History Main / DyingAlone

* ''Anime/GraveOfTheFireflies'' provides the page image, as the [=WWII=] era film starts with protagonist Seita's death as he dies ignored by everyone around him in a train station of malnutrition a sight in Japan that by the end of 1945 had become so commonplace that commuters barely even notice anymore. His ghost then recollects the months leading up to his death and the film is a posthumous HowWeGotHere story.

* The old male ''[[PteroSoarer Ornithocheirus]]'' from the fourth episode of ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' dies alone on a beach from a mix of exhaustion and starvation after using up all his energy in an unsuccessful attempt to attract a mate.

* In ''Manga/AkameGaKill,'' [[spoiler: Seryu suffers this after Mine [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe carves her in half]]. As she lays dying, she laments on how she doesn't want to die in the middle of nowhere, as her fight with Mine took place in a valley far from the Capital, where she was born. Despite her being an AxCrazy HeroKiller [[BlackAndWhiteInsanity obsessed with black and white morality]], it's easy to feel sorry for her in her final moments.]]
-->[[spoiler:'''Seryu:''']] I don't want to die... in a place like this...

** In ''ComicBook/Supergirl2011'' #23, Cyborg Superman is stealing ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'s flesh. As she -temporarily- dies, Kara cries she doesn't want to die alone.

* Simon Laurent in ''Fanfic/InfinityTrainBlossomingTrail'' dies alone, just like in [[WesternAnimation/InfinityTrain the show]]. [[spoiler:However, this time, he dies after turning into Destruction, and is pulled into Toluca Lake, screaming that he is the true Apex, drowning with the only person to have ever cared helpless and numb in shock at what she caused.]] Fittingly, Chloe even tells him that this is his fate [[spoiler:just seconds before ''he'' killed her.]]
** In the sequel, ''Fanfic/InfinityTrainVoyageOfWisteria'': [[spoiler: Grace ends up stabbed in the stomach by Ogami with no Apex to comfort her -- as she disbanded them at the end of the Fog Car in the previous story -- and only lamenting that she just wanted to be noticed (as in, let her parents love her)]]

* This is the fate of Doyle in ''Film/OnlyTheLonely''. In addition, only three people show up at his funeral. When Danny (played by Creator/JohnCandy) asks if they should wait for other mourners, he's told by Nick (played by AnthonyQuinn) that there isn't anybody else.

* Even though he was likely surrounded by his men when he died, [[spoiler:John Laurens']] death in ''Theatre/{{Hamilton}}'' evokes this trope by having it be a DarkReprise of the FriendshipSong "The Story of Tonight" sung by [[spoiler:Laurens]], who is standing just to the right of the Hamiltons, looking on mournfully.

* In Volume 8 of ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'', [[spoiler:General Ironwood]]'s [[FallenHero actions]] slowly but surely drive away everyone who ever stood by his side, leaving him to die alone, [[spoiler:crushed beneath the kingdom he revered]].

[[quoteright:350:[[Anime/GraveOfTheFireflies https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/seitadies_3.jpg]]"On the night of September 21, 1945, I died."]]

[[quoteright:350:[[Anime/GraveOfTheFireflies https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/seitadies_3.jpg]]]]

* ''Anime/GraveOfTheFireflies'' provides the page image, as the [=WWII=] era film starts with protagonist Seita's death as he dies ignored by everyone around him in a train station of malnutrition a site that by the end of 1945 had become so commonplace that commuters barely even notice anymore. His ghost then recollects the months leading up to his death and the film is a posthumous HowWeGotHere story.

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1338792332090493800

[[quoteright:203:[[Webcomic/{{xkcd}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/xkcd_rover_7463.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:203: See, WesternAnimation/WallE? You could have had it ''[[http://xkcd.com/695/ much]]'' worse.]]

* This is the sad fate of all {{Magical Girl}}s in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', as they generally work alone and either die inside a Witch's Labyrinth or ''become'' a Witch themselves, [[NoBodyLeftBehind also leaving no trace of themselves in the process]]. But it's {{Defied|Trope}} in episode 9; not wanting Sayaka (now a witch) to die alone, Kyouko performs a MercyKill[=/=]HeroicSacrifice and dies with [[TogetherInDeath her]].

** One of the major ideas behind a hospice/palliative care is to ''avert'' this. While one reason is to ensure that the dying is both mentally prepared and physically without pain, it usually also provides the service that the dying isn't alone in their last minutes. Depending on how fast they die, they will either be with a nurse or said nurse will have alarmed the family so they can be with their beloved one last time.

* [[HeroicSacrifice Kratos' ultimate fate]] in ''VideoGame/GodOfWarIII''. [[SubvertedTrope Until he came back in]] ''VideoGame/GodOfWarPS4''.

* ''Series/{{Farscape}}''. In "The Flux", Aeryn Sun can choose to complete the repairs to her spacecraft which is trapped in a NegativeSpaceWedgie, or revive John Crichton. She chooses to do the latter, figuring that she's dead either way and would rather not experience a lingering, lonely death. They decide to go OutWithABang instead, but someone turns out to rescue them.

