Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour

Quoth Mom: "Good work, Socrates."

"If anyone loudly blesses their neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse."

— Proverbs 27:14, The Bible

Nobody likes to be woken up in the middle of the night. Most people need to get some sleep because they have work or school in the morning, both of which tend to start early, meaning you have to wake up even earlier to make sure you have the time to brush your teeth, get showered, get dressed, and hopefully eat breakfast. Art Imitates Life, so this carries over into all kinds of media from video games to movies to TV shows. At one point or another, you've probably seen a character get woken up in the late night, and the victim often says something irate to whoever woke them up or otherwise gets rather pissed off.

Sometimes, there will be an establishing shot of a clock showing that it is indeed the middle of the night. Odds are that someone will complain about it being a certain time, most often 4:00 AM (even if they never looked at a clock) or just "the middle of the night", or that they need their "beauty sleep".

And you're equally likely to run into the subversion scenario where someone only thinks it's an unreasonable hour, only for the person waking them up point out that it's far later than they think (in most extreme cases, it's a Rip Van Winkle or Asleep for Days situation but usually they just slept in; may be double-subverted via a Faked Rip Van Winkle).

If you've ever gotten a late-night call from someone, you probably assumed the worst because nothing good usually happens at the ungodly hours. It makes it that much more annoying when it's revealed that the reason was incredibly trivial. Or, if the situation is serious, characters may think back to the moment and the one woken up will likely comment on how annoyed they initially were. You have probably done that yourself if you have received that kind of call that early in the morning.

The subversion of this trope may be the person is just Not a Morning Person and acts like they're being woken up too early when it's revealed to be a perfectly reasonable hour. Sometimes just being woken up can be a Berserk Button to a character. Bonus points if this leads to the woken party protesting I Was Having Such a Nice Dream.

Often done by a small child to their parents or older sibling, whether because they had a nightmare, they want to be taken to the bathroom, or 'just because'. Could also be done by an animal, most often a cat singing on the fence.

Compare Interrupted Bath, Wake Up Fighting, Loud Sleeper Gag, Insomnia Episode, and Don't Wake the Sleeper, when somebody is being stealthy, and trying to avoid this trope. Might lead to a Big "SHUT UP!", You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!, or Sleep Deprivation. If the character is a Sleepyhead or Really Fond of Sleeping, it might go beyond normal annoyance and become a specific Berserk Button.

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Examples

Advertising

• An old Snickers commercial has a guy get a telemarketer call at 6 am (which the telemarketer argues with the claim of it being later where he is). The guy heads all the way to where the telemarketer is to destroy his phone.

Anime & Manga

• Digimon Adventure: In "Evil Shows His Face", the guys are spending the night in a mansion. Agumon wakes Tai up shortly after he's fallen asleep to take him to the men's room. Tai's a bit grumpy, especially since Agumon's taking a long time in there.
• Doraemon
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur has Nobita, currently having a fever, being awakened by the titular pet dinosaur, Piisuke, when it wandered out from a lake in the park during a rainy night, all the way to Nobita's bedroom, interrupting Nobita's sleep by tapping on the windows. Cue Nobita jolting awake and having a massive Oh, Crap! at his dinosaur wandering around in the open.
  • Doraemon: The Record of Nobita : Spaceblazer: How Nobita and Doraemon first met their friends of Planet Koya Koya, Ropporu, and Chammy. Early in the story, Chammy attempts to force open their spaceship's exit hatch, oblivious to the fact that the exit of their ship had connected to the floorboards of Nobita's bedroom because of a failed hyperspace jump. She finally managed to barge her way through, flipping over Nobita's futon in the dead of the night, causing a panicked Nobita to wake up (an equally sleepy) Doraemon for help.
  • Doraemon: Nobita and the Haunts of Evil: After the gang's first unsuccessful expedition to the land of Bauwan, Gian decides to call it quits, only to be awakened in the middle of the following night by the hologram of Bauwanko materializing in his bedroom, who then instructs him to continue the mission while dropping a map to Bauwan. Gian actively wonders if he dreamt the whole thing, but the next morning he found the map on his blanket.
  • Doraemon: Nobita and the Castle of the Undersea Devil had Shizuka getting awakened from the middle of her sleep by Buggy, who had an important secret that it's willing to share only with her, because of getting into a quarrel with Nobita and the boys.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld: Miyoko, while stuck in the form of a house cat as a result of a Forced Transformation, managed to convince Nobita and Doraemon to keep her as a temporary pet. She then awakens Nobita in the dead of the night, trying to get him to open the bedroom windows to let in some moonlight, for the effects of the spell affecting her can be dispersed by the moon — cue cat!Miyoko turns back into a human, to Nobita and Doraemon's surprise.
  • Doraemon: Nobita and the Knights on Dinosaurs has Nobita and Doraemon purposely waking up Shizuka and Gian, dragging them into the open field using Doraemon's Dream Chime gadget — because they have emergency news that their friend Suneo's gone missing and is still stuck underground.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Dorabian Nights: The Establishing Character Moment of the ditzy Robot Buddy genie, Miku-jin, have him arriving in Nobita's bedroom in the dead of night via Time Machine, waking up Nobita from sleep by pulling his nose and then giving a briefing of the tour to Arabia... before suddenly realizing he actually a day too early and Doraemon had not called for him yet, at which point an embarrassed Miku-jin quickly bails leading to Nobita wondering what just happened.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's the Legend of the Sun King: Early in the story, Gian decides to "borrow" Doraemon's Hologram Stage Costume gadget for himself, with Nobita and Doraemon trying to retrieve it with another gadget, the Time Hole and Time Stick. Their attempts to grab the Hologram Stage Costume from Gian's bedroom in the middle of the night didn't work as intended, with Nobita accidentally snatching Gian's hair with the Time Stick instead and waking him up from his sleep. The subsequent struggle accidentally creates a time warp leading from Tokyo to the distant, Mayan-inspired fantasy kingdom of Mayana, kickstarting the adventure.
  • Doraemon: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey has Nobita's new pet, the stray dog Hachi, who wakes up Nobita in the middle of his first night at Nobita's place because he heard a stray cat stuck on an adjacent house's rooftop, begging his master to save the stray.
  • Stand by Me Doraemon, a reboot of the series, changes Doraemon and Nobita's first meeting slightly, in which Doraemon's first arrival in present-day Japan occurs in the dead of the night (rather than in the afternoon like the original), coming out of Nobita's desk while Nobita is asleep. Cue Nobita woken up, rubbing his eyes, and seeing a robot cat coming out of his drawer.
• Girls und Panzer: Mako does not take the news that she'll have to show up at tankery practise at 6:00am well. And when she's told that in order to make it there by six, she'll have to get up at five in the morning, she tries to quit the team. It takes a (blank) shot from Anglerfish team's 75mm cannon to actually wake her up so she can make it to practise.

