Late to the Party: Difference between revisions

** Averted in [[Bio Shock Infinite (Video Game)|Bio Shock Infinite]], however. Both factions are still fighting, and Columbia hasn't been reduced to the horrific crumbling state of Rapture where everything seems to be hanging by a thread and ready to flood at the slightest provocation. It's still going to be very dangerous though.

** In Bioshock 2, there's a subplot of a busisnessman who stumbled upon Rapture looking for his missing daughter {{spoiler|who was turned into a Little Sister}} told through audio logs. {{spoiler|Right before you enter one area of the game, you hear - in the actual world and not an audio log - the man screaming to "get away from her." When you go inside, you can find a suitcase full of surprisingly-normal possessions and an audio log. The audio log ends with the businessman screaming the same desperate pleas you had just heard from outside the room. It turns out that you'd been mere minutes behind him for most of the way.}} You'd think that'd be the end of that plotline, but right before the finale {{spoiler|you're late to the party again, because apparently the businessman didn't die there, and was instead dragged off to become a Big Daddy who would serve his own daughter as a little sister. You find an audio log telling you this directly after you encounter (and let's be honest, probably killed) a Big Daddy with a name matching the businessman from the audio logs, right next to an operating table for the creation of Big Daddies.}}

* This occurs a number of times in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', usually involving a previous bloody massacre by Sephiroth or the shady dealings of the Shinra organization.

* This gets ludicrous throughout the middle of ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', wherein nearly every city the protagonist comes across is {{spoiler|obliterated}} literally moments before he arrives. The [http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html list of console RPG cliches] actually names this "curse" after the main character -- who, granted, was created to {{spoiler|bring destruction}}, but not by arriving five minutes ''after'' every plot-related catastrophe.

** There are a few examples, though, which fit this trope especially well:

*** "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead:" the Doctor and companion (and an archaeological expedition) arrive a century after the "event"

* ''[[Lost]]'' was partially inspired by games such as ''[[Myst]]'' in which the character finds himself in a strange place with little information, including the objectives of the game. As the characters have explored the island, they've found the abandoned Dharma stations, numerous skeletons, and what was once a large statue, which now has been reduced to a lone foot.

* Ripley and the Colonial Marines in ''[[Aliens]]''.

* In ''[[At the Mountains of Madness (Literature)|At the Mountains of Madness]]'', all of the dying happens before the viewpoint characters arrive.

* [[John Carpenter]]'s ''[[The Thing (Film)|The Thing]]'' got dug up by, and slaughtered, a <s>Scandinavian</s> Norwegian expedition team before it found its way into the American outpost in Antarctica.

* Jay in ''[[Marble Hornets]]'' begins his investigation nearly three years after the events recorded in the tapes. Most of the cast has scattered or disappeared and several locations trashed by the time Jay looks for them.

* ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' includes this in each book. First book: "What happened to Dahak's crew?" Second book: "What happened to the Fourth Imperium?" Third book: "What happened to Pardal's techbase?"

* In the pilot episode of ''[[Crusade (TV)|Crusade]]'', [[The Captain|Gideon]] arrives to Earth days after the battle with the Drakh (see ''[[Babylon 5 (TV)|Babylon 5]]: [[A Call To Arms]]''). All the crew see are ship wreckage and infected Earth. Matheson comments that they were late for the party even before they jumped. Then again, there's not much they could've done with a research vessel with enough weapons to scare off an occasional [[Space Pirates|raider]] or two.