"Branded into covert teams, Penal legionnaires are tasked with the most dangerous missions where their unorthodox abilities and unique skills are essential for victory. They include soldiers from many different regiments, repentant souls who have been chosen to fight and redeem themselves of their crimes.
Some want to die in battle and forget their disgrace, but the toughest, the most dangerous, the born killers, somehow survive. For every hundred pathetic miscreants that die whimpering under enemy guns, one mad killer emerges triumphant, screaming his insane anger."
Some want to die in battle and forget their disgrace, but the toughest, the most dangerous, the born killers, somehow survive. For every hundred pathetic miscreants that die whimpering under enemy guns, one mad killer emerges triumphant, screaming his insane anger."
"There walked a lonely man, silent, mute, the only man not knowing how, not knowing why was he the sole survivor.
Why should he be alive, breathing still while others died, and the only question: why was he the sole survivor?"
Why should he be alive, breathing still while others died, and the only question: why was he the sole survivor?"
— Blue Öyster Cult, "Sole Survivor"
Oh, my friends, my friends forgive me,
that I live and you are gone.
— Marius, Les Misérables
"Surviving something like that, you go through a lot. Accepting the loss of those who died, what they died for. It's a heavy burden, to be the sole survivor."
— Kaji, Rebuild of Evangelion
"Hundreds leave. A handful stay. Only one looks back."
— Dilios, 300
"Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo, third officer reporting. The other members of the crew - Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash, and Captain Dallas - are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off."
— Ellen Ripley, Alien
"On that night... before any of us knew what was happening... our team went from five members... to one."
— Undine, Sleepless Domain
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier...
The last of Barrett's Privateers.
The last of Barrett's Privateers.
— Stan Rogers, "Barrett's Privateers"
"This was the planet Mars as my crew and I first saw it. Dangerous, treacherous, alive with something we came to know only as Death. This is what we faced when our spaceship cracked up and landed just six months ago in January of this year, 1973. But It seems as if six centuries passed before rescue ship arrived. For today of all my crew, I, Col. Edward Carruthers of the United States Base Command, am the only one alive."
—Col. Edward Carruthers, It! The Terror from Beyond Space
Yes, that would make for a wonderful story, no? The last black knight, the only survivor of the greatest battle in Helsreach. I apologize for surviving and breaking the flow of your legend, Reclusiarch. I promise most faithfully that I and the six or seven others will be very quiet and let you have all the thunder.
— Andrej, Helsreach
John-117: (on comms) Kelly, inform command I have four survivors. Take your team north. Rendevous at Evac Alpha for Pelican extraction. We'll meet you there. Chief out.
Cadet Lansky: How did you find us?
John-117: The distress beacon.
Cadet Sullivan: Why did you come for us?
John-117: You're the only survivors.
Cadet Sullivan: In the school?
John-117: On the planet.
The only soul that returned from the trip was you...
— Fear & Hunger: Termina, if you achieve Ending B
"I used to have five brothers. Now I'm not even a brother."
A veteran independent mercenary who was active in the star system surrounding Rubicon before the Fires of Ibis.
Sulla is a patient of Generation One augmentation—or better said, a survivor, as the technology in its infancy had less than a 10% success rate. Though he escaped the fate of the others, Sulla is followed by the specter of Death wherever he goes.
After receiving his surgery, Sulla lost interest in most mercenary work, and now lives only for the hunt. It is unclear who currently employs him.
Sulla is a patient of Generation One augmentation—or better said, a survivor, as the technology in its infancy had less than a 10% success rate. Though he escaped the fate of the others, Sulla is followed by the specter of Death wherever he goes.
After receiving his surgery, Sulla lost interest in most mercenary work, and now lives only for the hunt. It is unclear who currently employs him.
— Sulla's Arena profile, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
