History Main / MayorOfAGhostTown

* Burgess Meredith's character in the ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 Twilight Zone]]'' episode ''[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough At Last]]'' finds himself in this position after surviving a nuclear attack by virtue of being in a bank vault at the time, much to his pleasure (at first).

* ''[[ComicBook/RobinSeries Robin]]'': When Tim starts looking into the EldritchAbomination that completely derailed his attempt to track a gun runner he comes a town where most of the population had been slaughtered by the creature and the single remaining hold out had grabbed up what weapons and tools he could to arm himself and put defenses around his house.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''WesternAnimation/WallE'' provides a robotic example, with the ghost town being the abandoned, overpolluted Earth.

* ''LightNovel/KinosJourney'': One of the countries that Kino encounters is the last remaining member of a "democracy" that voted by majority. Ultimately, everyone else had voted each other to death until one man and his dying wife were left.

* In the GrandFinale of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', Ozai apoints Azula as the new Fire Lord while he goes off to end the war (and gives himself a new title denoting supreme ruler of the world). Azula's [[VillainousBreakdown increasing instability and paranoia]] means she ends up gradually banishing every member of the Royal Household (and, possibly, everyone in the Fire Nation capital) other then the few people needed to coronate her.

* In order to be able to take the maxmum amount of taxes in the State Treasury from the Federal government, who wanted to create a nuclear waste storage center, the government of UsefulNotes/{{Nevada}} created in 1987 the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfrog_County,_Nevada county of Bullfrog]] out of Nye County, around the completly unhabited Yucca Mountain, where the waste had to be sent, and set the land value tax to the maximum. This county, deprived of any population and infrastructure such as roads, had its seat at Carson City, the capital, and its officials were named by the central government. In 1989 the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCourts Nevada Supreme Court]] ruled the fact Bullfrog County had no resident made it unable to have a representative government, making the creation of this county unconstitutional.

* ''The Custodians of Culture'' has an old man convincing a simple-minded relative that they have to take on this role for their hometown that's been abandoned after a highway bypass, when in truth he's just a bitter old hermit. After he dies the younger man decides he has a duty to stay and take on the job of custodian, rather than get on with his life.

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVII'' has this happen to Suifu in the Penal Colony where all the refugees/prisoners from Dharma Shrine are being held. Once the problems are solved, he finds himself alone, ruefully admitting that he'll never enjoy the sort of power and position [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority he was able to claim for himself there]].

* UpToEleven in ''A Planet for the President'', where the President of the United States is the only survivor of a global pandemic caused by an artificial virus deliberately spread by the American government as part of a DepopulationBomb plot that should have not affected the American people (he only survives because his vaccine was the only one that was not faulty).

[[folder:Film]]

* In ''Franchise/WinnieThePooh: Springtime with Roo'', Rabbit (in a YetAnotherChristmasCarol) finds himself in a BadFuture where he's the only one left in the Hundred Acre Wood after his friends had enough of his NeatFreak personality and moved away.

* Burgess Meredith's character in the ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 Twilight Zone]]'' episode "Time Enough At Last" finds himself in this position after surviving a nuclear attack by virtue of being in a bank vault at the time, much to his pleasure (at first).

* One of the countries that [[LightNovel/KinosJourney Kino]] encounters is the last remaining member of a "democracy" that voted by majority. Ultimately, everyone else had voted each other to death until one man and his dying wife were left.