You Are Too Late: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

In a dramatic moment, some [[Big Damn Heroes]] burst into the villain's hideout to foil his [[Evil Plan]] but find that they're too late. This can go several ways:

Compare [[Remembered Too Late]].

 

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Halo]]'''s fifth level, Cortana sends the player to stop an [[Zombie Apocalypse|outbreak]] of [[Not Using the Z Word|the Flood]], "before it's too late!". Turns out it is, and the only way to stop them from spreading out into the galaxy is to destroy the titular fortress world along with any human survivors still on it.

** In the level "The Covenant", Johnson is captured to be used to activate the array. Master Chief is a bit too far away, so Miranda goes in after him. They almost sacrifice themselves, but Truth kills Keyes before she can carry it out, then activates the rings. MC and the Arbiter, with the [[Enemy Mine]] help of the Flood, arrive [[Just in Time]] to deactivate them.

** Still, at the end of the game Soap and Price are wanted as traitors with no real way to clear their names, the Americans have repelled the Russian invasion but at the cost of many civilian deaths and the eastern seaboard heavily damaged by an EMP, Makarov escaped, and World War III is just getting underway.

** Guess again. At Fort Besselat, he floods the battlefield, essentially {{spoiler|stopping the Lion War as it reached its peak}}. He also would have probably succeeded in rescuing Orlandeu even if Delita hadn't {{spoiler|staged that execution}}. Before that, he spirits both the Virgo Stone & the Germonic Scriptures away before the Knights Templar can get their hands on them. Granted, they eventually {{spoiler|get them anyway}}, but he still shows up JUST in time to thwart the [[Big Bad]]. Whether or not he managed to {{spoiler|save his sister}} is a matter of debate.

** While Ramza fails to stop the corrupt church or the machinations of his childhood friend turned evil Delita, he does arrive in time to deal with a much worse threat, in the form of the Fallen Angel Ultima.

* ''[[Persona 3]]''. The party is the [[Unwitting Pawn]] that, about halfway in, allows the [[Big Bad]] to summon the [[Eldritch Abomination]], and find out three-thirds down the story that they've been too late to stop it ever since. They nonetheless manage to prevent the Abomination from destroying humanity, {{spoiler|though the main character dies in the process of doing it.}}

 

=== Webcomics ===

* In ''[[Endstone]]'', [http://endstone.net/2009/03/02/issue-1-page-5/ they didn't stop Jon from rocking the two over-stones.] Kyri stops him but is tossed through time, leaving her daughter behind and [[Parental Abandonment|alone]].

 

=== Web Original ===

* [[Peter Chimaera]]'s ''[[Quarter-Life: Halfway To Destruction]]'' - the "bad guy from the game" announces Gordon Freeman and his friend Jim are too late to stop his plan before he even begins listing off his demands, and Jim is "blowed to smitheroons"

{{quote|"IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO MY DEMANS" - "TOO LATE".}}

* ''[[Broken Saints]]'' features a subversion that is closest to this: the heroes arriving in the secret lair at all is actually ''part of'' the [[Big Bad]]'s plan; he wants them to become his first disciples in the new world order. Though the heroes are too late to stop the plan, a pair of [[Heroic Sacrifice]]s allows them to reverse the effect.

 

== Second Kind ==

 

=== Video Games ===

** A similar scenario occurs in ''[[Red Alert]] 1'': Stalin has a nuclear facility, and it is unknown whether any atomic bomb has been armed yet.

*** Naturally, some of them are, in time for them to be launched ''during'' the mission. Next mission: infiltrate the command centre, deactivate the bombs in flight.

* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'': Act 3. Ocelot can now disable the world's conventional armed forces, but cannot yet launch a nuclear strike or assume total control over their information warfare machine, but see type 5 below.

* Just about all the endings of the original ''[[Drakengard]]''. The canonical one plays it straightest: You're too late to stop Furiae's death and the breaking of the last seal, and have to stop Manah's [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|final form]] single-handedly. The other endings are ''some'' variant of this as well (usually involving being too late to stop Furiae from kicking the bucket somehow), but with copious amounts of [[It Got Worse]] and [[Mind Screw]] thrown into the mix.

* In the second ''[[Onimusha]]'' game, when [[Yagyu Jubei|Jubei]] finally confronts demonic [[Evil Overlord]] [[Oda Nobunaga|Nobunaga]], Nobunaga immediately tells Jubei that he is too late and that Nobunaga has completed the final step of his plan, animating a giant golden statue. (Considering that you could only learn of this plan through a couple of notes left laying around, players who either didn't find or pay attention to these notes could conceivably have no idea what Nobunaga is talking about). Fortunately Jubei gets an [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower]] from the [[MacGuffin]]s he has been collecting, enabling him to take Nobunaga down in a not terribly difficult boss fight.

