History Main / TripleShifter

* ''ComicBook/{{Robin|1993}}'': Tim Drake, the third Robin, [[https://liviedoodles.tumblr.com/post/149261246701 doesn't appear to have had time to sleep]] in 5 years. He spent his days at school, his evenings socializing, his nights as Robin, and his weekends at the Teen Titans -- who train and fight supervillains and cults and hordes of their own members who've turned evil day and night. As Red Robin, he simply cut out his friends and family (most of whom had died), not to mention school, for superheroing and sleeping. And brooding. A lot of brooding, about how many people he knows who are dead (a lot) and how many of those are his fault (perhaps half).

** Pre-Crisis ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} went through an era during which she hardly had any sleep. She was working as a soap opera actress, which was extremely time-consuming and only left nighttime to operate as Supergirl. She was going mad due to the lack of sleep (her body doesn't need the rest but her mind does) and private life, so in ''Superman Vol. 1'' issue #376 she quit her job and told [[Franchise/{{Superman}} her cousin]] [[ComicBook/Supergirl1982 she was moving to Chicago]] because she could not juggle her job and her hero duties.

* ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' shows that Batman's constant triple shifting are wearing him down and making him a little sloppy at the beginning of the movie. He also complains of exhaustion at least once.
--> '''Bruce Wayne:''' (after Alfred has drawn the curtains back, letting sunlight in) [[NotAMorningPerson Bats are nocturnal!]]

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' also does this, though he isn't as lucky as Franchise/{{Batman}} and is constantly harassed as Peter Parker for being sleepy.

* This is mentioned in ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}'' when Rorschach notes he hasn't slept in days and that he is getting too tired to think straight. He also chides himself for falling asleep without removing his mask. The guy is [[SociopathicHero a bit crazy]] and has [[BecomingTheMask immersed himself in his superhero persona]] so deeply that he seems to forget the need to rest every now and then.

* ''ComicBook/RobinSeries'': Tim Drake, the third Robin, [[https://liviedoodles.tumblr.com/post/149261246701 doesn't appear to have had time to sleep]] in 5 years. He spent his days at school, his evenings socializing, his nights as Robin, and his weekends at the Teen Titans -- who train and fight supervillains and cults and hordes of their own members who've turned evil day and night. As Red Robin, he simply cut out his friends and family (most of whom had died), not to mention school, for superheroing and sleeping. And brooding. A lot of brooding, about how many people he knows who are dead (a lot) and how many of those are his fault (perhaps half).

* In ''LightNovel/{{Ark}}'', the titular character grows so dependent and focused upon New World that he gets by on about 2 hours of sleep a night - which, at one point, drives him to a ''severe'' illness which is only helped by Justiceman's posse.
* ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'':

Of course, one could assume that Evil doesn't strike ''every'' night. But it sure seems that way.

* The 2016 annual of ''ComicBook/MightyMorphinPowerRangersBoomStudios'' includes a short story that shows one week in Jason's life as he juggles high school, running an after-school karate class, and saving the world from monsters. He just about manages it but spends most of Saturday dead to the world in bed.

-->'''Fry:''' Yep! It's exhausting, [[ShapedLikeItself but I need the extra money to buy coffee so I can stay awake for my night job]].

* PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/PokemonScarletAndViolet'' with [[RidiculouslyAverageGuy Larry]], a {{salaryman}}, [[ElementalRockPaperScissors Normal-type]] Gym Leader, [[AlmightyJanitor and Elite Four member]] with ExhaustedEyeBags.

* ''Manga/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' overall averts discussing this trope, showing magical girl veteran Mami spending her after-school hours searching for witches and fighting them, but still capable of attending school, and Sayaka seems to do the same once she contracts as well. The [[Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagicaRebellion Rebellion movie]] does imply that fighting the nightmares at night leaves the girls with issues, like Madoka not doing any reading before lessons and Sayaka staying up late to complete homework.

* Lelouch/Zero from ''Anime/CodeGeass''. In one episode, after schoolgirl/terrorist Kallen is publicly embarrassed due to nodding off in class, Rivalz suggests she take lessons from Lelouch, who's the undisputed master of sleeping through class without getting caught, napping through about half the school day on average. He still manages to pull a straight-B report card and somehow maintain his RichIdiotWithNoDayJob public persona while secretly working to overthrow the government nights and weekends. Even better, he could have easily gotten a straight-A+ record, if not for the necessity to maintain a low profile.

