History Main / SoleSurvivor

** Season 3, Double Life, being built on a CantLiveWithoutYou soulmate gimmick, means it's impossible for one member of a soulmate pair to live without the other, resulting in this trope being functionally impossible. In the end, one member of the last soulmate pair standing decides to blow themself up to give their soulmate the win, resulting in said soulmate dying ''a split-second'' after the self-detonation.

* ''WebVideo/AfterlifeSMP'': After finding that all his fellow server-mates are [[KilledOffForReal dead]] or [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome missing]], Oli briefly celebrates being "the winner of ''Afterlife''" while presumably speedrunning the rest of his lives, but eventually attempts to reach out to Angel Sausage (who decided to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence to join his patron deity) to escape his loneliness. [[spoiler:He ultimately rejects "life" in Heaven as Pearl (AKA said patron deity)'s sparring-buddy due to wanting to be alive again rather than "dead" in Heaven, falls into the ocean without any origin, builds a boat on a FarSideIsland he landed near, and sails west to the WebVideo/EmpiresSMP Season 2 world, where he [[TrappedInAnotherWorld ends up trapped]] with all his server-mates who seemingly don't remember him anymore.]]

* ''WebVideo/AfterlifeSMP'': After finding that all his fellow server-mates are [[KilledOffForReal dead]] or [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome missing]], Oli briefly celebrates being "the winner of ''Afterlife''" while presumably speedrunning the rest of his lives, but eventually attempts to reach out to Angel Sausage (who decided to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence to join his patron deity) as a Fairyborn to escape his loneliness. [[spoiler:He ultimately rejects "life" in Heaven as Pearl (AKA said patron deity)'s sparring-buddy due to wanting to be alive again rather than "dead" in Heaven, falls into the ocean without any origin, builds a boat on a FarSideIsland he landed near, and sails west to the WebVideo/EmpiresSMP Season 2 world, where he [[TrappedInAnotherWorld ends up trapped]] with all his server-mates who seemingly don't remember him anymore.]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* In ''Literature/TheCrawlspace'', the narrator is the only one out of her four roommates to survive the story, since she escapes from the apartment as soon as she can, unwittingly leaving the others to their fate (she did ''try'' to warn them).
[[/folder]]

* ''WebVideo/EpicsGameshows'': Generally applies to anyone who wins, due to the format of contestants being voted off until one person is chosen from two finalists to win the game. The same applies with ''WebVideo/KawaiiVinnysMinecraftSurvivor''

-->'''Astronaut:''' Uh, Houston? We have a problem.
-->'''Mission control:''' What's that, Peter?
-->'''Astronaut:''' Uh, well, um, all of our astronauts died. Except me.
-->'''Mission control:''' Oh, dear. Well, that's a story for another ''What If?''.

* ''{{WesternAnimation/Dinosaur}}'': Aladar is the only Iguanodon in the prologue in his family to survive the Carnotaurus attack, while his biological mother and all of his unhatched siblings' eggs are instead trampled to death by said Carnotaurus while trying to kill a fleeing Pachyrhinosaurus, due to his egg [[ByWallthatisHoley barely being crushed by the Carnotaurus' footprint, with encounters with an Oviraptor and later a Pteranodon eventually resulting in his egg being brought to Lemur Island where he will be hatched.

* D.D./Trishia from ''Manhua/InfinityGame'' is the only one who survived the previous game when the DM eradicated the entire world.

* Ben Cauley was the only survivor of the plane crash that killed soul legend Otis Redding and most of Cauley's bandmates, the original Bar-Kays. [[note]]Fellow Bar-Kay James Alexander agreed to stay behind and return the band's rental cars and catch a later flight, as the original flight didn't have room for them all[[/note]]

* From [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11 stories]], Captain Jay Jonas of the New York Fire Department in interviews speaks about how just before he and a group of firefighters were about to go up the burning North Tower, realizing they may not come out alive, all of them took time to [[ItHasBeenAnHonor shake hands and say it's been an honor working with one another]] and wish each other luck. He notes out of everyone in that group he was the only one who came out alive, and even his survival was a stroke of luck.[[note]]After Jonas ordered his unit to evacuate the North Tower after the South Tower had collapsed, the group came across an injured woman on their way down who couldn't walk and took her with them. A few floors above the ground level she stops and says she can't go on but the group refused to leave her. The North Tower collapsed with them still inside, but due to how the building debris fell they ended up in a cove all still alive and hours later were eventually rescued.[[/note]]

* In Season 1 of ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'', Bud Manstrong recounts being the only survivor of the "movie night" aboard Gargantua-1 in which everyone else aboard was ThrownOutTheAirlock, including Dr. Venture's father. Ultimately subverted in Season 7, where it's revealed that a group of Guild villains, including [[AlmightyJanitor Red Death]] and [[TinMan Vendata]], had snuck aboard in an ill-fated attempt to arch Jonas Venture. The two of them, as well as one other villain named Hate-Bit, survived, but the remaining villains shown in Red Death's flashback don't make it out.

