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11th May '13 2:21:10 PM SeptimusHeap

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Last Starfighter was merged into The Only One

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->'''Alex Rogan:''' ''"How many [starfighters] are left?"''\\
'''Grig:''' ''"Including yourself?"''\\
'''Alex Rogan:''' ''"Yes!"''\\
'''Grig:''' ''"One!"''\\
'''Alex Rogan:''' '''''"ONE?"'''''
--> -- ''Film/TheLastStarfighter''

%% One page quote is sufficient. Please place additional quotes on the Quotes tab.

Related to OnlyOne, but with the added condition that TheHero is fighting alone against numberless foes. He now has to battle BackFromTheBrink. (There are a few versions without this.) Better hope he's a OneManArmy or else make ready for the DownerEnding.

Can occur as an inverse to TheChosenMany; there were once many, but now there is only one. Sometimes the heroic inversion of the ConservationOfNinjitsu, where TheHero becomes the ninja in question against the Army Of {{Mooks}}.

Compare EverybodysDeadDave. May result from DwindlingParty. Do not confuse with ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'', which this trope is named after.
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!!'''Examples:'''

[[foldercontrol]]

%%Zero Context Example entries are not allowed on the wiki. All such examples have been commented out. Add context before uncommenting them.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* Kirby in his own [[KirbyOfTheStars self-titled anime]] is a Star Warrior destined to fight off the BigBad of the universe. 
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''Franchise/GreenLantern'':
** At one point things got so bad for the Green Lantern Corps that the last Guardian teleported to Earth and threw a ring at a random person. Eventually they got better.
** This happens to the Corps every so often. When Hal Jordan was still a rookie, the villain Legion had defeated the entire corps with its gigantic yellow suit of armor, but Hal figures out that if he covers Legion in mud, his ring will work on him. When cracking the armor open turns out not to have been the best idea, Hal flies into the central power battery and supercharges his ring, giving him the strength to defeat the villain on his own.
** After the ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths, the GLC is reduced to the three Lanterns of Earth and a small handful of others spread around the universe. When the sole remaining Guardian is driven mad by solitude, it's pretty much up to Hal to save the day again.
** Nova Corps: After a devastating interstellar war, the superpowers of a million-man-strong force were co-opted into one super suit, leading to several HeroicRROD situations.
** In ''[[WesternAnimation/GreenLanternFirstFlight First Flight]]'' Sinestro has destroyed Green Lantern battery, all of the remaining Green Lanterns are left powerless. Only Hal was able to get green elements power working again and fight Sinestro one on one.
* ''ComicBook/RogueTrooper'' is the last living Genetic Infantryman, if you don't count his biochip buddies.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'' is the TropeNamer. Alex Rogan escaped the Ko-Dan Armada's destruction of Starfighter Command by ColonyDrop because he was off-planet at the time, having refused to become a Starfighter in the first place.
* ''Film/TheRock'', although it was two, but everyone else on the team was killed.
* ''Franchise/{{Rambo}}'':
** ''Rambo: First Blood Part II'' was sort of this. Rambo himself even mentions the wisdom behind going in alone when you're outnumbered. 
** In ''Rambo III'', Rambo and the Colonel who trained him are attacked and cornered by what seems to be the entire Soviet army.
--->'''Colonel:''' "Got any ideas?"\\
'''Rambo:''' "Well, surrounding 'em's out."