* Franchise/{{Batman}} is the TropeCodifier. In some continuities, it's explained that he ''doesn't sleep'' but rather engages in a 30-minute trance every day that "gives the equivalent of a six-hour sleep." In other continuities, no one bats an eye because he occasionally makes a brief but memorable evening appearance as [[EccentricMillionaire Millionaire Playboy]] Bruce Wayne, carousing the night away with beautiful women on his arms. So he's assumed to be sleeping all day thereafter, as a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob.

* ''Podcast/RedPandaAdventures'': For much of the series, this trope is avoided as the Red Panda's secret identity is a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob and his sidekick Kit Baxter, a.k.a. the Flying Squirrel, is the rich idiot's chauffeur. This allows them to be together at nearly any moment without arousing suspicion of superheroics or needing other employment. Early on, when Kit confirms that she still gets paid to ''be'' a chauffeur, the Red Panda notes she does because she wouldn't be much use as a sidekick if she had to get a second job. This changes later in the series, when many of the Red Panda's agents, informants, and foot soldiers enlist in the military during the build-up of World War II. Kit takes a job at a newspaper owned by the Red Panda to make use of the paper as a source of information. From then on she's generally shown balancing her work life with her hero life, such as worrying about filing a story at the office about recent villain-stomping or being exhausted at the paper when hero matters keep her busy.

[[folder: Light Novels]]

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[[folder:Literature]]

** [[spoiler:Yukito/Yue]] plays this trope far more dramatically. [[spoiler:While he starts as an OrdinaryHighschoolStudent, it turns out he's the vessel of Yue, a powerful magical being who has been cut off his source of mana since his creator, Clow, is dead, and Clow's succesor Sakura is, well, a little girl with a big heart and great potential but limited magic at the moment -- and she's also using the few magic she currently has to transform the Clow Cards into Sakura Cards. As such, the BigEater and HeavySleeper traits that were a mere RunningGag at first become ''way'' more serious. It takes Touya willingly transferring ''all'' of his PsychicPowers to Yue/Yukito to restore his strength, and when poor Sakura finds out, she has a heartbreaking HeroicBSOD and blames herself for it [[HeroicSelfDeprecation for not having enough power to maintain Yue's presence]].]]

* Lelouch/Zero from ''Anime/CodeGeass''. In one episode, after schoolgirl/terrorist Kallen is publicly embarrassed due to nodding off in class, Rivalz suggests she take lessons from Lelouch, who's the undisputed master of sleeping through class without getting caught, napping through about half the school day on average. He still manages to pull a straight-B report card and somehow maintain his RichIdiotWithNoDayJob public persona while secretly working to overthrow the government nights and weekends. Even better, he could have easily gotten a straight-A+ record, if not for the necessity to maintain low profile.
* ''Anime/FreshPrettyCure'' actually showed the end result of an action such as this - Love, Miki and Buki actually got themselves ''hospitalized'' because they pushed themselves between dance practice, school and being Pretty Cure.

** Hayaska also attends school, works as Kaguya's full time valet, and is the de facto head servant of the household due to seniority. Chapter 179 establishes that she only gets about 4 hours of sleep per day and has no social life that extends beyond seeing her friends during school hours.
* ''Manga/{{Kekkaishi}}'''s Yoshimori is constantly falling asleep in class, since he's in school during the day and hunts Ayakashi during the night. His 'breakfast' is often coffee-flavored milk.

** The matter of sleep was actually addressed in the third episode of [[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha the first season]], with [[MentorMascot Yuuno]] telling Nanoha to take a break since she's exhausting herself. Naturally, that led to her missing a [[MineralMacguffin Jewel Seed]] [[MyGreatestFailure that proceeded to damage her town]]. Also, in [[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaAs the second season]], the Wolkenritter go out searching for Linker Cores at night causing them to wake up late the following morning, because they spend their days with Hayate, who is not supposed to know about their nightly trips.
** And then there's Teana in ''[[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers StrikerS]]'', who puts herself through a rigorous training regimen (in addition to her regular training which in and of itself is very demanding) resulting in only sleeping four hours a night. At the end of it she's so exhausted her body needs 30+ hours of sleep to recover.

* The girls get hit on both ends in ''Anime/PowerpuffGirlsZ''. When they have to fight at night they're look exhausted the next day, and they're show having to take a supplementary class. On one occasion they actually have to leave the professor to fight monsters while they take their school finals.

