History Main / ColdSleepColdFuture

* ''Series/TheLostFleet'': Captain John Geary spends a hundred years drifting through space in an EscapePod, in cryosleep, after his ship is shot out from under him in the opening engagement of a war between TheAlliance and [[OneNationUnderCopyright The Syndicate Worlds]]. When he's revived, he finds the war is still raging, a bloody and seemingly endless stalemate in which half-trained sailors in jerry-built ships are thrown at each other in wasteful head-on charges, the ever-worsening toll in blood and treasure is causing unrest in the civilian population and even the military. Oh, and just to set the tin lid on it all, the Syndics have successfully lured the majority of the Alliance fleet into an ambush and Geary is now [[LoopholeAbuse technically]] the most senior officer in what's left of it. [[spoiler: Luckily, Geary turns out to be a really good fleet commander, and by the end of the first arc his future and his nation's are both looking rather warmer.]]

** Happens InUniverse in ''The Defenseless Dead''. A law is being debated to allow people in cryogenic suspension to be [[HumanResources harvested for their organs]]. In an attempt to forestall this, the doctors take the risk of reviving several people to plead their case, but when interviewed by the media they come across as paranoid and mentally disturbed. The protagonist thinks that's an [[ProperlyParanoid entirely reasonable reaction]] for someone who has woken up in a world populated by cannibalistic ghouls who want to harvest your body parts.

* In {{Queen}}'s song '' '39''. A careful listener may discern that it is a song about time dilation and its effects on explorers ("The Volunteers") in a particular instance.

* Multiple different aspects of this are seen in ''Literature/{{Cryoburn}}''. Yani was dying of old age before he was frozen, but could only afford to pay to be frozen for a hundred years or until a cure for old age was found, whichever came first, so a century later he was thawed out, and dumped on the street: old and broke. Others are more fortunate: being revived when a cure was found for what was killing them, and still having money. They tend to isolate themselves in enclaves of people from their own time, so they can live among people who get the same jokes, and with whom they have other things in common.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' has an episode (''The Neutral Zone''), in which three late 20th century humans are revived in the middle of a showdown with the Romulans. Two of the three adapt fairly quickly to a future that is better than their past, but the third was a wealthy financier who reacts badly to the loss of his money, prestige and power.

** [[ComicBook/UltimateMarvel Ultimate Captain America]], a different character then the classic, also went through the refreezing. He associates better with his few surviving friends and is very stuck in the past. When he learned that Hank Pym assaulting his miniaturized wife with bug spray and mind-controlled ants was merely the latest attack in a years-long abusive relationship, he storms off, smacks Hank around until he goes giant, and then and only then kicks Hank's sixty-foot tall (naked!) rear end. SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome?

* In Creator/LarryNiven's ''A World Out Of Time'', the protagonist is revived into an authoritarian world. He's expected to earn his new lease on life by piloting a sublight interstellar mission. If he fails to qualify, they'll erase his brain pattern from the body (of a condemned criminal, executed by brainwipe) he's using and try again with the next HumanPopsicle.

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', the hero Link is placed into an enchanted sleep for seven years, to allow him to safely reach adulthood and deal with the problem of Ganondorf. When he wakes, he finds that the country of Hyrule has been overrun by the BigBad and his hordes of evil. The real King's been murdered, the Princess is missing, and he's got to make everything right again. Subverted somewhat in that once he does fix all the problems, [[spoiler:he gets sent back in time so he can live out his childhood properly.]] Of course, then he ends up Groundhogging his way through Majora's Mask and reliving the end of the world over and over and over and over and over and...

* Somewhat similar: ''Series/DoctorWho'' and his companions arrive on "The Ark in Space" where the future of humanity is 'cryogenically' [[note]]even The Doctor doesn't know that the word is 'cryonically'[[/note]] frozen. It's mentioned that emotionality is not encouraged in this future society, which doesn't stop the characters from emoting wildly merely because they're being absorbed by [[BodyHorror Wiirn]].

** The tie-in novel ''Debtor's Planet'' reveals that the financier did finally find a niche in Federation society: his mindset and skills make him the ''perfect'' choice as an ambassador to the Ferengi. In a later novel, ''Mere Mortals,'' he's Federation Secretary of Commerce. Although the Trek novels are not considered canon, his future appears not to have been so cold after all.

* ''Series/TheLostFleet'': Captain John Geary spends a hundred years drifting through space in an EscapePod, in cryosleep, after his ship is shot out from under him in the opening engagement of a war between TheAlliance and [[OneNationUnderCopyright The Syndicate Worlds]]. When he's revived, he finds the war is still raging, a bloody and seemingly endless stalemate in which half-trained sailors in jerry-built ships are thrown at each other in wasteful head-on charges, the ever-worsening toll in blood and treasure is causing arrest in the civilian population and even the military. Oh, and just to set the tin lid on it all, the Syndics have successfully lured the majority of the Alliance fleet into an ambush and Geary is now [[LoopholeAbuse technically]] the senior officer in what's left of it by date of rank. [[spoiler: Luckily, Geary turns out to be a really good fleet commander, and by the end of the first arc his future and his nation's are both looking rather warmer.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' has an episode (''The Neutral Zone''), in which three late 20th century humans are revived in the middle of a showdown with the Romulans. Two of the three adapt fairly quickly to a future that is better than their past but the third was a wealthy financier who reacts badly to the loss of his money, prestige and power.

