Good Morning, Crono



"I know how you like to sleep in, so I guess this letter will be your alarm clock. Did I guess right?"

- Zelda, The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword

When it comes to Kid Heroes, they're usually not granted the courtesy of starting their adventure out in the thick of combat. That would just be cruel, unless they're being forced to undergo Training from Hell. In many cases, if the main character in a role-playing game is no more than sixteen years of age, they'll likely start the game in bed, sleepy and bleary-eyed. A younger sibling, parental figure or, if it's a Dating Sim, Patient Childhood Love Interest will usually be the one to awaken the hero, informing him/her that they're Late for School/an audience with the king/a date with their love interest.

Very often begins with a dialog box on an otherwise empty black screen, which fades in to reveal the hero in bed after the person speaking has yelled at him to wake up a few times.

This is an easy way to get the character into their Morning Routine, giving the audience a tour of their daily life. It may not look good for the character if he/she wakens up and finds out they can't remember a thing about themselves.

Related to what the Turkey City Lexicon refers to as "White Room Syndrome," which is symbolic of the author starting the story without any idea of the plot or characters.

A form of Easing Into the Adventure. May be the "wake up and go to school" in Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World. Compare Morning Routine.

Anime

 * The title character from Sailor Moon.
 * When Minako got an episode centered on her during the R season, it also started with her sleeping in.
 * Cardcaptor Sakura wakes up from a prophetic dream at the beginning of the first episode, as well as many others before the end of the Clow Card Arc.
 * The Twelve Kingdoms begins with Yoko having a dream about a strange man?an important character who continues to taunt her for much of the first arc.
 * X 1999 also begins with a "prophetic dream"?really a few moments of the dreamer's next day at school.
 * Haibane Renmei starts with a dream the main character has immediately before hatching from her cocoon, and spends most of the first few episodes having the world of haibane explained to her, as she has no memory of who she is or where she's from.
 * Excel Saga episode 4, in its parody of Dating Sims, has this: Excel looms over the bed telling the player to wake up, or they will be Late for School. In the game, Il Palazzo kills Excel before even leaving the room because she lied to force him out of bed, earning a bad ending.
 * Project A-ko starts with just this trope. Moreover, because she has superpowers, she does a lot of collateral damage rushing to school.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion spoofs this in the final episode of the series. Shinji is shown a vision of an alternate life for himself, in which his life is more like a typical shounen series—including being woken up by Asuka, who is now his Unlucky Childhood Friend.
 * Come to that, this is exactly how the Angelic Days spin-off manga starts. Asuka is changed to Victorious Childhood Friend, however. (Which makes sense, as said manga takes place in the same alternate universe—which is explicitly stated to be a real alternate universe that exists somewhere in the canon multiverse.)
 * Princess Tutu opens with Ahiru having a nightmare and tumbling out of her bed.
 * Chrono Crusade starts this way as well, although with a bit of a twist. In the manga, Chrono is sleeping in a car when Rosette gets a call to go on a mission. When he's slow to get up, Rosette (literally) kicks him out of the car. In the anime, both Chrono and Rosette are asleep in their car when they get the call—Chrono wakes up first and gently wakes up Rosette, since he's worried Sister Kate won't want to speak to him.
 * The borderline Kid Hero of Last Exile, Claus is introduced to us under this guideline. He's a hell of a pilot but it takes multiple strikes on a battered sheet of steel/iron to get him awake so he can inadvertently change modern warfare as Prester knows it.
 * Nanoha’s first scene has her being woken up by her cell phone, which apparently has a built-in alarm clock, and her father, notes he’s impressed that she’s able to get up on her own.
 * The Pokémon anime begins this way, with Ash oversleeping and being late to get a Pokemon from Professor Oak, although missing the first three is how he ended up with Pikachu.
 * Yuru-Yuri begins with Akari hitting the snooze button and going back to bed, until Kyoko abuses the doorbell, jarring her out of bed and making her realize she's going to be Late for School
 * Puella Magi Madoka Magica starts with an Action Prologue, which turns out to be All Just a Dream and becomes a Good Morning, Crono. After a few episodes, it switches to Or Was It a Dream?.

