Basic Trope: A character or characters avoid death due to lucky, random chance with no outside interference.
- Straight: Bob leaves his office building earlier than usual for lunch. Seconds after he leaves, the building explodes, killing everyone inside. Had he been slower, Bob would've died, too.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is the sole survivor of the destruction of Earth because he decided to leave early for lunch at a new restaurant on the Moon.
- Bob misses the start of World War III because he was invited to join his girlfriend on a vacation to South America.
- Downplayed:
- Bob leaves early for lunch and a fire breaks out in his office building. Everyone else is injured, but they all survive.
- Bob only has one other coworker, who dies in a robbery while Bob is out for lunch.
- The blast from the building catches Bob as he's walking away, but he manages to survive.
- Justified: Bob leaves for lunch early because he's really hungry.
- Inverted:
- Dice Roll Death
- Bob leaves earlier than usual for lunch and gets hit by a bus as soon as he leaves the building.
- Subverted: Bob returns from an earlier than usual lunch break to find the building engulfed in flames. A piece of the outside wall breaks off the building and lands on top of Bob.
- Double Subverted: But he manages to survive the wall falling on top of him.
- Parodied: During the course of Bob's day, every single place he visits becomes the site of a massive, unrelated tragedy within seconds of him leaving. Bob remains oblivious to both his good fortune and the chaos seemingly left in his wake.
- Zig-Zagged: The boiler explodes every week; sometimes Bob is there when it happens, sometimes he isn't.
- Averted: Bob doesn't leave early and no one dies.
- Enforced: "How are we going to get the whole plot introduced?" "Let's have a disaster hit the workplace while Bob is out to lunch."
- Implied: Bob sneaks out of work early, and as he's driving home, he gets a call from his wife saying that his office exploded.
- Lampshaded: "I was lucky I left when I did! I could've died!"
- Invoked: A disgruntled worker plants a bomb in the building and persuades Bob to take an early lunch break before setting it off.
- Exploited: Upon seeing what he missed, Bob calls the emergency services and gets as many people away from the disaster area as he can.
- Defied: All the doors are locked from the outside as soon as all the workers are inside, after which it explodes.
- Discussed: "Do you ever wonder if you'll come back from a lunch break to find your office reduced to ashes?" "Well, crime is quite a problem in this city, so I wouldn't be surprised."
- Conversed: "Ever notice how there's always at least one character who lives because he wasn't where he was supposed to be?" "It's kinda hard not to notice, with them being the main character and all."
- Deconstructed:
- The disaster that struck the building happened because Bob left when he did; he was the only one who knew how to disarm the bomb that would bring down the building, and could've prevented the disaster had he been there.
- Bob is so traumatized by the people who died without him that he becomes plagued with Survivor's Guilt.
- Reconstructed:
- But because he's still alive, and is an expert at disarming bombs, he's able to help the investigators piece together what happened in the building.
- Bob's unexplained absence leads Alice to go around looking for him, causing her to miss a meeting in the room where the bomb was planted. The fact that she was out looking for Bob saves her from being at the meeting when the explosion happened, saving her life.
- Bob decides that the best way to provide closure to his dead friends is to assist in erecting a monument and/or help restore what can be restored of the building.
- But because he's still alive, and is an expert at disarming bombs, he's able to help the investigators piece together what happened in the building.
- Played For Laughs: Bob returns from a lunch break and finds everyone present covered in confetti and lollipops, later discovering that the ceiling was rigged with buckets set up as a prank.
- Played For Drama: Bob becomes the prime suspect of the investigation that follows the disaster he managed to escape.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob’s survival was serendipitous, yeah, but the enemies who set the bomb were prioritizing the annihilation of everybody Bob has the smallest connection to as a method to terrorize Bob and Bob's death (if it actually happened) was supposed to be a bonus.
- Bob's survival is considered too serendipitous by the Improperly Paranoid Inspector Javert Rabid Cop in charge of the investigation and Bob is taken and given the third degree by means of reenacting Hostel.
- Bob's Survivor's Guilt drives him insane.
Back to Serendipitous Survi—OH MY GOD! What happened when I was gone?!
