It seems like a lot of people have this misconception about Chrono Trigger.
During the chapter "The Trial", you get thrown in jail and end up escaping. To start the escape sequence, you can either choose to rattle the bars on your cell three times, or wait three "days" for your execution, which happens in a couple of minutes of game time.
Rattling the bars results in you running around the prison with just Crono, and you run into Lucca as you make your exit, but waiting will result in Lucca joining up before you gain control.
Throughout the prison are a number of chests whose contents you can obtain, and plenty of battles with guards to be had. Some of the guard battles are avoidable through a "stealth" mechanic the game teaches you about when you rattle the bars: approach a guard from behind and press A to knock them out. There's also an NPC you can save, which nets you some Mid Ethers later on, and a hint about how to avoid some fights in the Sewer Access.
The misconception is thus: people assume that if you wait for your execution, the chests and the juicy loot contained therein are off-limits. To a lesser extent, some seem to think that the NPC can't be saved in one or the other variant of the prison escape.
During the recent /r/chronotrigger community play-through, I tested this. I detailed my method in the first paragraph of
this post, but I'll summarize it here. I did the prison escape twice, reloading my save after the first time so I could do both variants. Both times, I kept track of the loot that I got. The result? I got the same core loot from opening chests both times, and saved the NPC both times. There are a few minor differences between the two variants, but nothing significant.
The game does do a really good job of making you want to escape as soon as possible, and in that regard, I guess it just doesn't occur to people that they could still explore the entire prison and grab everything even if they wait the three days.