Film

 * Being There opens with Chance the gardener being awakened by his television set, and as the opening credits roll we watch him as he gets up, tends to the garden (where there is a TV in the greenhouse), watches TV back up in his bedroom, and then goes down and waits for breakfast, watching TV while he does so. As Chance is a middle-aged man, this also serves as a good introduction to exactly what kind of person he is. And then the plot kicks in when the maid tells him the master of the house is dead.

Literature

 * The introduction to 10-year old Harry Potter, in both the book and film version, involves him being woken up by his Aunt banging on the door of the cupboard he sleeps in, demanding he make breakfast for his cousin. Even before that, when we are first introduced to Harry, he is happily sleeping in Hagrid's arms, ending up woken by Aunt Petunia's shriek when she opened the door to put out the milk bottles.
 * The Death of the Vazir Mukhtar begins with the main character waking up in his family's house in Moscow, having arrived there from Persia the day before. He then goes on social calls.

Video Games

 * The Trope Namer is one of the opening lines in the initial translation of Chrono Trigger, where Crono's mom wakes him up to go to the Millenial Fair. Later, Crono has a bizarre dream where the exact scenario plays out with the Mysterious Waif instead of momma. And when you finish the game normally, the trope is again replayed, but this time with a soldier waking him up.
 * The Dream is replayed in a secret ending where Crono is a Reptite and his Reptite Mother wakes him up and he meets Reptite Marle in Millennium Fair.
 * A similar occurrence happens in Chrono Cross, where Serge's mom wakes him up (from a prophetic dream) warning that he's late to a date with Leena.
 * In the opening to Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, demoness Etna awakens Prince Laharl by smacking him with a number of weapons, and is just about to shoot him when he finally wakes up. From a two-year nap. Talk about a Heavy Sleeper...
 * In the "Etna Mode" for the PSP and DS versions she fires the shot, apparently accidentally kills him, and decides to become Overlord herself.
 * Dragon Quest III also starts this way, with the hero's mother waking him or her up for an audience with the king... on his/her sixteenth birthday, no less.
 * Ends up being a different trope altogether, as the hero was raised from a young age to be a hero, and would start his/her epic quest on his/her sixteenth birthday by design.
 * In Dragon Quest VI, you start with a dream in which you are defeated by the big bad, and are woken by your sister.
 * The Tales (series) love to do this:
 * The first day of Tales of Phantasia begins with the main character waking up in the morning.
 * Stahn Aileron, the main character of Tales of Destiny, has narcolepsy as his entire gimmick.
 * As does his son Kyle in the sequel, to the point that his mother wakes him up in the same fashion that Stahn's sister did (by banging a ladle very loudly against a frying pan right next to his head)
 * Tales of Symphonia begins with Lloyd being awakened from sleeping while standing up and carrying buckets.
 * Tales of Legendia is an exception, but protagonist Senel does have a great deal of trouble getting up in the morning; one of the party usually has to go and wake him.
 * Your created character in Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology wakes up at the foot of The World Tree and, yep...you've got amnesia. Of course, your character isn't the only one...
 * The prologue in Tales of Innocence turns out to be the protagonist's dream about being a general in an alien war. The game proper begins as he wakes up from it.
 * Like Lloyd, Shing of Tales of Hearts opens the game waking up from a daydream he has... while practicing swordplay. Ouch.
 * Kingdom Hearts begins with Sora being woken up on the beach by Kairi. (Okay, technically it begins within the dream he's having, but...)
 * The sequel starts with Roxas waking up on his room, but there is more to it than it looks like.
 * This happens again later when Sora, Donald, and Goofy wake up after sleeping for a year after the events of Chain of Memories.
 * Similar to the Kingdom Hearts II example above, 358/2 Days starts with Roxas waking up in his room in The Castle That Never Was.
 * It happens in The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past, The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening (sort of, as ), The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (kind of gets two. ), The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword (the first we see of Link is his nightmare and subsequently getting woken up by a bird and falling out of bed), The Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap and The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (t starts off with a 1 minute cut-scene, after which Link goes to sleep, and then is woken up the next morning with a yell).
