History Main / HermitGuru

* In most ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' games, you need to find a trainer so that your characters can gain a certain skill level. These experts, masters, and grandmasters often live in quite remote locations.

** Elder Brother, the recluse the protagonist visits and stays with for several months to learn the IChing.

** [[spoiler:Toph]] has become this in ''WesternAnimation/LegendOfKorra'', living in the giant swamp, and is considerably less good-natured.

* ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast1992'': Sahasrahla is an ancient, secluded wise who lives in the Eastern Palace rather than just near it and forks over the Pendant of Courage. In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast the game]]'', Link must defeat the Armos Knights to claim the Pendant; this is mirrored in the comic by soldier mooks crashing the temple.

* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'': Played with. The MasterSwordsman Meti-ten-Ryo lived in a barrel in the middle of a marketplace of the Yellow City of Kesh, but was no less a hermit for it; she paid no attention to the goings-on of anyone around her and was considered BeneathNotice by its citizenry because she was just a mad old beggar woman who lived in a barrel. Eventually, Kesh was destroyed wholesale in the Universal War, but Meti refused to let that change her lifestyle and kept living in her barrel in the middle of the ruined shell of a city filled with corpses and death.

* The Ancient One, Comicbook/DoctorStrange's mentor, lives in an isolated lamasery in Tibet. The Aged Genghis lives somewhere relatively close by in a cave with a single acolyte to help him remember to eat (because the Aged Genghis isn't entirely sane these days...)

* DoubleSubverted in ''ComicBook/QuantumAndWoody'' when Eric travels to Africa to learn "The Way of the Black Lion". After the desert guru sends Eric off with a mystic pendant and a quest, he loots Eric's wallet and drives off in a car ''loaded'' with pendants. Then, after Eric confronts the black lion without a fight, the guru reappears and accepts him for training.

* ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace''. [=TuMok=] of Mars relates how he consulted a 900-year-old sage on Olympus Mons. After months of {{Ice Cream Koan}}s and WordSaladPhilosophy, he loses patience and bangs the sage's head against the hardest rock he can find. On recovering consciousness, the sage tells [=TuMok=] that he's discovered the wisdom he was looking for. "For it is only when you stop screwing around with this existential rubbish that you ever achieve anything."

* Played with in ''Film/BatmanBegins''. To be trained by the League of Shadows, Bruce Wayne must pick a rare blue flower and climb to his monastery at the top of a snow-bound mountain. This is presented the same way as this trope, with Ducard presenting Ra's al Ghul as a mentor who will help Bruce seek enlightenment, even though the path he teaches is a lot more antagonistic than most gurus.
* Tom Hanks' character in ''Film/CastAway'' became a guru by unintentionally living a hermit's life after an airplane crash.
* ''Film/KillBillVol2'' has Pei Mei, a kung-fu master living in an ancient temple who trained the Bride. He is an evil prick who probably ended up living alone on a mountain because very few people are crazy enough to spend more time in his company than is absolutely necessary.

* ''Film/SimonOfTheDesert'' revolves around a weird ascetic who has spent 6 1/2 years standing on top of a ten-foot pillar in the desert, praying to God.

* There are several in Literature/{{Discworld}}.

** ''Literature/SmallGods'' also features St. Ungulant (whose first initials are actually "S.T."), who lives up a pole in the middle of the desert, and is stark raving mad. But don't say that to his ImaginaryFriend Angus! Ungulant also makes an appearance in the second Discworld PC game. S.T. Ungulant is also very proud of being a self-taught hermit, although he admits that trying to apprentice yourself to an older hermit "ruins the point of herming."
** ''Literature/WitchesAbroad'' and ''Literature/ThiefOfTime'' both address the question: If people seek wisdom from old men on mountains because wisdom seems wiser when it's a long way away, where do the people who already live on the mountains go to seek wisdom? Answer: To Ankh-Morpork, to learn "The Way of Mrs. Cosmopolite" from a working-class housewife.
** One lives on the Ramkin property in ''{{Literature/Snuff}}'' (see RealLife, below). Herming from father to son, with a week's vacation every year, and all the snails you can eat.
* There are several examples in ''Literature/TheGlassBeadGame''.

* A staple character of the folklore of Asia. In one such tale, ''The Tiger's Whisker'', a young woman seeks the aid of a wise old mountain hermit after her husband has returned psychologically damaged from war. She begs him for a spell to return her husband to his old, loving self, from the cold violent man he's become. The hermit says she must bring the whisker from a living tiger as an ingredient for such a spell. The young woman spends months gaining the tiger's confidence with food and patience before snipping its whisker. When she returns to the hermit he throws the whisker in the fire and when she protests, tells her that if she can use such patience to tame a tiger, surely she can do the same for her husband?

* In one short fantasy story, a rich JerkAss decides he is going to be the first to climb an extremely dangerous peak in Nepal. He runs across a "wise man" in one of the villages at the base of the mountain and makes some comment about how the stupid natives admire the dirty, lazy, almost naked old man, the natives thinking the old man is wise. When [[spoiler:the JerkAss finally, after a great deal of effort, reaches the top of the mountain, he finds the Wise Man there. When the Wise Man asks how he got there, the stunned JerkAss just waves his arm, indicating the climb. The Wise Man says, "You walked??!?"]]