Audio Plays

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who story "Arrangements For War," Paramount Minister Mortund is incredibly annoyed at being contacted by Plenipotentiary Suskind in the middle of the night in order to have a discussion of politics — doubly so since Mortund is in hospital, recovering from a bullet wound, and in a lot of pain. After answering Suskin's questions and proving that the Doctor was right to encourage the Kingdom Alliance after all, Mortund hangs up very testily... whereupon Suskin privately acknowledges that it's just as well his assassination attempt on Mortund failed.

Comic Books

• Asterix: In Asterix and Son, a legionary disguised as a nanny tries to kidnap the baby at night. When the baby starts crying, the legionary tries to sing him to sleep so that the villagers won't wake up... only, they wake up from his singing and yell insults like "Call that singing?!"
• In the Donald Duck story "The Last of the Blackducks", Donald's Mean Boss is woken up in the early morning by his brother, who tells him that Donald hadn't come to work. The boss grumbles about his brother disturbing him at such an early hour (highlighting his unsympathetic and selfish nature, seeing as he expects Donald to be at work at that time.)
• The Loud House: In "Who Ghost There?", Lincoln and Clyde think that the former's house is haunted and start searching around for ghosts in the middle of the night. At one point, Lincoln's sisters all shout, "Go to bed!" in unison.
• New Mutants: When Warlock crashes into the X-Mansion, Sam has no way but fetching his friend Douglas Ramsay, because he was the only one able to communicate with an alien, thanks to his ability of learning languages. Doug reluctantly helps, but doesn't hide his discontent for having been woken up in the late of night:
  Sam: You're upset.
  Doug: How would you feel if a supposed pal yanks you out of a sound sleep, informs you he's a mutant — and YOU'RE a mutant — and flies you to his place to establish a meaningful dialogue with a potentially hostile alien?! Sheesh!!
• Tytus Romek IA Tomek: In the twenty-fourth book, Tytus is woken up at 3:00 in the night to take part in NATO training, which makes him point out how you'd need to be insane to exercise so early. When Romek informs him that Hitler invaded Poland at 4:00 in the morning, he retorts that the dictator was not mentally sound either.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • In one strip, Calvin asks "Geez, I gotta have a reason for everything?" when his tired parents enter his room because he's playing drums and honking a squeeze horn in the middle of the night.
  • In this strip, Calvin's mother complains about being woken up at two in the morning because Calvin said he was feeling sick.
  • This strip has Calvin dancing to classical music at 78 RPM in the middle of the night.
  • In one strip, Calvin wakes up his mother early in the morning to inform her that Hobbes had a nightmare about eating the whole family. She is not pleased.
    Calvin's Mother: You woke me up at 2 AM because you think your stuffed tiger had a bad dream?!?
  • One strip has Calvin ransacking his room in the middle of the night to expose all the monsters that could be hiding in the drawers and cabinets. His dad is not amused by why he's up and making such a mess.
    Calvin's Dad: YOU'RE TRASHING YOUR ROOM AT 1:00 IN THE MORNING, LOOKING FOR MONSTERS?! IF YOU DON'T GET IN BED THIS INSTANT, YOU'LL HAVE A LOT MORE TO WORRY ABOUT THAN STUPID MONSTERS!!
  • Two Running Gags are that Calvin wakes up ridiculously early on weekends to watch Saturday Morning Cartoons (sometimes so early that they haven't even started running yet) and on Christmas to open up his presents, much to the annoyance of his parents.
    Calvin: That's long enough! Wake up! Wake up! It's Christmas!
    Calvin's Dad: Quarter to 6. He let us sleep in this year.
  • 15 June 1986: Calvin wakes up his parents at five in the morning to give him a Father's Day card, on the grounds that Dad taught him "early to bed, early to rise".
    Mom: Good work, Socrates.