 * The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass and The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks both begin with Link having fallen asleep while listening to Niko telling a story.
 * The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild starts with Link waking from a 100-year slumber in which he was healing after a brutal battle with Ganon. And he's lost ost of his memories.
 * At the beginning of the first Golden Sun game, Isaac's mother awakens him... in the midst of a huge thunderstorm... in the middle of the night... to inform that a massive boulder is about to fall on the town.
 * The "main" story of the sequel begins with Felix waking up after being knocked out by a tidal wave. I guess the writers really had something against the normal laws of sleep.
 * The graphical roguelike Azure Dreams starts out with the Kid Hero sleeping comfortably in bed...until his sister awakens him by violently jumping on the bed.
 * It's his female friend (and possible love interest) and his little sister. Depending on your actions in the game, this can change.
 * In Heart of Darkness, the game opens with the protagonist being awakened by his Sadist Teacher after falling asleep in class. Oddly enough, it sounded like the teacher was actually explaining something interesting for once...
 * Also seen at the beginning of the online multiplayer game Monster Hunter, although nobody is there to wake your character up from his/her slumber.
 * In Fallout 3, you wake up to Amata telling you that your dad is gone, Jonas is dead, and her dad is trying to kill you.
 * Overblood begins this way from a freezing tube.
 * Oddly, Dark Cloud does this, but doesn't give you control of the character - in fact, the character is promptly knocked unconscious when, urm, civilization is wiped off the map.
 * Mega Man Battle Network does this in the first game as well as having it as the opening of many of the chapters across the series.
 * In a dark twist, Planescape: Torment's protagonist, The Nameless One, starts the game by waking up on a mortuary slab with no memory of who he is or how he got there. His wake-up call comes from a floating, wise-cracking skull. His day doesn't improve from there, though it does (if you can believe it) get more interesting.
 * EarthBound starts this way too, but it isn't your mother waking you up... it's the crash-landing of a meteorite carrying future not-bee that does.
 * It's treated more conventionally in Mother3 when Claus wakes Lucas up by yelling at him to come and play.
 * Final Fantasy VIII begins with Squall regaining consciousness in the Balamb Garden infirmary after a fight with Seifer.
 * Subverted in Commander Keen: Keen Dreams, where (in the backstory) the protagonist is woken up by a bunch of enemies, which he quickly dispatches.
 * In The Journeyman Project, Agent 5 is awoken from a psychic dream that only he has to find he is late for work. In the Updated Rerelease Pegasus Prime, Crono's mom a fellow agent calls him on his eyepiece to inform him as such, and to see the doctor about all those ominous dreams he keeps having.
 * In LucasArts' Loom, the hero is napping on a cliffside at the beginning and is awoken by a messenger nymph: "Rise, son of Cygna! It is the dawn of your 17th year. The elders await you in the council."
 * And odd variant in Pokémon Gold and Silver: the game effectively starts with the player waking up old mentor and expert Professor Oak and then telling him the time.
 * It's presumably you having a dream, one of those sorts when you start to wake up.
 * The main characters in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance get carried into Ivalice in their sleep. In the sequel however, the adventure starts sometime in the afternoon after school's over.
 * Legaia II: Duel Saga opens with a character trying to wake the protagonist with a spoon and bucket. How the player chooses to react to this sudden stimulus (wake up calmly, wake up fearfully, go back to sleep) helps determine the protagonist's attitude for the rest of the game.
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic begins with the player character asleep on a spaceship. That's losing a fight with a Sith battle fleet. "Heavy Sleeper" doesn't even cover this.
 * The Overlord series subverts this, with various vicious wake-up calls. "Rub some acid into his eyes!"
 * Eternal Darkness starts by giving control to the player in the middle of protagonist Alex's dream, in which she's fighting off a neverending stream of zombies, probably to give you some level of the hang of fighting early on - no matter how you do, you won't take any damage and Alex wakes up, more properly starting off the game, after a set time.
