View source for Cock-a-Doodle Dawn

{{trope}}
[[File:rooster-at-day-break 8879.jpg|thumb|400px|Which came first, the rooster or the sun?<ref>[[Captain Obvious|The sun]].</ref>]]

A common staple in fiction, [[Everything's Better with Chickens|Roosters]] are often shown to crow at daybreak. In fact, almost all works set on a farm have this happening. In many depictions, a rooster's crowing itself is what brings the sun up.

In certain works, the rooster is replaced with a creature more suited to the setting.

Related to [[Howling to the Night]], which is when wolves howl at dusk.

''Not'' [[Truth in Television]], as in [[Real Life]] they never shut up regardless of what time it is. They are just the only animals awake at that ungodly time.

{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* This trope is why a rooster is used as a symbol for insomnia for Ambien (prescription sleep aid) commercials.

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Pani Poni Dash!]]'', Serizawa would often dress as a rooster, climb on top of a pole, and announce the time of day.
* In ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', a Dodrio can be seen atop Oak's laboratory at daybreak.
* In ''[[Doctor Slump]]'', this is done by a ''pig''. [[Widget Series|It's that kind of manga.]]

== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Featured in a lot of ''[[Asterix]]'' adventures. Averted in ''Asterix and the Cauldron'', where Asterix discovers the emptying of the cauldron just before daybreak and rouses all the villagers, so the rooster considers crowing unnecessary.

== [[Film]] ==
* [[Rover Dangerfield]]
* [[Home on the Range]]
* [[Rock-a-Doodle]] involves the sun not rising at all unless the rooster crows.
* In ''[[Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs]]'', a [[Mix-and-Match Critters|ratbird]] crows, heralding the beginning of an ice cream snow day.
* A rooster is heard to crow right before daybreak in ''[[Yellow Submarine|The Yellow Submarine]]'', which is odd, since the meanies seem to have turned every other living creature to stone.
* Played for laughs in the claymation movie, ''[[Chicken Run]]''. Fowler the rooster is seen at sun rise at the beginning of a scene, where he loudly shouts in very obvious English, "COCKADOODLEDOO!"
* Parodied in ''[[Babe]]'', where a duck crows to avoid being eaten.
** And really annoys the actual rooster, who sees it as ''his'' job but can never wake up early enough to beat the duck.
* Part of the [[Establishing Character Moment]] for heroine Nastenka in ''[[Morozko]]'' (The Russo-Finnish ''Jack Frost'', as seen on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''); her [[Wicked Stepmother]]'s making her knit a load of socks by dawn; despite knitting at ludicrous speed, she resorts to using her [[Friend to All Living Things]] credentials to beg the neighborhood rooster to give her more time. The rooster [[Talking Animal|explains that he has to follow this trope]], and suggests that she asks the ''sun'' instead. She does. It works.

== [[Literature]] ==
* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', a rooster crowing interrupts Gandalf's confrontation with the Lord of the Nazgûl at the gates of Minas Tirith, even though there's enough smoke from Mordor that it's impossible to tell that the sun is rising.
* The book ''[[The Enormous Egg]]'' starts with a mini-plot about the family's chicken, Ezekiel, who crows every morning, annoying the neighbors. The solution is to put him in the cellar at night and not let him out until well after sunup, so he doesn't know when its dawn and therefore doesn't crow.
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** In ''[[Reaper Man]]'', there is Cyril the Rooster, who never remembers to crow at the right time till he is given the words "Cock-a-Doodle Doo" to read by [[Anthropomorphic Personification|Death]]. Unfortunately,  {{spoiler|Cyril is dyslexic. [[Crowning Moment of Funny|Dock-a-loodle-fod!]] }}
** In ''[[Wyrd Sisters]]'' there's a spell that must by completed before the first rooster crows. {{spoiler|Nanny Ogg has her vast army of children and grandchildren gag all of the area's roosters so the spell will work even if takes until after dawn to finish it.}}
*** Given that this is such a [[Cutting the Knot|witchy]] response to this kind of limitation, one must [[Fridge Logic|wonder]] why Granny Weatherwax is so concerned with doing the spell the "right" way and disapproves of Nanny's loophole. 
* [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s Chanticleer thinks that the sun rises because he crows. Pertelote persuades him not to crow one morning, and he is shocked when it still rises.
* In one ''[[Encyclopedia Brown]]'' story, high school dropout/con artist Wilford Wiggins tries to get kids to invest in a device that can control birds. He demonstrates its abilities by making a rooster crow at sunset. Encyclopedia ruins the scam by pointing out that since the rooster had been kept under a blanket beforehand, it probably thought the sun was rising instead of setting.

== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* In ''[[The Office]]'', Dwight hints that a rooster wakes him up every morning. Not surprising since he lives on a farm.
* Mentioned in ''Friends'', Chandler and Joey's pet chick, now a full grown rooster, apparently has a habit of waking up the whole apartment building at dawn, though only Monica and Rachel knows that they own it.

== [[Music]] ==
* [[The Beatles]]' "Good Morning" starts with a rooster.
* Camille Saint-Saëns' "Danse Macabre", which begins [[When the Clock Strikes Twelve]], has its climax interrupted by the crow of an oboe, after which the diminuendo is quick.

== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Warcraft]] 3'' has a rooster crowing to indicate daybreak.
* ''[[Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg]]'' the sun doesn't rise until a rooster crows
* Multiple ''Zelda'' games, to indicate that it's officially daytime.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]''
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask|The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask]]''
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]''

== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Two ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' strips open with a rooster crowing, heralding a new dawn in the Azure Empire. There's also a younger rooster who is unimpressed with this, commenting in the first strip "You're such a sell-out" and in the second "You're not my real dad".
* Occurs {{spoiler|as a [[Chekhov's Gun]]}} in [[Tales of the Questor]]: the hunt of the protagonist is [https://web.archive.org/web/20120626075459/http://www.rhjunior.com/totq/00508.html stated] to end when "the cock crows the dawn". {{spoiler|Unfortunately, [http://www.rhjunior.com/totq/00514.html there's] a [http://www.rhjunior.com/totq/00521.html way around that], [http://www.rhjunior.com/totq/00522.html or is there?]}} 
** {{spoiler|[http://www.rhjunior.com/totq/00544.html There is.] someone didn't take the possibility of a nickname or code name into account.}}

== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Any cartoon or film that takes place on a farm, really.
* On ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'', the crowing is done by scallops.
* One episode of ''[[The Angry Beavers]]'' spoofed this by having a ''bear'' crow. At the end of the episode, Dagget asks, "Norbert, what is ''wrong'' with that bear?"
* There's a rooster who crows at dawn in ''[[Fairly Oddparents]]'', which, on one occasion, [[Made of Explodium|explodes.]]
* A rooster crows in the [[Title Sequence]] of ''[[Shaun the Sheep]]''.
* In the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", Applejack [[Flash Back|remembers]] when she left the farm for the big city, and is surprised to find that city folk have no concept of a rooster. Homesick, she watches the sun rise the next morning and sadly cock-a-doodle-doos to herself.
* A sight gag in the ''Super Secret [[Secret Squirrel]]'' cartoon "Dr. O" has the sun repeatedly coming out and disappearing as Secret Squirrel struggles with the controls of Dr. O's sun-blocking satellite. A rooster farmer is seen crowing when the sun comes out, and stopping when it disappears again. Eventually, the light starts changing so fast he keeps getting cut off, and he eventually gives up.
* At the very beginning of ''[[Der Fuehrer's Face]]'', a rooster can be heard crowing "Heil Hitler!" while performing a Hitler pose outside [[Donald Duck]]'s chalet (which for some reason, resembles [[Adolf Hitler]]'s face).
* In the classic [[Tex Avery]] cartoon "[[Tex Avery MGM Cartoons|Cock a Doodle Dog]]", Spike the Bulldog has his sleep interrupted by a rooster with an especially obnoxious crow. After various backfiring attempts to shut the bird up, Spike winds up crowing loudly by the rooster's house after the rooster goes to bed.

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