History Main / SleptThroughTheApocalypse

* ''ComicBook/LokiAgentOfAsgard'': Lorelei and Sigurd weren't present for Ragnarok, which makes them impossible for Heimdall to find. One of Loki's tasks is to bring them back home, regardless of whatever opinions they have on the matter.
* Near the end of ''Marvel Universe -- The End'', ComicBook/{{Thanos}} has destroyed the universe. Cue [[ComicBook/Warlock1967 Adam Warlock]] (who had been outside reality) showing up and demanding to know what's going on.

* In ''ComicBook/NightOfTheLivingDeadpool'', Deadpool awakens from a food coma in the middle of a ZombieApocalypse.
* In ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'', Tailgate was damaged and trapped underground, managing to miss a [[ForeverWar four]] ''[[ForeverWar MILLION]]'' yearlong war. He is unearthed after the war ends and has to figure out how to navigate a society where Autobots and Deceptions are still figuring out how a robot society not based on war will even work.
* The protagonist, Rick, in ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'' was comatose when the ZombieApocalypse started. The first issue came out a couple of months after ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'' (see below) had its wide release in the US, but was written before that, as noted by Robert Kirkman in an early letters page.

->''"The earth died screaming''\\
''While I lay dreaming''\\
''Dreaming of you."''
-->-- '''Music/TomWaits''', [[Music/BoneMachine "Earth Died Screaming"]]

There's a lot of ways for Joe and/or Jane to [[LateToTheTragedy miss the opening act]] of TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt without realizing it. The threat itself may be a localized one like a ZombieApocalypse, and being out in the countryside [[CellPhonesAreUseless where there's no cell reception]] is one way to survive without becoming the wiser. Or they may be [[TheImmune naturally immune]] or in a place where whatever 'it' is can't affect them. A HumanPopsicle may thaw to find the world AfterTheEnd isn't all he expected. And of course, a HeavySleeper may be [[TheDitz clueless]] and lucky enough not to realize it's happening until he's knee deep in radioactive weevils.

If the story is a comedy or [[SlidingScaleOfComedyAndHorror a horror story being played for laughs]], Joe may be killed off pretty quickly without even realizing he was LateToTheTragedy. Otherwise, he'll have a pretty good [[SortingAlgorithmOfMortality survival rate]] as he taps into his inner ActionSurvivor.

Frequently overlaps with RipVanWinkle, where the future reality the protagonist finds himself waking up in is strange but not apocalyptic per se. Compare ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts when someone survived because they were offplanet.

* One of the game scenarios in the UsefulNotes/AtariJaguar ''VideoGame/AlienVsPredator'' game has the player as a Colonial Marine who was placed in 30 days' [[HumanPopsicle cyro-sleep]] as punishment for striking a superior officer. When he wakes up, everyone else is dead as the space station is overrun with the aforementioned aliens and predators.

* One of the survivors of the Jonestown massacre, where the Reverend UsefulNotes/JimJones convinced over 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide, was an elderly woman who ignored the calls for a meeting and took a nap.

** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'': Leon oversleeps at a motel before making his way to Raccoon City. Considering [[ZombieApocalypse what was happening there]], that was probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to him.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", Henry Bemis goes into the bank vault to have his lunch and read, which protects him from the nuclear blast that kills everyone else. He is knocked out by the force and eventually awakens to find the world destroyed.
** {{Subverted|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E82OneMorePallbearer One More Pallbearer]]". In the final scene, Paul Radin discovers that a nuclear war has devastated the world while he was in his bomb shelter attempting to fool Mrs. Langsford, Reverend Hughes and Colonel Hawthorne that such a war was beginning. [[spoiler:However, it turns out that this is nothing but Radin's fantasy, his mind having been broken.]]

* ''ComicBook/{{Invincible}}'': Because Damien Darkblood was busy with other investigations, he didn't saw the news regarding the destructive battle between [[spoiler:Mark and Omni-Man. Which had him took him forever to realize Omni-Man killed the Guardians of the Globe long after the truth about Omni-Man was revealed]].

* The hero of ''Film/TheDayOfTheTriffids'' does this, when he is stuck in hospital with his eyes bandaged after suffering an accident that leaves him temporarily unable to see. Meanwhile, a meteor storm blinds almost everyone else in the world, leaving the hero, now able to see again, as one of the relatively few people who still has his sight -- which against the titular Triffids, is definitely a good thing.

