Specifically talking about after the final boss. After you beat him, the death cutscene starts and the character is forced to not move afterwards. Would the timer technically stop once that cutscene starts instead of imprecisely stopping it once the fade starts or ends for more accurate times? Most other games do it like this for either the final hit, or like Mario 64 and the game-ending item is collected, so it would only make sense if the same could apply here.

No because if the final cut-scene starts while Trey Cincaid is airborne and over the lava, he falls into the fire below and dies, restarting the entire fight.

Good thing we tested that haha