History Main / LastofHisKind

* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine Tasmanian Tiger]], "Benjamin" [[note]]No actual records confirming that the individual was called by this name have ever been found, nor are there records of the man who made the claim having ever actually been an employee of the zoo[[/note]], died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. [[Irony Only a few months prior, the species had received protection.]] The animal died of exposure to the elements because there was a strike at the zoo and he was locked outside with no shelter during a period of extreme daily highs and nightly lows because nobody remembered to open the door to his pen.

* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine Tasmanian Tiger]], "Benjamin" [[note]]No actual records confirming that the individual was called by this name have ever been found, nor are there records of the man who made the claim having ever actually been an employee of the zoo[[/note]], died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Only a few months prior, the species had received protection. The animal died of exposure to the elements because there was a strike at the zoo and he was locked outside with no shelter during a period of extreme daily highs and nightly lows because nobody remembered to open the door to his pen.

* ''{{TabletopGame/Shadowrun}}'': One of Harlequin's aliases is "Last knight of the Crying Spire".

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!!Examples:

* A couple of ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' strips play with this: a dinosaur stands alone among a bunch of caves all labelled "extinct" ("Suddenly Bobby felt very alone") while Literature/TheLastOfTheMohicans fruitlessly calls out for his fellow tribesmen. ("OK fellas, joke's over!")

* A meta-example would be the ''ComicStrip/SpiderMan'' daily newspaper strip; once, superheroes were primarily known to the public through the newspaper strips, and all the major superheroes had their own strips. Now, ''Amazing Spider-Man'' is the last superhero daily strip, and one of only a few remaining daily on-goings altogether.
** Though it really depends on whether or not one considers ''ComicStrip/ThePhantom'' a superhero or a masked "mystery man" like Franchise/{{Zorro}} or Radio/TheShadow. The latter would make ''The Phantom'' the last daily adventure/drama strip.

* Literature/LoneWolf is the last surviving Kai Lord after the [[BigBad Darklords]] massacred the rest of the order at their monastery. He would later repay the favour through the genocide of the Darklords and rebuilding the Kai Order to the point where it has five [[OneManArmy Grand Masters]]. Becoming the first [[PhysicalGod Kai Supreme Master]] is just a nice bonus.

* ''Roleplay/TheGamersAlliance'': For the longest time, [[TheEngineer Daven]] is seen as the last surviving member of the [[ProudScholarRace Lefein]] race... until he finds out that in fact There Is Another.

!! Organism - By Species
* Far, far too many extinct and critically endangered species. There's a term for the last members of a species - called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endling endlings]].
** The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon Passenger Pigeon]], Martha, died in 1914 at Cincinnati Zoo after outliving her two male companions as a very honored, but alone, bird.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesome_George Lonesome George]], the very last Pinta Island Tortoise, died on June 24, 2012.
** The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine Tasmanian Tiger]], "Benjamin" [[note]]No actual records confirming that the individual was called by this name have ever been found, nor are there records of the man who made the claim having ever actually been an employee of the zoo[[/note]], died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Only a few months prior, the species had received protection. The animal died of exposure to the elements because there was a strike at the zoo and he was locked outside with no shelter during a period of extreme daily highs and nightly lows because nobody remembered to open the door to his pen.
** "Booming Ben", the last known living specimen of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_hen Heath Hen]] (''Tympanuchus cupido cupido''), was heard for the final time on March 11, 1932, on Martha's Vineyard, still hopefully drumming to try to attract a mate.
** The Cornell Lab of Ornithology recorded the [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nDRY0CmcYNU song]] of the last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauaʻi_ʻōʻō Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird]] before its death in 1987. The song was from a male, singing a mating call to female that sadly, would never come. Most tragically, the recorded song was only ''half'' of the mating call: Kauaʻi ʻōʻōs mated for life and sang a duet-- the conspicuous, empty pauses in the last recording were supposed to be where the female would chime in.
** ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyophorbe_amaricaulis Hyophorbe amaricaulis]]'', the Loneliest Palm. This is a species of palm tree with only one known member in the world, in a garden in Mauritius.
** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecnomiohyla_rabborum Rabb's fringe-limbed tree frog]] was reduced to a single known specimen in 2012. Named [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toughie_(frog) Toughie]], his species had been wiped out by chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease that has been devastating frogs throughout the Americas and Australia. He died in 2016, most likely taking his species with him.
** The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_toad Golden Toad]] was a single male sighted in Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica In 1989.
** The last confirmed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiji baiji (Yangtze River dolphin)]] was Qiqi, who died in 2002.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_(rhinoceros) Sudan]], the last male [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_white_rhinoceros Northern White Rhino]], died on March 19, 2018, due to age-related complications, leaving two females --Najin (Sudan’s daughter) and Fatu (Najin’s daughter and Sudan’s granddaughter)-- who are living under constant protection from poachers and have health issues that prevent them from being able to become pregnant. In vitro fertilization (using genetically-similar Southern White Rhino females as surrogates) may be the only hope, as they did freeze his sperm and the sperm of other male rhinos, and the surviving females are still producing viable eggs that could be used.
** The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs Aurochs]] was an old female that died in Poland's Jaktorow forest in 1627. She outlived the other last aurochs (three younger males) by over ten years.
* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenean_ibex Pyrenean Ibex]] was an old female named Celia, who was killed by a falling tree in early 2000. Celia was successfully cloned in 2003, but the clone died after approximately ten minutes. This made the Pyrenean Ibex the first (and possibly only) biological taxon to go extinct twice.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_(snail) ‘George’]] was the last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achatinella_apexfulva (Achatinella apexfulva)]] a species of snail native to Oahu, Hawaii. He was born and lived in captivity, he lived at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and died at the age of 14 in 2019.
** The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_kākā Norfolk Island kaka]] (a parrot native to Norfolk Island and Phillip Island) lived in captivity in London, until it died in 1851.
* ''Homo sapiens sapiens'' (us humans) is the last species of the ''Homo'' genus, and the last of an entire lineage of bipedal apes who once lived in abundance across the old world. The past ten or so thousand years is the first time in the history of hominins that there has been one species. And unless we do something about it, [[DownerEnding we may soon be the last of the Great Apes]].
** That said, there are attempts to either shift the entire ''Homo'' genus to the ''Pan'' genus (where Bonobos and Chimpanzees reside), or shift the ''Pan'' genus into the ''Homo'' genus. This causes problems in taxonomy, due to how things are arranged.
** There are many similar cases with other species, like the Tuatara (the last reptile that isn't a squamate, a turtle or an archosaur).
** ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba Ginkgo biloba]]'', a kind of tree, is not only the last living species within its genus, it's the last living species within its whole ''division'' (the botanical equivalent of a phylum). In a sense, it would be like if human beings were the last animal with vertebrae.
* There are only 2 samples of smallpox left on earth. Fortunately both are [[SealedEvilInACan locked away in highly secure laboratories]].
* Solo, the last African wild dog on Botswana's Mombe Island. Famously, after lions wiped out her entire pack, the desperately-lonely dog began sharing her kills with young spotted hyenas and jackals, becoming a peripheral member of the hyena troop and helping her jackal companions rear their pups.