* In ''VideoGame/GodOfWarRagnarok'', a [[PlayableEpilogue post-game]] sidequest reveals that [[spoiler:the real Tyr, not the one that was actually just Odin impersonating Tyr, is still alive and locked up in a prison in Niflheim. By the time Kratos frees him, Ragnarok has already happened and he's somewhat dismayed that he couldn't be there to help]].

* Will/Ed in the European version of ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars: Dark Conflict/Days of Ruin'' is a variation -- as soon as the meteors started raining he barricaded himself into a kitchen supply room to wait to be rescued, but by the start of the game he's been in there so long he doesn't realize how bad it really is outside.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Sandsverse}}'': Horace took a nap during most of Lent. At one point he woke up, saw what was happening, and went back to sleep.

** The third ''[[Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion Rebuild]]'' movie has a straighter example. [[spoiler:The planet is in ruins and most of humanity has been killed off, and Shinji spends a total of fourteen years in non-aging stasis inside of a giant dormant mecha while this all happens. What makes it worse this time around, is that one of the first things Shinji finds out after he wakes up is that not only did he sleep through it (in what was probably the safest place on Earth for that entire time), his actions in the previous movie are what ''caused'' it.]]

* In ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'', Tailgate was damaged and trapped underground, managing to miss a [[ForeverWar four]] ''[[ForeverWar MILLION]]'' year long war. He is unearthed after the war ends and has to figure out how to navigate a society where Autobots and Deceptions are still figuring out how a robot society not based on war will even work.

* In the original ending of ''Film/ArmyOfDarkness'' (changed due to ExecutiveMeddling), the hero has to drink a specific quantity from a sleeping potion so he wakes during his era, but he miscounts and when he wakes much later than he meant to, the world's been destroyed.

** Rick Grimes was shot in the line of duty and subsequently in the hospital in a coma when the ZombieApocalypse began;

* The protagonist, Rick, in ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'' was comatose when the ZombieApocalypse started. The first issue came out a couple of months after ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'' (see below) had its wide release in the US, but was written before that, as noted by Robert Kirkman in an early letters page.

* In ''ComicBook/NightOfTheLivingDeadpool'', Deadpool awakens from a food coma in the middle of a ZombieApocalypse.

--> '''Thanos:''' Adam Warlock, only you could somehow miss the end of the universe.

--> Blow, Gabriel, blow! Now it just cannot worsen.
--> City's so tight asleep, that Heaven itself will not rouse it.

* InvokedTrope in the [[TabletopGame/D20Modern D20 Apocalypse]] setting Plague World. Long story short: [[AlienInvasion aliens invade the Earth]] by first unleashing a deadly virus targeting humans. Humans create Rip Van Teams (Teams of soldiers placed in suspended animation) using captured alien technology. Aliens win the war. Aliens get on the Earth. The virus mutates and kills most of the aliens. The last alien spaceship stays in orbit for 300 years, not having enough fuel to leave the solar system, crashing into the Earth when its orbit decays. The last spaceship gone, Rip Van Teams awake to reclaim the world.
* In ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' Nicol Bolas was trapped in the Meditation Realm for thousands of years. By the time he escaped, Dominaria had been reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland due to the Phyrexian invasion.

* In ''VideoGame/StarWarsKnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'', The Exile was drugged into a coma [[spoiler:aboard the Republic cruiser ''Harbinger'']] and wakes up in a kolto tank on Peragus to find that EverybodysDeadDave. They then piece together what happened from various {{Apocalyptic Log}}s: [[spoiler:An HK-50 BountyHunter droid trying to capture the Exile to collect G0-T0's bounty secreted itself aboard the ''Ebon Hawk'', then started killing the miners via sabotaged equipment to prevent them from bounty-jumping it, and finally triggered an emergency lockdown, herding the remaining crew into the dormitories so it could gas them all at once.]]

* ''VideoGame/WorldsEndClub'': The prologue begins with the Go-Getters' bus getting blown away from the impact of a meteor. After escaping the underwater theme park, they find out a full year has passed and humanity has been forced underground by a malevolent AI.