** In ''Literature/ManifoldSpace'', the PortalNetwork works only at speed of the light; traveling to Alpha Centauri takes 4 objective years there, and 4 years back even though the subjective time is instant. Bar the very first time that Madeleine Meacher went through the portal and exploited the CompoundInterestTimeTravelGambit, the Earth gets progressively worse. The second journey isn't too bad though the resource wars are getting more intense. The third time, a new ice age is upon the world and global industrial and civilization has collapsed, including the [[LostTechnology technological base]]. Later, Earth is [[spoiler: all but abandoned saved for a few feudal kingdoms as humans from the Asteroid Belt work to restore the planet from Earth orbit]]. In her final journey, [[spoiler: Mankind has been pushed back to one last bastion at Mercury, fleeing from an alien invasion.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': While Aang is frozen the Fire Nation wipes out his people (the Air Nomads) and conquers most of the world. Fire Nation culture changes to be brutal, nationalistic, prejudiced and joyless.
** When he first comes out, Aang also experiences a bit of this problem with his friends Katara and Sokka. All Aang wants to do is play--but the Water Tribe children have lived in a war their whole life, and are more used to hunting and working than goofing off like kids are expected to in Aang's time.

* In ''{{Transmetropolitan}}'', cryonically preserved humans are known as "Revivals" and have become their own caste of unwanted social misfits, revived more out of a begrudged sense of duty than any real desire to have yesterday's people cluttering up today's world. Revivals almost inevitably become depressed, insane and suicidal as a result of the social neglect they face from a future that doesn't care for them, as well as a frankly schizophrenic future (think all the vices of the internet, writ large by hipsters and vomited out into the street).

* In the first version of GeneRoddenberry's ''Genesis II'' (1973), Dylan Hunt wakes up from a 160 year nap to discover that while he was in suspended animation there had been a nuclear war and that mutants fought with humans for survival in a [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] world.

* Multiple different aspects of this are seen in the Literature/VorkosiganSaga novel, ''Cryoburn''. Yani was dying of old age before he was frozen, but could only afford to pay to be frozen for a hundred years or until a cure for old age was found, whichever came first, so a century later he was thawed out, and dumped on the street: old and broke. Others are more fortunate: being revived when a cure was found for what was killing them, and still having money. They tend to isolate themselves in enclaves of people from their own time, so they can live among people who get the same jokes, and with whom they have other things in common.

*** The Dystopia may be just offscreen. Note comments like, "If you don't want to pay your taxes, you're free to spend a week with the Pain Monster!"
*** Okay, so we still have taxes, but that doesn't make it ''worse'' than the present. At least now there are options!
*** Also the Pain Monster is much better then getting Auditted by the IRS. At least it ends in a week.
*** Also consider "You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do" and [[IAmAHumanitarian Soylent Cola]], although that varies from person to person.

* In Mikhail Akhmanov's ''ArrivalsFromTheDark'' series, this is pretty much the history of the [[HumanAliens Faata]]. Their original civilization (as glimpsed by their HalfHumanHybrid offspring in his GeneticMemory) was not very different from human. However, an unknown cataclysm known as an Eclypse results in [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt total collapse]] of their civilization. When they finally manage to rebuild, they send spaceships (possibly GenerationShips) on sublight journeys to other stars on exploratory missions. However, the ship-bound Faata return decades (or centuries) later to find that the planet-bound Faata suffered the Second Eclipse and have been reduced to savages that barely survive. Disgusted, they resolve to remake the Faata society in such a way as to ensure the unending prosperity of their race and prevent the Third Eclipse. They use [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke genetic engineering]] to create a caste-based society with the smartest at the top, gifted with longevity and perfect health. The other castes (mostly made up of their savage brethren) would be considered non-sentient servants and remade to serve specific tasks. These would include soldiers, pilots, workers, etc. Most females were turned into breeders who are kept in a perpetually-vegetative state, "producing" new Faata as needed. A later discovery of a mind-reading biological computer would restrict the higher caste to only those with PsychicPowers. All alien races were to be conquered and adapted to serve the Faata.

*** And of course, John Spartan's methods were considered overly violent and neanderthalic even in the time period he was from. That's what got him frozen himself.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', full stop.

* ''RebuildOfEvangelion'' [[spoiler:has Shinji nearly destroy the world, just to save Rei by the end of 2.22. Shinji is then lost inside Unit-01, and is retrieved 14 years later... to a seriously changed world. Not only does everyone hate him for what he did, but when he tries to change the world back by the end of the movie, he only makes things somehow even worse. Also, by the time Shinji re-appears, the planet is starting to turn into a giant monstrosity, complete with an anatomically correct eye centered at the epicenter of Near-Third Impact and a huge ravine with anatomically correct TEETH! Nothing whatsoever is what it used to be.]]

* Yuri, the protagonist of Creator/StephenBaxter's ''Proxima'' is put into stasis as a child, at a time of environmental catastrophe. He wakes up in a world which resents people of his parents' generation, blaming them and, by extension, him, for worsening global warming by their disastrous attempts to solve it. He’s treated badly, and ends up being press-ganged into a half-baked colonisation effort on a barely habitable exoplanet. [[spoiler: Even the woman he ends up having a child with can barely stand him, through no fault of his own, and abandons him at the first opportunity.]]

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife2''. While not necessarily involving cold sleep (more a form of time travel) it still fits most of this trope.