Fan Works

• In Bastard (Harry Potter), Gil is woken up by Lockhart's agent at eight in the morning to prepare for an interview and is very grumpy about it (especially considering he has to hurriedly tell his girlfriend to leave). At Hogwarts, he is also annoyed that thanks to the breakfast being at eight, he has to wake up at six to have enough time for his exercise routine.
• In the Catarina Claes MUST DIE! omake A Parent's Worst Nightmare, when the news of Catarina's Assassination Attempt arrives at the Claes mansion, Duke and Madame Claes have already gone to bed. While Duke Claes is relatively calm at being waken up at this hour, this is not the case for Madame Claes.
  She groaned as she woke up, and looked at her husband. "Wha?..what's going on?"
  "It's about Catarina!" replied Luigi.
  She continued to wake up and then asked, "What did our daughter do now that required you to be woken up and you to wake me up?"
• Inverted in Create Your Own Fate. Lieutenant Commander Jackson apologizes to Eleya for getting her up, only for Eleya to say she was already up: Jackson is in Hathon Province where it's the middle of the night, but Eleya's apartment in Kendra Province is in the opposite hemisphere. Also it didn't hurt that she'd already been woken up by air raid sirens from a Fek'Ihri ship entering orbit (before being quickly blown away by the planetary defenses).
• A Darker Path: Damsel of Distress deliberately goes to Brockton Bay in the early hours of the morning so that her minders, Edict and Licit, will take a while to notice her absence. However, Atropos is aware of what she's doing and calls Licit to come collect her. Both heroes are unhappy about the wake-up, but they come rather than let Damsel get herself killed.
  Edict is going to absolutely kill me.
  Edict: So help me, if this isn't an earth-shattering emergency, I'm going to—
• In The Devices and Machinations of Lisa Loud, Lisa wakes up in the night and then tries to get a hair sample from her sister Leni. She ends up waking all her other siblings, and they complain, one of whom jokes, "I say that's the 'Lisa' her problems!".
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "Resignation", someone is woken up early to receive important world news:
  King Albrecht woke with a start, roused by the loud bangs against his bedroom door. The monarch rubbed his eyes as he sat up. Through the window, he could see the moon hang low over the horizon. Sunrise seemed to be still a few hours away, and he groaned. Still, his subjects wouldn't wake him if it wasn't urgent.
• Grow Young With Me: Ron calls Harry at 3am for help when Hermione is out at a conference. (Ron managed to microwave a chicken leg in foil and became quite alarmed at the sparks and smoke.) He tried Floo-calling first, but couldn't get an answer (as Harry was asleep), and didn't want to risk leaving the house while the microwave was sparking, so he finally managed to call Harry's phone.
• In a Frozen II fan comic, Elsa sings "Into the Unknown" out the window. An unseen neighbor then yells at her to shut up because it's three in the morning.
• In this JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind comic, Narancia kicks down Giorno's bedroom door in the middle of the night. Giorno is alarmed, asking if they're being attacked by an enemy Stand, but it turns out Narancia just wants to know if it's possible for him to use Gold Experience to give functional cat ears to a human. Giorno's only reaction is Stunned Silence.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles: In Chapter 15, Naruto is awakened at 3 a.m. by someone knocking at his door. While yawning and making his way to the door, he warns whoever is knocking to prepare to have their ass kicked. However, he is shocked to see Hinata in tears and carrying a backpack, asking if she can come in. He agrees without asking any question. It's only when Neji shows up the next day that Hinata explains to Naruto that she had an argument with her father when he forced her to break up with the Uzumaki, resulting in her leaving the Hyuga Clan compound and going to her boyfriend's apartment.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: In Season 2 Episode 13, Nyx comes to Gaz for help after everyone else is trapped by the Nightmare Weaver. Since it's 2 in the morning, Gaz is not happy with her at first.
• The Peace Not Promised: As the Slytherin head of house, Severus is on-call all through the night, with a signal device that loudly honks to wake him up if he's needed at the castle. Lily doesn't enjoy it much, but she's proud of him and the work he's doing.
• Peeking Through the Fourth Wall: Discussed in Episode 2. Luna, while reading a story in which she calls her roadie Chunk and asks for pizza at three in the morning, notes that if she tried doing that for real, he'd probably hang up on her.
• Price of Blood: Director Piggot is not at all happy to be woken by a work related call when she's at home. But she can tell from the ringtone being used, and the fact that someone had the audacity to use it, that it really is important.
  Still, she had a whole store of acerbic phrases ready to be used on the first of her subordinates who used the emergency line for a non-urgent situation. It hadn't happened yet, but she lived in hope.
• In A Probationary Sentence, Alice wakes up at four in the morning and wants to wrap herself in a blanket and try to fall asleep again, with the narration musing that it's the worst time to wake up, especially with the early December wind howling outside. However, Alice's sleepiness lasts for about two seconds until she realizes she was woken up by an urgent message.
• Recoil: To make sure her warning of Behemoth's attack will be taken seriously, Taylor fakes having worked herself to the bone for a week straight crunching the numbers, then calls her superior officer, Major Hamilton, around 2am on the day of the attack, to report what she's supposedly just worked out. Neither he nor Chief Director Costa-Brown are pleased about being woken up, but they do listen, and her supposedly having worked all night helps to sell it.
  Hamilton: Why are you awake at this misbegotten hour, anyway?
• Total Eclipse of the Bark: In "It's Nao or Never", Miyuki wakes up the girls by banging a frying pan with a spoon right after the sun has just barely begun to rise. The others are rather annoyed by this, and a grumpy squirrel even throws an acorn at Miyuki (she admits she deserved that).
• Us and Them: Shortly after Aeris and Sephiroth find out they're expecting their first child, Aeris suddenly wakes him up in the middle of the night worrying about it. Sephiroth is not very sympathetic at that hour and she gets out of bed. He then finds her in the morning behind a cushion fort with a bag of cookies. It turns out pregnant Cetra are prone to sleepwalking so she was asleep the whole time. Seph just resigns himself to being woken up late at night.
• Viridian: The Green Guide: Katsuki has an "Eureka!" Moment when he realizes that they can use Shinsou's brainwashing quirk to undo the other brainwashing quirk on Ogawa. Problem is, he has this little reveal at one o'clock in the morning, so Shinsou doesn't take it too kindly when Katsuki starts banging on his door. Ironically, he's an insomniac so he'd be awake for several hours anyway — he's just annoyed on principle.
• Witches Wizards Shadows and Souls: Dumbledore goes to Yugi's house to drop his Info Dump on the Death Eaters after he saw him and his friends fend them off with their magic, but because of the timezone difference what was a reasonable hour for Dumbledore is around three or four in the morning in Japan. Yugi and all the people he has over for a sleepover are not happy at the visit; Yugi and the Pharaoh in particular wory about Grandpa Solomon being woken up after a stressful day.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: In a chapter of the "Cat Out of the Bag" intermission, Basil calls his father at 3:00 in the morning to tell him that Ratigan raped him. His father just gets irritated and tells Basil that he's old enough to know about stranger danger before hanging up and going back to sleep.

Films — Animated

• Atlantis: The Lost Empire: While the expedition camps one night, Milo gets up to relieve himself, unwittingly disturbing the firefly swarm which descends on the camp and starts lighting everything on fire. Milo starts trying to wake everyone up, at which point we see Rourke looking at his alarm clock and grumbling, "I'm gonna kill him." He then pokes his head out to tell Milo to go back to bed, at which point he sees the unfolding crisis.
• The Chipmunk Adventure: To fool Mrs. Miller into letting them go on a balloon race around the world, Alvin calls Dave, who is vacationing in France, to record his conversation and fake a phone call to Mrs. Miller telling her to let them go on vacation with him. Because of the time difference, Dave is woken up in the middle of the night and is angry at Alvin for it.
• Corpse Bride: Victoria goes to the church in the middle of the night, seeking the help of Pastor Galswells on how to deal with Emily. The Pastor is very grumpy about being bothered at such a late hour, but when Victoria mentions Emily being a living corpse, he suddenly turns serious and it looks like he's going to be a Reasonable Authority Figure... only for the scene to Smash Cut to him giving over Victoria back to her parents, telling them that's she's acting crazy.
• The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: Wallace and Gromit attempts to capture a pesky rabbit from stealing a pumpkin from a client in the night. They accidentally woke up two neighbors who are poking their heads out the window. The duo did manage to capture the rabbit, and the people they woke congratulate them.
• Frozen: When the younger Anna wakes her big sister Elsa up to play in the middle of the night, Elsa grumbles at her to go back to sleep. When Anna says she can't sleep, Elsa tells her to play by herself. She brightens up when Anna asks her if she wants to build a snowman, though.
• The Lion King:
  • The Lion King has Mufasa being mildly exasperated with his energetic son Simba waking him up early in the morning.
    Sarabi: Your son is awake.
    Mufasa: Before sunrise, he's your son.
  • The Lion King 1 ½: During the "parenthood" montage, Simba repeatedly wakes Timon up at night to take him to pee or get a drink of water. Timon eventually reaches his Rage Breaking Point when Simba awakens him once again, only to soften up when Simba reveals he had a nightmare.
• Zigzagged in The Rescuers: When Bernard and Bianca are sneaking through the zoo at night, Bernard complains about the "grumpy old lion" who roared at him. Bianca says, "Waking him up in the middle of the night — wouldn't you be grumpy too?". However, Bernard claims he didn't wake him up; the lion just woke up of his own accord.
• In Shrek the Third, Shrek and Fiona are visiting her parents when they're woken up in the middle of the night by a palace servant. A very aggravated and tired Shrek growls, "Well, somebody had better be dying!" Unfortunately, the next scene reminds him to Be Careful What You Wish For, because that's exactly why they've been summoned.