* The hero of ''VideoGame/{{Crystalis}}'' awakens from cryosleep 100 years AfterTheEnd.
* Will/Ed in the European version of ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars: Dark Conflict/Days of Ruin'' is a variation -- as soon as the meteors started raining he barricaded himself into a kitchen supply room to wait to be rescued, but by the start of the game he's been in there so long he doesn't realize how bad it really is outside.
* ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'':
** ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'': Squirps was placed in hibernation to meet the heroes and prevent the apocalypse, yet it also meant that he slept through the end of his own kingdom. There's nothing left of Squirpia by the time he wakes up.
** A minor example in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory''. Luigi manages to sleep through not one, but ''two'' Bowser attacks, only waking up just before Bowser inhales him.
* The Kid from ''VideoGame/{{Bastion}}'' wakes up in his bed to find the world [[ShatteredWorld torn to pieces]].
* In the game ''VideoGame/Rage2011'', the protagonist was deliberately sealed in a vault to survive an asteroid impact. The novel explains that he was a seasoned [[SemperFi Marine Lieutenant]] and that he'd been sealed along with the others so they'd have someone who'd protect them.
* In ''VideoGame/IMissTheSunrise'', Ros (the player character) was kept in a suspension tank during the Shine, so they have no recollection of it.
* One of the game scenarios in the UsefulNotes/AtariJaguar ''VideoGame/AlienVsPredator'' game has the player as a Colonial Marine who was placed in 30 days' [[HumanPopsicle cyro-sleep]] as punishment for striking a superior officer. When he wakes up, everyone else is dead as the space station is overrun with the aforementioned aliens and predators.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
** In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' DLC ''Mothership Zeta'' there are apparently thousands of people abducted and frozen from the time before the war. The most notably is Elliot, an army field medic abducted during the battle of Anchorage and was frozen then. Your other teammates break it to him that the world was nuked.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has Mr. House who was awake during the apocalypse itself but knocked out saving Las Vegas from nuclear annihilation. While he was out the dot of civilization he preserved was swallowed up in the post-nuclear wasteland.
** The protagonist of ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' is put into cryosleep in Vault 111 minutes after the start of the Great War and awakens 200 years later.
* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', the Dawnguard expansion has the vampire, Serana. Being trapped in an underground shrine for at least two thousand years, she slept through the corruption of the Falmer, the extinction of the Dwemer, the transformations of the Chimer and Orsimer, the Thrassian Plague, the founding of the Cyrodiilic empire, [[Videogame/TheElderScrollsOnline the Planemeld]], the [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsArena shattering of the Staff of Chaos]], the [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Warp in the West]], the [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind unbinding of the Heart of Lorkhan]], the [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion Crisis]], the eruption of Red Mountain, and the Great War against the Aldmeri Dominion which resulted in the banning of Talos worship. She wakes up in the middle of the Skyrim Civil War and the Dragon Crisis. Depending on your actions, she could have also slept through the Eye of Magnus almost destroying reality, the aforementioned Dragon Crisis, and the return of Miraak.
* ''VideoGame/LollipopChainsaw'' has protagonist Juliet narrate about her life and then wake up, realizing she's late for meeting her boyfriend before school, completely oblivious that a kid from school has opened the gates of hell and created a zombie apocalypse until she gets to the meeting spot.
* Not really an apocalypse (but a prequel to one), but [[AlmightyJanitor Roger Wilco]] in ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestITheSarienEncounter'' sleeps through the [[SpacePirates Sarien]] attack on the ''Arcada'' and the slaughter of everyone aboard. The only reason the Sariens missed him is that nobody bothered to check the broom closet.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'': At the very end of the game, [[spoiler: Lightning]] purposely invokes this (via [[TakenForGranite entering crystal-stasis]]) to "become an eternal epitaph" to [[spoiler: Serah]]'s memory. [[Videogame/LightningReturnsFinalFantasyXIII The next game]] is about what happens [[AfterTheEnd when she wakes up]].
* An NPC in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'' sleeps through the attack and arson of his village by monsters despite one battle happening a few feet away from his bed.
* In ''VideoGame/DeadRising3'', Theodore "Teddy" Lagerfeld Jr. is an extremely lazy BasementDweller who's been holed up playing video games for so long that he didn't even notice there was a ZombieApocalypse going on until Nick Ramos shows up asking for help. Unfortunately, Teddy is so lazy that he refuses to help, and tries to kill Nick with remote controlled helicopters when he persists.
* In ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace'', a small number of the eponymous Endless PreCursors managed to slip through the civil war ("Dust Wars") that destroyed their civilization and [[RacialRemnant almost all of their species]]. Skuoi Kyryi fought in the Dust Wars, slowly becoming [[{{Cyborg}} more augmented]] due to assassination attempts until he got sick of it and froze himself in a ship adrift in deep space, where he slept 'til he was recovered millennia later by a race of new upstarts. Kyuind Neuil, a [[BrainUploading Virtual Endless]], managed an orbital factory in an isolated area, and tended his factory til he was discovered by an [[RobotRepublic Automaton]] expedition. Eiyno Wraeil, a [[TransHuman Concrete Endless]] was testing out a new hibernation pod right as the war broke out, destroying the robots that were set to awaken him after fifteen minutes, leading him to sleep for several thousand years.