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** For the villain version of this, the Rule of Two, in which the vast hordes of Sith and their armies are reduced to just one master and apprentice at a time for a thousand years.
** Luke is literally the Last Starfighter at the end of ''Film/ANewHope'', with all his fellow pilots killed or too damaged to keep fighting, in a race against time to destroy the Death Star before Vader kills him -- until [[BigDamnHeroes Han shows up]].
** Before Luke came along, Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda were among the few remaining Jedi in the galaxy. Luke spends the films training to be a Jedi Knight, and will spend much of the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse reforging the Jedi Order and expanding it to serve the New Republic.
* In ''Film/MysteryMen'', Captain Amazing would normally be more than enough to thwart the evil Casanova Frankenstein's plans for mass destruction ... except he's dead now. Our only hope is a bunch of rag-tag superhero wannabes.
-->'''The Shoveler:''' "Amazing is gone. There's no use waiting for the cavalry, because as of this moment, the cavalry is us. This is our fight, whether we like it or not. Just we few. We're not your classic superheroes. We're not the favorites. We're the other guys. We're the guys nobody ever bets on."
* ''Film/DemonKnight''. The Demon Knight is a LegacyCharacter. One Demon Knight, One Collector.
* ''Film/TheMatrix'' has shades of this trope as early as the first film; when they are hacked into the Matrix, any and every human being around them who is still plugged in by the machines has to be considered a threat because they could become an Agent in the blink of an eye. Their small group is basically operating behind enemy lines, outnumbered some 6,000,000 to 9. In Reloaded, [[spoiler: Smith]] starts to blatantly invoke this trope in his fights with Neo in an attempt to overcome The One's RealityWarper abilities in regards to martial arts and combat. And by Revolutions, within the Matrix, he spends the whole movie setting this up for the climatic final confrontation against Neo [[spoiler: by turning every single person in the Matrix, human or otherwise, into a copy of himself. Though he needn't have bothered once he converted the Oracle and saw that he would win, he's just that kind of a perfectionist. ]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* By the last book of ''Literature/TheInheritanceCycle'' Eragon is the last sane, free Dragon Rider left after [[spoiler:Brom is killed by Durza, Murtagh is enslaved by [[BigBad Galbatorix]], who {{mind control}}s him into killing Oromis and Glaedr]].
* ''Literature/OnlyYouCanSaveMankind'' gleefully subverts this. [[spoiler: You respawn, while the aliens are KilledOffForReal. Also, you're not the only one who can save mankind. Not that it needs saving, anyway.]]
* Douglas Hill's ''Literature/LastLegionary.'' The last survivor of a planet of [[BadassArmy highly-skilled and galaxy-reknowned mercenaries]] versus a shadowy Warlord and his powerful organisation. Fortunately, Keill Randor is a OneManArmy with [[MadeOfIron unbreakable bones]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
%%* Disney's Series/AaronStone
* ''Franchise/KamenRider'':
