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Sleepyhead Rule: The teenaged male lead will begin the first day of the game by oversleeping, being woken up by his mother, and being reminded that he's slept in so late he missed meeting his girlfriend.
When it comes to Kid Heroes, they're usually not granted the courtesy of starting their adventure out in the thick of combat. That would just be cruel, unless they're being forced to undergo Training From Hell. In many cases, if the main character in a role-playing game is no more than sixteen years of age, they'll likely start the game in bed, sleepy and bleary-eyed. A younger sibling, parental figure or, if it's a Dating Sim, Unlucky Childhood Friend will usually be the one to awaken the hero, informing him/her that they're Late For School/an audience with the king/a date with their love interest.
This is an easy way to get the character into their morning routine, giving the audience a tour of their daily life. It may not look good for the character if he/she wakens up and finds out they can't remember a thing about themselves.
A form of Easing Into The Adventure.
Examples
Anime
- The title character from Sailor Moon.
- Cardcaptor Sakura wakes up from a prophetic dream at the beginning of the first episode, as well as many others before the end of the Clow Card Arc.
- Ash from Pokemon oversleeps in the first episode and Professor Oak gives him Pikachu instead of one of the Kanto Starters (though Movie 4 implies a certain amount of foreknowledge)
- The Twelve Kingdoms begins with Yoko having a dream about a strange man—an important character who continues to taunt her for much of the first arc.
- X1999 also begins with a "prophetic dream"—really a few moments of the dreamer's next day at school.
- Haibane Renmei starts with a dream the main character has immediately before hatching from her cocoon, and spends most of the first few episodes having the world of haibane explained to her, as she has no memory of who she is or where she's from.
- Excel Saga episode 4, in its parody of Dating Sims, has this: Excel looms over the bed telling the player to wake up, or they will be Late For School.
- Project A Ko starts with just this trope. More, since the fact that she has superpowers, she does a lot of collateral damage rushing to school.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion spoofs this in the final episode of the series. Shinji is shown a vision of an alternate life for himself, in which his life is more like a typical shounen series—including being woken up by Asuka, who is now his Unlucky Childhood Friend.
- Princess Tutu opens with Ahiru having a nightmare and tumbling out of her bed.
- Chrono Crusade starts this way as well, although with a bit of a twist. In the manga, Chrono is sleeping in a car when Rosette gets a call to go on a mission. When he's slow to get up, Rosette (literally) kicks him out of the car. In the anime, both Chrono and Rosette are asleep in their car when they get the call—Chrono wakes up first and gently wakes up Rosette, since he's worried Sister Kate won't want to speak to him.
Literature
Video Games
- The Trope Namer is one of the opening lines in the initial translation of Chrono Trigger, where Crono's mom wakes him up to go to the Millenial Fair. Later, Crono has a bizarre dream where the exact scenario plays out with the Mysterious Waif instead of momma.
- The Dream is replayed in a secret ending where Crono is a Reptite and his Reptite Mother wakes him up and he meets Reptite Leena in Millennium Fair.
- A similar occurrence happens in Chrono Cross, where Serge's mom wakes him up (from a prophetic dream) warning that he's late to a date with Leena.
- In the opening to Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, demoness Etna awakens Prince Laharl by smacking him with a number of weapons, and is just about to shoot him when he finally wakes up. From a two-year nap. Talk about a Heavy Sleeper...
- In the "Etna Mode" for the PSP and DS versions she fires the shot, apparently accidentally kills him, and decides to become Overlord herself. Except he turns out not to be dead at the very end of the story.
- Dragon Quest III also starts this way, with the hero's mother waking him or her up for an audience with the king... on his/her sixteenth birthday, no less.
- Ends up being a different trope altogether, as the hero was raised from a young age to be a hero, and would start his/her epic quest on his/her sixteenth birthday by design.
- The Tales Series love to do this:
- The first day of Tales Of Phantasia begins with the main character waking up in the morning.
- Stahn Aileron, the main character of Tales Of Destiny, has narcolepsy as his entire gimmick.
- As does his son Kyle in the sequel, to the point that his mother wakes him up in the same fashion that Stahn's sister did (by banging a ladle very loudly against a frying pan right next to his head)
- Tales Of Symphonia begins with Lloyd being awakened from sleeping while standing up and carrying buckets.
- Tales Of Legendia is an exception, but protagonist Senel does have a great deal of trouble getting up in the morning; one of the party usually has to go and wake him.
- Your created character in Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology wakes up at the foot of The World Tree and, yep...you've got amnesia. Of course, your character isn't the only one...
- The prologue in Tales Of Innocence turns out to be the protagonist's dream about being a general in an alien war. The game proper begins as he wakes up from it.
- Like Lloyd, Shing of Tales Of Hearts opens the game waking up from a daydream he has... while practicing swordplay. Ouch.
- Kingdom Hearts begins with Sora being woken up on the beach by Kairi. (Okay, technically it begins within the dream he's having, but...)
- The Legend Of Zelda games also love to do this: it happens in A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, Minish Cap, Twilight Princess...