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild''. Link slept for a hundred years while Ganon essentially destroyed his world, but flashbacks reveal he was at ground zero from the get-go, fighting with all his strength to protect Zelda and the kingdom. He was only put to cryogenic sleep to recover when his injuries became lethal, which happened ''after'' everything went to hell.
* ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'' has this as ''a learnable skill'', Null Sleep. It makes the user undamageable if they are [[StatusEffects asleep]]. It's pretty much the only known way to survive the [[{{Superboss}} Demi-Fiend]]'s notorious Gaea Rage head-on, which does [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill many times more HP in damage than any of your characters can ever have]].
* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'':
** Kirby in ''VideoGame/KirbyPlanetRobobot'' somehow manages to sleep through Planet Popstar being invaded and subsequently mechanised [[UnwillingRoboticisation (not to mention many of its inhabitants also being mechanised)]] by the Haltmann Works Company.
** Happens to Kirby again, although with an event with less stakes, in ''VideoGame/KirbyStarAllies''. This time, he sleeps through the Jamba Heart pieces raining down all over Popstar and turning several people, such as Whispy Woods, King Dedede and Meta Knight, evil.
* In ''VideoGame/IratusLordOfTheDead'', the titular {{Necromancer}} is worried that he'll end up having to do this due to being [[SealedEvilInACan sealed deep underground and being immortal]]. He is overjoyed [[DugTooDeep when a group of unsuspecting miners accidentally releases him]] before the inevitable end of the world.

* The [[PlayerCharacter Unplanned Variable]] in ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds'' was a colonist bound for the Halcyon system aboard the colony ship ''Hope'', one of thousands in suspended animation for the ten year journey. Nine years in, and the Hope's Skip Drive failed, adding an additional twenty-six years before the arrival in Halcyon, with only a year's worth of supplies for the crew members who were kept awake to man the ship. The crew began thawing and eating the colonists, leading to a mutiny that left the ship lifelessly drifting towards Halcyon. The Halcyon Holdings Board discovered the ''Hope'' twenty five years later, at which point there was no way to safely revive any of the colonists. Dr. Phineas Welles went against the Board and attempted thawing out colonists, leading to an unspecified number of deaths before he finally manages to revive you, starting the game.
* ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'': At the start of Route C, the entirety of [=YoRHa=] [[spoiler:is infected by the machines and brought down from the inside; the Bunker gets blown up, and all of the androids connected to the server get controlled by the machines.]] Aside from the playable characters[[labelnote:*]]9S disconnected himself and 2B after discovering some suspicious activity and never reconnecting, and A2 defected from [=YoRHa=] a long time ago[[/labelnote]], the only surviving [=YoRHa=] androids are a Scanner in the forest, who was literally asleep and deactivated, and a pair of [[FantasticDrug E-Drug]] junkies in the desert.
* In ''VideoGame/GodOfWarRagnarok'', a [[PlayableEpilogue post-game]] sidequest reveals that [[spoiler:the real Tyr, not the one that was actually just Odin impersonating Tyr, is still alive and locked up in a prison in Niflheim. By the time Kratos frees him, Ragnarok has already happened and he's somewhat dismayed that he couldn't be there to help.]]

* In the ''[[WebAnimation/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers SMG4's Mario Bloopers]]'' episode "The Weegee Uprising", [[Franchise/{{Mario}} Luigi]], Boopkins, and Shroomy spend 500 years trapped in the freezer while Weegee dolls took over the world.
* ''WebOriginal/{{Sandsverse}}'': Horace took a nap during most of Lent. At one point he woke up, saw what was happening, and went back to sleep.