Films — Live-Action

• Aliens: One of Ripley's earlier scenes after her rescue from the Nostromo have her waking up from a Catapult Nightmare because of the previous film's events. Realizing she'll need to face her past eventually, she then calls her liaison, Burke, waking him right in the middle of the night (leading to the conversation that forms the quote at the top of the main page).
• Amélie sets the grocer Collignon's alarm clock for four in the morning, as revenge for him being cruel to his employee Lucien. Collignon gets up, gets dressed, but does not notice that something is wrong until he starts opening his shop, and realises that the street around him is deserted, except by a few rats.
• Annie: When Miss Hannigan, who runs the Orphanage of Fear, hears some of the girls singing in the middle of the night, she makes them clean the place as punishment. She also wakes up the girls who hadn't been singing, one of whom complains, "But it's in the middle of the night!". Miss Hannigan mocks her by mimicking the line in a high voice.
• Charade: There is a Running Gag of people being killed in their pajamas throughout. One of the victims receives a call for him to meet someone, which sparks the protest, "It's three-thoirty in the morning!" He gets up anyway, but is lured to his death.
• Child's Play 2: In the middle of the night, Andy attempts to kill Chucky who was locked up in the basement. He unintentionally woke up his foster parents thinking he's up to no good. Andy's foster dad tries to talk to him, only to get killed by Chucky.
• The Day After Tomorrow: A serious case. Terry Rapson calls Jack Hall while he's fast asleep, but it's not night for him because of time zone differences, and Terry apologizes for the inconvenient timing. The scene loses any humor because the call is about the shift in temperature in the North Atlantic meaning the North Atlantic Current has stalled, meaning disaster is on the way.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: When Rodrick Heffley pranks his younger brother Greg by pretending the latter had slept all week and it was now time for school, when it was actually around four in the morning, Greg ends up waking his parents and other brother Manny, who grumble at him to go to bed.
• The very first scene of Eskimo Day is Bevis being woken at a very early unspecified hour by Shani's alarm clock, before the highly momentous day of taking their son to his university interview. Bevis muses on the words "godforsaken" and "unholy".
  Bevis: What did you set it for this godforsaken time for?
  Shani: There might be traffic. And what if the car doesn't start?
  Bevis: Wait a moment, you don't say "godforsaken" to do with time. You say "unholy".
• Late in The Last King of Scotland, Nicholas Garrigan finds that his passport has been stolen and replaced with a Ugandan one, leaving him effectively trapped in Idi Amin's employ. In desperation, he seeks out the help of Stone, the local representative of the British Foreign Office, even visiting him at his home in the dead of night; Stone is clearly annoyed at being woken up but allows Garrigan inside anyway. Unfortunately, Stone isn't interested in helping his visitor out of the country, as Garrigan has been serving as an unwitting enabler of Idi Amin's human rights abuses, and the lateness of the hour means that Stone isn't in the mood to be his usual ingratiating self: once he's finished with his long-overdue "The Reason You Suck" Speech, he makes it clear that the only way he'll help Garrigan out of the country is if he uses his role as Court Physician to assassinate Amin.
• Pulp Fiction: Lance and his girlfriend Jody are both annoyed that someone would be calling his house at 1:30 in the morning. Lance assumes it's a clueless and impatient customer, and he announces that he's going to chastise whoever it is for calling too late. However, given that Lance is a drug dealer with no real day job, it's no real surprise that he's still wide awake, eating cereal, and watching television at this hour.
• Tootsie: Michael Dorsey cannot find acting work. His agent tells him bluntly that nobody will hire him. He auditions as a woman named Dorothy Michaels and gets hired for a soap opera. But when the producers decide to extend "Dorothy"'s contract for another year, Michael calls up his agent at an indecent hour to find a way to get out of the contract.
• Shaun of the Dead: After Shaun gets dumped, he and Ed try and take his mind off it by partying late into the night. Halfway through jamming to a record, their flatmate Pete angrily storms down the stairs and yells at them about the noise.

Jokes

• People can be divided into three categories:
  owls, who go to bed late and wake up late.
  nightingales, who go to bed early and wake up early.
  woodpeckers, who make nightingales go to bed late and owls wake up early.
• Two very drunken men (John and Jim) crawl home to Jim's apartment. John notices a discolored stain on the bedroom wall.
  "Jim, wha— whazzat onna wall?"
  "S'my alarm clock."
  "Huh? S'not an alarm clock, issa... issa spot onna wall."
  "Juswatch."
  Jim grabs a boot and hurls it at the spot on the wall. Five seconds later, they hear the neighbor:
  "GAH! GODDAMMIT YOU ASSHOLE IT'S THREE IN THE MORNING!"

