There Is Another: Difference between revisions

So, you are a writer, and you establish, for the purposes of building up drama and depth, that a character is the [[Last of His Kind]]. However, this severely restricts the options available to you, especially if we have previously seen others of his kind, [[Everybody's Dead, Dave|who are now, obviously, gone]].

 

 

Compare: [[The Chosen Many]], [[The Last Man Heard a Knock]].

** Although this could be more a case of life choice rather than skills. A Quincy is someone who gets rid of hollows not someone who can use the spirit bow thing.

** He also implies that he tried to get rid of his Quincy abilities, but he's so intrinsically powerful that he couldn't. [[Badass|From what we've seen of him in action, this is believable.]]

** A better application of this trope would be the introduction of Misa, the second Kira.

** While it would hardly be shocking if others had survived in the same way Goku did (if one slipped through the cracks decades ago, why not two, or three, or fifty?), from the time the Saiyan race is introduced the manga has only 4 story arcs. None of them introduce new Saiyans (aside from [[Half Human Hybrids]]), and then the series ends, leaving no possibility of the issue ever coming up.

** ''Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!'' introduces Vegeta's younger brother, who comes to Earth seeking help against his enemies. If it sounds like a fanfic, he was sent to a distant planet for being unpardonably weak by Saiyan standards and Vegeta is more embarrassed by him than anything else. He's also a pretty nice guy, shorter than Vegeta, and married to a friendly humanoid-but-not-human''like'' alien, which weirds Vegeta out. Oh, and the main cast are so ridiculously powerful post-Buu Saga that his enemies are a joke to them.

*** Which has changed again in the new Martian Manhunter retooling. Not only are there other White Martians, but {{spoiler|another Green Martian... and female. But she's evil}}.

*** After another apparent retcon in ''[[Brightest Day]]'', {{spoiler|this is still the case. It's a ''different'' Green Martian. Who is also female. And insanely evil.}}

** In the [[Story Arc|penultimate arc]] we find another survivor: {{spoiler|Dr. Mann's father, who blames his cloning experiment and/or efforts to sabotage his daughter's for the disaster... and decides that the world would better off with the menfolk out of the way completely since his daughter([[Replacement Goldfish|s]]) can continue his work}}.

* ''[[Elf Quest]]'' does this with the Wolfriders, who believe they are the last of their kind. Imagine their surprise when they find out {{spoiler|not only are there more tribes (three [later four] to be precise) but a High One survived as well}}.

 

== Films ==

* At the beginning of ''[[Ice Age]] 2'', Manny the Mammoth is led to believe he's the last of the mammoths. Later, he finds a female mammoth who was living with her possum brothers (...), and at the end {{spoiler|he found out a herd of mammoths, and had to make a [["Friend or Idol?" Decision]] about staying with them or his friends}}.

* [[Hancock]] had the titular character suffer from amnesia only to be reminded once again, by saving her current husband, that he once had a wife who had the same powers he did.

* In ''[[King Ralph]]'', the [[Unexpected Successor|title character]] discovers he's not the only distant relative of the royal family still alive. {{spoiler|His advisor, Sir Cedric is too. He had been offered the position first, but he [[Refusal of the Call|turned it down]].}}

 

== Literature ==

** The last egg (a green one) is expected to hatch in book 4. In this universe, eggs wait to hatch until they sense the proximity of a worthy rider, so ... [[Mary Sue|three guesses who's likely to hatch it.]] * cough* {{spoiler|Arya}}* cough*

* The first book in the Deathgate Cycle makes Alfred out to be the last Sartan alive. Two books later we find out there are others. Many, many others, living on other worlds.

* A variation. Grand Admiral Thrawn died in [[The Thrawn Trilogy]]. He was far from the only one of his species - Chiss are isolationist but not endangered - but there's only one [[Magnificent Bastard|Thrawn]]. Luke and Mara found his clone floating, asleep or not yet alive, in a [[People Jars|Spaarti cylinder]] underneath his hidden fortress in the [[Hand of Thrawn]] duology. They sort-of-accidentally killed it while escaping. But the incredibly elaborate Chiss [[Gambit Index|gambiting]] in [[Outbound Flight|Survivor's Quest]] has enough elements of Thrawn's style to cause Mara Jade to wonder if he had another clone. [[Timothy Zahn]] has said that he'd be interested in writing a book involving Thrawn's clone, who, unusually, would not mentally be Thrawn (while he'd have Thrawn's memories, he'd still know they were just copied memories) and would feel [[Cloning Blues|tremendous pressure to live up to the original]]<ref>Which, given Chiss skin tone, would make him a [[Just for Pun|Blue Clone with Cloning Blues]]</ref>.

** Trillian. Sure, Arthur runs into her only a few hours after the Earth is destroyed, but up till then he believed himself the [[Last of His Kind]].

