Just In Time - Television Tropes & Idioms

"That was too close...you were almost a Jill Sandwich!"
—Barry Burton, from the original Good Bad Translation of Resident Evil

Miraculous saves in the nick of time that inevitably make the viewer groan. Oh and by "miraculous", we of course mean "contrived." Frequently occurs explicitly when a bomb must be disarmed, and invariably is only disarmed when there are seconds to go, regardless of how long the initial countdown was.

Some varieties:

Examples:

Referenced in Doctor Who with the following quote:
The Doctor: Thank you, Brigadier. But do you think for once in your life you could manage to arrive before the nick of time?
In the original Miracle on 34th Street, Kris Kringle's lawyer, Fred Gailey, interrupts the judge just as he is about to sign the commitment order for Kris. However, Fred immediately points out that even if he had been too late to stop the judge, he could have simply filed a habeus corpus motion and challenged the commitment anyway, meaning the nick of time entrance just meant that Mr. Gailey was spared some extra work for his client.
Literary example: In the Discworld novel Moving Pictures, Victor ponders the idea that since the Theory Of Narrative Causality would ensure he arrives in the Nick of Time, he could stop to catch his breath but decides against it, because that would break the rules: He'll inevitably arrive in the nick of time, so long as he dramatically gives his all to get there.
Subverted in an episode of My Parents Are Aliens: a countdown clock reaches zero - and goes on down into the negative numbers. "On our home planet, countdowns go to minus 10!"
Subverted in Watchmen: Rorschach and Nite Owl II arrive "just in time" to challenge Ozymandias; but he knew they were coming and set his plans irreversibly in motion half an hour prior.
Of course, it's pointed out in the movie Galaxy Quest: The main characters star in a Star Trek-like show that makes frequent use of this trope, and the aliens that catch the signal and then base their entire society on the show don't realize it's fake. So they design their bombs to stop at exactly 1 second to go, since they always do so on the show.
W-a-a-a-y overused in the first season of Code Lyoko. Heck, it was practically a Once An Episode deal.
Several cases in the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series have everything seem lost, only for a casebreaking piece of evidence to appear at just the last moment. A particularly extreme example occurs in the first game. The judge declares a Guilty verdict and even starts to go through the normal game over sequence before being interrupted at literally the last second.
The fight in Naruto against Kimimaro, which has three. To summarize: Naruto is fighting Kimimaro, and Kimimaro is about to kill him. At the last possible second, someone shows up and saves Naruto, though you at least saw him coming there. He ends up not doing so well, and Kimimaro is about to kill him, but then at the last possible second someone else shows up out of absolutely nowhere and saves him. That person manages to seemingly defeat Kimimaro, but Kimimaro survives and starts off one last attack to kill them, and then at the last possible second he dies from his illness.
Real Life, just this morning. The bus this troper was on after a training session was canceled reached the Post Exchange bus stop just as the second bus she had to catch did. TV-perfect timing. Which allowed troper to get to work that much sooner.
- A Real Life example for this troper was when she was late for school, and got into the classroom just as her name was called on the register, narrowly avoiding a detention for being late.
- Just the other day, this troper went into 7-Eleven to get bus fare, and upon exiting, saw the bus right there. I had to cross two streets and sprint half a block to make it to the bus stop, though— good thing my sister was there as well, letting the bus driver know what was up. (The bus driver copped an attitude, though.)
Subverted in Monty Pythons Flying Circus: In one scene, a Russian rifle squad is about to execute a "spy" when a messenger runs in at the last second and stops them. The message? "Carry on with the execution".