Literature

• Sue Townsend is fond of this trope in the Adrian Mole books.
  • Growing Pains:
    • Adrian has toothache in the early hours of the morning, and his pain-racked sobs wake his parents, who crash into the room demanding quiet, showing no sympathy.
    • While making his final preparations to run away from home in the early hours of the morning, he gets into a rage and kicks his suitcase across his bedroom floor, waking his parents, who shout from the bedroom.
  • In True Confessions, Adrian tries to sleep at his girlfriend Sharon Bott's house, but the Bott family spend most of the night quarrelling and watching violent videos, before finally going to bed at 4am. At 6am, Adrian is woken by Mr Bott switching on breakfast television.
  • Wilderness Years:
    • Adrian writes Pandora a pompous note, asking her not to disturb him with wild lovemaking. In the early hours of the morning, she bursts into his room, and screams abuse at him. Later in the book, he puts another note through her door: in her reply, she tells him that he woke her at 4am with his clumsy manipulation of her letter box.
    • Adrian's mother calls him at 1am, to tell him that Martin Muffett (whom Adrian dislikes) has been found after going missing for a day, having been trapped in an underground train for several hours.
    • Adrian returns to his parental home, to find that his family have become chaotic, with a noisy nocturnal lifestyle, and that sleeping there is impossible.
  • In Cappuccino Years:
    • Adrian's sister Rosie is pregnant, and has a Creepy Doll electronic baby to prepare her for motherhood, which cries several times a night, and has to be fed with an electronic bottle. When Rosie throws the doll out of the window in the middle of the night, an ear-splitting alarm sounds, which wakes everyone in the house.
    • Adrian is woken by his mother typing at 5am. He confronts her, but she sends him back to bed, telling him she is writing her round-robin Christmas letter. She is actually writing his book, which he found extremely difficult to write himself.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio: When Pinocchio returns to Gepetto's house (after misbehaving the whole day and letting Gepetto get arrested for disturbing the peace), he realises that he's starving and there's nothing in the house to eat, and he has no idea how to cook. He goes over to another house and begins banging on the door, crying out for something to eat. The house owner finally yells down he'll give Pinocchio something, and while the puppet is congratulating himself for his tenacity the owner dumps a bucket of freezing water on him from above.
• All by Myself!: Leon the penguin frequently wakes up his parents in the middle of the night to take him to the bathroom, much to their dismay. By the morning, they're quite sleep-deprived. Eventually, Leon's mother has had enough of this and asks Leon to try using the bathroom on his own at night.
• The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump starts with the narrator woken up by a call from his boss, who blames time zones for that. It ends with him returning the favor.
• Classic Singapore Horror Stories: The short story, "Prahma the Horned God" have the protagonists, Professor Rashid and his wife Carmen, rudely awakened in the dead of night by a phone call, which Rashid answers while half-aware phone calls at this hour are rarely good news. Turns out the call comes from halfway across the globe from the States, where their son, Adam who works as a foreman in an American chemical plant, had died in an accident that destroyed the whole structure.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In the first book, Rodrick wakes Greg up to tell him that he slept through the summer. Greg makes a beeline downstairs to get breakfast and he eats so loudly that it wakes up Frank, who yells at him for waking him up at 4 AM. Later, Greg plays very loud music late at night. He realizes too late that he forgot to plug the headphones into the speakers, which awakens a pissed-off Frank. Frank, in a state of Tranquil Fury, proclaims that he wants to tell him something before referring to him as "friend". Greg notes that he only calls him that when he's especially furious.
• Dilly The Dinosaur:
  • In one story, Dilly watches a horror movie at night and screams, which wakes up his big sister Dorla, who grouses about it. She even describes the dream he'd woken her up from, about being an only child, as "lovely".
  • In "Dilly Breaks the Rules", Dilly annoys his parents by doing his trademark scream in the middle of the night, despite screaming being against the rules. He pretends it was because of a nightmare to convince the parents to amend it to "No screaming unless I'm frightened".
• Played straight and then averted in a Doc Savage story. It's 2 AM in New York, and Doc and his team need to place an urgent call to London to get some information. Renny laughs and says that someone in London is going to cuss plenty when they get woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night, then Ham points out that due to the five hour time difference between New York and London, it'll already be early morning there and they'll likely be up already.
• In Gerald Durrell's The Drunken Forest, an armadillo is brought to the Durrells' house in Paraguay early in the morning, and their interpreter Rafael complains he hasn't promised to act as interpreter at 5 a.m.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights: Played for Horror. In the story "1:35 AM", a woman finds an animatronic doll that doubles as an alarm, and sets it for 1:35 PM. However, this goes wrong, and it instead wakes her up at 1:35 AM every morning. Even after she gets rid of the doll, she continues to hear the alarm no matter where she goes, including when she attempts to stay awake. This slowly drives her mad.
• Geronimo Stilton: In "The Race Across America", Geronimo is trying to sleep on a plane, but Bruce keeps asking him if he's asleep yet. Geronimo snaps and yells at him for keeping him up, but he ends up waking almost everyone on the plane and they all grumble. Geronimo notes that they're as cranky as a mouse whose cheese has gone moldy.
• The Lord of the Rings novel The Fellowship of the Ring. On the day the four hobbits leave Frodo's new home in Crickhollow, Merry wakes up Frodo at 4:30 in the morning by banging on the door. When Frodo is awakened, he is "shaken and bewildered" and asks what's going on.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: While on the run from the Hogwarts acceptance letters, the Dursleys and Harry Potter were woken up by a knock at the hut door in the middle of the night. It was caused by Hagrid who was here to wish Harry a happy birthday and tell him that he's a wizard.
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Ron, Fred, and George Weasley rescue Harry from the Dursleys in the middle of the night. The boys unintentionally woke the muggle family up. Harry and the Weasleys manage to escape from them.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Harry received a visit from Professor Dumbledore in the middle of the night, waking the Dursleys in the process. He told them about Sirius Black's death, and remind that next year Harry will be come of age at 17. Professor Dumbledore even calls out the Dursleys for mistreating Harry after all these years.
• Invoked in Hogfather, when Susan complains that Death put noisy toys into the stockings of the children she's looking after. He responds that there has to be something in the stocking that makes a noise, "otherwise, what is 4:30 AM for?"
• The Kingkiller Chronicle: In The Name of the Wind, Kvothe finds a Secret Underground Passage to get into the Archives (which he got banned from) but he still needs help from a scribe to use it properly, which he has in his friend Fela. He's so excited at the prospect of using the Archives, that he goes to visit Fela in the female dorm (which men are banned from entering) in the middle of the night. Unsurprisingly, Fela is barely awake when she answers the door, and the situation is even more awkward than it would normally be since she Sleeps in the Nude and is too drowsy to properly cover herself with a Modesty Bedsheet, which gets Kvothe so distracted that he momentarily forgets what he came there to talk about. Then she also notices his clothes are dirty and torn up, reminding him that he didn't even bother to change his clothes that got damaged while exploring underground, and that's when he decides to just leave and talk to her properly the next morning.
• The Mc Atrix Derided (a parody of The Matrix trilogy by British comedy writer Adam Roberts) begins with its protagonist Gordon Everyman a.k.a "Nemo" (the John Anderson / Neo expy) repeatedly awakened by a series of spam phone calls in the dead of night, from a survey to a Viagra commercial to a wrong number (with the caller rudely snapping at Gordon, "Why did you answer if your number is wrong?) before a frustrated Gordon unplugs his phone. A later conversation reveals Gordon's been receiving the calls regularly for the past several nights.
• In Mortimer by Robert Munsch, Mortimer keeps singing in the middle of the night, waking up his parents and his seventeen siblings.
• Toms Midnight Garden: An elderly cantankerous neighbour complains that she is woken almost every night by Tom sneaking out to the garden. Near the end, when he comes in from the garden for the last time, he makes a dramatic cry, waking everyone in the house. He goes to apologise to the previously unseen house's owner, and it turns out she is the girl he has been meeting in the garden, now much older, because he has travelled back in time whenever he goes out.
• In The Turkish Gambit, Charles complains that he had to rise at four in the morning since he wasn't informed that the decisive battle wasn't to begin until three p. m., and he adds that waking up so early is like a death sentence to him. Considering he is really Anwar Effendi, the brilliant spy and chief of Turkish secret police, we never know how much of that is the truth.
• Warrior Cats: In Bluestar's Prophecy, when Bluepaw is sad and grouchy over her mother's death, she gets annoyed by things like Lionpaw waking her up in the middle of the night just to see how pretty the moon looks.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5:
  • In "Lines of Communication", Sheridan who has been watching President Clark's Propaganda Machine ISN all night and gotten fed up with the stories they've been spinning about them, suddenly gets an idea and goes to Ivanova's quarters. She is lying in bed and when the door chime goes off, she moans, "Leave me alone," before grudgingly dragging herself out of bed. After Sheridan drags her off to tell her about his idea too for their own broadcast, and manipulates her into accepting being the host, he tells her to get some sleep and they'll discuss it more in the morning. Annoyed, she mutters, "If he wasn't my commanding officer I swear I'd shoot him dead."
  • In "The Hour of the Wolf", Londo actually apologizes to Vir for video-calling him and waking him up out of a sound sleep. He forgot the time difference between Centauri Prime and Babylon 5.
  • "Voices of Authority" ends with G'Kar coming to Garibaldi's quarters late at night to give him the Book of G'Quan. When Garibaldi protests that he doesn't read Narn, G'Kar just tells him, "Learn." Garibaldi goes back to bed muttering, "He hates me. They all hate me. That's why they do this, to drive me crazy."
  • Garibaldi returns the favor in "Walkabout" when he comes to G'Kar's quarters at a similarly late hour to return the book to him, or rather shove it at him and give him a What the Hell, Hero? for not having the Narn cruiser at Babylon 5 out in the fight before storming out.
  • "Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi" has Londo being rousted from bed at a very early hour at the summons of Emperor Cartagia. Despite the risk, he keeps Cartagia waiting while he changes out of his night clothes into a proper outfit.
  • In season 4, Mr. Garibaldi finds himself in the employ of William Edgars, one of the richest men in the Earth Alliance, who has a tendency to call at odd hours in the morning. Garibaldi is quite irritated, but Mr. Edgars tells him he expects all his retainers to be on call 24/7.
  • "And All My Dreams Torn Asunder": After tensions between the Interstellar Alliance and Centauri Republic turn into a shooting war, Zack comes to wake Sheridan and Delenn and inform them of the latest turn of events. Downplayed in that, while it is implied to be vary early morning (alluding to the 3AM phone call so often mentioned with regards to national leaders), neither of them seemed to be able to sleep with the current situation.