* While Anime/SuperSonico is not a heroine, she is still a college student, a band member, part-time model, part-time waitress and lives alone with five cats. The first scene in episode 1 shows how it affects her, as it takes several alarm clocks and the aforementioned cats to even wake her up.

* Franchise/{{Batman}} is the TropeCodifier. In some continuities it's explained that he ''doesn't sleep'' but rather engages in a 30-minute trance every day that "gives the equivalent of a six-hour sleep." In other continuities, no one bats an eye because he occasionally makes a brief but memorable evening appearance as [[EccentricMillionaire Millionaire Playboy]] Bruce Wayne, carousing the night away with beautiful women on his arms. So he's assumed to be sleeping all day thereafter, as a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob.

* The 2016 annual of ''ComicBook/MightyMorphinPowerRangersBoomStudios'' includes a short story that shows one week in Jason's life as he juggles high school, running an after-school karate class and saving the world from monsters. He just about manages it, but spends most of Saturday dead to the world in bed.

* ''ComicBook/RobinSeries'': Tim Drake, the third Robin, [[https://liviedoodles.tumblr.com/post/149261246701 doesn't appear to have had time to sleep]] in 5 years. He spent his days at school, his evenings socializing, his nights as Robin and his weekends at the Teen Titans -- who train and fight supervillains and cults and hordes of their own members who've turned evil day and night. As Red Robin, he simply cut out his friends and family (most of whom had died), not to mention school, for superheroing and sleeping. And brooding. A lot of brooding, about how many people he knows who are dead (a lot) and how many of those are his fault (perhaps half).

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': The ComicBook/{{Huntress}} feature shows that Helena's job as an attorney and nightly superhero activities don't mix well. Her lack of sleep is sometimes devastating for her day job, with her turning up hours late or being incredibly short tempered. She does usually try to only patrol as Huntress for the first part of the night in order to get some sleep, but this doesn't always work out.

* In the ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' fanfic, ''FanFic/{{Intrepid}}'', Sophia is a student by day, a Ward by night, and goes out in a SecondSuperIdentity behind her bosses back.
* In ''Fanfic/LastChildOfKrypton'': Shinji goes to school, works for Misato and is a super-hero. Since he's Franchise/{{Superman}}, he doesn't need to sleep.
* In ''Fanfic/SOE2LoneHeirOfKrypton'' Asuka is a thirteen-years-old kid that goes to school, pilots mechas and at the night dons her ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} costume and saves people.

* In ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/23448010 Not Set in Stone]]'', Laurel works as an ADA by day, Black Canary by night, and occasionally catches up on paper work ''after'' that. Lampshaded by Oliver "And people wondered when he slept."

* At one point in ''Film/MenInBlack'', Jay actually asks Zed whether they ever sleep. Apparently, the organisation works to an alien schedule of a 37 hour day. The lack of sleep is implied to be offset by drinking copious amounts of coffee.[[note]]Theoretically possible, and perhaps even preferable. A couple of studies done where people are locked in rooms with no sense of time show them adapting naturally to anything from a 20-30 hour day. It's still a little short of the [[TheMenInBlack Men in Black]] day but if they were also extending their sleep cycles or taking multiple naps(it's not saying they're awake for 37 hours, just that the day is 37 hours long) then they probably could adapt.[[/note]]

* In ''Literature/{{Renegades}}'', Nova leverages her power as TheSleepless to fill her time with work - a Renegade hero at day, an Anarchist in the evenings, and a number of odd jobs, from helping the Renegades file evidence to working on her own projects, during the night.

* Everyone on ''Series/TwentyFour'', it seems, mandated by the format of the show. Jack Bauer only gets to sleep between seasons. This may be more justified than other examples as it is only one long day, usually with a few year's gaps between. With caffeine and adrenaline, most people can function on one missed night of sleep and everyone aside from Jack has opportunities to stop and catch their breath at some point. Jack usually shows the toll by the end of the day.

* Deconstructed in ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', where Oliver is trying to be a vigilante and the CEO of a Fortune 500 company simultaneously, and is entirely incapable of it. The joint-owner Isabel ends up doing everything, and when he skips out on the annual board meeting, the one meeting she insists he absolutely needs to come to, [[spoiler: she convinces the board to remove him and make her the sole owner. While this was part of her evil plan with the season's BigBad,]] it's hard to argue that his removal wasn't completely justified.