 * Dragon Quest Swords starts out with your father awakening you with a nasty Kaboom spell and sending you on your way to the castle.
 * Shin Megami Tensei begins with the hero having a dream where he is told he is the center of the balance between Law and Chaos... and then his mother yells at him to wake up. It's when he goes back to the dream that things get weird.
 * Princess Waltz also begins like this.
 * Naturally Linear RPG in its parody glory uses this to start... each chapter.
 * Your landlady yells at you to wake up at the beginning of the Gamecube Custom Robo game (after a brief flashback sequence.)
 * The Text Adventure Game The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy starts with you as Arthur Dent, waking up in bed.
 * One of the origin stories in Dragon Age involves being woken up by your cousin for your wedding day. Likely deliberate Lampshade Hanging on this trope.
 * The original Breath of Fire subverts this; the game starts with Ryu being awakened by his grandmother... because their village is on fire.
 * Arguably appears in Mass Effect 2. While the game technically starts with a scene of, the main gameplay starts with Shepard waking up.
 * This trope is inverted before : Shepard wakes up
 * Portal begins with the player being brought out of suspended animation.
 * To some extent, Portal 2 starts in the same way.
 * The Legendary Starfy begins with the title character asleep in bed, then adventure literally falls into his lap in the form of Bunston.
 * In Shining Force 2 the protagonist begins the game by being woken up by his mother.
 * Halo does this with the suspended animation variation. The attack on the Cool Spaceship technically counts as the Master Chief's every day life too.
 * Baten Kaitos Origins starts like this, with the main character waking up from a Prophetic Dream to begin his first mission with the Dark Servicemen.
 * Both main characters wake up this way in Plumbers Don't Wear Ties.
 * In Morrowind, the player character wakes up on a ship about to make landfall.
 * The Prince/Princess in Fable III is awakened by Jasper, the butler, at the start of the game.
 * Summon Night: Swordcraft Story starts off this way, the main character being told to wake up a seventh time.
 * Yuuto in Eien no Aselia starts the game out with his little sister trying to wake him up and failing, and his friend Kyouko trying to wake him up and succeeding.
 * This happens at the beginning of Sonic and The Secret Rings with Shahra trying to wake up Sonic.
 * Persona 3 and Persona 4 are more of a "Good Evening". In the former, one of your party members will greet you when you return to the dorm. In the latter, your cousin Nanako will greet you every night when you get home in a borderline Tastes Like Diabetes fashion.
 * Subverted in Brave Soul. The hero starts the game sleeping, then wakes up to find that he's tied up in the middle of the forest.
 * Jabless Adventure begins with Jables waking up with a squid on his head. This squid is there to deliver the Call to Adventure.
 * Inazuma Eleven 2 and 3 starts out this way.
 * Played both subverted and straight in Suikoden Tierkreis, the main character, Sieg, who usually oversleeps, wake up very fast in the intro because he's so excited he get to go hunting laggarts. The one who's oversleeps is his friend, who's normally the one waking Sieg up. Sieg's childhood friend, Marica, pops in after that, and surprises that her friend can wake up on his own.

Webcomics

 * Owen wakes up from a weird dream in the first scene of Project 0.
 * Legendary's opening is very similar.
 * Like every other console RPG trope, it makes an appearance in Adventurers!!
 * Parson Gotti of Erfworld is introduced this way. Except that it's not his mother, but his alarm clock getting him up at 5:18 pm to work the graveyard shift at Kinko's. Is it any wonder that he wanted to be summoned to Erfworld?
 * In Order of the Stick, Durkon's segment in "Origins of PCs" starts out with the high priest of Thor waking him up.

Western Animation

 * Kung Fu Panda starts out with Po awakening from a kickass, awesome dream (complete with the amusing touch of his father's voice coming out of the Furious Five's mouths) to find out he's late for work in the noodle shop. We then get to see his daily life, from his struggle to get out of bed and the posters and action figures he's collected, to his clutziness that prevents him from throwing a throwing star (and topples him ignominiously down the stairs) and the mess he makes of the dining area with his large size. And, of course, the boring, ordinary life that he longs to escape from.