** Len from ''Series/KamenRiderDragonKnight'' not only starts ''out'' like this, he wants to ''keep it that way'' at first because he doesn't believe anyone from Earth can be trusted with the Kamen Rider Advent Decks, particularly Kit, who is the mirror twin of the Rider who betrayed the team. The fact that most of the Earth Riders actually tend to be bad guys (though a few are innocently duped or framed) doesn't help matters any. He gets better about it as the series goes on, and then it's revealed that he ''wasn't'' the last of the Ventaran Riders to escape being vented anyway.
** In ''KamenRiderBlade,'' [[HeroesRUs BOARD]] gets ransacked in the first episode. We start the series with two members (one being our hero) and a mysterious, unaligned Rider who considers ''everyone'' his enemy as the only good guys who are alive and free, and a ''lot'' of questions as to what is really going on that they have to solve on their own. At least they got to salvage some of the lab equipment (most notably their monster detector.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* In ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', the Master Chief is one of a very small handful of surviving SPARTAN II {{Super Soldier}}s (and generally the only one available in his combat theater).
* Most single-player FPS's other than tactical and squad types.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' you play the lone space marine who was left on guard duty at the ship, now the only thing standing against the hordes of hell.
* Essentially the plot for ZeroWing: "You know what you doing. Move "Zig". [[VideoGame/ZeroWing For great justice...]]"
* Once you reach the second half of ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'', it's not rare to take out entire fleets by yourself after all your partners have been pummeled.
* ''VideoGame/Warhammer40000SpaceMarine'' subverts this. [[TheHero Titus]], [[TheLancer Sidonus]], and [[NewMeat Leandros]] are sent into battle alone in that area of Graia[[note]]They're not the only Ultramarines squad in the theatre, but the others are operating elsewhere on the planet[[/note]] before they discover a surviving garrison of the Cadian 203rd, open up the path for the Guardsmen to receive reinforcements, and are themselves reinforced when the Liberation Fleet arrives, at which point they are no longer the only Space Marines in the area.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Fraxy}}'', the premise is basically this: In the red corner, your little midget cricket of a ship. In the blue corner, The BulletHell NintendoHard [[ThatOneBoss Death Machine]] boss. Guess who wins, albeit dying a lot in the process.
* Played with in the Creator/{{Taito}} shoot 'em up ''VideoGame/MetalBlack'': Decades after aliens destroy Earth and the world's governments unconditionally surrender, you steal an experimental space fighter and blow up most of the planet's remaining military forces while attempting to escape into space to fight the enemy hordes. The game has multiple endings depending on if you win or game over in a certain stage, and one ending involves the governments being motivated by your death into bringing another 20,000 experimental fighters into action.
* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', the player is a newly-recruited Grey Warden of just a dozen in [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Ferelden]] alone. Then all but two in Ferelden are killed in battle, leaving just the player and another Warden who is nearly as new. Their goal is to unite all the races in the fight against the [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Darkspawn]] and defeat [[BigBad the Archdemon]]. However, the game's {{loading screen}}s specifically mention that the Warden and Alistair are just the last Wardens currently within Ferelden's borders ([[spoiler:not counting Riordan, who is incarcerated]]): there's many more elsewhere on Thedas and they ''will'' stop the Blight if you don't. All you really do is reduce its duration to a matter of months instead of years, with a corresponding drop in casualties.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Afterburner}}'' franchise for Sega was effectively this. One carrier-launched fighter against a huge {{Mook}} airforce, though you do get refuels every so often.
[[/folder]]
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7th Apr '13 10:21:12 AM Sackett