!! Organism - Human - Specific
* Any creature who has no children or biological siblings. They become the last member of an unbroken chain of organisms that had managed to survive and reproduce [[TimeAbyss since the very beginning of life on Earth.]]
* Complete/Absolute orphans are a very special last of kind, and also last of their bloodline. A similar phenomenon are "elder orphans", senior citizens who have outlived the rest of their family.
* Also the fate of many old noble families, many who can trace their family lines down to Dark Ages.
* Being the last speaker of a language can be like this. Here's a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_speaker_of_language list]], including speakers both alive and dead.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi Ishi]] was the last member of the Native American Yana tribe. From 1911 to 1916, his status gave him a lot of attention from anthropologists in California.
* The famous artist Creator/HenriDeToulouseLautrec, the last descendant of the family of the Counts of Toulouse.
* Creator/LuchinoVisconti, the Italian film director was the last of the famous Visconti di Modrone family.
* The last survivor of the Bo, an indigenous tribe of the Andaman-Nicobar Islands, died on [[http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1964610,00.html Feb 16th, 2010]].
* Truganini, the last known full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian, died in 1876. However, it must be noted that Australian aboriginal culture considers anyone descended from Tasmanian Aboriginals to be part of that group; with several thousand such people living today, there is still hope for the culture.
* After the Khmer Rouge devastated Cambodia, there was one living person who knew anything of how to perform the three-thousand-year-old traditional dances. She happens to be an old lady trying to teach people everything she can remember in the hopes that when she goes, not all the knowledge will vanish with her. It's likely most of it has already been lost.
* Jacques de Molay was the last Grandmaster of UsefulNotes/TheKnightsTemplar and since he was killed in 1314, several years after ThePurge and defection of other Knights Templar, he might have been the Last Templar of the Crusader Era.
* Bartholomew Roberts who died in 1721 is considered the last Great Pirate of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfPiracy. He was the most successful of them all and the classic book ''A General History of the Robberies and Murderers of the Most Notorious Pyrates'' marks his death as the EndOfAnAge.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zablon_Simintov The last Jew of Afghanistan.]] Yes, it's a country with over thirty million people, and only one single Jew left.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawnadithit Shanawdithit]] was the last surviving member of the Beothuk, a First Nation (the Canadian term for what would be called a "Native American tribe/nation" in the US) from Newfoundland. She died in 1829.
* During the UsefulNotes/CulturalRevolution many practitioners of ancient Chinese arts were targeted, with numerous skills lost forever. One of the survivors is Yang Fuxi, who is currently the last traditional bow maker in China. He has taken three students so hopefully his skills won't disappear as well.
* Squanto was a Patuxet Native American who was captured by Englishmen and sold into slavery in Europe. He was freed by Spanish priests and returned home, only to find that the rest of his tribe had died from European-borne disease.
* [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15480741 The last known living weapons master of the Indian martial art of Shastar Vidya is attempting to pass on his knowledge.]]
* With the death of Jacques Rivette on January 29, 2016, Creator/JeanLucGodard became the last of the UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave group of avant-garde directors and the one with the longest career.
** Creator/OliviaDeHavilland and Creator/KirkDouglas, born in June and December 1916 respectively, are the last major movie stars from UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood, both of them having outlived nearly every other major actor, actress and director from that era.
** Douglas, Creator/SidneyPoitier and Creator/SophiaLoren are the last three living people listed in AFIS100Years100Stars list.
** Creator/ManoelDeOliveira, who died in 2015 [[LongRunners after a long life of 107 years]] and remaining active to his final two years, was the last major filmmaker who began his career in silent cinema.
* [[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/08/the_most_isolated_man_on_the_planet.single.html The most isolated man on earth]]. He lives in the Brazilian rainforest. It's thought that he's the last member of a tribe that was either massacred or wiped out by disease. Since he rejects all contact, nobody knows what tribe he belonged to, what language he speaks, or what his name is.
* Last Kings:
** UsefulNotes/CleopatraVII Philopator was the last Hellenic ruler of Egypt. Upon the defeat of Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium and the annexation of Egypt into UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire, she committed suicide. Her defeat also ended the last Hellenic Kingdom, set up by the Diadochi, in the wake of UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat's death.
** UsefulNotes/{{Nero}}: The last Julio-Claudian emperor. The bloodline of UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} and UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar ended with him.
** Julian the Apostate, who attempted to revive paganism, was the last non-Christian ruler of UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire and the Western World and his rule is invoked by writers and historians as the closest history has come to marking the DeathOfTheOldGods.
** UsefulNotes/RichardIII was the Last of the [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfPlantagenet Plantagenets]], and the last King of England to be killed in battle. The Plantagenets were England's longest ruling dynasty.
** Bahadur Shah Zafar was the Last Mughal Emperor, he died in exile in the wake of the 1857 Mutiny, at the end of which the English murdered his sons and heirs in cold blood.
** Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III were respectively [[UsefulNotes/LEtatCestMoi the Last King and Emperor of France]], Nicholas II was the Last of the Romanovs, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was the last Shah of Iran, and of course Pu Yi was Film/TheLastEmperor of UsefulNotes/{{China}}.
** Stanisław August Poniatowski was the last elected King of the UsefulNotes/PolishLithuanianCommonwealth, and the last King of Poland as a whole.
** The House of Hohenstaufen, a clan of powerful, talented German nobles which produced seven kings and emperors of Germany between 1138 and 1254, was hunted to extinction by their arch-enemies, popes Urban IV and Clement IV, and the papacy's ally, Charles of Anjou. Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II was in constant conflict with the papacy, and his sons and descendants paid the price. His favorite, but illegitimate, son, Enzo of Sardinia, was captured by his family's enemies the Guelphs (a faction sympathetic to the Pope) in 1249 and imprisoned for decades until his death. Friedrich II's only legitimate son, the last Hohenstaufen emperor Konrad IV, died under mysterious circumstances in 1254. In 1266, his half-brother Manfred was killed in battle by Charles of Anjou, who'd been promised Manfred's kingdom (Sicily) by the pope. Charles also captured and imprisoned all of Manfred's children. Two years later, Manfred's nephew (Konrad IV's son) sixteen-year-old Konradin attempted to seize his family's domains in Italy from Charles of Anjou. He was captured and publically executed. A few months later, Konradin's bastard half-brother, Corradino, was also captured and murdered by Charles of Anjou, finally extinguishing the Hohenstaufen in the male line.
** Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen due to her celibacy and therefore lack of offspring, was the last Tudor monarch.
** Feodor I Ivanovich, the middle son of Tsar Ivan "The Terrible" IV, was the last of Russia's Rurik dynasty. Both of his brothers, Ivan Ivanovich and Dmitry Ivanovich, were either killed accidentally or murdered, and his only child, Feodosia, died at age 2. Mind you, there were plenty of other Rurikids (there still are), it's just that the two assemblies which chose the new ruler in 1598 and 1613 both selected people related to the older king by marriage rather than blood.
* Before his 2018 death, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Maren Jerry Maren]] was the last surviving Munchkin from ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' (he played one of the members of the Lollipop Guild) and the last "true" surviving cast member of the entire movie (Caren Marsh Doll, Judy Garland's stand-in for the film, is also technically a cast member, though uncredited).
* Similarly, Madeline Lebeau was the last surviving cast member of ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'' before her death in 2016.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow Joseph Medicine Crow-High Bird]] was the last war chief of the Crow tribe and the last living Plains Indian war chief. Because of the requirements to gain the status of war chief (which he performed during World War II)[[note]]touching an enemy without killing him, taking an enemy’s weapon, leading a successful war party and stealing an enemy’s horse[[/note]], he is likely truly the last.
* UsefulNotes/FidelCastro was the last major world leader from the UsefulNotes/ColdWar era, having outlasted his Latin American/African/Asian allies and counterparts (Mao/Allende/Chavez/Ho Chi Minh/Nelson Mandela/Indira Gandhi/Che Guevara) and his opponents (Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Reagan/Thatcher/Pinochet). Since UsefulNotes/{{China}} and UsefulNotes/{{Vietnam}} have radically moved away from Communist principles, UsefulNotes/{{Cuba}} is perhaps the last Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist nation, an era that is expected to end in the wake of the Cuban Thaw of 2015. Indeed a number of tourists have toured Cuba in the hope of seeing TheRemnant before the inevitable re-opening of the free market in the Island. He died in 2016 at the age of 90.
* Lazar Kaganovich was the last Old Bolshevik, the members of the Communist Party from before the 1917 Revolution. He lived through the Russian Civil War, the 1932-33 famine, World War II, multiple purges, the Sino-Soviet split, almost the entire Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. He died in 1991, [[{{Foreshadowing}} just five months before the fall of the Soviet Union]].
* By the time she died in 2017, Creator/JuneForay was the last remaining prominent voice actress from UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation, as well as the last surviving main cast member of ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'' (she frequently [[RoleReprisal reprised her role]] as Rocky for multiple projects well into her golden years, with the last being a short film that was released just three years before her passing).
* John Glenn was the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven astronauts before he passed away in December 2016 at age 95.
* Partially due to the fact that many of the ''Film/OurGang'' stars fell victim to horrible deaths (see [[http://www.neatorama.com/2010/07/05/the-curse-of-the-little-rascals/ this article]] for more on ''that'' mess), Jean Darling was the last living member of the original group until her death in 2015 - she appeared in the films when they were silent.
* Following the death of Music/{{Soundgarden}}'s Music/ChrisCornell in May 2017, Eddie Vedder of Music/PearlJam became the last surviving major grunge singer of the early '90s.
* Creator/MickeyRooney and Creator/SidCaesar were the last two surviving main cast members of ''Film/ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' before dying within two months of each other in 2014.
* Max Baer Jr. is the last surviving member of ''Series/TheBeverlyHillbillies''' regular cast, with the passing of Donna Douglass in 2014.
* By 1991, only one year after ''Theatre/AChorusLine'' ended its original Broadway run, four of the five co-creators, James Kirkwood, Jr., Edward Kleban, Nicholas Dante, and Michael Bennett had passed away. The last creator, Music/MarvinHamlisch, would pass away in August 2012 at age 68.
* It was inevitable that sometime in the early 21st century, there would be only one surviving human who was born in the 19th century (i.e. prior to 1901), which would've happened in 2021 at the latest unless they'd also broken the record for verified oldest person (currently held by the late Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at 122 years). Nabi Tajima held this dubious honor before her death in 2018 at 117 years old (and thus the third oldest person in the world).