• Bad Girls Club: An episode in season 2 featured Tanisha Thomas waking up the rest of the girls in the house by Banging Pots and Pans together before six in the morning, yelling for everyone to get up and ranting about the girls not allowing her to sleep and her repaying the favor. While that was partially the reason, Tanisha's outburst was also due to the large mess the other girls left that night. The girls ask what Tanisha's problem is, with one even threatening to call the police.
  Tanisha: I DIDN'T GET NO FUCKING SLEEP 'CAUSE OF Y'ALL! Y'ALL NOT GONNA SLEEP 'CAUSE OF ME!
• Big Brother:
  • Season 8 of the US show had Daddy-Daughter Duo Richard "Evel Dick" and Daniele Donato in the final 7. Evel Dick realizes that Daniele may be up for eviction and decides the best way to save her is to get the other houseguests to hate him even more than her. He does this by getting up in the middle of the night and waking them up by turning on their lights, banging on a pot lid, and insulting them. For their part, the others simply try to ignore him and decide to start getting ready, wishing each other a good morning. This works a little too well and Evel Dick ends up winning Season 8, with Daniele being the runner up.
  • Evel Dick is back in Season 9 to host one of the Power of Veto competitions. He wakes up the houseguests the same way he did the previous season, banging a couple of pots together before the sun is up. This time however, the houseguests are much more receptive to his antics, treating him as a celebrity.
• Bear in the Big Blue House: In "Call it a Day", Shadow's song features a dog howling at night. A cow wakes up and complains, "Quiet! I'm trying to get my beauty sleep!".
• The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon is prone to bother people in the middle of the night when something is obsessing him. Some examples:
  • In "The Pancake Batter Anomaly", being sick has made Sheldon extra annoying, so Leonard calls Howard at six o'clock on Sunday morning to warn him that Sheldon is at "Code Milky Green." The phone also wakes up Howard's mother, who bellows "WHO'S CALLING AT THIS UNGODLY HOUR?!" In the middle of Leonard's call, Howard gets another call from Sheldon, asking for soup. Howard pretends to be his mother and also gives him the "ungodly hour" line.
  • In "The Earworm Reverberation", Sheldon wakes up Leonard and Penny in the middle of the night by playing a song on the keyboard because it's stuck in his head and is driving him crazy. Penny goes to his room and breaks the keyboard. Unfortunately, Sheldon just switches to a tuba.
  • In "The Barbarian Sublimation", Sheldon gets a taste of his own medicine when an MMO-addicted Penny (who became a night owl so she could play the game more) barges into his room in the middle of the night to wake him up, just so she can ask him for tips. Given his Super OCD, he's not only frustrated about being woken up, but at having her in his room at all.
  • In "The Werewolf Transformation", due to his identity crisis brought on by not getting his hair cut, Sheldon starts playing bongos at three in the morning, to Leonard's annoyance.
• Blackadder: At the beginning of "Money" in the second series, Blackadder is sleeping with a prostitute, and is woken by Baldrick, who has a visitor for him.
  Baldrick: My Lord, there is someone at the door to see you.
  Blackadder: What time is it?
  Baldrick: Four o' clock.
  Bladadder: I've told you, you mustn't let me sleep all day, this woman charges by the hour.
  Baldrick: My Lord, it is four o' clock in the morning.
  Blackadder: Someone wants to see me at four in the morning? What is he, a giant lark?
  Baldrick: No, he's a priest.
  Blackadder: Tell him I'm Jewish.
• Charmed:
  • "Which Prue Is It, Anyway?": After the Villain of the Week is defeated in, Andy comes knocking on the door, Prue answers and mentions that it's four in the morning, wondering why he's even there. The villain of the week at least made a point to attack the manor in the early morning hours hoping that she'd be asleep, while Andy just shows up out of nowhere trying to figure out the mystery of Prue's dead clone.
  • "Charmed Again": Piper is shown in the attic reciting various spells late into the night trying to resurrect her dead older sister. Phoebe wakes up to it, walks to the attic, and is surprised her sister awake so late.
• Chernobyl: In the first episode, sometime after the explosion, which occurred at 1:23:45 AM, Dyatlov calls plant director Viktor Bryukhanov, who is highly annoyed, first at being awoken at this hour, and second that there's been an explosion at his power plant. Bryukhanov then demands they call chief engineer Nikolai Fomin, irritably stating, "If I'm up, he's up!"
• Clarissa Explains It All: In one episode, Clarissa develops a crush on a youthful weather presenter, which in turn leads to her becoming obsessed with the weather as her family is planning an outdoors trip. The night before they're supposed to leave, she bursts into her parents room with the urgent news that there's a ring around the moon, meaning it's about to snow. Her dad is quite annoyed at being woken up and gets even more irritated when it actually does start snowing, giving a sarcastic "Great, snow!" before lying back down and pulling the comforter over his head.
• Played for a laugh in an episode of CSI: NY when Stella and Don are canvassing an apartment building in the middle of the night. One lady answers her door with an eye mask pushed up on her forehead and before Don can finish introducing himself, she interrupts him.
  Lady: Do you know what time it is?!
  Det. Flack: [starts to ask if she heard anything]
  Lady: I said, "Do you know what time it is?!"
  Det. Flack: Uh, yes ma'am, it's 3 a.m.
  Lady: [slams the door in his face]
• In the Doctor Who episode "The Unquiet Dead", Mr. Sneed, who owns a morgue, is annoyed at being awoken in the middle of the night. Charles Dickens, who's joined the Doctor and Rose for this adventure, points out that this is ridiculous on his end because the dead don't die on schedule.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: A variant in "The Baby Comes Out" — in the opening scene, involving a view of the house from outside as the lights start to come on in the middle of the night, Will gets woken up by his uncle Phil in full Panicky Expectant Father mode as he's screaming for everyone to get up because Vivian's baby is coming. Turns out it was a false alarm, but Will still goes from half-asleep to fully awake and screaming when he sees Phil because, as he puts it, "You ain't got no drawers on!". The next morning, Will complains that he can't handle these false alarms anymore — "I mean, getting woke up in the middle of the night by a naked man running around the house."
• House of Anubis: In the premier, Nina is rooming with Patricia, who's been bullying her. She has a nightmare and starts talking in her sleep, waking up to Patricia taunting her. When Nina asks why she's doing it, Patricia justifies it by pointing out that Nina was the one who woke her up in the middle of the night.
• Several Kaamelott episodes feature people waking King Arthur in the middle of the night for what he refers to as bullshit such as thinking they saw a ghost, complaining about Arthur not singing along when asked to, or there being a report of four Picts maybe heading towards the castle.
• In Keeping Up Appearances, a Running Gag is that Hyacinth suddenly wakes Richard in the night, to tell him about her latest grand and far-fetched idea. This is usually accompanied by the sight of their alarm clock in Hollywood Darkness.
• Laverne & Shirley: In "One Flew Over Milwaukee", Shirley awakens in the night and starts playing music to her pet canary Duane, who she claims has bronchitis. Her roommate Laverne complains about how late it is and calls Shirley crazy.
• On M*A*S*H, this happens frequently to the characters, though it's justified by the fact they work at a hospital and can get wounded at any hour of the night. Also, often they may get calls to Korea from the U.S., which is under a different time zone and where it's already the middle of the day there. Not that it makes the characters feel any better about it — in one episode, Col. Potter complains to Klinger the entire time he's walking to the phone to answer a call.
• Outlander: When Claire unexpectedly lands in the 18th century and arrives at Caste Leoch she is put under the care of Mrs. Fitz. The day after arrival, Mrs. Fitz cheerfully rouses her from bed, clucking that she's never seen a lazy body. She says Claire has nearly slept half the day away. It's already half past four in the morning! Claire, who is from the 20th century where people don't rise or rest according to the sun, is nearly dead on her feet.
• Phoenix Nights: Brian Potter is woken up at "'alf three in the pissin' mornin'!" by his bouncers Max and Paddy prank-calling him to tell him that his nightclub, the Phoenix, has burnt down, and his compere Jerry was caught in the blaze. Brian is initially distraught at the idea that Jerry was killed, but as soon as Max asks him whether Jerry had false teeth (at which point he and Paddy can't keep themselves from laughing anymore), a furious Brian realizes they've pranked him and hangs up. Just seconds later, he's woken up again by another caller: this time, it's the police, telling him that someone's broken into his club and stolen a TV. Brian, however, just thinks this is another prank call and openly insults the police, farts down the phone at them, and tries to go back to sleep. Minutes later, he's outside the club, apologizing to the police for not believing them.
• Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin: In the penultimate episode of Season 1, Noa is woken up by creaking wood, and looks around to find that her boyfriend isn't in the bed with her. She freaks out until she finds him doing sit ups on the floor in front of the bed. She never looks at a clock but complains in terror to him that it's four in the morning.
• Slasher: Multiple times in Solstice, the third season:
  • The season three finale takes place between the hours of three and six in the morning. At one point, Amy's cat gets loose, and Saadia brings him back to the owner's apartment, and her friend Jen comments "Hey, it is four in the morning." The real reason is because Jen already knows Amy is dead, because she and her brother killed her earlier in the day.
  • It's also shown that Jen and Connor's mentally unwell stepmother Amber does this all the time, enough that her doctor prescribed her a sleeping medication, as the season premier and finale has her keeping the kids awake into early morning hours. Jen even off-handedly mentions that now Saadia knows why she was always so tired at school.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Crossfire", Quark (who's species is noted for having extremely large ears and consequently exceptionally good hearing) complains about his upstairs neighbour, a shapeshifter named Odo, awakening him at night by turning into animals. At the end of the episode after Quark helps him work out a problem despite their typically adversarial relationship, Odo has extra insulation installed in the space between their rooms.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • Downplayed in an episode, where Chakotay complains that Harry (who was working the night shift) woke him up to discuss the distress call the ship got, but admits it was still the right thing to do.
    • In "Child's Play", Janeway grumbles about having been summoned to astrometrics by Seven of Nine at three in the morning.
• Temps de chien:
  • In the first episode, Antoine is awoken at five in the morning by his cellphone because of an emergency at the vet hospital he's working at. He then apologizes to Kim, who is also awake because of the phone call.
  • A few episodes later, Antoine and Kim are awakened at three in the morning by some vandal screaming in front of their house.
• Yes, Minister: In the episode "Big Brother", as Jim Hacker is working through the night, he telephones a sleeping Humphrey to ask about a trivial matter, egged on by his wife. In this call, he forgets to ask the question he had intended, just after hanging up. His wife tells him to wait ten minutes before calling back again.
• Young Sheldon: In S5, after Sheldon and Missy get their own rooms, Sheldon builds a contraption that allows them to get each other's attention from their respective rooms. Sheldon often uses this in the middle of the night, such as in "A Clogged Pore, a Little Spanish and the Future", where he bothers Missy after having a nightmare.