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5th Apr '13 1:58:57 AM SeptimusHeap

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4th Apr '13 10:49:31 AM StarSword

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finishing cleanup

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4th Apr '13 10:46:40 AM StarSword

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* ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'' is the TropeNamer. Alex Rogan escaped the Ko-Dan Armada's destruction of Starfighter Command by ColonyDrop because he was off-planet at the time, having refused to become a Starfighter in the first place.
* ''Film/TheRock'', although it was two, but everyone else on the team was killed.
* ''RamboFirstBloodPartII'' was sort of this. Rambo himself even mentions the wisdom behind going in alone when you're outnumbered. 
** In ''RamboIII'', Rambo and the Colonel who trained him are attacked and cornered by what seems to be the entire Soviet army.
--->'''Colonel:''' "Got any ideas?"
--->'''Rambo:''' "Well, surrounding 'em's out."
* Most single-player FPS's other than tactical and squad types.
* In {{Halo}}, the Master Chief is one of a very small handful of surviving SPARTAN II {{Super Soldier}}s (and generally the only one available in his combat theater). 
* In Doom you play the lone space marine who was left on guard duty at the ship, now the only thing standing against the hordes of hell.

to:

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* StarWars:
** For the villain version of this, the Rule of Two, in which the vast hordes of Sith and their armies are reduced to just one master and apprentice at a time for a thousand years.
** Luke is literally the Last Starfighter at the end of ''A New Hope'', with all his fellow pilots killed or too damaged to keep fighting, in a race against time to destroy the Death Star before Vader kills him - until [[BigDamnHeroes Han shows up]].
** Before Luke came along, Obi Wan Kenobe and Yoda were amongst the few remaining Jedi in the galaxy. Luke spends the films training to be a Jedi Knight, and will spend much of the StarWarsExpandedUniverse reforging the Jedi Order and expanding it to serve the New Republic.
* You know what you doing. Move "Zig". [[ZeroWing For great justice...]]
* Once you reach the second half of the ''{{Freelancer}}'', it's not rare to take out entire fleets by yourself after all your partners have been pummeled.
* Disney's Series/AaronStone
* ''VideoGame/Warhammer40000SpaceMarine'' is a massive inversion; [[TheHero Tidus]], [[TheLancer Sidonus]], and [[NewMeat Leandros]] are sent into battle alone on Graia[[hottip:*:Well, they're not the only team, but the other teams are operating elsewhere on the planet]] before they discover a surviving garrison of the Cadian 203rd, open up the path for the Guardsmen to receive reinforcements, and are themselves reinforced when the Liberation Fleet arrives, at which point they are no longer the only Space Marines in the area.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Fraxy}}'', the premise is basically this: In the red corner, your little midget cricket of a ship. In the blue corner, The BulletHell NintendoHard [[ThatOneBoss Death Machine]] boss. Guess who wins, albeit dying a lot in the process.
* Played with in the Taito shoot 'em up ''Metal Black'': Decades after aliens destroy Earth and the world's governments unconditionally surrender, you steal an experimental space fighter and blow up most of the planet's remaining military forces while attempting to escape into space to fight the enemy hordes. The game has multiple endings depending on if you win or game over in a certain stage, and one ending involves the governments being motivated by your death into bringing another 20,000 experimental fighters into action.
* This ''did'' happen to the GreenLantern [[TheChosenMany Corps]]. It was so bad that the last Guardian teleported to Earth and threw a ring at a random person. Eventually they got better.

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* ''RogueTrooper'' is the last living Genetic Infantryman, if you don't count his biochip buddies.
* Len from KamenRiderDragonKnight not only starts ''out'' like this, he wants to ''keep it that way'' at first because he doesn't believe anyone from Earth can be trusted with the Kamen Rider Advent Decks, particularly Kit, who is the mirror twin of the Rider who betrayed the team. The fact that most of the Earth Riders actually tend to be bad guys (though a few are innocently duped or framed) doesn't help matters any. He gets better about it as the series goes on, and then it's revealed that he ''wasn't'' the last of the Ventaran Riders to escape being vented anyway.
* In ''KamenRiderBlade,'' [[HeroesRUs BOARD]] gets ransacked in the first episode. We start the series with two members (one being our hero) and a mysterious, unaligned Rider who considers ''everyone'' his enemy as the only good guys who are alive and free, and a ''lot'' of questions as to what is really going on that they have to solve on their own. At least they got to salvage some of the lab equipment (most notably their monster detector.)
* In ''MysteryMen'', Captain Amazing would normally be more than enough to thwart the evil Casanova Frankenstein's plans for mass destruction ... except he's dead now. Our only hope is a bunch of rag-tag superhero wannabes.

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* ''ComicBook/RogueTrooper'' is the last living Genetic Infantryman, if you don't count his biochip buddies.
[[/folder]]

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* ''Film/DemonKnight''. The Demon Knight is a LegacyCharacter. One Demon Knight, One Collector.
* ''Film/TheMatrix'' has shades of this trope as early as the first film; when they are hacked into the Matrix, any and every human being around them who is still plugged in by the machines has to be considered a threat because they could become an Agent in the blink of an eye. Their small group is basically operating behind enemy lines, outnumbered some 6,000,000 to 9. In Reloaded, [[spoiler: Smith]] starts to blatantly invoke this trope in his fights with Neo in an attempt to overcome The One's RealityWarper abilities in regards to martial arts and combat. And by Revolutions, within the Matrix, he spends the whole movie setting this up for the climatic final confrontation against Neo [[spoiler: by turning every single person in the Matrix, human or otherwise, into a copy of himself. Though he needn't have bothered once he converted the Oracle and saw that he would win, he's just that kind of a perfectionist. ]]
[[/folder]]