* {{Defied|Trope}} in ''LightNovel/AiNoKusabi''. Iason has fallen victim to a trap: as a result, he has lost his legs, is helplessly trapped in an exploding building, and now [[FaceDeathWithDignity calmly waits for his end]]. Then his lover Riki comes to join him so he ''[[TogetherInDeath doesn't die alone.]]''. And after OneLastSmoke that doubles as an [[IndirectKiss indirect]] LastKiss, Iason and Riki go down together.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' episode "[[Recap/TheLoudHouseS5E7SeasonsCheatingsAFlipmasCarol A Flipmas Carol]]" had Lucy playing the role of the Ghost of Christmas Future when she shows [[ConMan Flip]] a BadFuture in which his eventual fate will be dying alone and [[LonelyFuneral going unmourned]] following an accident he had at his store, which went out of business due to his customers being fed up with being swindled by him, unless he changed his greedy ways.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' episode "[[Recap/TheLoudHouseS5E7SeasonsCheatingsAFlipmasCarol A Flipmas Carol]]" had Lucy playing the role of the Ghost of Christmas Future when she shows [[ConMan Flip]] a BadFuture in which his eventual fate will be dying alone and [[LonelyFuneral nobody attending his funeral]] following an accident he had at his store, which went out of business due to his customers being fed up with being swindled by him, unless he changed his greedy ways.

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' universe has [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-4999 SCP-4999]], an entity who seems to exist solely to [[DefiedTrope defy]] this. If an eligible participant[[note]]the selection appears to be semirandom, but SCP-4999 apparently prefers to visit the neglected or marginalized of society[[/note]] is going to die alone within the next twenty or so minutes 4999 appears next to them, [[OneLastSmoke offers them a cigarette]], and waits beside them until they finally expire. In a rare case, the Foundation is not even attempting to try to contain this particular SCP, since not only can they not really contain it, but they would consider it unethical.

** In the [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist first anime]], this also happens to Scar. He ends up taking a ''lot'' of people with him shortly after.

* In Charles Logan's 1975 science-fiction novel ''Shipwreck'', there is only one character, Isidore Tansis: well, only one human character at least: there is a nearly-intelligent computer without consciousness, and also alien creatures of unknown intelligence. Tansis is the sole survivor of a spaceship nuclear power disaster (a few fellow survivors are mentioned briefly as having died of radiation sickness before the novel starts). He manages to escape in a scout craft and land on a nearby planet, where he has to figure out his own survival for years to come, as there is no hope of anyone coming to rescue him (no other ships are within many light-years, and the story is set in a universe with no faster-than-light travel). This is very difficult, as the planet is not quite hostile to human life, but rather inhospitable, and the struggle to survive gets harder and harder over some years, and his health eventually starts to fail. It is hardly a spoiler that, at the end, Tansis dies, since it is the inevitable outcome of the situation right from page 1; but what is not quite so clear is whether he is, in fact, dying alone when in the company of several seal-like sea creatures with whom he cannot communicate, because they speak only by dilating their eye pupils in complex patterns, but with whom he somehow feels a mystical union.

** In ''ComicBook/TheLeperFromKrypton'', Superman is dying from an incurable disease which kill him within hours, so he builds an one-passenger rocket and heads towards a faraway star to be cremated. ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} (carrying her cousin's pas and present sweethearts Lois, Lana and Lori in a survival pod) and a funeral cortege trail behind him, but they turn around when he is approaching the star Flammbron so he can face his end alone.

* In ''Machinima/FreemansMind'', our HeroicMime given a voice estimates that this is his most probable fate (it's the series' page quote, summarizing his journey through ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' quite well, from a cynical standpoint anyway).

* In ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'', Peggy Hill suggests that Cotton Hill should do this as part of her CallingTheOldManOut routine after he's been tormenting Hank while lingering on his deathbed.

* In ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaAs'', Hayate notes in the introduction to Episode 9 that the thought of dying from her {{ill|Girl}}ness didn't scare her because she had been alone until the Wolkenritter came into her life, but now that they are depending on her, [[WorthLivingFor she wants to live and be there for them]]. [[spoiler:Graham also suggests that if she were to be sealed away with the Book of Darkness, no one would have to mourn her.]]

* According to her legend, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacinta_and_Francisco_Marto#Illness_and_death St. Jacinta Marto]] said she'd die completely alone more than once, during her time as an IllGirl affected with chronic purulent pleurisy brought on by Spanish Influenza. Her chaplain and treating doctor/nurses told her that they'd be there for her... but the kid spent her last hours pleading for Holy Communion and Last Rites, because [[NotNowKiddo the chaplain didn't take her seriously]] and said he'd come back in the morning. A couple of hours after he left, she was dead.

* ''LightNovel/VampireHunterD: Bloodlust'' sees Leila admit her biggest fear is dying alone and unmourned. She and D make a deal - the one who lives longer will visit the other's grave, just to avert this. The DistantFinale [[TearJerker shows Leila's grave, surrounded by her family]] - she managed to avert the trope, living out the rest of her life in peace. And D kept his promise and visited her grave, which is something of a TearJerker in itself given it emphasizes for the second time [[Really700YearsOld just how old D really is]].

* Due to the GroundhogDayLoop that Twilight Sparkle finds herself in ''[[Fanfic/EakinsHardReset Hard Reset]]'', Twilight had multiple experiences with death throughout her loops trying to stop the Changeling Invasion, and in one of her loops, she shares with Celestia what exactly death feels like:

* One of the many side effects of strict lockdown policies during the COVID-19 pandemic: many people who died (whether from the disease itself or from unrelated causes) could not spend their last moments with loved ones. It even extended after death; a funeral would draw too large of a crowd and was thus forbidden. This is partly why the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partygate Partygate]] scandal in the United Kingdom so quickly went nuclear in 2022 - during the main wave of the pandemic, when people were living alone, subjected to horrific isolation, many of these people did indeed die alone. The public was told it was for the sake of protecting the country, and so most did as they were told. Yet, despite the tragic losses of tens of thousands of people, many of whom had been following the instructions to the letter, the government had been holding lavish parties, callously breaking the very rules they had told everyone else to follow.