Not So Extinct

"Dinosaurs are extinct, so you never can tell where you'll find them." Hadji in "The Sea Haunt", Jonny Quest

Everyone knows that dragons (or elves, or fairies, or Prehistoric Monsters, or whatever race it may be) have been extinct for thousands of years... but if they're all gone, why is this story taking such pains to mention them? It's a safe bet that they aren't extinct at all, and that you'll meet one by the end of the story (if not sooner).

Also applies if the creature in question is thought to be a myth. A form of Chekhov's Gun. May involve an Egg McGuffin.

This is generally a fantasy trope. If it happens in the real world, or if the story revolves around an extinct creature being discovered, it's Species Lost and Found.

Examples of Not So Extinct include:

Anime

• In Negima Second Season, Asuna spends 24 out of 26 episodes looking the Chupacabra which everyone says doesn't exist; they create a Chupacabra school club and order T-shirts and other items. At the end of the series, she finds one (which she quickly puts to work signing T-shirts.)

Comic Books

• Any space traveller's reaction to Superman and seeing a living Kryptonian.
• Transformers:
  • In IDW's first ongoing, Prowl describes the Cybertronian race as teetering on the brink of extinction. "The Death of Optimus Prime" epilogue reveals that Prowl's estimates were only counting Autobots and Decepticons, showing that millions of non-combatant Cybertronians survived. Numerically, the Cybertronian race remains a pale shadow of what it once was, but they were no longer in danger of going extinct tomorrow. The Sequel Series also showed other Cybertronian holdouts across the galaxy and introduced several Lost Colonies.
  • Transformers: Last Bot Standing opens with an aged Rodimus thinking himself as the Last of His Kind. He's stunned to see that Steeljaw's pack have survived the Great War and ends the story accepting that more Cybertronians are probably still out there in the galaxy.

Fan Fiction

• In The Dark Crystal fanfic Katabasis, Jen and Kira discover that a colony of the Arathim Ascendancy survived the Skeksis' genocide. Chapter 3 sees them run across the last pocket of Gruenaks. UngIm mentally lampshades this trope when he sees a Gruenak. Sadly for Jen and Kira, this trope doesn't appear to be in play for the Gelflings beyond them two. It takes urSkek magic to give the Gelfling a chance to rebuild.

Film - Animated

• The Grand Finale of How to Train Your Dragon, The Hidden World, reveals that the Night Furies have been hunted to extinction, leaving Toothless as the Last of His Kind. Grimmel the Grisly is determined to finish the job.
• Implied in Shrek. The only ogres seen in the first three films were Shrek and his immediate family, Shrek being surprised to see the Ogre Resistance in Forever After, suggesting that some tragedy befell the ogre species in the past.
• The Mammoths in Ice Age. After Manny spent the first film believing himself to be the Last of His Kind, The Meltdown reveals that others of his kind survived.

Film - Live Action

• The Gelflings in The Dark Crystal. After the Skeksis thought the race dead, Jen and Kira are revealed to have survived the genocide.
• The Dark Elves in Thor: The Dark World. Five thousand years ago, Bor Burison (the father of Odin) led a campaign to wipe them all out only for their leader Malekith to hide away the last Dark Elf fleet. The Asgard of 2013 is understandably caught off-guard when a thought-dead foe invades.
• In several Godzilla films, the titular Kaiju is framed as originating from a dinosaur species that survived the extinction event.
  • In the Monsterverse, Godzilla and Kong were both thought to be endlings of their respective species. And while it seems that Godzilla is truly the Last of His Kind, The New Empire reveals that a whole community of Great Apes survived into the present day.
• Shazam! Fury of the Gods suggests that some Olympians might have survived Ares' genocide.

Literature

• Downplayed in Harry Potter. Word of God states that while none of the creatures Luna "Looney" Lovegood claims exist actually exist, the fact that she accepts their existence helped her in discovering many real magical creatures that were previously unknown.
• In The Hollows, it's widely believed that elves were wiped out in the Turn, but a few survived, including Trent, Jonathan, and Quen.
• On the Discworld a lot of standard fantasy creatures are extinct, though that's often synonymous with "trapped in a parallel dimension."
  • Giant, flying, fire-breathing dragons are shunted off in a dimension of their own. Their improbable biology requires magic to sustain, and the Discworld generally doesn't have enough magical energy around for them to exist anymore. There are exceptions, small pockets of high magic where dragons survive, and individual dragons can be summoned if enough magical energy is pumped into them.
  • Elves are similarly stuck in their own dimension(s), although there are weak points where travel is possible - lots of them in the Ramtop mountains.
  • Orks were the foot soldiers of the defunct Evil Empire, and it's revealed in Unseen Academicals that the people of Uberwald have been exterminating the few survivors. They haven't been entirely successful.
• Animorphs does this with the Venber in "The Extreme". Though they're actually hybrids of Venber and humans brought back by the Yeerks.
• In Transformers Exiles, both Vector and Nexus Prime express shock that they're not the last of the Thirteen Primes after Optimus tells them of Alpha Trion's survival, pondering if more of their brothers might still exist somewhere in the galaxy.

