History Main / AnOddPlaceToSleep

* Gray Ghost, the first pony Leviathan meets in ''[[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/501459/manehattans-lone-guardian Manehattan's Lone Guardian]]'', has a reputation for sleeping wherever she wants ''except'' her room, and does this often enough that those who don't know her believe she's homeless. When Leviathan first sees her, Gray is curled up like a cat in a corner of the apartment building's rooftop.

[[quoteright:350:[[ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/AnOddPlaceToSleep_-_Peanuts_2_3364.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Woodstock's back must be really limber.]]

* In flashbacks to his manslayer days it's shown that [[Manga/RurouniKenshin Himura Kenshin]] used to sleep sitting up with his sword leaned against him for easy access, showing how paranoid he was about potentially being attacked. During that time period the only time we actually see him in a bed is either when he is injured or after it's implied [[spoiler:he and his first wife Tomoe had TheirFirstTime]).

* ''Series/{{ER}}'': From time to time, doctors will crash out and sleep in vacant exam rooms. A relatively minor example, since the rooms contain beds which are ''designed'' to be slept in, just not necessarily intended for the ''on-duty medical staff''. On at least one occasion, an exhausted junior doctor taking advantage of such a vacant room ended up the victim of a prank from a couple of other bored doctors, who were able to put his entire leg in a cast without him waking up, only to send him bolting out of bed and stumbling on the cast by paging him over the intercom.* In ''Series/TheFalconAndTheWinterSoldier'', Bucky sleeps on the floor of his apartment, as Sam mentioned during ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'', "like a caveman."

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas'', when Jack slips inside a Christmas Town bedroom to look at the sleeping elf children, the ones to the left of the window appear to be sleeping in dresser drawers rather than beds.

* ''Series/{{ER}}'': From time to time, doctors will crash out and sleep in vacant exam rooms. A relatively minor example, since the rooms contain beds which are ''designed'' to be slept in, just not necessarily intended for the ''on-duty medical staff''. On at least one occasion, an exhausted junior doctor taking advantage of such a vacant room ended up the victim of a prank from a couple of other bored doctors, who were able to put his entire leg in a cast without him waking up, only to send him bolting out of bed and stumbling on the cast by paging him over the intercom.

* In one ''Ghosts of Literature/FearStreet'' book the protagonist is bitten by a vampire and, naturally, gains more vampiric symptoms as time goes on. This includes going to sleep one night and being surprised to wake up hanging upside-down inside his closet.

* In ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'', Steve and Sam invoke this trope when they start talking about how they're so used to rock-hard military cots that civilian beds aren't comfortable anymore because they're too soft.

If a character doesn't sleep in a bed because there isn't one available, it's not this trope. ThereIsOnlyOneBed is when a character gives up the bed out of necessity or a sense of honor.

* Played for comedy in ''Manga/TokyoGhoul[=:Re=]'', with the rumor that [[TheAce Arima]] has a habit of taking catnaps in the middle of battle. It's accompanied by a comical image of Arima sleeping standing up, complete with a SnotBubble and panicked subordinates yelling for him to wake up. Sasaki and Juuzou confirm that this actually happened, because he goes long periods without sleeping while on major assignments.

* ''FanFic/MonstersInParadise'': While Amber is getting herself psyched for battle, Yukari is standing half-asleep at the other end of the battlefield, dreaming of a visit to Mykonos, Greece.

* ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'':
** In the N64 title and its Gamecube ports, villagers can often be found asleep outside their houses late at night or early in the morning. To make it more embarrassing, they fall asleep standing up.
** In ''New Leaf'', sometimes villagers are sleeping when you enter their house. That's all fine and dandy, except for the fact they fell asleep while standing.

* In ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee'', upon challenging Erika she'll doze off mid-sentence, still standing up at that.
* Clorica from ''VideoGame/RuneFactory4'' is the queen of this trope. Sleeping while standing is normal for her, and she sleeps ridiculously often. Heck, her intro scene is of her sleeping while standing next to your bedside, and she's often asleep while she's supposed to serve as your wakeup call.

* ''Film/CastAway''. Tom Hanks sleeps on the ground, because of course there's no beds on a deserted island.

* In ''Film/TheGrizzlies'', Inuit student Kyle sleeps in an abandoned cargo container due to his turbulent home life. His teacher Russ discovers this while practising lacrosse against the container, and later gives him a key, allowing him to sleep in a classroom so he has a safer and warmer place to sleep.

* Quite possibly the most disturbing exmple, is ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe Fire Emblem's]]'' Jaffar, As Legault says at the end of their first support conversation; "[[BloodbathVillainOrigin There were countless corpses stacked one on top of the other...]] [[AtopAMountainOfCorpses And there, atop of the bodies,]] [[EnfanteTerrible they found a lone infant]] sleeping... You. You are death incarnate. You feel nothing, fear nothing, desire nothing... You kill. Nothing more. Angel of Death... The perfect name."

* ''Film/{{Munich}}'': After planting a bomb in a terrorist's bed, one of the protagonists can only sleep in a cupboard.

* In ''Film/AMuppetFamilyChristmas'', space is at a premium with the entire casts of both ''Series/TheMuppetShow'' and ''Series/SesameStreet'' sharing a small farmhouse, so Fozzie's mom tells the gang that two of them will have to sleep suspended from hangers on a hook on the wall. Gonzo and Animal are only too happy to comply.

* In one early ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode, Hayley walks in one Roger, who has apparently hanged himself. She naturally screams, only for him to wake up and explain that he sleeps this way to help his back. Presumably his BizarreAlienBiology makes him TheManTheyCouldntHang.

* The ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' episode "The Nap" deals with George's fondness for sleeping under his desk at work, a premise inspired by friends of one of the writers doing the same thing in RealLife. It's initially a purely practical move designed to keep his coworkers from catching him napping in his windowed office, but he likes the arrangement so much that he gets the desk fitted with amenities conductive to sleeping, including a shelf for his alarm clock. By the end of the episode, the desk is destroyed and he's instead found napping in a kitchen cupboard [[YourDoorWasOpen in Jerry's apartment]], [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight to which Jerry doesn't react in the slightest]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': Bender, and by extension, all robots, prefer to sleep standing up in a room small enough to be a closet. To Bender, [[HumansThroughAlienEyes it's odd that his human roommate Fry instead wants to sleep in the spacious, windowed closet]] that opens off this "apartment."

* The ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' episode "The Nap" deals with George's fondness for sleeping under his desk at work, a premise inspired by [[RealLifeWritesThePlot friends of one of the writers doing the same thing]]. It's initially a purely practical move designed to keep his coworkers from catching him napping in his windowed office, but he likes the arrangement so much that he gets the desk fitted with amenities conductive to sleeping, including a shelf for his alarm clock. By the end of the episode, the desk is destroyed and he's instead found napping in a kitchen cupboard [[YourDoorWasOpen in Jerry's apartment]], [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight to which Jerry doesn't react in the slightest]].

* The ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' episode "The Nap" deals with George's fondness for sleeping under his desk at work. It's initially a purely practical move designed to keep his coworkers from catching him napping in his windowed office, but he likes the arrangement so much that he gets the desk fitted with amenities conductive to sleeping, including a shelf for his alarm clock. By the end of the episode, the desk is destroyed and he's instead found napping in a kitchen cupboard [[YourDoorWasOpen in Jerry's apartment]], [[UnusuallyIninterestingSight to which Jerry doesn't react in the slightest]].