* In the second Monster Hunter World arc in ''Roleplay/WeAreOurAvatars'', everyone spent the last 7 days high on Samus's super marijuana after their camp caught on fire and they woke up to the apocalypse.
* Antoine Daniel's reason for his lack of new videos in three months is explained in episode #35 of ''WebVideo/WhatTheCut''. Shortly after he posted episode #34, SpacePirates invaded every town and city on Earth, causing mass migrations and riots. Earth nations united against the pirates and reached a stalemate, until a second alien invader showed up, camels from Pluto. Earth and the pirates were forced to [[EnemyMine unite against the camels]]. In the end, the conflict was settled with a game of RockPaperScissors. And during all this time, Antoine was getting drunk in a pub, unaware of anything, and thinking only three days had passed.
* According to the ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'' [[AllThereInTheManual Ultimate Fan Guide]], Grif was sent to the Red Team for doing this; basically, he fell asleep on duty at a base that was shortly overrun by aliens, and only survived because friend and foe alike thought he was KIA.

* ''Literature/HardaHorda'' antology contains two examples:

** ''Fiery Tail'' has a fraction of humanity packed into [[TheArk Space Arks]] to survive [[ColonyDrop a swarm of asteroids hitting Earth]], with almost all of the survivors put into a stasis to make it more manageable in the limited space of their ships. And then spend unspeficified time in cryosleep, waiting for the Earth's ecosystem to recover and become habitable once more.

* ''Literature/HardaHorda'' antology contains ''Anywhere But the Head'', where the main character is an overmedicated hikikomori who realises she missed an outbreak of a ZombieApocalypse somewhere between her next dose of anti-depressants, sleeping pills and neuroleptics. The story is a BlackComedy, and openly toys with the concept that it might as well be all ThroughTheEyesOfMadness - [[spoiler: it isn't, but it's still a CosyCatastrophe, as beyond the outbreak, she also slept through the evacuation]].

* ''Literature/{{Evolution}}'': One of the stories deals with a group of soldiers who were in suspended animation waking up hundreds of thousands of years after the human civilization collapsed, they encounter the precursors of raptor-like rodents and a group of feral humans.
* ''Literature/TheLangoliers'': A minor character falls asleep before the airplane flies through a NegativeSpaceWedgie, and he doesn't wake up until the entire adventure is over and the airplane is flying home.
** As a possible subtle meta-joke, the way the heavy sleeper is described could fit author Stephen King himself.
** And only characters who are asleep when passing through said Wedgie remain on the plane; anyone awake goes Somewhere Else, leaving behind any inorganic matter they had on (or ''in'') them.
%%* ''ComicStrip/BuckRogers'' (the original).

* In one of the vignettes in ''Literature/{{Evolution}}'' by Creator/StephenBaxter, a hibernating "dragon's teeth" team (intended to set up resistance cells years or decades after an invading force conquers the land) never gets relieved; the survivors wake up millennia AfterTheEnd and find nothing left of civilization but feral humans, heavily eroded roads and some odd-looking, grass-covered hills.
* In the second ''Literature/RedDwarf'' novel, Lister ends up stranded on an ice planet that has just been moved closer to the sun, so the glaciers are all melting. He concludes that there is nothing he can do to significantly increase his chances of survival, goes back inside, and becomes the first human to sleep through the end of an ice age.
* Creator/VernorVinge's ''Literature/MaroonedInRealtime'': After a time-halting technology called the "bobble" is invented, a number of people enter long-term [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]], some by choice, some not so much. But those who get bobbled near the beginning of the 23rd century, and emerge near its end, find that ''something'' seems to have happened in-between... and there's no-one left around to answer any questions.
* The titular character in ''The Vampire Tapestry'' hibernates periodically, and mentions the fear that next time he'll awaken to discover that humanity has either destroyed itself (this trope), or rendered itself inedible through cybernetics and/or genetic engineering (which would qualify as this trope ''for him'').
* Happens to an alien in Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/WorldOfPtavvs'', when it's released from temporal stasis to discover its species has been extinct for half a billion years or so.

* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' has ''The Familiar'', where Jake goes to sleep one night and then wakes up ten years later, in a world where the Yeerks control the planet and everyone is a controller.