!! Show Business
* From the 1994 cancellation of ''Series/CaesarsChallenge'' until the 2010 revival of ''Series/LetsMakeADeal'', ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' on CBS was the last of the network daytime game shows airing nationally in the United States, not counting syndicated programs.
** For individual networks, ''Caesar's Challenge'' was the last daytime game show on NBC, while the 1990-91 version of ''MatchGame'' was ABC's last. FOX never had a network daytime game show that aired on weekdays, though they aired ''Family Double Dare'' and ''Fun House'' on weekends in their early years, with ''Fun House'' being cancelled last in 1991.
* ''Series/GeneralHospital'' is the only surviving Soap on ABC, ''Series/DaysOfOurLives'' is the only one left on NBC. At some point, either one of those two, ''The Young and the Restless'' or ''The Bold and the Beautiful'' will be the last surviving American Daytime Soap Opera. Considering Soap Operas are OlderThanTelevision (''Series/GuidingLight'' began as a radio show) whichever one who gets that dubious title is going in the record books.
* By the time it was replaced with E/I programming in September 2014, Creator/{{Vortexx}} was the last Saturday morning kids block on the Big Five networks which broadcasted entertainment instead of only existing to meet E/I requirements. Creator/{{Toonzai}} had also fit this trope before Vortexx replaced it. Creator/KidsClick would count, but it airs mainly on Creator/ThisTV affiliates and a few Sinclair-owned stations.
** Subverted with Creator/{{ABC}} Kids, which [[LoopholeAbuse despite bumpers stating that its shows were "educational and informational"]] actually consisted of older, non E/I shows ported from Creator/DisneyChannel such as ''WesternAnimation/TheReplacements'', ''Series/ThatsSoRaven'' and ''Series/HannahMontana'' (it was running on autopilot by the time ABC switched to a completely E/I Saturday lineup in September 2011).
** NBC Kids was the last Saturday block on the Big Five networks not to be monopolized by Litton Entertainment. There are still non-Litton Saturday blocks on some local or minor affiliate channels as well as digital subchannels such as Creator/MeTV.
* ''Manga/SazaeSan'' is now officially the last traditionally hand-animated and painted animated show ''in the world'' that is still in production, as just about all animated series are either an AllCGICartoon or colored digitally with software. [[note]]Most animated series that began production when hand-painting cels was still commonplace, such as ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' or ''WesternAnimation/EdEddnEddy'', were usually forced to switch to digital color when it became the industry standard.[[/note]] The last animated movie with hand-made cels was ''Anime/PrincessMononoke'' (1997), and the last serial cartoon with hand-made cels was ''WesternAnimation/EdEddnEddy'' (1999), although when the latter revived and began production for its SeriesFinale TV movie, the animation studio was forced to color it digitally.
** Hand-painted animation isn't entirely extinct, but most of it is now reserved for students in art school to hone their craft with, along with stop animation and claymation.
** Hand-painted animation is hardly extinct, but still a fairly rare beast due to the time and effort and cost involved. See ''Anime/{{REDLINE}}'' or ''Disney/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'', both from 2009.
* The demise of ComicBook/TheDandy leaves its stablemate ComicBook/TheBeano as the last weekly humour anthology comic in the United Kingdom.
* Creator/AdultSwim, with their Creator/{{Toonami}} revival block, is currently the only adult oriented TV channel to consistently show {{anime}} in the United States.
* Since NBC Universal shut down all Creator/G4TV operations on November 30, 2014, AT&T U-Verse was the last cable/satellite provider which still carried this network until it officially ended at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2015.
* ''Series/XPlay'' was the only Creator/TechTV-produced show to survive the transition to [=G4TechTV=]. If you count ''Series/AttackOfTheShow'' as a ReTool of ''The Screen Savers'', rather than a replacement, ''X-Play'' becomes the only Tech TV program to make an unaltered transition. When ''X-Play'' was canceled in 2013 as G4 was shutting down, co-host Morgan Webb was the last remaining Tech TV on-air personality.
** The last surviving G4 original show, ''Cinematech'', was cancelled in April 2007.
* ''Radio/OpieAndAnthony'' were 90's shock-jocks who lasted until 2014, long after their style of (male-oriented, aggressive) comedy had fallen out of favor. By the the time Anthony was fired for a series of offensive tweets, the show had spent years with no real competition, as ''Creator/HowardStern'' had downplayed radio for the sake of his TV career, and the public airwaves had abandoned the genre completely (both they and Stern moved to satellite radio).
* ''Series/SesameStreet'' presents an odd case. Either Bob [=McGrath=] (Bob), Loretta Long (Susan) or Carroll Spinney (Big Bird/Oscar) were the last remaining members of the original 1969 cast to still remain with the show, but at that point in time most of the humans seemed to have been [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome Chucked Out]], PutOnABus or DemotedToExtra with the exceptions of Alan, Chris and Nina, along with Charlie (introduced in Season 50); everyone else only appeared sporadically by the time the much-publicized announcement that several of the older actors would be "let go" [[http://www.toughpigs.com/the-weirdest-things-about-this-sesame-street-humans-news-story/ made its way to the public]][[note]]who freaked out and insisted that they got fired instead because of ExecutiveMeddling from HBO - Sesame Workshop's CEO stated that the older humans were still very much part of the Sesame family and that they would find a way to use them in the future that would fit the current ''Sesame''[[/note]]. And while Carroll still did his characters occasionally, he had Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson as the respective understudies for Big Bird and Oscar after his retirement in 2018 and death in 2019. Frank Oz's directing career has become increasingly busy, thus Eric Jacobson does Grover and Bert, and Cookie Monster is being taken over by David Rudman. Cameraman Frank Biondo may also fit into the "last of their kind" mold, having been part of the show since the very first episode.
* ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' is the last remaining magazine that focuses mainly on satire.