- At the beginning of the first Golden Sun game, Isaac's mother awakens him... in the midst of a huge thunderstorm... in the middle of the night... to inform that a massive boulder is about to fall on the town.
- The graphical roguelike Azure Dreams starts out with the Kid Hero sleeping comfortably in bed...until his sister awakens him by violently jumping on the bed.
- It's his female friend (and possible love interest) and his little sister. Depending on your actions in the game, this can change.
- In Heart of Darkness, the game opens with the protagonist being awakened by his Sadist Teacher after falling asleep in class. Oddly enough, it sounded like the teacher was actually explaining something interesting for once...
- Also seen at the beginning of the online multiplayer game Monster Hunter, although nobody is there to wake your character up from his/her slumber.
- Oddly, Dark Cloud does this, but doesn't give you control of the character - in fact, the character is promptly knocked unconscious when, urm, civilization is wiped off the map.
- Mega Man Battle Network does this in the first game as well as having it as the opening of many of the chapters across the series.
- In a dark twist, Planescape: Torment's protagonist, The Nameless One, starts the game by waking up on a mortuary slab with no memory of who he is and how he got there. His wake-up call comes from a floating, talking skull. His day doesn't improve from there, though it does (if you can believe it) get more interesting.
- Earth Bound starts this way too, but it isn't your mother waking you up... it's the crash-landing of a meteorite carrying future not-bee that does.
- It's treated more conventionally in Mother3 when Claus wakes Lucas up by yelling at him to come and play.
- Final Fantasy VIII begins with Squall regaining consciousness in the Balamb Garden infirmary after a fight with Seifer.
- Notably absent in the Square action RPG Vagrant Story. After puting in your name the first thing you do is walk into a fight. The in game tutorial comes after the first boss and no the baddies aren't nerfed. And For some reason the main character can't remember a thing about himself
- Amusingly enough, Ashley is woken up just in time for the Final Battle by a disembodied voice ("Wake up, Agent Riot!") This, after the villain's One Winged Angel transformation blew up the building they were standing on and knocked Ashley unconscious.
- Subverted in Commander Keen: Keen Dreams, where (in the backstory) the protagonist is woken up by a bunch of enemies, which he quickly dispatches.
- In The Journeyman Project, Agent 5 is awoken from a psychic dream that only he has to find he is late for work. In the Updated Rerelease Pegasus Prime,
Crono's moma fellow agent calls him on his eyepiece to inform him as such, and to see the doctor about all those ominous dreams he keeps having.
- In Lucas Arts' Loom, the hero is napping on a cliffside at the beginning and is awoken by a messenger nymph: "Rise, son of Cygna! It is the dawn of your 17th year. The elders await you in the council."
- The beginning to every Pokemon game.
- Except for Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, where the game starts with you... in the back of a moving truck. Hmm.
- The main characters in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance get carried into Ivalice in their sleep. In the sequel however, the adventure starts sometime in the afternoon after school's over.
- Legaia: Duel Saga features a character trying to wake the protagonist at the beginning of the game with a spoon and bucket. How the player chooses to react to this sudden stimulus (wake up calmly, wake up fearfully, go back to sleep) helps determine the protagonist's attitude for the rest of the game.
- Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic begins with the player character asleep on a spaceship. That's losing a fight with a Sith battle fleet. "Heavy Sleeper" doesn't even cover this.
- Eternal Darkness starts by giving control to the player in the middle of protagonist Alex's dream, in which she's fighting off a neverending stream of zombies, probably to give you some level of the hang of fighting early on - no matter how you do, you won't take any damage and Alex wakes up, more properly starting off the game, after a set time.
- Hikari Netto of Rockman EXE only begins the first game sleeping, but he does begin each chapter thus, since "go to bed" is the game's chapter break. Of course he fits the standard "lazy sleepyhead" schtick to a tee, making him lucky to have a sentient and diligent alarm clock for a brother.
- Dragon Quest Swords starts out with your father awakening you with a nasty Kaboom spell and sending you on your way to the castle.
Webcomics
- Legendary's opening
 is very similar.
- Like every other console RPG trope, it makes an appearance in Adventurers!
- Parson Gotti of Erfworld is introduced this way. Except that it's not his mother, but his alarm clock getting him up at 5:18 pm to work the graveyard shift at Kinko's. Is it any wonder that he wanted to be summoned to Erfworld?
- In Order Of The Stick, Durkon's segment in "Origins of PCs" starts out with the high priest of Thor waking him up.
Western Animation
- Kung Fu Panda starts out with Po awakening from a kickass, awesome dream (complete with the amusing touch of his father's voice coming out of the Furious Five's mouths) to find out he's late for work in the noodle shop. We then get to see his daily life, from his struggle to get out of bed and the posters and action figures he's collected, to his clutziness that prevents him from throwing a throwing star (and topples him ignominiously down the stairs) and the mess he makes of the dining area with his large size. And, of course, the boring, ordinary life that he longs to escape from.
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