Music

• "Friends" by Anne-Marie and Marshmello features an annoying boy who keeps pestering the narrator about becoming his girlfriend even though she repeatedly says she's not interested. At one point he shows up at her house at 2 a.m. in pouring rain, and the narrator suggests that similar things have happened before.
• Insane Clown Posse: In the "Rare Milenko Phone Skit", Violent J calls some guy named Mandy at two in the morning to talk to his daughter, which devolves into an argument between Shaggy and Mandy.
• The Notorious B.I.G. was a frequent victim of rude awakenings in his tracks:
  • In "Warning", Biggie is paged at just before six in the morning, and understandably wakes up more than a bit cranky when his pager goes off. His crankiness soon gives way to fury when the caller turns out to be a friend warning Biggie about an assassination attempt on his head — which he promptly thwarts not long after.
    Who the fuck is this, pagin' me at 5:46 in the morning?
    Crack of dawn and now I'm yawnin'
    Wipe the cold out my eye
    See who's this pagin' me and why.
  • In a call-back to "Warning", the start of "Somebody's Gotta Die" has Biggie woken up by someone ringing his doorbell at almost four in the morning, also waking up his guard dogs in the process. Turns out it was his homie Sing at the door, who informed Biggie that a mutual friend got murdered at a theater, prompting Biggie to seek revenge.
    I'm interrupted by a doorbell
    3:52 — who the hell is this?
    I gets up quick, cocks my shit
    Stop the dogs from barkin', then proceed to walkin'.