** Dexter Morgan seems to ignore this problem entirely, with no apparent problems. By day, he's a skilled forensic scientist, and has never been shown to doze off at work. In the afternoons and evenings, he spends time with his girlfriend/wife and her kids, or goes bowling with the guys from work. At night, he stalks people he suspects of being murderers, and once he is sure, abducts them, kills them, and cuts them into little pieces he can dump in the sea. Sleep? Optional.

** In the reboot season Dexter goes through at least a 60 hour period without any sleep at all and is not even remotely impacted by tiredness, despite multiple injuries, extreme emotional distress, fighting, and spending a few hours at his girlfriend's house on Christmas Day.

* ''Podcast/RedPandaAdventures'': For much of the series, this trope is avoided as the Red Panda's secret identity is a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob and his sidekick Kit Baxter, a.k.a. the Flying Squirrel, is the rich idiot's chauffeur. This allows them to be together at nearly any moment without arousing suspicion of superheroics or needing other employment. Early on, when Kit confirms that she still gets paid to ''be'' a chauffeur, the Red Panda notes she does because she wouldn't be much use as a sidekick if she had to get a second job. This changes later in the series, when many of the Red Panda's agents, informants, and foot soldiers enlist in the military during the build up of World War II. Kit takes a job at a newspaper owned by the Red Panda to make use of the paper as a source of information. From then on she's generally shown balancing her work life with her hero life, such as worrying about filing a story at the office about recent villain-stomping, or being exhausted at the paper when hero matters keep her busy.

* {{Averted}} in ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'': most transhuman [[BodyBackupDrive bodies, or "morphs"]] have it as part of the standard suite of upgrades to require no more than four hours of sleep per 24 hour cycle. This is {{averted}} with [[BeingHumanSucks the unmodified Flat morph]], who are commonly owned by eccentrics, throwbacks, or [[NoTranshumanismAllowed bioconservatives]]; and {{exaggerated}} by Hibernoid morphs, who can enter hibernation for space travel, or run off of two hours of sleep for a 24 hour cycle, or shift into a four hour sleep cycle for every 48 hours.

* {{Averted}} with the Space Marines of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' sleep four hours per 24-hour day. They are capable of taking a twenty minute nap to keep them refreshed for hours afterwards; or they can alternate resting each half of their brain to keep vigilant for days on end without proper rest, but doing so causes them great fatigue. They use the four hour regular sleep period for a proper measure of sleep, even though they can cheat around this.

* ''{{VideoGame/Crusader}}'': Between the start of No Remorse and the start of No Regret, six months pass. Though never spelled out, this is alluded to in ''No Remorse'' by the player character being able to go to the bar to catch up with his fellow rebels, go to his footlocker (presumably at the foot of his bunk), and so on. However, there is no such downtime in ''No Regret''. After spending 48 hours in a cramped lifepod, the Silencer then appears to go full-tilt for the next few days to a week, depending on how quick you play through each level. This understandable; he's one of those SuperSoldier shooter-protagonist types. What's not so easily explained is how his entirely human VoiceWithAnInternetConnection companions not only stay on the line the whole time but, when they trade off, also go on missions of their own (including two of them who were just in the not-so-tender care of the Lunar Mining Cartel for months...).
* Gordon Freeman in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2''. Supposing he arrives in City 17 in the late afternoon, he spends the first night fighting in [[ZombieApocalypse Ravenholm]], the next day fighting and driving, the second night fighting in Nova Prospekt, and fights again in the late afternoon of the third day (from his viewpoint). Then come the extensions, which may or may not have allowed him to sleep (or be knocked unconscious) in-between. Of course, he had just slept for twenty years, and maybe those [[HealThyself medkits]] contain FoodPills. And maybe caffeine...
** There's a one-week break [[spoiler:(which seems like a minute to Gordon, so maybe not...)]] at the start of chapter "Anticitizen One", and he's in stasis again by the end of the story, giving him unknown hours of sleep between the end of ''Half-Life 2'' and the start of Episode 1. The same applies to the gap between Episode 1 and 2; it appears the same again will be true of Episodes 2 and 3. He does manage to go for three whole days without sleep, but the episodes are a different affair.
* Doesn't exactly fit with the crime fighting description, but earlier ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' games allowed you to stay up all night working, only being forced to "sleep" at the hour when you wake up every day so that you can have breakfast. Loss of stamina could be easily remedied by eating food or bathing in the hot spring, so it was common to go the whole game without sleeping for any reason other than skipping days to reach a particular event. This has been averted in later games however by the inclusion of sicknesses from going without sleep for too long and the difficulty in increasing stamina, not to mention the crippling effect that low stamina will have on your character, making it near impossible to perform any task worth staying up for.