!! Vehicle
* Many historical aircraft survive only as singular museum pieces.
** Out of even relatively common historical military aircraft, there are many that have only one or none examples of stock planes, planes near assembly line specifications, which you would think would be the most common examples. This is because the military scrapped nearly everything it had and surviving aircraft of a type are often the results of obscure contracts and deals and either remained useful or put into storage when the standard line was scrapped. Examples include the fact that there is only one stock B-24, one B-29 that wasn't modified into an atomic bomber or trainer at some point, and one PBY Catalina that wasn't an airliner.
* Flying Scotsman. The last of Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley's famous A1/A3 express passenger steam engines. All others of the class were scrapped by 1968. Flying Scotsman was only rescued through private patronage. One fictional example exists, though: [[WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine Gordon the Big Engine]].
** Green Arrow, too, as the last of Gresley's V2 mixed-traffic engines.
** A lot of famous locomotive classes are now down to one survivor, and this is more likely the older the class. Patrick Stirling's GNR No. 1 is the last of the "Stirling Singles," and LNWR 790 "Hardwicke" is the last of FW Webb's Precedent-class engines.
* Please see [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_surviving_ships this article]] from Wiki/TheOtherWiki. You may spot some ships listed below there and then some more.
** The USS ''Texas'', [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Texas_%28BB-35%29 BB-35]], is the last World War I-era dreadnought, the kind of superheavy "big guns and smokestacks" battleship that most people still think of when you say 'warship'. Also the last of the ''New York'' class, due to her sister ship ''New York'' being sunk for a nuclear weapons test.
** The IJN ''Mikasa'' is the last pre-dreadnought type battleship in the world. She is also the last remaining ship of the once mighty Imperial Japanese navy.
** The USS ''Salem'' is the last heavy cruiser in existence. These were a class of ships often considered second to only Battleships in terms of power, eventually even being considered more powerful due to superior anti-air armament. Logically, she is also the last of the ''Des Moines'' class cruiser, her sisters having been scrapped after it was deemed they wouldn't be able to compete with ''Salem'' as museum.
** ''Georgios Averof'' is the last armored cruiser, a class of warships made obsolete by Dreadnaught type battleships as well as faster but more lightly armored cruisers. She was also the last ship of this type to serve in a combat role, as she participated in combat during WWII.
** RMS ''Queen Mary'' is the last golden age Atlantic ocean liner and could become the last "grand liner"[[note]]A term that is loosely defined as world famous luxury cruise ships. Changes in cruise marketing have made it unnecessary for lines to promote individual liners, to the point that passengers often don't know the name of the ship they book a cruise on until after boarding.[[/note]] if efforts to save her postwar rival the ''United States'' fail. She's also the last ship to have sailed under the "Cunard White Star" brand.
** Though sea cruising is a thriving industry, the Cunard Line's ''RMS Queen Mary 2'' is the only ocean liner in the world still in operation and the only sailing vessel still providing regular transatlantic passenger service between New York and Southampton.

