Counting Sheep

Trying to get to sleep by lying in bed, closing one's eyes and counting imaginary sheep jumping over a fence, and hoping to drift off to sleep from the boredom and repetition of the activity. Cartoons may show the sheep in an Imagine Spot. Proven by science as ineffective.

This trope is rarely ever played straight, but more often deconstructed (with the character concentrating into counting sheep so intently that they forget to sleep, if ever interrupted, cue swearing or recounting), parodied (flocks of sheep have a soporific effect because people will try to count them) and/or exaggerated (using some weird method in counting sheep, like counting something else, or the sheep is doing something else other than jumping, or using calculator, or counting to 338,547 sheep, or setting up an animation of sheep jumping using a computer...). Usually, it will be Played for Laughs. When it's ineffective, the trope can also be used to show how serious the character's insomnia is. When it's too effective on the other hand, it shows how easily the character drifts off to sleep.

Examples of Counting Sheep include:

Advertising

A series of mattress commercials by Serta featured counting sheep who were constantly annoyed that people stopped needing them since the mattress was so comfy, they'd had an easier time falling to sleep.

Anime & Manga

In the first episode of Haruhi-chan, Kyon has a dream, and Mikuru is a sheep that Haruhi is cruelly trying to force into jumping ~~over the fence~~ through a ring of fire so Kyon can count her.
In the second episode of Ah! My Goddess TV, when Keiichi and Belldandy are trying to sleep in a car, he explains the idea of counting sheep to her. He ends up awake all night, as Belldandy doesn't realize why you do it. She ends up counting over 38,000 when we last see it.
In an episode of Pokémon, James, Jessie and Meowth are up in a tree spying on a rancher and his field full of Mareep, which are basically electric sheep. As usual...

James: "One Mareep, two Mareep, three Mareep... *yawn* ..."

In Kurikosan Konnichi Wa, the titular Kuriko prefers to imagine her husband jumping the fence.

Kuriko: Ten Yoichi's, eleven Yoichi's...
Yoichi: Make it sheep, will you?

Film

From The Wizard of Oz:

Cowardly Lion: I haven't slept in weeks.
Tin Man: Why don't you try counting sheep?
Cowardly Lion: That doesn't do any good -- I'm afraid of 'em.

Literature

In Winnie the Pooh, Pooh tries to put himself to sleep by counting Heffalumps [creatures that resemble elephants] but every Heffalump takes a pot of his honey, and when "the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalumps were licking their jaws, and saying to themselves, 'Very good honey this, I don't know when I've tasted better', Pooh could bear it no longer".

Live Action TV

In a brief Bert and Ernie sketch on Sesame Street, Ernie got bored counting sheep, so he started counting fire engines, and finally balloons. The noise of these imaginary objects wakes Bert up.
- Another sketch had the Count spending the night at Bert and Ernie's apartment and being unable to sleep. When Ernie suggests counting sheep, the Count obliges...complete with his typical Evil Laugh and Dramatic Thunder accompaniment. Neither sleep, but the Count is refreshed, while Ernie... is not.

Ernie: 43,891... 43,892...

- One "Number of the Day" sketch had the Count count sheep until an elephant appears, with said elephant indicating that number (for example, if the elephant appears after five sheep, then the Number of the Day is five, for zero only the elephant appears).
Mr. Bean once did this, but instead of imagining them, he uses a photograph of a field full of sheep. After continually losing count, he counts the number of rows and columns of sheep, does a quick calculation, and instantly drops off.
In a Season One Kids in The Hall sketch, a kid says he can't sleep and his father suggests counting sheep. The kid starts crying about all the slaughtered sheep. His father says they're live sheep. The kid says, "You didn't tell me they were alive. Dad, I was up all night tagging their toes!"

Newspaper Comics

In Dilbert, a co-worker notes that he used to own a sheep farm. Asked how many sheep he had, he says every time he tried to count them he fell asleep.

Music

Counting sheep apparently does nothing for Adam Young.

Theatre

In Once Upon a Mattress, Winnifred, having failed to find any comfortable position on the bed, counts all through the night and by the next morning has reached several thousand without getting any rest.