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* ''DemonKnight''. The Demon Knight is a LegacyCharacter. One Demon Knight, One Collector.
* The ''Afterburner'' franchise for Sega was effectively this. One carrier-launched fighter against a huge {{Mook}} airforce, though you do get refuels every so often.
* TheMatrix has shades of this trope as early as the first film; when they are hacked into the Matrix, any and every human being around them who is still plugged in by the machines has to be considered a threat because they could become an Agent in the blink of an eye. Their small group is basically operating behind enemy lines, outnumbered some 6,000,000 to 9. In Reloaded, [[spoiler: Smith]] starts to blatantly invoke this trope in his fights with Neo in an attempt to overcome The One's RealityWarper abilities in regards to martial arts and combat. And by Revolutions, within the Matrix, he spends the whole movie setting this up for the climatic final confrontation against Neo [[spoiler: by turning every single person in the Matrix, human or otherwise, into a copy of himself. Though he needn't have bothered once he converted the Oracle and saw that he would win, he's just that kind of a perfectionist. ]]
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<<|CombatTropes|>>
<<|{{Plots}}|>>

to:

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* In ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', the Master Chief is one of a very small handful of surviving SPARTAN II {{Super Soldier}}s (and generally the only one available in his combat theater).
* Most single-player FPS's other than tactical and squad types.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' you play the lone space marine who was left on guard duty at the ship, now the only thing standing against the hordes of hell.
%%* You know what you doing. Move "Zig". [[VideoGame/ZeroWing For great justice...]]
* Once you reach the second half of ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'', it's not rare to take out entire fleets by yourself after all your partners have been pummeled.
* ''VideoGame/Warhammer40000SpaceMarine'' subverts this.  [[TheHero Titus]], [[TheLancer Sidonus]], and [[NewMeat Leandros]] are sent into battle alone in that area of Graia[[note]]They're not the only Ultramarines squad in the theatre, but the others are operating elsewhere on the planet[[/note]] before they discover a surviving garrison of the Cadian 203rd, open up the path for the Guardsmen to receive reinforcements, and are themselves reinforced when the Liberation Fleet arrives, at which point they are no longer the only Space Marines in the area.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Fraxy}}'', the premise is basically this: In the red corner, your little midget cricket of a ship. In the blue corner, The BulletHell NintendoHard [[ThatOneBoss Death Machine]] boss. Guess who wins, albeit dying a lot in the process.
* Played with in the Creator/{{Taito}} shoot 'em up ''VideoGame/MetalBlack'': Decades after aliens destroy Earth and the world's governments unconditionally surrender, you steal an experimental space fighter and blow up most of the planet's remaining military forces while attempting to escape into space to fight the enemy hordes. The game has multiple endings depending on if you win or game over in a certain stage, and one ending involves the governments being motivated by your death into bringing another 20,000 experimental fighters into action.
* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', the player is a newly-recruited Grey Warden of just a dozen in [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Ferelden]] alone. Then all but two in Ferelden are killed in battle, leaving just the player and another Warden who is nearly as new. Their goal is to unite all the races in the fight against the [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Darkspawn]] and defeat [[BigBad the Archdemon]].  However, the game's {{loading screen}}s specifically mention that the Warden and Alistair are just the last Wardens currently within Ferelden's borders ([[spoiler:not counting Riordan, who is incarcerated]]):  there's many more elsewhere on Thedas and they ''will'' stop the Blight if you don't.  All you really do is reduce its duration to a matter of months instead of years, with a corresponding drop in casualties.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Afterburner}}'' franchise for Sega was effectively this. One carrier-launched fighter against a huge {{Mook}} airforce, though you do get refuels every so often.
[[/folder]]
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4th Apr '13 9:44:02 AM StarSword

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namespace, disambiguation, Zero Context Example fix.

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25th Mar '13 2:17:27 AM Xtifr

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