!! Political Entity
* The [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] doesn't really disappear in TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: a little-known region called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria Transnistria]], a separatist state of UsefulNotes/{{Moldova}}, is all but Soviet in appearance. It retains the hammer-and-sickle logo for its flag and emblem, plus Stalinist architecture preserved in its utmost purity.
* The Principality of UsefulNotes/{{Liechtenstein}} is the only surviving polity of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, which ceased to exist as a political entity in 1806, after almost a thousand years of existence. Its survival is due to a number of ContrivedCoincidence and pure luck, since it managed to avoid being incorporated into the newborn Austrian Empire[[note]]the Empire ceased to exist after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, too, by the way, which means that Liechtenstein was able to outlive both its parent and baby sister countries.[[/note]] ''and'' the [[UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}} Swiss Republic]], which tried to annex it at some point or another. It even managed to avoid being Anschluss'ed into the UsefulNotes/NaziGermany by virtue of its association with Switzerland (though it was more or less sympathetic to them). Thus it came out of it unscathed and remains independent, even if it functions more like another canton of Switzerland nowadays. Since 1924, it's been in a customs union with Switzerland.
* Likewise, the [[InsistentTerminology Most Serene Republic]] of UsefulNotes/SanMarino, which is the only survivor of the once-numerous city-state republics in the Italian Peninsula (and indeed, all of Europe). It uses a Switzerland-like directorial parliamentary system, but while Switzerland has a leader representing each of its cantons, San Marino has two "Captains Regent", mirroring the use of the Roman dual praetorship system; from a certain perspective, you can say that San Marino is also the only surviving polity of the Roman Republic, which ceased to exist in ''[[OlderThanFeudalism 27 BC]]''.
* UsefulNotes/VaticanCity, the last independent European country with an absolute monarchical rule.[[note]] Yes, UsefulNotes/ThePope is indeed, by all definitions, a monarch.[[/note]]

