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Don't Wake the Sleeper: Difference between revisions

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The Sleeper might have a name and/or proper title. But if so, he is in many cases ''still'' referred to as "The Sleeper" or "The Dreamer" rather than by name or title.
Different works have very different reasons why The Sleeper must remain asleep, but the four major types of reasons are:
* The Sleeper is dangerous and will cause havoc if he wakes up. In effect, this is [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]], with a pillow instead of a canister.
* The Sleeper is doing something very important in his dreams: Protecting something, defending the world from something, maybe even dreaming a world into existence.
* [[King in Thethe Mountain|You should wait until he is needed.]]
* Waking up would be traumatic. [[Never Wake Up a Sleepwalker|Often about a sleepwalker.]]
 
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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The Kisin {{spoiler|who's sealed in a prison below Shibushen}} in ''[[Soul Eater]]''. {{spoiler|They fail to prevent Medusa's minions from waking him up.}}
* In one of [[Dragon Ball: Insanity School (Fanfic)|Dragon Ball Insanity School]] chapters, Goku is sleeping and the rest of the main cast try to take a magazine from his clutch without waking him up. When this happens he's so angry that blast them all away with a kamehameha.
 
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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== [[Film]] ==
* In ''[[PansPan's Labyrinth]]'', this is the secret objective of one of the quests given. The protagonist is not told that there is a sleeper, or that horrible things will happen if she wake him up.
 
== [[Literature]] ==
* Ur-Example: Kumbakarna, from the ancient Indian epic ''[[Ramayana (Literature)|Ramayana]]''. He was a giant demon prince who was cursed by the god Indra to sleep for six months of each year, and was cursed with death if he was woken during that sleep. His brother, the demon-king Ravana, woke him so he could help turn the tide of a decisive battle. It was working for a while, but then guess what happened.
* In Steven Erickson's ''Malazan'' series, the whole world is a sleeping goddess, Burn, whom it would be A REALLY bad idea to wake.
* This is a discussed trope in ''[[Alice in Wonderland (Literature)|Through the Looking Glass]]''. Alice and another character (the White Knight?) talk about the Red King sleeping under a tree. The Knight supposes that he's dreaming their world. I'll let someone with a more recent memory of the book add it as an example, since I'm not sure I have the details correct.
* In ''Jinx High'' by [[Mercedes Lackey]], There's a Dangerous Sleeper under Tulsa, Oklahoma.
* In [[Lord Dunsany]]'s "[[The Gods of Pegana]]", the gods created the world, but {{smallcaps|Māna-Yood-Sushāī}} created the gods, and from this task he now rests, lulled by the endless drumming of Skarl the Drummer (who is technically not a god, despite having been created along with the gods). If Skarl were to cease drumming even for an instant, {{smallcaps|Māna-Yood-Sushāī}} would wake up, and his awakening would destroy the world and the gods.
* Jody Lynn Nye's "Waking in Dreamland" and its sequels are set in the world of dreams. All dreams contribute to the setting, but Seven Sleepers give it structure and coherence. When one of these Sleepers wakes up, there is a cataclysmic event called a Changeover in which some other dreamer's vision replaces the previous one. The [[Big Bad]] of the first novel [[Science Is Bad|wants to find out what happens]] if [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|they all wake up at once]].
* The first [[Guardians of the Flame]] novel, ''The Sleeping Dragon'' by Joel Rosenberg has the titular creature, which guards the way back into the characters' reality.
 
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== [[Mythology]] ==
* Later addendums to the [[King Arthur|Arthurian myth]] have Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, hidden in a cave and magically kept asleep, only to be awoken when he is truly needed. Waking him up ''early'' would be a very bad plan indeed (although in that case, one wonders why Merlin apparently included a giant gong in the cave.).
* A running theme in the [[H.P. Lovecraft (Creator)|Cthulhu Mythos]], with mad cults trying to wake up Great Cthulhu. [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|Their success would be a very bad thing]].
* In the ''[[Tain Bo Cuailnge]]'', Fergus notes that ''nobody'' dares to wake Cu Chulainn when he's asleep - the last man who tried found his forehead smashed all the way into the back of his skull.
 
