Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,951
edits
m (remove image pickin/quotes page inline comments) |
No edit summary Tag: Disambiguation links |
||
(13 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|{{smallcaps|"You have perhaps heard the phrase that [[No Exit|hell is other people]]? ... In time, you will learn that it is wrong."}}|'''Death''', ''[[
Maybe
On the plus side, they'll usually have a trusty animal companion that helps keep them sane in the absence of true human companionship (generally it's debatable just how sane they are)... that is, until it dies. Usually they will be rescued by movie's end, but before that expect them to run into [[The Last Man Heard a Knock|another survivor]] and creep them out quite a bit before settling down. However, if they aren't the lead [[Go Mad From the Isolation|expect them to actually go insane]] long before being found.
Line 10:
This is also the ultimate [[Ironic Hell]] for any [[Misanthrope Supreme]] [[Big Bad]].
Related to [[I Just Want to Have Friends]], [[Last of His Kind]], [[Alone in
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[One Piece]]'' has Brook, who after a series of particularly unfortunate circumstances ends up spending nearly fifty years without sunlight or contact with any other living thing. Because of a promise he'd made he couldn't even kill himself. The brief flashback set ten years into his ordeal leaves little doubt that he's gone off the deep end, to say nothing of when the main cast finds him after another forty years.
** Made worse by the fact that he's made immortal by a Devil Fruit power, meaning that he doesn't even have a natural death to look forward to. When [[Futurama|Bender said that the only thing that kept him sane was having an eternity in which to perfect his art]], he lasted two minutes before he gave up. Brook kept going for half a century. To be fair, though, when he is finally free of his imprisonment, he uses the skills he acquired in fifty years of isolation to {{spoiler|become a world famous musician during the two year [[Time Skip]].}}
*** The lack of a natural death is (mercifully) debatable fanon, however. In his introductory arc he referred more than once to the fact that his second lifetime is expected to simply run out eventually.
** This trope is emphasized by the fact that Brook's remaining crew dies while playing a song. As they die, he comments that it's only a quarter, trio, duet and finally
** To add some more perspective on this, one chapter was dedicated to reviewing the timeline of the universe. When the rest of the Straw Hats were just starting to go through their tragic pasts, Brook was still by himself, amusing himself by leaning up against walls at various angles.
* In obscure doujinshi series ''Mythic Quest'', every human in the world is transported to a different dimension at the beginning of the Sorcerer's Curse arc. Except one, the female lead. For five years.
* ''Pandora Hearts'' has Alice, the B-Rabbit, spend a lot of time alone in the Abyss.
* {{spoiler|Black Mage Zeref}} of ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' spent centuries in self-imposed exile after he realized the value of human life one day and lost control of his death magic because of it.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[Incredible Hulk
* The short-lived ''The Last American'', from Marvel's Epic Comics line, was about this.
* In a What-if tale in the Marvel Universe, Cain Marko, the Juggernaut, has powers that make him invulnerable and immortal. He wanders the Earth because a strange plague had wiped out both humankind and mutants. Of course, he discovers a stronghold of surviving mutants. Of course, Magneto tries to stop him. Of course, he cannot. When he get to them, the survivors inform him that he has the plague but cannot die because his power made him immune. Cain is immortal, but he has doomed all that remained of mutantkind. They ask for him to leave before they die. Cain, who always was a dick, agrees with them. He roams the really solitary Earth, thinking about the truth about his battlecry: ''Nobody can stop the unstoppable Juggernaut''.
* [[God]] in ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)]]'' was this, being the first and only being before Creation. Many of the terrible things in the story happen because of his pathetic need for love and attention.
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[I Am Legend]]''.
* ''[
* ''[[Cast Away]]''.
* ''[[
* ''[[The Omega Man]]''.
* ''Silent Running''.
* The protagonists of the indie flick ''Nothing''. Hordes of angry people are settling on their house, they are hiding in a room, crying and hugging... and suddenly everything apart from them and the house disappears, replaced by a big, white, surprisingly bouncy nothing.