* The winner of ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' is a mild version, as the other players are "voted off" the show rather than killed.
** This is also invoked in a different way in any particular season where tribal lines are incredibly strong, which usually results in one tribe banding together to knock out the opposing tribe in a merged situation. Such a move would later become known as ''Pagonging'', the name going back to the first season during which the former Tagi Tribe members stuck together even post-merge to rid the game of all the members of their former enemy tribe, known as the Pagong Tribe. This was a common trend in the early seasons and was a large reason why the show started doing pre-merge tribe shuffles to blur the tribal lines a bit and (hopefully) make things more unpredictable. The sole survivor from a Pagonged tribe usually makes a remark about being the last of their original tribe left in the game before [[StatusQuoIsGod they get voted out]] or, in a particularly rare case, [[UnderdogsNeverLose go on an immunity run and win the game in the end]].

* Obviously, the winner of ''Series/{{Survivor}}''.
** A mild version, as the other players are "voted off" the show rather than killed.

* The wreck of the ''White Ship'' killed all those aboard (including the heir to the throne of England, William Aethling) bar one, a butcher named Berold. While William escaped with several others to a lifeboat, he [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished decided to go back and rescue his half-sister]]; unfortunately, the lifeboat was swarmed and capsized. [[ButterflyOfDoom Had William survived, it would have averted the following nineteen-year conflict over the succession.]]

** This is also invoked in a different way in any particular season where tribal lines are incredibly strong, which usually results in one tribe banding together to knock out the opposing tribe in a merged situation. Such a move would later become known as ''Pagonging'', the name going back to the first season during which the former Tagi Tribe members stuck together even post-merge to rid the game of all the members of their former enemy tribe, known as the Pagong Tribe. This was a common trend in the early seasons and was a large reason why the show started doing pre-merge tribe shuffles to blur the tribal lines a bit and (hopefully) make things more unpredictable. The sole survivor from a Pagonged tribe usually makes a remark about being the last of their original tribe left in the game before [[Main/StatusQuoIsGod they get voted out]] or, in a particularly rare case, [[Main/UnderdogsNeverLose go on an immunity run and win the game in the end]].

* On ''Series/SeventhHeaven'' Simon asks his elderly neighbor to come to his class and speak about being a Holocaust survivor. Initially reluctant until she hears about deniers in his class, she tells her story about how out of all her family members sent to the concentration camps she at 10 years old was the only one who survived. The end also includes a credit that explains the story came from a real life Holocaust survivor used with permission.
* Subverted on ''Series/{{Angel}}'' when Lindsey briefly believes himself to be the only one left alive by Darla and Drusilla's massacre of the Wolfram and Hart Special Projects division. Just as he's pondering the implications of this, and seemingly finding them somewhat to his liking, one of the paramedics reports finding "a live one" (Lilah), to which he responds "We do?" in a disappointed tone.

* ''Series/{{Branded|1965}}'': Jason [=McCord=] was the sole survivor of the Bitter Creek Massacre.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", Henry Bemis finally has all the time in the world to enjoy reading when he's the only survivor of a nuclear war... [[CruelTwistEnding then he goes and breaks his last pair of glasses]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E82OneMorePallbearer One More Pallbearer]]", Paul Radin offers three people who wronged him the chance to ride out an atomic attack in his personal underground shelter, but they all refuse. Then, the attack happens. Devastated, he emerges into the ruins of the city, but the KarmicTwistEnding reveals that the attack wasn't real -- he's hallucinated it out of guilt.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E104TheThirtyFathomGrave The Thirty-Fathom Grave]]", Chief Bell was the only survivor of the sinking of the submarine ''714''.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E127TheOldManInTheCave The Old Man in the Cave]]", Mr. Goldsmith is the only survivor of the Village after the other residents, Major French and his men all eat the canned food that the Old Man warned them was contaminated with Strontium-90.

** A variation in "A Little Peace and Quiet". Penny has a stopwatch with the power to [[TimeStandsStill stop time]]. She uses it when WorldWarIII starts between the US and the Soviet Union, only to find that she's stopped time just as the town was moments from being obliterated by a bomb. Now she's faced with a choice: live out her life effectively alone, or die with everyone else.
** In "Still Life", the 86-year-old Professor Alex Stottel is the last surviving member of Dr. Levinson's expedition to the Amazon River basin, where they encountered the Curacai, in January 1913. Stottel was a 13-year-old boy at the time.
** In "Devil's Alphabet", Frederick becomes the last surviving member of the Devil's Alphabet Society after Cornelius' suicide on November 2, 1898.
** In "The Last Defender of Camelot", Lancelot is the last surviving Knight of the Round Table 1,000 years after the fall of Camelot. He was kept alive for all that time by a spell cast by Myth/{{Merlin}}.

* ''Series/{{Branded}}'': Jason [=McCord=] was the sole survivor of the Bitter Creek Massacre.