You Are Too Late: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"[[All Blue Entry|Dan]], [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|I'm not a Republic serial villain.]] [[Did You Actually Believe?|Do you seriously think]] [[Just Between You and Me|I'd explain my masterstroke]] [[Defied Trope|if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome?]] [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|I did it thirty-five minutes ago]]."''|'''{{spoiler|Ozymandias}}''', ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]''}}

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:

# The hero is still in time to stymie the villain's overall plan, but [["Friend or Idol?" Decision|only at the cost of]] a [[Heroic Sacrifice]], or the death of the [[Love Interest]], [[True Companions|close friend(s)]], or (rarely) an innocent bystander. Often results in a [[Bittersweet Ending]] or [[Downer Ending]].

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== Web Original ==

* Comedic example: In an episode of ''[[Hey Ash Whatcha Playin]]'', Ashley declares that she's going to poop in Anthony's bed while he's playing ''[[Guitar Hero]]''. Anthony tries to pause the game and stop her, but it turns out that she broke the pause button earlier. By the time he finishes playing... well, I'll let the dialogue speak for itself.

* Comedic example: In an episode of ''[[Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?]]'', Ashley declares that she's going to poop in Anthony's bed while he's playing ''[[Guitar Hero]]''. Anthony tries to pause the game and stop her, but it turns out that she broke the pause button earlier. By the time he finishes playing... well, I'll let the dialogue speak for itself.

{{quote|'''Ashley:''' [[You Are Too Late|You're too late]]! Enjoy the poop!<br />

'''Anthony:''' {{spoiler|...this is your room.}}<br />

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* In the first ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' book, Richard pretends to be touched by Kahlan's power, then makes Darken Rahl open the wrong box, which kills him.

* In the ''[[Incarnations of Immortality]]'' series, 'With a Tangled Skein', the personification(s) of Fate is trying to prevent a diobolical plot of Satan's to sabotage some sort of ceremony. Many sidequests ensue as they follow their suspect before realizing that they royally screwed up by following a decoy around the whole time. Cue a Satan showing up to mock their failure. It's all right, though, because during the course of the sidequests and subplots they alerted Chronos (the incarnation of time) to Satan's plot, and he simply called the ceremony's hosts and told them to call it off once he was certain they would fail.

* In ''[[Mistborn]]'', heroine Vin releases the power of the Well of Ascension and rejects godhood in order to defeat the unknown power in the process of destroying the world. {{spoiler|Except that in so doing, she actually ''unleashed'' aforementioned power, the dark god Ruin, from his imprisonment, as per a plan that had been set in motion milennia ago}}. ''Then'' it turns out that {{spoiler|Ruin's opposite number, Preservation, had been manipulating ''him'' into rushing headlong to his own destruction so that a new god combining aspects of both could be elevated}}.

== Live-Action TV ==

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* The ending of the first [[Myth Arc]] of ''[[Bionicle]]''. [[Big Bad|Makuta Teridax]] is revealed to have been playing the heroes as [[Unwitting Pawn|Unwitting Pawns]], taking possession of Mata Nui's body, a [[Humongous Mecha]] containing the whole Matoran World, during a crucial part of the process of reviving the Great Spirit so that when the Toa Nuva finally awoke Mata Nui, they woke it with his mind. Mata Nui's soul itself is placed inside the Mask of Life and jettisoned out into space.

* A ''[[Donald Duck]]'' comic features Donald desperately trying to find and deliver a recycled can of soda to the soda manufacturer, thereby making his total number of returned cans ten thousand and granting him a yacht to a tropical island. He arrives ''just'' a few seconds too late, and is greeted by the manufacturer with this line.

* The "Ground Zero" storyline of Peter David's run on the Hulk. Hulk finds a Gamma Bomb planted in the middle of a small town by the Leader. He fights off the Leader's guards, and is about to disable the bomb--when it blows up.

* In the 2009 [[DCU]] one-shot "Faces of Evil: Kobra", the new leader of the Kobra cult is [[Do Not Adjust Your Set|broadcasting to the world]] his intentions to transform the organization and kill everyone associated with his predecessor. He does this from within a Checkmate base, where earlier in the issue, Superman had delivered a bunker full of half-reptilian [[Half-Human Hybrid]] babies rescued from the predecessor's [[Tyke Bomb]] program. As the new Kobra prepares to execute the infants, Superman takes off from the JLA satellite, but finds only flaming rubble when he arrives at what used to be the Checkmate base, making it apparent that the broadcast was not live.