!! Business
* The Frisco is the last of the Nighthawk chain of restaurants (and, yes, they all had separate names). Had a pretty big outpouring of support to help it survive its 2009 relocation.
* Creator/{{Nintendo}} is the last of the dedicated video game console companies. All others, like Creator/{{Atari}}, Creator/HudsonSoft[[note]]Although they originally created and designed the UsefulNotes/PCEngine / Turbografx-16, it was NEC who actually manufactured, released and distributed the system.[[/note]], and Creator/{{SNK}}, but most notably Creator/{{Sega}} either went third-party or just went defunct. Creator/SonyComputerEntertainment was the first to start a trend of hardware companies making the consoles while game studios made the games, Nintendo has resisted and pressed on.
* Luftschiffbau Zeppelin is often considered the first major company based on aviation, and as such holds the title of last of its kind in multiple categories. First they are the last company that started by making lighter than air vehicles and may soon be the last manufacturer of airships. They are the aircraft manufacturer that existed before world war one and the last German aircraft manufacture from before World War II (or at least the last one still making aircraft). Before you think that Zeppelin's glory days are done, keep in mind that they hold numerous altitude records and are poised to be the first organization to send an object to space without the use of rocket propulsion.
* Following the 2016 announcement that the Bangor, Maine location would close, the last remaining Howard Johnson's restaurant in the world is located in Lake George, New York (and even ''that'' one was closed in 2011 before reopening in 2015).
* The only surviving location of cult fast food chain Hot 'n' Now is in Sturgis, Michigan, following a fire at the only other remaining location in Bay City, Michigan (which was in the middle of rebranding anyway) in September 2016.
* The last remaining location of the family restaurant chain [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lum%27s Lum's]] was in Bellevue, Nebraska (although a franchise opened briefly in Massachusetts in 2010). However, the Bellevue location finally closed in May 2017.
* Since the locations in Pomeroy, Ohio and Spencer, West Virginia stopped selling it in August 2017, the [=McDonald's=] on Sand Lake Road in Orlando, Florida is the last one that still sells pizza.
* With the demise of Child World/Children's Palace, Lionel Kiddie City, Circus World, and KB Toys (which later bought out Circus World), Toys "R" Us was the last remaining general purpose toy store chain in the US... and then ''they'' went out of business, after which KB Toys announced they would potentially be taking the slack left by TRU, thus having the last of their kind reign handed over to them.
* Similarly, f.y.e. has been the last remaining American record store chain for several years following the demise of Musicland (which owned Sam Goody and Media Play), Tower Records, and the many regional competitors (many of which were merged into f.y.e.). In Canada, that honor goes to Sunrise Records, which was a regional chain before expanding to replace most of the vacant spots left by the recently-closed HMV.
* Following the closure of locations in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska in July 2018, the last remaining Blockbuster Video in the world is in Bend, Oregon.

