History Main / WastelandElder

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E4DaleksInManhattan "Daleks in Manhattan"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks "Evolution of the Daleks"]], Solomon leads a Hoovervile in Central Park.
* ''Series/{{Firefly}}:'' "Safe" features a run-down religious community on the fringes of a frontier planet. The village leader initially comes across as a ReasonableAuthorityFigure when his lunatic followers decide to BurnTheWitch (or rather, the psychic). But it's implied [[KlingonPromotion that he killed his predecessor to get the job]] and changes his tune when River (the psychic) comes close to revealing this.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", Captain William Benteen has done all he can to keep the V9-Gamma colonists together and keep their hope for rescue alive, but it's {{Subverted|Trope}} when Colonel Sloane arrives and provides an escape from the wasteland and Benteen is less than willing to give up his role as a leader. He'd rather keep them on the desert planet, barely scraping out an existence and forever looking to him for guidance, than go back to Earth where they won't need him.

* ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'':
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", Captain William Benteen has done all he can to keep the V9-Gamma colonists together and keep their hope for rescue alive, but it's {{Subverted}} when Colonel Sloane arrives and provides an escape from the wasteland and Benteen is less than willing to give up his role as a leader. He'd rather keep them on the desert planet, barely scraping out an existence and forever looking to him for guidance, than go back to Earth where they won't need him.
** Played straight, then subverted in "The Old Man in the Cave." A town is managing to survive AfterTheEnd by following the directions of a hermit living in a cave in the nearby hills, who sends his instructions through more traditional Wasteland Elder. Then a group of really asshole soldiers show up and storm the cave, revealing the hermit to be [[spoiler: a computer that the real Wasteland Elder had been using to determine what food and areas were radioactive and therefore to be avoided. The soldiers and townspeople destroy in a fit of rage]]. After that, of course, they all die from not being able to tell what's radioactive or not.
* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'': Several appear, with varying degrees of success, such as Hershel, Deanna, and King Ezekiel. Herschel leads a group of his relatives and friends in surviving on his farm. Deanna is a former Congresswoman who leads a benevolent (but poorly prepared) StepfordSuburbia settlement. Ezekiel is a former zookeeper and community theatre actor leading a feudal-based society.

* There are numerous examples in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series of computer games; Killian Darkwater, the shopkeeper/sheriff/mayor of Junktown, to name one. In ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' it's established that the PlayerCharacter of the first game eventually became one.
** The second game has two: The Elder (no name given) who is the ''de facto'' leader of your home village and fairly secular, and Hakunin, the old shaman who's invested in more spiritual matters.

* In the manga version of ''Manga/{{Akira}},'' Lady Mikayo becomes this after taking in refugees in the wake of [[spoiler: Akira's AngstNuke wrecking Neo Tokyo]]. Eventually, she evolves into the de jure leader opposing [[spoiler: Tetsuo]]

** The trope was played somewhat more classically way back in the first appearance of [[MonsterClown Buggy the Clown]], although in that case, he was the alder of a perfectly normal town that had only started to take on qualities of 'wasteland' recently after being occupied by circus-themed pirates.

* Doan from 2300 AD in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' qualifies.

* ''Series/{{Jeremiah}}'': Given how TheVirus targeted all the adults fifteen years previously, no one left could quite be called an "elder". but there are occasional benevolent settlements led by WiseBeyondTheirYears people in their twenties or thirties, like Cord Geary in "Red Kiss."

* '''MICHELANGELO''' is one in a Post-Apocalyptic (think Film/MadMax) mutant world in ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012''.

** Franklin Hayes, an economics professor from the University of Wyoming who spends years working to rebuild the community of Scottsbluff before the Army of Excellence ruins that with their RapePillageBurn methods.

* ''Film/NoEscape1994'' takes place in a dystopian future where hundreds of convicts are dumped on an isolated island to kill each other. The man known as The Father (a former Beverly Hills doctor accused of killing his wife) leads a large faction devoted to finding redemption, living off of scavenged garbage, and fighting off the marauding prisoners who reject their philosophy.

* ''Film/NoEscape1984'' takes place in a dystopian future where hundreds of convicts are dumped on an isolated island to kill each other. The man known as The Father (a former Beverly Hills doctor accused of killing his wife) leads a large faction devoted to finding redemption, living off of scavenged garbage, and fighting off the marauding prisoners who reject their philosophy.

* ''Literature/TheHost:'' Melanie's uncle, Jeb, is leading a group of about thirty-five people hiding in a system of natural caverns during the PuppeteerParasite invasion. Jeb discovered the caverns and reserves a right to veto any votes by the rest of the community that go against his liking (with a flippant comment in the book and with his gun in the movie). However, his vetoes are all intelligent ones, and he has a fairly easy-going demeanor.

** The Gypsy-esque Tchigani people are also hiding from the E-Police in the wasteland, although their community is far less prosperous than Greentree's. Their leader is only in his thirties and isn't particularly bright or pleasant. However, the group's eldest member is more approachable and the only one who's heard of Bodhi.
--> '''Ivor:''' He's old. He only lives to keep the past.

* ''Literature/BlackRideRising:'' Several such characters appear in the short stories, set within a few years of the ZombieApocalypse.

* ''Literature/StarWarsLegends:''

** The short story "A Thing or Two" briefly features Robin, a late middle-aged woman in charge of a backwoods town that survives by largely trading with an extended family of nearby moonshiners for alcohol to use in their makeshift hospital.