Live Action TV

• Game of Thrones has two explicit examples of creatures widely believed to be extinct at the start. People are... less sure by the end of the season.
• Supernatural: The attack pattern of the Monster of the Week in a Season 6 episode points to a dragon, but dragons are extinct... except this one.
• At the start of the 2005 relaunch of Doctor Who, both the Daleks and the Time Lords were considered extinct by the universe at large. Over the course of the Russell T. Davies era, survivors of each race would show up before the Steven Moffat era resurrected the Dalek race in Series 5 and revealed, in Series 7, that the Time Lords had not been destroyed. Until Chris Chibnall killed all the Time Lords in Series 12. Though even then, the Fifteenth Doctor thinks/hopes that there may be some Time Lords still out there.
• Star Trek:
  • The crew of Star Trek: The Original Series often ran across such beings. Sometimes the episode would see the "Not So" part done away with.
  • The Borg Collective is described as such in Star Trek: Picard. Future!Janeway may have delivered the greatest blow the Collective ever suffered in the Grand Finale of Star Trek: Voyager, but she didn't kill them. The Grand Finale of Picard reveals though that Future!Janeway very nearly delivered a death blow before the episode sees the Collective be Killed Off for Real.

Video Games

• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 1, the Rachni were said to be wiped out two thousand years ago before Shephard's party finds a group of them on Noveria. One of the options is to finish the job.
  • Throughout the series, the Protheans are believed to have gone extinct some 50,000 years ago, harvested by the Reapers. Mass Effect 2 introduced a race called the Collectors who revealed to be Protheans who have been Reforged Into a Minion. Mass Effect 3 introduces Javik, the last living Prothean. He was supposed to be one of a million but the cryo-mechanism suffered damage and the VI prioritized his survival above his army's.
  • A group of Leviathans, the creators of the Reapers, are revealed to have survived the Reapers' initial Robot War in the Mass Effect 3: Leviathan DLC.
• The Iconian storyline in Star Trek Online reveals that the Iconians survived the Fall of Iconia. As Picard theorized, they used their Cool Gates to flee somewhere beyond the reach of their attackers (the Andromeda Galaxy) and have been rebuilding their strength ever since.

Western Animation

• Transformers:
  • In The Transformers episode "The Search for Alpha Trion", Shockwave confesses that he'd believed that female Autobots had been rendered extinct before the episode's events.
  • In the opening episode of Transformers Animated, Optimus Prime believes that the Decepticons have been totally destroyed. Ratchet is quick to correct that the Decepticons were defeated not destroyed. While the Decepticons aren't even close to the galactic threat they once were, they're still around and very dangerous.
• The Owl House:
  • Basilisks were originally rendered extinct before Emperor Belos' experiments brought them back. One of them, Vee, managed to escape to the Human Realm.
  • The Titans are believed to have gone extinct eons ago, with the corpse of the last forming the Boiling Isles. "Edge of the World" reveals that many of the younger Titans were hunted by the Titan Trappers leaving only one still out there: King.
• In the backstory of Voltron: Legendary Defender, the Alteans were said to be wiped out in the early days of the Galra Empire, leaving only Allura and Coran and later revealing that Haggar/Honerva is an Altean. Season 6 reveals that several Altean astronauts were off-world at the time of planetary destruction and were guided by Lotor to found a hidden colony. One that Lotor used as his personal farm for Life Energy. The Grand Finale sees Altea restored, restoring the race.
• The First Ones in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Though both Horde Prime and Light Hope say that they were wiped out by the Horde, the First Ones survived in some form, lasting long enough to birth Adora.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Man Trap", the crew of the Enterprise encounter a "salt vampire", said to be the Last of His Kind who dies at the episode's end. The Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "Veritas" shows that at least one more of the species survived until the 24th century.
• Some Shrug of God comments from the various Ben 10 writing staffs think that some Arburian Pelarotas, despite their homeworld being destroyed, are probably still out there somewhere in the galaxy.
• Season 4 of Young Justice reveals this about the Kryptonians. Though Kal-El was the only one to make off the planet by spacecraft, hundreds of Kryptonians survived in the Phantom Zone, including Kara Zor-El. As did the planet Daxam, a Kryptonian colony.