** ''VideoGame/Persona4'' has the dungeon-exploration take place during the day, avoiding this (and if you do it you can't do anything that night out of exhaustion). But the characters seem to have no trouble staying up until midnight several nights in a row to watch the Midnight Channel. It's possible that they also took a nap and set the timer to wake them up in time, or sleep in until the very last minute the next morning. It's also an infrequent event(a few nights a month) and a lot of reasonably healthy teens have little problem staying up until 12:05am and then getting by on 5 or 6 hours of sleep for several days every once in a while.
** Likewise, ''VideoGame/Persona5'' has the dungeon crawling during the day. While you normally have to go straight to bed if you spend the day in the Metaverse, maxing out Kawakami's Confidant unlocks the ability to get special massages that put you back in the fight and let you do stuff at night. A downplayed example occurs in ''[[UpdatedRerelease Royal]]'', as rather than having to go straight to bed after visiting the Metaverse, Joker is now allowed to do things inside the coffee shop such as study, play video games, or craft infiltration tools.
*** Kawakami herself is an example, as she works as a teacher in the day and as an on-call maid in the night due [[WorkOffTheDebt an onerous debt placed on her]]. At one point in her Confidant she uses Joker's call as a time to take some much needed rest, and later on in the Confidant it gets to the point where she's hospitalized due to overwork.

* Spoofed with the Guildmaster in ''VideoGame/RecettearAnItemShopsTale''; he's at the merchants' guild at all hours, and sometimes the pub, because he's avoiding his wife.
* In ''VideoGame/SakuraWars: [[VideoGame/SakuraWarsSoLongMyLove So Long, My Love]]'', Sagitta Weinberg ([[DubNameChange Cheiron Archer]]) is actually more like a quadruple shifter. She's a lawyer, and a stage actor, and a mecha pilot for a secret anti-demon force. And in her spare time that somehow exists, she's the leader of a Harlem biker gang ([[spoiler:though it takes her a little while to pick up that particular mantle again]]).

* Most {{Magical Girl}}s in ''Webcomic/SleeplessDomain'' don't have to worry too much about this. Their school hours are adjusted to allow them to spend days in school, nights fighting monsters, and mornings in-between sleeping. They're also perfectly free to take nights off as needed. Those, however, are the ones who register with the government and attend a specific school. Magical Girls who don't register, but still fight monsters, like Tessa's classmate Rue, have to cope with normal school hours along with nighttime monster fighting. Rue has worked out a system for sneaking naps throughout the day, such as in the first few minutes of class where the teacher regularly talks about her life before going into the lesson.

* ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' used to have no problems with this -- he did his crimefighting thing at night and slept during the day. Now that he has to be a single dad during the day, one has to wonder when he gets to sleep. Although if you've seen seen Gosalyn in action, it's obvious parental supervision is a sometimes thing.

** The episode "Getting Antsy" shows this outright. With Darkwing and Launchpad coming back after a night of patrol and just planning on going to bed and leaving Gosalyn on her own, getting annoyed when she says they promised to take her mini golfing that day.

** In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'', Batman hasn't slept for three nights straight... as they fight the VillainOfTheWeek whose power is being able to attack you in your sleep. At the end of the episode, after he and [[ComicBook/MartianManhunter J'onn]] save everyone, he's seen slumped over in a chair in the Watchtower's infirmary, snoring. Admittedly, in order to manage to stay awake, he'd consumed a supercaffinated beverage, proving that the Batmobile has Bat-cupholders.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Homer has a plan to do this when he has to get a second job at the Qwik-E-Mart to pay for Lisa's pony. His productivity immediately plummets to new lows as he falls asleep at both of his jobs, and even the drive home.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep Polyphasic sleep cycles]] sleep for shorter periods more often, with the purpose of minimizing time asleep for sustained periods. Example schedules include a half-hour nap at 6-hour intervals, 20 minutes every 4 hours, or one 2 hour sleep with short naps during the day. Although popular in some athletic and professional circles, most users stop because of conflicts with other people's schedules. Can also manifest as a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_sleep-wake_syndrome serious sleep disorder.]]