* Zac, the protagonist of ''[[The Quiet Earth (film)|The Quiet Earth]]'', and the last man on Earth. {{spoiler|Or so he believes - although meeting two other survivors is only a comfort for a short while when they start favoring each other's company and leaving him feeling even more alone.}}
* ''[[The Last Man On Earth]]'' starring Vincent Price. This was the first movie version of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and was remade twice more, as ''[[The Omega Man]]'' and ''[[I Am Legend]]'' (Will Smith film).
== [[Literature]] ==
* Drizzt in ''[[The Dark Elf Trilogy]]'' runs away from the drow and lives alone in the cavern labyrinth for ten years and he's nearly losing his mind despite having the magical panther. In the end he approaches the svirfnebli who have been fighting the drow for millennia in the hope of them taking him in.
* The protagonist of ''[[I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream]]''.
** He's not alone. He still has AM. [[Fate Worse Than Death|Being insane and alone would be a vast improvement.]]
* In the [[Nightside]] novel ''Something from the Nightside'', a timeslip reveals a future where the immortal Razor Eddie is the only surviving human.
* ''[[
* The protagonist of ''[[The Quiet Earth]]'' actually caused the quantum mechanics accident that removed every other person on the planet except him. He doesn't take it well.
* ''[[Treasure Island]]'': happened to Ben Gunn.
* Ayla for a good part of ''The Valley of Horses'' from the ''
* ''[[
* Mau goes through this in ''[[Nation]]'' after the Wave wipes out his people. It doesn't last terribly long, though, before other survivors start showing up.
* In ''[[The Island Keeper]]'', a girl who fled to an island to grieve in solitude loses her canoe in a storm, and has to survive there alone until the lake freezes enough to walk out. While she isn't left isolated as long as other examples, bonus points are awarded because she winds up killing and eating a raccoon and a deer she'd originally thought of as her furry friends.
* The short story ''Descendant'' by [[Iain M Banks]], from [[The Culture]] novella ''The State of the Art.'' An injured, shipwrecked soldier must hike a thousand kilometers to reach an outpost with only his damaged spacesuit's AI for company.
* Snowman in ''[[Oryx & Crake]]'' by Margaret Atwell. He is the sole survivor after a virus wipes out the human race and his sanity is definitely debatable.
* ''Something Green'' by [[Fredric Brown]] has a protagonist trapped on an alien world where there is apparently nothing that is colored green. He keeps himself sane by a combination of talking to his alien pet and occasionally firing his [[Ray Gun]], which has a green energy discharge, while he dreams of returning to Earth, apparently the only planet where green things grow. Then he's rescued. {{spoiler|It turns out the alien pet is a hallucination. When his rescuer reveals to him that Earth has been destroyed in a war and that he'd have to settle on one of the other, non-green planets, the protagonist has a BSOD and murders his rescuer, then wanders off and completely forgets about the incident and continues to dream of rescue. It's implied that this has happened to him more than once.}}
* Used in ''[[
** The lack of other people isn't the true hell for Vorbis, though... [[What You Are in
* ''[[I
* Allen Steele's ''Coyote'', in which a group of political dissidents escape on an interstellar spaceship, has exactly one passenger pulled out of hibernation en route. He can't go back in. The destination is centuries away. He goes mad for a while, then spends the rest of his life painting murals all over the ship.
* Thomas Glavinic's novel ''[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jul/26/fiction5 Night Work]'', in which Jonas, a resident of Vienna, wakes up one day to find himself the only person in existence on the whole planet. Even animals and insects are gone. With no one to interact with, he basically turns on himself.
* ''Men'' opens with one of the characters engineering the apocalypse, killing everyone else on the planet except him. Naturally, he goes insane. Then becomes sane again. Then goes insane again. Then becomes sane again. Over and over, for fifty thousand years. Then he finds that he wasn't the only one left. There were still babies kept in capsules.