!! Miscellaneous
* You might already know that the entirety of Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, etc.) were descended from Latin. What you probably don't know is that Latin is just a member of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_languages Italic branch]] of the Indo-European language family; it has many sibling languages whose speakers settled in (appropriately) the Italian Peninsula, all of which were assimilated/killed off when the Roman Republic began to consolidate the peninsula, making it a weird case of GenocideFromTheInside. Note that up until then, the Latins were considered as the most backward FlyoverCountry goers out of them all, making it also a weird case of UnderdogsNeverLose.
* The ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_of_the_Romans Last of the Romans]]'', in latin ''Ultimus Romanorum'', is a term that has historically been used to describe a man thought to embody the values of Ancient Roman civilization, values which, by implication, became extinct on his death. It has been used to describe a number of Roman individuals. It has also been metaphorically used in other contexts to describe someone that is the last to embody the moral spirit of his culture.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5ecU2yGDpM This song]] about an old member of the Communist Party captures the sense of tragedy of being the last of a movement that seemed on the brink of changing the world for so many years. It also recognizes that the failure of that movement can be traced to a large degree to the sins of that movement (slavish devotion to Moscow, opportunistic betrayal of principle for quick popularity).

* Wrestling/TheUndertaker picked up the nickname "The Last Outlaw" during a feud with Wrestling/TripleH and later promos played up his status as one of the last remnants of the 1980s era high-concept comic-book-style [[TheGimmick gimmicks]]. (Really, the only other one is his storyline half-brother Wrestling/{{Kane}}.) If you want to get technical, it's really Kane who's left from that era, because 'Taker can no longer wrestle on a regular basis, so much so that his appearances in recent years have only been during the lead-up to ''Wrestling/{{WrestleMania}}'' and the actual pay-per-view itself.

* ''Series/SesameStreet'' presents an odd case. Either Bob McGrath (Bob), Loretta Long (Susan) or Carroll Spinney (Big Bird/Oscar) were the last remaining members of the original 1969 cast to still remain with the show, but at that point in time most of the humans seemed to have been [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome Chucked Out]], PutOnABus or DemotedToExtra with the exceptions of Alan, Chris and Nina, along with Charlie (introduced in Season 50); everyone else only appeared sporadically by the time the much-publicized announcement that several of the older actors would be "let go" [[http://www.toughpigs.com/the-weirdest-things-about-this-sesame-street-humans-news-story/ made its way to the public]][[note]]who freaked out and insisted that they got fired instead because of ExecutiveMeddling from HBO - Sesame Workshop's CEO stated that the older humans were still very much part of the Sesame family and that they would find a way to use them in the future that would fit the current ''Sesame''[[/note]]. And while Carroll still did his characters occasionally, he had Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson as the respective understudies for Big Bird and Oscar after his retirement in 2018 and death in 2019. Frank Oz's directing career has become increasingly busy, thus Eric Jacobson does Grover and Bert, and Cookie Monster is being taken over by David Rudman. Cameraman Frank Biondo may also fit into the "last of their kind" mold, having been part of the show since the very first episode.

* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon Passenger Pigeon]], Martha, died in 1914 at Cincinnati Zoo after outliving her two male companions as a very honored, but alone, bird.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesome_George Lonesome George]], the very last Pinta Island Tortoise, died on June 24, 2012.
* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine Tasmanian Tiger]], "Benjamin" [[note]]No actual records confirming that the individual was called by this name have ever been found, nor are there records of the man who made the claim having ever actually been an employee of the zoo[[/note]], died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Only a few months prior, the species had received protection. The animal died of exposure to the elements because there was a strike at the zoo and he was locked outside with no shelter during a period of extreme daily highs and nightly lows because nobody remembered to open the door to his pen.
* "Booming Ben", the last known living specimen of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_hen Heath Hen]] (''Tympanuchus cupido cupido''), was heard for the final time on March 11, 1932, on Martha's Vineyard, still hopefully drumming to try to attract a mate.
* The Cornell Lab of Ornithology recorded the [[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nDRY0CmcYNU song]] of the last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauaʻi_ʻōʻō Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird]] before its death in 1987. The song was from a male, singing a mating call to female that sadly, would never come. Most tragically, the recorded song was only ''half'' of the mating call: Kauaʻi ʻōʻōs mated for life and sang a duet-- the conspicuous, empty pauses in the last recording were supposed to be where the female would chime in.
* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyophorbe_amaricaulis Hyophorbe amaricaulis]]'', the Loneliest Palm. This is a species of palm tree with only one known member in the world, in a garden in Mauritius.
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecnomiohyla_rabborum Rabb's fringe-limbed tree frog]] was reduced to a single known specimen in 2012. Named [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toughie_(frog) Toughie]], his species had been wiped out by chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease that has been devastating frogs throughout the Americas and Australia. He died in 2016, most likely taking his species with him.
* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_toad Golden Toad]] was a single male sighted in Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica In 1989.
* The last confirmed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiji baiji (Yangtze River dolphin)]] was Qiqi, who died in 2002.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_(rhinoceros) Sudan]], the last male [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_white_rhinoceros Northern White Rhino]], died on March 19, 2018, due to age-related complications, leaving two females --Najin (Sudan’s daughter) and Fatu (Najin’s daughter and Sudan’s granddaughter)-- who are living under constant protection from poachers and have health issues that prevent them from being able to become pregnant. In vitro fertilization (using genetically-similar Southern White Rhino females as surrogates) may be the only hope, as they did freeze his sperm and the sperm of other male rhinos, and the surviving females are still producing viable eggs that could be used.
* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs Aurochs]] was an old female that died in Poland's Jaktorow forest in 1627. She outlived the other last aurochs (three younger males) by over ten years.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_(snail) ‘George’]] was the last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achatinella_apexfulva (Achatinella apexfulva)]] a species of snail native to Oahu, Hawaii. He was born and lived in captivity, he lived at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and died at the age of 14 in 2019.
* The last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_kākā Norfolk Island kaka]] (a parrot native to Norfolk Island and Phillip Island) lived in captivity in London, until it died in 1851.

* ''Theatre/WesterosAnAmericanMusical'': During "Small Council", Daenerys is called "the last dragon", the dragon referring to her family sigil. Daenery's brother Viserys is dead by the time she's first seen onstage, and the two of them were the last known survivors of their family at the beginning of the original story.

* "Booming Ben", the last known living specimen of [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_hen Heath Hen]] (''Tympanuchus cupido cupido''), was heard for the final time on March 11, 1932, on Martha's Vineyard, still hopefully drumming to try to attract a mate.

* ''WebOriginal/MultituberculateEarth'' has [[https://multituberculateearth.wordpress.com/2022/03/29/the-last-placental/ The Last Placental]] portrays the short story of the last [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpolestidae carpolestid]], and with it the end of Placentalia in the project's timeline. It is far from somber, however: the animal is barely aware what is going on and choses to [[BestialityIsDepraved mate]] with a multituberculate.

* ''Roleplay/TheGamersAlliance'': For the longest time, [[TheEngineer Daven]] is seen as the last surviving member of the [[ProudScholarRaceGuy Lefein]] race... until he finds out that in fact There Is Another.

* LastOfHisKind/RealLife

Compare EndofanAge, FlingALightIntoTheFuture, HumanitysWake, UniquenessValue, GenocideSurvivor, and LivingRelic. GenocideBackfire and GenocideFromTheInside can both cause this trope. EndangeredSpecies and DyingRace are not as extreme versions, although they may lead to this eventually. Sometimes paired with TheAloner for truly horrifying angst. Occasionally PlayedForDrama or PlayedForLaughs with OnlyYouCanRepopulateMyRace. Occasionally the Last Of His Kind is of a previously extant BarbarianTribe of some kind. If ThereIsAnother, see AdamAndEvePlot. TheCollector likely wants to put him in their FantasticNatureReserve.

Compare FlingALightIntoTheFuture, HumanitysWake, UniquenessValue, GenocideSurvivor, and LivingRelic. GenocideBackfire and GenocideFromTheInside can both cause this trope. EndangeredSpecies and DyingRace are not as extreme versions, although they may lead to this eventually. Sometimes paired with TheAloner for truly horrifying angst. Occasionally PlayedForDrama or PlayedForLaughs with OnlyYouCanRepopulateMyRace. Occasionally the Last Of His Kind is of a previously extant BarbarianTribe of some kind. If ThereIsAnother, see AdamAndEvePlot. TheCollector likely wants to put him in their FantasticNatureReserve.

* LastOfHisKind/{{Sports}}