In certain stories, some calamity or disaster has occurred. A once proud race or civilization has been destroyed and its residents have been lost to time. All except for one last being who embodies everything a culture still hold dear and lives on to keep the destroyed way of life alive. A living example of The Ark to ensure what is lost will endure as long as the being continues to live on.
This trope involves situations where such a being becomes evident in a story as a living repository for all the lost knowledge, essence, and information of a way of life or species from a bygone era. Often the characters are living eponymous "lights" of Fling a Light into the Future and often examples of a Living Relic and sometimes the Last of His Kind if there are truly no others left alive.
Regardless, the trope must involve the example in question being a sort of repository for the knowledge or essence of a people, culture, or way of life long gone. Those who are the last of their kind or a living relic don't always and sometimes never remember large amounts of information about their own kind or culture, but this trope makes that caveat mandatory to qualify.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Tales of Wedding Rings, the Robot Girl Amber serves as this trope for the Dwarven Race. There used to be five races: human, elf, catfolk (Cat Girl), dragonkin (lizard hybrid), and dwarf. In addition, there's a prophecy that the princess of each race would someday have to marry the hero would become the Ring King. The problem is that the dwarves died out ages ago, but they thought ahead and built Amber who could "sleep" until the hero arrived and take the place of the dwarf princess. Amber isn't a dwarf (nor does she look like one), but does have their accumulated knowledge and mentions that she has dwarf DNA within her to be able to give birth to dwarf babies (or rather dwarf hybrids)
Comic Books
- In Ultimate Comics Thor, Thor is revealed to be this trope by virtue of Mjölnir, which Odin enchants with Asgardian magic to ensure that it will be able to bring Asgard back into existence after Ragnarök. Even after losing Mjölnir and the destruction of Asgard for the second and last time later on, Thor becomes a walking Valhalla, as a living container of all the ghosts of the defunct Asgardian gods and able to interact with them for guidance.
- Vision from Ultimate Vision continuously serves as this for alien cultures, having warned worlds about Gah Lak Tus since half a billion years prior. Nobody ever survived, but she continues all the same, downloading a complete record of the planet she fails to help before moving on to the next. She even did the same for Earth, before she managed to successfully ward off Gah Lak Tus with Earth's help.
- In Wonder Woman (Rebirth), Wonder Woman reveals her bestowed status as the Goddess of War ensures that she has become a living container for the realm of Olympus and all its wonders after all the other Gods left.
- Rogue from the X-Men undergoes this trope at times due to the memory absorption aspect of her Power Parasite mutant ability causing her to store scores of memories of those she touched inside her mind, much to her chagrin. In the 2011 crossover Age of X, an alternate reality is created by one of Legion's personalities; in this reality, Rogue goes by the name Legacy, and absorbs the memories and essence of dying mutants to ensure their memory lives on after death. This is shown on-panel with a dying Tempo.
Films — Live-Action
- In Man of Steel, Superman is revealed to be this trope for Kryptonians, as the Codex which contains all the Kryptonian's genetic potential and DNA plans for reconstructing the species is infused with cells, meaning the species can be cloned back into existence from his biomass. General Zod and his minions are Kryptonian survivors who seek to extract the Codex from Superman and terraform the Earth to bring Krypton back to life, and kill anyone who gets in their way.
Literature
- In Fahrenheit 451, the "Book People" act as this trope in a literature sense. They are a group of nomadic intellectuals hiding in the wilderness outside the protagonist' book-burning city. They commit entire works of literature of all kinds to memory and hope to one day reintroduce books and knowledge to society, when it is ready. The Book People and their way of life have a profound impact on protagonist Montag, helping to change the way he sees the world and stirring his love of books.
- In The Giver, a young boy who is trained by an elderly man to be the next Giver, as the living repository for all the memories, feelings, and emotions discarded in the new emotionless utopia of the setting to act as an unconventional advisor to the ruling authority. He must recall all emotions like Love and concepts like Family, because his regimented society has eliminated them to prevent dissension and conflict.
- In the Warrior Cats book Firestar's Quest, there is a single living cat, named Sky, who has knowledge of SkyClan's history and culture, since his grandmother was born into the Clan, and he was raised in their traditions. He is able to teach Firestar and Sandstorm about the lost Clan so that they are able to honor the Clan's traditions when rebuilding it.
Live-Action TV
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Picard becomes this trope in the episode "The Inner Light". After being struck by energy from an initially mysterious alien probe, Picard begins to live out memories of being Kamin, an iron weaver from the non-Federation planet of Kataan that was destroyed by a supernova a millennium prior to the present. Due to Kamin's race not possessing the technology to evacuate their people before Kataan is rendered uninhabitable by the supernova, the leaders opt to place memories of the race inside the probe to be given to the one who finds it to keep the story of the race alive.
Video Games
- In Dota 2, Yurnero the Juggernaut was born and raised on the Isle of Masks, but was exiled from his homeland. Shortly afterwards, the island and his people were destroyed, leaving him as the last person to bear and carry on the traditions of his people.
He alone remains to carry on the Isle's long Juggernaut tradition, one of ritual and swordplay.
- In the original Mass Effect trilogy, the Reapers are strongly implied to be this: a new Reaper is created by processing billions of specimens from a particular space-faring species that the other Reapers are exterminating during the regular reaping cycles. Each Reaper thus carries the collective memories of the extinct species it was created from.
Western Animation
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang becomes this trope as the last of the Air Nomads and therefore becomes the sole remainder of the cultural knowledge of his people after their genocide in the Hundred Year War. As such, he's often the one who explains any Air Nomad topic, angry over any cultural site desecration, and proved considerably irritated but later accepting of the Air Acolytes. He passed this behavior down to his sole Airbender son Tenzin, who often chafed under the pressure of seemingly carrying the weight of an entire culture's future on his shoulders.
- In Cro, Phil, a woolly mammoth thawed out in the present day, serves as this in the framing segments, telling stories about his friends from prehistory to help his new friends solve their own problems in the present.
- In the DC Animated Universe, Brainiac serves as a dark example of the trope like his comic version, especially for Krypton as the original repository for all of Krypton's knowledge and culture. Brainiac often attempts to entice Superman to join him by bartering his possession of all of Krypton's vast collection of knowledge. Brainiac hopes to be this trope for all civilizations across the universe, destroying them once he collects their cultural information until none are left that exist.
- In Futurama, the Encyclopods are a race of this trope for other creatures, resembling gigantic manta rays with an atmosphere-like dome and eggs that have the appearance of Violet Dwarf Stars. They harvest the Chi and DNA of every endangered species to ensure such races can be reborn again in the future long after their extinction.
Real Life
- In the 18th century, the Maypure tribe of South America was wiped out by the rival Carib tribe. German explorer Alexander von Humboldt was visiting South America when he was given a parrot from the Maypure tribe as a gift from the Caribs. Von Humboldt realized that the parrot was the last living speaker of the Maypure language, so he recorded every word the parrot said. Two centuries later, von Humboldt's notes inspired artist Rachel Berwick to start "may-por-é
, an installation art piece featuring two parrots that have been trained to speak the Maypure language.