Video Games

In LSD Dream Emulator, sometimes, instead of starting a new dream, you are instead shown an animation. One of these shows sheep jumping over a fence.
In Worms 3D, the objective of one of the missions is to cure your leader from his insomnia by using the sheep weapon to make him count some sheep.
The game Pokémon Channel has an entire channel devoted to showing Mareep (electric sheep) jumping over a fence. Pikachu has a tendency to fall asleep while watching it.
One microgame in Wario Ware: Twisted! is called "Falling Asheep", which has you timing sheeps' jumps over a fence in a boy's thought bubble.
Due to their association with sleep, games in the Paper Mario series have this as an item with inflicts the Sleep status.

Web Comics

Count Your Sheep obviously derives its title from this trope. In the very first strip (yes, the art does get better), Katie puts herself to sleep by counting her imaginary friend, Ship the sheep. Since there's only one of him, this doesn't take long. There have been several variations on the gag over the years, including this semi-serious one.
Xkcd would like to remind you to watch out for overflow.
Sinfest inverts this.
Karate Bears actually count sheep in the morning for Breakfast!
Parodied in this Fuzzy Five strip, where the young lady counts fuzzy octopus toys in place of sheep.

Web Original

Insomniac Innovations by Glennz — glowing rotary digital sheep counter!
Counting Sheep emoticon by Mirz123.

Western Animation

An episode of Muppet Babies had Fozzie try to count sheep, but was overwhelmed by how many sheep there were. Of course, it was all an Imagine Spot.
In Sheep in The Big City, Sheep once got a job jumping over a fence to help insomniacs fall asleep.
In The Penguins of Madagascar, Mort attempts to sleep while obsessed with touching King Julien's feet. He counts sheep, but those quickly turn into disembodied feet.
Futurama, "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid", when the characters go to a pet show:

'Fry: Man, that's dog's gonna be hard to beat. Look at him bring in the sheep! One sheep, two sheep ... (yawns)... three sheep... (falls asleep)

One of the Wallace and Gromit Cracking Contraptions shorts features a device that produces sheep for Wallace to count himself to sleep. The "sheep" are really just Gromit in a sheep costume, being thrown up in front of the bed... 500 times.
In Cow and Chicken, Chicken tries to do this to sleep and get over the effects of too much caffeine. He ends up counting mules carrying coffee bean bags.
In "How to Sleep", Goofy does this unsuccessfully.
Ann-Margrock sings a lullabye to Pebbles about counting sheep.
An animated short of Ruby Gloom revolves around the characters doing this. Misery's version has the sheep jumping straight into the wall, where Misery counts with "...ow."
In the Disney cartoon, Aladdin was having a problem sleeping, so Genie tried to help him sleep by summoning mini sheep for him to count.
Johnny Test couldn't sleep, so he had Dukey dress up as a sheep and jump over his bed.
On Jimmy Two-Shoes, when Jimmy is trying to conquer his fear of pickles, he sleeps in bed while dreaming of pickles jumping over a fence, with a small yell between each snore.
One episode of the cartoon Grimmy features a gang of gangster sheep. How did they rob banks? "Count Us!".
In Drag-Along Droopy, sheepherder Droopy leads a massive flock of sheep who mow down all the vegetation in their path, riling the resident cattleman. On the eve of their face-off Droopy dozes, counting sheep hopping a fence. The sheep doze, counting Droopys hopping a fence.
In an episode of Garfield and Friends, Bo isn't sleepy, so he decides to count people until he dozes off.
Done with several tiny Strong Sads in the Homestar Runner animation "A Jorb Well Done."
One scene in "Day and Night" had several sheep jump inside Night's body.
On SpongeBob SquarePants, Mr. Krabs falls asleep by counting money jumping into a cash register, but keeps getting woken up by the squeaky boots he gave to SpongeBob.

Other

The Hitsuji de Oyasumi series of talk CDs feature an assortment of popular Japanese voice actors counting sheep to help the listener fall asleep. Not just a few sheep, either; most of the counts go up to 400 sheep.
- 22 albums of this and counting
- Here's a Norio Wakamoto version
On Neopets, there's a game called Maths Nightmare where you have to solve math problems very fast to keep the Babaas (sheep-like petpets) jumping over the fence.
- And one of the books that you can read to your neopet is called Counting Babaas. It's exactly what it sounds like.

This wonderful book gives suggestions for counting Babaas and even has Babaas on each page for you to count!