Turns out a completely fresh datadir means there is no chain state to load and hence no detection of a lagging clock occurs in that subsystem. Instead we do proceed into attempting to start a headers sync.
<details><summary>Diff to repro with fresh -datadir</summary>
--- a/src/init.cpp
+++ b/src/init.cpp
@@ -1499,6 +1499,8 @@ bool AppInitMain(NodeContext& node, interfaces::BlockAndHeaderTipInfo* tip_info)
const ArgsManager& args = *Assert(node.args);
const CChainParams& chainparams = Params();
+ SetMockTime(chainparams.GenesisBlock().Time() - 3h);
+
auto opt_max_upload = ParseByteUnits(args.GetArg("-maxuploadtarget", DEFAULT_MAX_UPLOAD_TARGET), ByteUnit::M);
if (!opt_max_upload) {
return InitError(strprintf(_("Unable to parse -maxuploadtarget: '%s'"), args.GetArg("-maxuploadtarget", "")));
</details>
Follow-up to #35351