreds of people inside), only for Walker and Trivette to arrive at the last second – with an army of police officers – and, after interrupting the vile act, beat up the bad guys.

* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'': In the 1980s revival premiere, "A Little Peace and Quiet," a woman who finds an amulet that can stop time uses her gift selfishly; unable to control her chaotic household/bratty children/henpecking husband/rude neighbors, she stops time to regain her senses. The backstory – rapidly deteriorating tensions between the Untied States and the Soviet Union – marches to the forefront at the end of the story, when the USSR unleashes a large-scale nuclear attack on the United States. Just a split second before her neighborhood is swallowed up in a nuclear blast, the woman manages to freeze time (with the words, "Shut up!"). This leaves the woman forever in a state of frozen time, living alone in what is thought to represent the last instant before the explosion and resulting blast envelopes her hometown. (Indeed, in the distance, a large fireball – presumably growing – is seen; that explosion could be heard in the final second before the woman manages to freeze time.)

* Tragically averted in an episode of [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space 9]]. While the crew of the ''Defiant'' looks like they'll be able to {{spoiler|save a stranded Federation officer they've been in contact with}} it turns out they were too late. Worse, they were {{spoiler|several years too late}} because they had actually been {{spoiler|unwittingly sending messages to the recent past before she had died}}.

 

 

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

** A face wrestler who is on the verge of defeat will either 1. Kick out (sometimes, rather emphatically) out of a sure pinfall at the last possible instant before the referee completes the three count – almost always, after the heel wrestler performs a powerful finishing move on the face; 2. appear to pass out from a very powerful submission hold, only to rally by either powering himself out of the hold or reaching the ring ropes, which, under the rules, almost always requires the aggressive wrestler to break the hold.

** A "weaker" wrestler – a jobber or one of the mid- to upper-card faces – will suffer a severe beatdown by one or more heels (often including a monster heel). Just as the face/jobber is about to be finished off for good, the head babyface will run out to the ring and run the bad guys off.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** In 3e, this is one of the basic powers of an Aspect 3 Miracle—it ensures that whenever you use it to take some physical action, you complete it either 'instantly', 'at just the right time', or (in an absolute ''worst'' case) 'just in time.' Unless opposed by another Miracle, you are always guaranteed to be at least just in time when using Aspect 3.

 

== Video Games ==

** Taken [[Serial Escalation]] in the final case of ''Investigations'', where this happens four times in succession whenever the [[Big Bad]] tries to make his escape. {{spoiler|First Shi-Long Lang and his Interpol men appear to strip Alba of his diplomatic immunity, then Gumshoe arrives with the pushcart used to sneak the murder victim across the embassy, then Larry Butz and Wendy Oldbag show up with proof of how the body could've gotten back over to the embassy's other side, and finally an unnamed police officer arrives with the final damning evidence.}} To be fair, the last two were already there.

* A chilling subversion comes in ''[[Rainbow Six]]: Vegas 2''. Your squad of highly trained covert anti-terror badasses arrive in a Rec Center where hostages are being held... just in time for the terrorists to fill the area with poison gas, killing the civilians.

* Sabin in ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]''. Turns into a [[Duel Boss]] battle.

* In ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3: Corruption'', Samus learns that her ship is under attack while it's parked. As she returns to her ship, the damage gets progressively worse, before arriving to the scene of the crime, finding that {{spoiler|a corrupted Ghor}} is pounding at its hull. {{spoiler|Ghor himself}} looks at Samus to say "just in time!" before attacking her.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''W-a-a-a-y'' overused in the first season of ''[[Code Lyoko]]'', to the point where it was practically a [[Once an Episode]] deal. There was even an episode ''called'' "Just In Time," but it was much closer to "By A Hair" in the original French (a more fitting pun, since one of the important plot devices was a strand of Aelita's hair {{spoiler|which Jeremy managed to materialize and used to revirtualize her when she was deleted near the end of the episode}}).

* In ''[[Between the Lions]]'', this is the source of a [[Punny Name]] for the protagonist of a book series that one of Lionel's friends likes ''instead'' of ''Cliff Hanger''. The apparent structure is that Justin Time is relaxing in a hammock when some random oblivious threat comes along. He gets out of the way ''just in time'', and goes back to relaxing.

* In ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'''s ''Treasure of Monte Zoom'' arc, there's a joke about the heroes always showing up in "the 'Ta-da' nick of time," leading Bullwinkle to wait around instead of going to save the day and arriving too early.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Tropes of Legend]]

[[Category:Plot Time]]

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Index to The Rescue]]

[[Category:Time Tropes]]