* ''[[The Mysterious Island]]'' by [[Jules Verne]] has Ayrton, who, after 12 years alone on an island, is quite an extreme example of that.
* The Shadow King in ''[[
* Pi Patel of "[[Life of Pi]]" becomes stranded on a lifeboat for 277 days with only a Bengal tiger to keep him company. The only other human being he encounters on the Ocean is a very disturbing, cannibalistic Frenchman. (At least based on a literal interpretation of the novel.)
* Subverted by Galen Tyrol on the 2000s remake of ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]''. Driven half-mad by Humans and Cylons alike, he settles in a dreary, desolate part of the world ({{spoiler|implied to be Scotland}}) so he never has to see another living being ever again.▼
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
▲* Subverted by Galen Tyrol on ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]''. Driven half-mad by Humans and Cylons alike, he settles in a dreary, desolate part of the world ({{spoiler|implied to be Scotland}}) so he never has to see another living being ever again.
** Earlier in the season, D'Anna does pretty much the same thing, deciding to stay {{spoiler|on the ruined Earth of the Final Five.}}
* Rousseau, ''[[Lost]]''. She's been on the island alone for 16 years ({{spoiler|until season 4}}) and is mad as a hatter. Of course, there's some chicken-egg debate here, seeing as she's alone because she killed the rest of her team.
** Claire has followed in her footsteps, spending about three years alone on the island.
* The protagonist of ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' TOS episode "[
** Also, Henry Benis in "[
** Heavily implied to be the fate of Patrick Thomas McNulty in "[
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' uses this trope in the episode "The Torment of Tantalus," in which Ernest Littlefield has been trapped alone on an alien planet for about fifty years and has gone totally crazy. He recovers surprisingly quickly.
* Omega, from the third Doctor's run of ''[[
** Another example (especially with the new series) is the Doctor himself, now the [[Last of His Kind|last of his species]] ({{spoiler|excluding the Master's occasional explosive cameos}}). On top of that, his companions keep abandoning him; he generally picks up another one soon afterwards to avoid being alone again. At the end of the Tenth Doctor's life we are shown what happens if he doesn't do that... it's not good.
* Sylar experiences this in the final season of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' as he gets sealed inside an empty shell of a city inside his own mind by Matt Parkman. In there, he experiences three years of being alone with nothing but his various psychological issues and guilt to deal with. Add in the sudden appearance of his archnemesis Peter to further exacerbate his guilt, it's no wonder that Sylar has completely cracked to the side of good by the end of the series.
== [[Music]] ==
* Lemon Demon's song ''Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets'' has a character who, after [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|unintentionally destroying the world]], becomes the Aloner for awhile. Though he deals with it better than most:
{{quote|
You got used to the dark and the cold.
You withered away into a pile of dust.
Completely withered away into a pile of dust. }}
* The song ''Iter Impius'' by Pain of Salvation shows us what happens to a man who had cryogenically frozen himself in a process to grant himself immortality. In the intervening time, mankind destroyed itself. After contemplating suicide, he declares himself king of the world and presumably remains there alone for eternity.
{{quote|
Leaving this world behind
I will stay on my own
On this blood-stained throne. }}
* [[Porcupine Tree]]'s song ''A Smart Kid'' is about a young man who finds himself on an Earth completely devoid of all other humans after some man-made disaster. Some aliens show up and he plaintively asks them to "please take me with you." [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6aF7u-oe40 Youtube Link]
* "Sole Survivor" from [[Blue
* [[Green Day
== New Media ==
* In ''[[Conquering the Horizon]]'' the protagonist Evelyn started out this way. She sometimes pretends her non-sapient companion Mr. Mooshi and her [[Hive Mind|other bodies]] are distinct people as a way of feeling less alone. As of this writing, on one occasion [[Attending Your Own Funeral|she even held a funeral for her dead bodies!]]