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* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has the instance Sunken Temple, where the final boss is asleep and his underlings are fighting to keep you from waking him up. He was originally a guardian, his dreams protecting the world from an evil God - who managed to corrupt him and twist his dreams into nightmares.
* ''[[Ever Quest]]'' had The Sleeper--or rather, his guardians--as one of the major bosses of the Scars Of Velious expansion. Waking him up results in destroying his dungeon permanently, robbing the community of an important source of loot. The Sleeper himself comes back in a later expansion.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: LinksLink's Awakening]]'' has the Wind Fish who is dreaming the entire island that the game takes place on, all the dungeon bosses try to stop you from waking it up and try to warn you about what you're doing. Ultimately, it turns out that {{spoiler|both Link and the Wind Fish are sharing the same dream}}.
* The [[Milkman Conspiracy]] segment of ''[[Psychonauts (Video Game)|Psychonauts]]'' revolves largely about the [[Driving Question]] of "Who is the Milkman?" and various forces preventing Raz from waking him up.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', the summonable "[[Summon Magic|aeons]]" are each the dream of a "fayth", who sleeps in that aeon's temple. There are also a whole bunch of fayth together on a holy mountain, dreaming ''something'', but nobody knows what. {{spoiler|It's Dream Zanarkand -- [[Doomed Protagonist|Tidus]]'s home town.}}
* In ''[[Super Mario 64]]'', you must walk slowly around sleeping Piranha Plant enemies otherwise they will wake and attack you.
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* ''[[Gothic]]'' has the "Sleeper" as a deity worshipped by the cult that inhabits an entire camp in the prison colony. The members of the cult believe that if the Sleeper is woken up, he will free them from the colony. {{spoiler|Then they all find out that the Sleeper is actually a powerful destructive demon, and waking him up is a ''very'' bad idea. Unfortunately, a particularly high-ranking guru of the cult refuses to accept this, and takes a band of loyal followers to wake him up anyway...}}
* ''The Adventures of Alice who Went Through the Looking-Glass and Came Back Though Not Much Changed'', an [[Interactive Fiction]] game based on [[Lewis Carroll]]'s Alice books, includes a version of the scene with the sleeping king who may be dreaming the world. If the player wakes him up, everything disappears and there is a [[Nonstandard Game Over]].
* ''[[Banjo -Kazooie|Banjo-Tooie]]'' has two instances in the first world: a sleeping snake and a sleeping caveman, both of whom need to be approached quietly.
* The ''[[Gauntlet (1985 video game)]]''-clone ''Demon Stalkers'' has an entire enemy type devoted to this: man-eating plants that don't move until you shoot one of them, at which point they all come alive at once.
 
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In one ''[[Xkcd (Webcomic)|Xkcd]]'' strip, Cueball [http://xkcd.com/1013/ accidentally wakes up the Sheeple from its 10,000 years long slumber], prompting everyone to run for their lives.
 
== [[Web Original]] ==
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** Same gag is used in the ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' short "Roman Legion-Hare", this time with [[Bugs Bunny]], Yosemite Sam and a cage full of lions.
** Another ''Looney Tunes'' short, "A Pest in the House", involves a tired hotel guest asking manager Elmer Fudd for peace and quiet as he sleeps in his room, and threatening to punch Elmer in the nose otherwise. His slumber is constantly disturbed by the blundering of bellboy [[Daffy Duck]], with the expected results.
* The main plot for the [[Tom and Jerry (Animation)|Tom and Jerry]] short "Quiet Please!", in which Spike tires of Tom's racket in trying to catch Jerry, threatening violence if Tom wakes him up one more time. Tom immediately has to sabotage Jerry's vigorous attempts to wake Spike. A later short, "Royal Cat-Nap", replays this scenario with the Mouseketeers, Tom having to prevent them from waking the king he is guarding. They relent and help Tom get the king back to sleep when they realise the penalty is a beheading, however.
* In ''[[Toy Story]]'', Woody and Buzz try to sneak past Sid's dog Scud. Then Woody's pull string is caught and his voice box wakes Scud up.
* A villain in ''[[Teen Titans (Animationanimation)|Teen Titans]]'', Plasmus, is a guy who has to be constantly asleep or he will become a mindless purple goo monster. (I really don't know how to word this)
* The [[Chilly Willy]] short "The Legend of Rock-A-Bye Point" is half this and half [[Music Soothes the Savage Beast]].
* This trope figures into ''[[The Fox and The Hound]]'', the scene where Todd is poking around Chief when Chief is asleep in his barrel-house.
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