* In Victor Hugo's classic ''Literature/LesMiserables'', TheAlcoholic Grantaire gets so wasted he sleeps through the entire June Uprising. [[spoiler: He wakes up in time to be executed alongside Enjolras.]]

* Most of the people we meet in the novel ''Literature/MindGames'' were asleep at System Start, which happened at 7 AM on a Saturday. That means they didn't see the original System announcements and have no idea what's going on.

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead2010'' has Rick Grimes waking up in a hospital after the ZombieApocalypse has begun. Later, the prison inmates his group came across at the beginning of Season Three are the ones who really got the short end of the stick. They've been trapped in the prison cafeteria for ten months since the beginning of the apocalypse and they don't have a single clue what's happened on the outside world. (Well, aside from the violent riot that started after someone in the prison died and ended up killing everyone but those five.) One starts begging for a cell phone to call his family, with ''no'' clue that modern communications no longer function.

* German tragicomedy ''Film/GoodbyeLenin'' involves the story of Alex, a disillusioned young East German who attends a democratic rally. His mother Christine, a staunch party member and decorated school teacher, suffers a stroke as she sees Stasi officers beat and arrest him. She suffers an 8-month coma during which the USSR withdraws from East Germany and eventually both countries reunite. Alex must maintain the illusion that her beloved communist world still exists, as should she realize her world has ended, (replaced with corporate advertisements, destruction of Marxist monuments, her life savings made obsolete, and a horde of West German "Refugees" bringing the sins of the decadent west) she could not survive the shock.
* The main character of ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'' is a volunteer for a [[HumanPopsicle cryogenics program]] who ends up being stuck in [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] for 500 years, at which point he wakes up to find that civilization has turned into a real dump due to humanity breeding itself into a species of utter morons.

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead2010'' has Rick Grimes waking up in a hospital after the ZombieApocalypse has begun. Later, the prisoners his group came across at the beginning of Season Three are the ones who really got the short end of the stick. They've been trapped in the prison cafeteria for ten months since the beginning of the apocalypse and they don't have a single clue what's happened on the outside world.

* ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'': At the start of Route C, the entirety of [=YoRHa=] [[spoiler:is infected by the machines and brought down from the inside; the Bunker gets blown up, and all of the androids connected to the server get controlled by the machines.]] Aside from the playable characters, the only surviving [=YoRHa=] androids are a Scanner in the forest, who was literally asleep and deactivated, and a pair of [[FantasticDrug E-Drug]] junkies in the desert.

* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'': In the ''LightNovel/JorgeJoestar'' novel, [[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable Rohan Kishibe]] explains that during the climax of ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean Stone Ocean]]'' when [[spoiler:Pucci was accelerating the universe with Made In Heaven]], he was so utterly absorbed in his work, the [[spoiler:recreation of the universe]] didn't affect him and he carried over unchanged without noticing.

* ''Series/{{Apocalypse}}'', a Creator/DerrenBrown special, involves setting up a young man who refuses to take responsibility for his life to believe that a meteor strike is imminent and then wake up in a hospital with a fake news report notifying people about a meteor-carried RagePlague. Basically, the guy is supposed to have slept through a ZombieApocalypse and must now take responsibility not only for himself but a young girl and a selfish asshole (meant to evoke disgust at himself) after the ReasonableAuthorityFigure is deliberately made to go away. Like all of Derren's specials on this scale (although this is probably the largest), everything is constantly monitored to prevent any harm from coming to the subject (physical or mental). The goal, as usual, is not only to show off Derren's skills and knowledge of psychology but also help the subject to be a better person.

* The title character of the short-lived ''Series/{{Cleopatra 2525}}'', where the title character is a stripper who wakes up in the year 2525 to discover that machines known as the "Baily" have taken over the surface. Surface humans live in villages with an early medieval level of technology and worship the Bailies. The free humans and mutants live in miles-deep shafts in the earth and must contend with general lawlessness, slave trading, crime lords, the risk of falling, and Franchise/{{Terminator}}-like infiltration robots called Betrayers.
* Used in the ''Series/{{Community}}'' episode "Modern Warfare", in which Jeff takes a one-hour nap in his car and wakes up to find the entire campus abandoned and in ruins due to [[SeriousBusiness a massive paintball tournament.]] Probably a direct parody of ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater''.