* Shelmerdine in [[Virginia Woolf]]'s ''[[Orlando]]''.

* The protagonist of ''How Like a God'' thinks he's the only person in the world with [[Psychic Powers]]. Wandering a [[Mental World]], he looks out into an ocean, filled with tadpoles that represent the minds of all the people in the world. Then he sees a ''whale''.

** Eventually {{spoiler|Thalia chooses to stop aging right before her 16th birthday, the daughter of Hades is killed, and Nico is younger than Percy, so he doesn't qualify, so it refers to Percy after all.}}

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' did this a few times.

** In the third season of the new series, it was revealed that the Doctor himself was not the last of the Time Lords as he believed, as the Master also survived the Time War, unknown to him. The Master, being the Master, has since died, come back to life, and "died" again in less than three years.

** The fourth season introduced an [[Opposite Sex Clone]] "daughter", although the Doctor was reluctant to consider her a "real" Time Lord. She's still alive, he just doesn't know it.

** In the 11th Doctor's second series, {{spoiler|Doctor River Song}} was confirmed to be ''part''-Time Lord.

* In ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'', the Sirian Anubis "Doggie" Cruger was thought to be the last of his kind after the Troobian Empire destroyed his home planet. At the end of the series, it's learned that his wife, Aisinya, was kept alive within the Troobian Emperor's personal chambers. [[Fridge Logic|The logic behind this has yet to pass a cursory examination.]]

* [[Angel]] was, for a long time, considered to be the only vampire with a soul, to the point where prophecies referring to the 'vampire with a soul' were assumed naturally to refer to Angel. But then Spike got his soul back.

* A version of this trope appears in both the old and new versions of [[Battlestar Galactica]]: {{spoiler|the twist being that another battlestar has survived the genocide: the Pegasus.}}

** {{spoiler|Also in the newer one, another Earth. Or something.}}

* [[The Six Million Dollar Man|Steve Austin]] thought he was the first and only Bionic man ... until the second season when he ran into OSI's "failed experiment": [[Name's the Same|Barney Miller]], the Seven Million Dollar Man.

* In ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'', John Henry delivers the line, implying that {{spoiler|Skynet is already starting to develop into a complex AI.}}

 

 

== Videogames ==

* [[Ratchet and Clank|Ratchet]] was discovered to be anything ''but'' the [[Last of His Kind]]. [[Lampshaded]] in A Crack in Time, where he meets [[Cool Old Guy|Cool Old Lombax]].

** Also, the uncorrupted furbolgs. Apart from Krolg in Ashenvale, the Timbermaw tribe at the farthest reaches of civilization was portrayed as the last uncorrupted furbolgs in Azeroth. That is, until the expansion added the Stillpine... on the draenei starting island. The island did sport Alliance, however, they had recently shipwrecked there, something which seems to happen often on that island.

* Red XIII from ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]''. You never actually see another member of his race anywhere in the canon, but in the [[Flash Forward]] ending, he's shown with a pair of cubs. The compilation reveals he did have a mate, named Deneh, who he lost contact with in one of the prequels, and presumably finds again after the events of the game.

* In ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Path of Radiance'', it's initially established that Reyson is {{spoiler|the last survivor of the heron race, due to a genocide by Begnion.}} However, throughout the game and its sequel, a couple more turn up... including {{spoiler|Reyson's sister, and later his elder brother.}}

** Actually his father was stated to be alive not to long after Reyson was introduced. But he's so sick that he can't do anything so he never appears in the game itself.

** In ''Homeworld 2'', meanwhile, there's an example with spaceships rather than people. After going through a lot of trouble to acquire the last known Progenitor [[Cool Ship|Dreadnought]], the key to reaching the mysterious Sajuuk, a final line of dialogue is delivered quietly at the end of the mission: "There is another Dreadnought. {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Makaan]] has it}}." (This is especially scary since a Dreadnought is much more powerful than anything the player can build at that point in the game, and about 50% stronger than the most powerful ship the player can ever build.)

* Very similar to the original ''[[Star Wars]]'', ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] 2'' states the player character to be the "last of the Jedi". Except for all the others. It's rationalized as the player character to be ''perceived'' as the last of the Jedi, as few others self-identify themselves such {{spoiler|and those that do, aren't}}.

 

== Western Animation ==

** Though to be fair, given the Manhattan Clan rather limited world view, they weren't exactly exposed to other clans much less those half-way around the world. So as far as they were concerned, when their clan was destroyed, that was it.

* In ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'', Dr. Venture has a dream in which his dead father warns him "There is another Venture!" in a spooky, dramatic voice. When asked why he said it like that, he answered "Don't ask me; it's your dream." It turns out he was right, the "other Venture" being the [[Twinnibalism|twin brother that Dr. Venture swallowed in the womb]].