== [[Radio]] ==
* ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]'': Unfortunately, Whit ends up in a coma before realizing his [[Your Mind Makes It Real|Imagination Station program about the Afterlife]] was a bit more than Man was ready for, leaving Eugene to discover that [[Curiosity Is a Crapshoot]]:
{{quote|
== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==▼
* In the ''[[Scion]]'' roleplaying system, the ultimate power of the 'Judgement' domain allows the user to "condemn" someone - assuming he knows for sure that they committed a great crime. Doing so basically traps them within their own mind, in a prison-cell, completely isolated from anything and everything, for months and years - to their perception. When their "sentence" finally ends, they wake up, with merely a second having passed in the real world. It is implied that most mortals do not get through this with their sanity intact - it is, after all, designed to put the fear of God(s) in magical beings and titanspawn...▼
▲* In the ''[[Scion]]'' roleplaying system, the ultimate power of the 'Judgement' domain allows the user to "condemn" someone - assuming he knows for sure that they committed a great crime. Doing so basically traps them within their own mind, in a prison-cell, completely isolated from anything and everything, for months and years - to their perception. When their "sentence" finally ends, they wake up, with merely a second having passed in the real world. It is implied that most mortals do not get through this with their sanity intact - it is, after all, designed to put the fear of God(s) in magical beings and titanspawn
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The eponymous protagonist of ''Dr. Muto''.
* The "Rat Man" from ''[[Portal (
* You are this in ''[[Minecraft]]''. It's just you and a world eight times the size of the planet Earth.
** Also creepers, zombies, and skeletons. Lots of them.
** This only applies to single player of course.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In ''[[
* In an episode of ''[[Justice League]]'', immortal villain Vandal Savage accidentally caused the death of the human race and spent thousands of years alone. Thanks to a time-lost Superman, he's able to prevent these events from happening, and even though it caused him to cease to exist, [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|he was ''happy.'']]
** Though considering his immortal nature, one can assume that he vanished because there is another, in-continuity version of him walking around in the now changed time-line. It is mentioned in the episode that no two versions of one person can exist at the same time.
* In ''[[Ben 10: Alien Force
* [[WALL-E]], at least in the beginning
* Strangely enough, came up a couple of times in the 2003 ''[[Strawberry Shortcake]]'' series. In "The Mystery of Seaberry Shore," Coco Calypso is the sole inhabitant of the eponymous shore (save her pet parrot and two dozen monkeys). When Strawberry is called in to investigate a seaberry robbery, it becomes apparent that Coco, contrary to her song ("With all that I've got, with all that I've found, it's okay by me if there's no one around."), is incredibly lonely. Fortunately for her, the thief was just a girl who lives in a neighboring lagoon who used the seaberries for sustenance before Coco started harvesting them. With the misunderstanding cleared up, the two girls resolve to be friends and share the berries.
** In "Strawberry's Big Journey," Strawberry's car breaks down just outside of a small town whose only resident, Banana Candy, takes on all the jobs in the town (claiming she needs them to make ends meet). In order to keep Strawberry and her friends from leaving, she plans to sabotage the car even more, but hearing about their trip, she has a change of heart, fixes the car and confesses to everything. Hearing that she's never left the town before, Strawberry invites her along on their trip, and she seems to have taken up residence in Strawberryland since then.
* Demona from ''[[
* The [[Family Guy]] episode "Road To The Multiverse" featured an entire universe inhabited by only ''one guy''. He did nothing but shout compliments.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Teruo Nakamura, an Imperial Japanese soldier, did not surrender until 1974. He lived by himself on a small island for twenty years.
** Lt. Hiroo Onoda held out for thirty years, and even then only surrendered upon the direct order of his former commanding officer (who luckily survived the war as well). Onoda was not alone the entire time; two of his men surrendered in [[The Fifties]].
* Alexander Selkirk, the original [[
* People with Insomnia can feel a ''lot'' like this if they don't live with people who also have it. Since most are asleep when they're doing their thing, it can seem that the whole world's died in its sleep.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:Solitary Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
|