Basic Trope: Something bad happened, and the heroes arrive too late.
- Straight: Alice and Bob come to the town of Troper's Landing, only to find the place uninhabited, several buildings damaged, and some blood smeared on the walls.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob come to the land of Troperia and find no people or animals, only damaged trees and buildings and puddles and smears of blood.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob come back to their house and find it has burned down.
- Justified:
- Alice and Bob experienced severe delays on their journey, such as vehicles breaking down, the path being hard to move through, etc.
- The call for help was older than Alice and Bob realized.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob come to the town of Troper's Landing just before something nasty hits it.
- Alice and Bob come to the town of Troper's Landing and find they just missed the Festival of Frolic.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob come to Troper's Landing and find it uninhabited, damaged, and smeared with blood...and then it's revealed that Alice was having a premonitory dream.
- Double Subverted: ...But that still doesn't help them get to Troper's Landing before the disaster happens; they go there because of Alice's dream, only to find it exactly as the dream showed it.
- Parodied: The "tragedy" turns out to be the birthday party of a Bratty Half-Pint. And it still looks like a horrific event's aftermath.
- Zig Zagged: Troper's Landing appears to have suffered a disaster, but it was All Just a Dream. Then it turns out that the disaster did really happen... or so it appears. They actually got the directions to a completely different place... which was also recently ravaged by tragedy.
- Averted: Alice and Bob are present for the disaster in Troper's Landing.
- Enforced: The author wants some way to show how dangerous the threat is without killing Alice or Bob, so s/he has it wipe out an entire town before they arrive.
- Lampshaded: "Goddamnit, why did we have the bad luck of getting delayed? We could have saved these people!"
- Invoked:
- The threat doesn't allow any news to escape about what's happening until it's finished.
- Or Alice and Bob wait until the tragedy is over to enter, as they don't want to risk getting caught in the initial destruction.
- Exploited: Bob and Alice are too late to help the owners of the surviving supplies, so they take them.
- Defied: As soon as Alice and Bob hear a faint rumor something bad is happening in Troper's Landing, they rush to help.
- Discussed: "I really hope we can get there before it's too late. I don't wanna end up arriving at a barren ruin."
- Conversed: "Oh man, this episode has me bracing for when they find out they're too late..."
- Implied: Alice comes back from Troper's Landing saying something horrible happened. This is never brought up again.
- Deconstructed: Because the event happened very long ago, any chance of following the perpetrator's trail is incredibly slim.
- Reconstructed: ...but that's okay, because Alice and Bob are able to report back on what happened and at least keep their superiors in the loop.
- Played for Drama:
- Alice and Bob arrive to a place that suffered a horrible disaster, and the realization that they could've easily saved the victims if they came sooner makes them have a Heroic BSoD.
- Alice and Bob find out that some people close to them died in the disaster.
Looks like we're Late to the Tragedy...whatever happened to this page happened a long time ago.