* The finale of the main campaign of ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]]''. The original plan to relight the Dragonfires to keep the forces of Mehrunes Dagon at bay is rendered moot when Mehrunes Dagon and his army finally break through and appear in the capital. In the end, Martin Septim shatters the Amulet of Kings and sacrifices himself to become an avatar of the dragon god Akatosh and banishes Mehrunes Dagon back to Oblivion. Sadly, Martin does not survive the ordeal.

== Third Kind ==

The villain's plan is his own undoing; [[Pyrrhic Villainy|he succeeds thoroughly but loses anyway]].

* [[Loyalty]] has the climax of the Desert retreival arc. {{spoiler|Sakura has just spent the better part of Two chapters chargeing alone through the desert, chaseing a hunch that Hinata is still alive. Amazeingly she picks up the trail, and locates the kidnappers. The chase culminates with her spotting Hinata leaned against a tree, tied up. She spends the better part of two hours painstakingly setting up her retreival tunnle and sabatogeingher opponent. Only to discover Hinata was dead long before, her body is boobytrapped. Her eyes have been plucked out. This all leaves Sakura in shock. Hinata was, for all intents and purposes, Sakura's only friend. The Rain chuunin who murdered Hinata sees Sakura in shock, and thinks he'll simply walk up and cut her throat. Instead he gets the surprise of his life when Sakura engages an epic murdurous rage and attacks him. She is nearly killed in turn, but manages to take him down for a Crowning Moment.}}

 

* ''[[Dead Rising]]''. Carlito dies if you continue the main storyline, but he has already destroyed one American city and has planted walking [[Zombie Infectee|children zombie bombs]] with host families all over the country.

* The third ending of ''[[Drakengard]]''. Manah gets the closest to succeeding in her plan—only to get defeated by the dragons, who suddenly decide that enough is enough and that [[Kill All Humans|humanity has to die]] before they end up dooming the world.

 

=== Web Original ===

 

=== Western Animation ===

* Happens in the finale of [[The Secret Saturdays]]: {{spoiler|Argost succeeds in capturing Zak and stealing his Kur Powers; unfortunately for him, he had earlier stolen the powers of his [[Evil Twin|anti-matter clone]], and as everyone knows, matter and anti-matter tend to not get along well. Cue the villain imploding.}}

 

== Fourth Kind ==

=== Real Life ===

* The opinion of many a more conservative person of the [[Magical Particle Accelerator|Large Hadron Collider]]'s [[Super Mode|mode change]] from firing protons to heavy lead ions [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11711228 as part of the ALICE Experiment], as most US news outlets did not report on the event (the planning of which was the catalyst for many a [[The End Is Nigh|Doomsday Theory]] about [[Black Holes Suck|Black Holes]] and [[The Virus|Strangelets]]) until an entire day later. Of course, for the rest of us geeks, it's a [[Real Life/Awesome|Crowning Moment of Awesome for Science]].

 

== Sixth Kind ==

'''Marigold:''' Ha ha ha ha! Er, a sinister secret plan! }}

* [[Bob and George]] [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/040223c Only a few moments too late]

 

=== Western Animation ===

* Played straight for comedy in the [[Phineas and Ferb]] episode "That Sinking Feeling".

{{quote|"You know what, [[Everything's Better with Platypi|Perry the Platypus]], I think it's time for you to go. That's right, go on, your services are no longer required. The lighthouse is gone and there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well run back to Major Monogram and tell him you lost this one."}}

* The second season finale of ''[[Beast Wars]]'' ended with Megatron basically erasing the Maximals from existence. Season three had them fix it, [[No Export for You|but not every region got that part.]]

* Happened in the ''[[Captain Planet]]'' episode "Whoo Gives a Hoot". The Planeteers attempt to stop Looten Plunder with a court injunction against clear-cutting an old growth forest. Despite their success in finding what they need to stop the cutting, Looten's clumsy, stupid minions actually managed to succeed in stealing the evidence, leaving Plunder free to continue. The Planeteers and judge eventually discover Looten's deception, only to discover that Looten had already cut down all the trees. The episode ends on that note, with him laughing in their faces about it and daring them to try and stop him again.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Time Tropes]]