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There's also a great movie that deals with this in a very subtle way: Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter". One of my favorites.

So, returning to the brainstorming. I can think of several disasters. A ship sinking and the captain being the only one that survives would be a good choice because of the maritime tradition that "The captain goes down with the ship" I would suggest a captain that wakes up on a lifeboat and has amnesia. He's rescued and learns that he's the only survivor. He doesn't remember what happened to the crew or the ship, adding to the feeling of survivor's guilt. Later we could find out there was a mutiny and they locked the captain in the lifeboat. And he wasn't responsible at all for the loss of lives. But of course, before we know that his reputation is destroyed by the media

Another scenario could be war. A lieutenant or captain being the only survivor of his platoon and facing court-martial. Once again we could use the amnesia card.

Or how about the pilot? Kind of Robert Zemeckis' Flight - the captain has to perform a very hard maneuver that fails yet he is the only survivor.

Does anybody see a little of this survivor's guilt in Finding Nemo? maybe we're not just into deep psychological idea but a family film.

There's survivor guilt in a lot of protagonists, especially action ones, Batman being the prime example (and we can thank The Lego Movie for calling Batman out on nursing it so much). I know I had a character who was the sole survivor of his paramilitary unit... by design. It seems like more of a character trope/motivation/arc than a story idea to me, more of a part. Maybe that's my "combination/remix artist" sensibility. I think it's just an issue of... what's left that you could survive and feel responsible for. I was reading about cruise ships this morning, so maybe it's about the chef who's responsible for accidentally letting loose a stomach bug or something like that. Yeah, I don't like it either.