Basic Trope: A character is trapped alone in space and grapples with the horror of isolation in the darkness and perhaps also an alien, AI, or other external threat.
- Straight: Bob is trapped alone on a spaceship and faces the horrifying prospect of death alone in space. Meanwhile, a hostile alien is waiting in the shadows.
- Exaggerated: Bob is alone in interstellar space, far from any planet, and his ship is full of aliens, and he's uncomfortably close to a black hole, and his AI is trying to kill him.
- Downplayed: Bob is alone on a malfunctioning ship for a couple harrowing hours before he is rescued.
- Justified: Astronauts have found space isolation very scary.
- Inverted:
- Bob is surrounded by people on his perfectly-functioning ship and the horror is that cabin fever drives them to kill each other.
- Bob is alone in space, but it's a wacky comedy in which Bob talks to a Companion Cube to keep sane and nothing really goes wrong before Bob is rescued.
- Bob is being surrounded by people on his perfectly-functioning ship and it's a wacky comedy in which Bob talks to a companion cube to keep sane and nothing goes wrong before they are rescued.
- Subverted:
- Bob quickly flushes the alien into space and steers the ship to safety.
- The alien is actually friendly, though it has trouble communicating that at first which led to scary misunderstandings.
- Double Subverted:
- But the alien laid eggs, and soon things go wrong again.
- That was just a ploy by the alien to get close and off Bob. Though that doesn't necessarily stop the alien from becoming lonely once it realizes it killed the only other living thing in a ten million mile radius.
- Then the friendly alien is murdered by an evil alien that was chasing after it, and now it wants to kill Bob for associating with it.
- Then Bob's ship's AI goes crazy trying to kill the alien, not wanting to spare Bob.
- Parodied: Bob accidentally gets locked in his quarters and acts like he's going to die alone in space, to the annoyance of his crew.
- Zig-Zagged: A space isolation story has massive Mood Whiplash.
- Averted: Bob's space mission goes smoothly and he is never alone.
- Enforced: The producers think dying alone in space is a horrifying death.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, it's like those bad sci-fi movies. I'm gonna die alone in space!"
- Invoked: The alien, being quite sadistic, leaves Bob alive to suffer.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob kills himself rather than be alone in space.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: When Bob is rescued, he's nearly lost his mind.
- Played for Laughs: Bob goes crazy from the isolation, causing him to act like a goody Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
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