Myths & Religion

• The Gospel of Luke has a parable of a man going to his friend's house in the middle of the night to ask for some bread for another friend who was visiting. The friend at the house refuses because he and his family are sleeping. Jesus tells them that, in demonstration of praying persistently, if the man keeps knocking, the friend would get up and give him the bread due to the persistence rather than the friendship.
  "Then, teaching them more about prayer, [Jesus] used this story: "Suppose you went to a friend's house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You say to him, "A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat." And suppose he calls out from his bedroom, "Don't bother me. The door is locked for the night, and my family and I are all in bed. I can't help you." But I tell you this — though he won't do it for friendship's sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence."

  —Luke 11:5-8, New Living Translation

Puppet Shows

• Dinosaurs:
  • At the beginning of "The Mating Dance", Baby wakes up crying in the middle of the night because he's hungry. This exchange between Fran and Earl occurs:
    Fran: Earl, feed the baby.
    Earl: Why?
    Fran: Because if you don't feed it, it'll die.
    Earl: How many other kids we got?
    Fran: Two.
    (Earl falls back asleep)
  • At the end of "Nature Calls", Baby wakes Earl up. Earl's slightly annoyed and grumbles that he's trying to sleep until Baby says he wants to try using the toilet for the first time.
• Sesame Street:
  • A Running Gag is Ernie waking up his roommate Bert in the middle of the night, usually because he's worried about something, has an unusual request or question, can't sleep, or wants to play one of his strange games. In one skit, he wakes up the neighbours too by singing, just so that one of them would say what the time was because he was curious.
  • In one episode, Oscar is staying the night with Maria and Luis, but he keeps waking them up at night with his Sickeningly Sweet nightmares, putting them in a grumpy mood.
  • In the song "Born to Add", two people yell out addition equations in the middle of the night on the street. This wakes the neighbours, who complain, and even have them arrested.

Stand-Up Comedy

• One of Bill Engvall's routines had to do with him getting woken up in the middle of the night by a boy trying to call his daughter Emily.
  Bill: Dude, if you have a brain in your skull, you will hang this phone up right now! (slams the receiver down)
  Bill's wife: Bill, you gotta be nice.
  Bill: I'm sorry, 'nice' stops at midnight!

Theatre

• Annie opens with the youngest orphan Molly waking all the other orphans at four o'clock in the morning by calling for her Missing Mom after a nightmare. After Annie sings her back to sleep, she decides to run away from the Orphanage of Fear before Miss Hannigan wakes up. But Miss Hannigan catches her, and punishes all the girls for her escape attempt by making them all get up and scrub the floor.
• Hamilton: Hamilton arrives at Burr's house in "Non-Stop" to ask him to join in the writing of the Federalist Papers. An annoyed/surprised Burr answers the door and points out that "Well, it's the middle of the night!"
• Othello: The play's very first scene features Roderigo and Iago rousing Brabantio, a wealthy Venetian Senator, in the middle of the night. The irritable old man threatens to have Roderigo (the only one actually in view at the time) arrested for it, before Iago chimes in to let him know (truthfully) that his daughter has slipped away to elope with the title character and (falsely) that the two are currently "making the beast with two backs".

Video Games

• At the start of Bear & Breakfast, Hank wakes up his friends Anni and Will by bursting through their door and shouting "Goooood moooorrrniiiing!" They both tell him to get out for waking them up so early for their morning trek.
• Cult of the Lamb: Waking up individual cultists in the middle of the night will cause minor damage to your cult's Faith, and calling a Sermon or Ritual at your temple during those same midnight hours will cause a much bigger drop in Faith.
• EarthBound begins with Ness waking up from a meteor crash at the top of a hill in Onett. When he investigates the hilltop, only to see the police (and Porky) at the site, he decides to return home. But then, as he returns to bed, an annoying knocking is coming from his house's door. It was Porky, who informs Ness that his little brother Picky was missing since the police left. Ness eventually returns to the hilltop again, where he finds Picky at the hill and discovers the meteor to contain a traveler from the future who informs him that a great evil will destroy the world and that he and three other children are the chosen one. By the time Ness climbs back down and return to his house, the sun comes up. This is repeated in the epilogue, where it is Picky at the door instead, who delivers a taunting letter from his brother to Ness.
• Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries: In the second tutorial mission, your trainer Deadeye asks how you'e enjoying being strapped into a walking nuke reactor at six in the morning and tells you that you should have studied harder in school.
• In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team, the Latios sublot begins with Latios zooming past the player character's base and making a lot of noise in the process. After they get woken up, they go outside to investigate... and immediately go back in to get some more sleep. The narration notes that it's "Morning, but only by time... A time so early in the morning that everyone is still in bed."
• Pikmin 3: After the gang rescues Louie from the Scornet Maestro, they take his unconscious body back to the S.S. Drake. Louie wakes up in the middle of the night, where he thinks that the Koppaites have kidnapped him. In response, he hijacks the ship, steals their food (and Charlie's rubber duck), lands in the Garden of Hope, and blows up a concrete wall that was previously blocking the area. The Koppaites are woken up by this, and are not happy about it as they must now start the day early while trying to get their food back.
  Charlie: Where did this ground come from?! Why aren't we in the air? I can't even take a quick snooze without something going haywire!
• Shrek Superslam: In one cutscene, Shrek and Fiona are woken up by their neighbor who keeps on blaringly and obnoxiously ringing loud bells next door, and it's implied that he's done this before. Shrek gets fed up and barges over there, and one of his complaints is that it's four in the morning.
• The Sims: Having your sims call neighbors in the middle of the night will get them berated for calling so late. Doing so will also lower their friendship level.
• Touhou Gensokyo ~ Lotus Land Story: In Stage 5, Yuuka is disgruntled at the player character for noisily busting into her mansion "at this hour". It's not specified what time it is, but Yuuka has a drowsy expression and is wearing a nightgown, so it can be surmised that it's late in the night/very early in the morning.
• Undertale: If you say that Papyrus is cool while at Grillby's with Sans, Sans will talk about how Papyrus was so dedicated to becoming a Royal Guard, he marched up to the house of the head of the Royal Guard and asked her directly. Papyrus then got the door slammed in his face, as he had woken her up in the middle of the night.
• Yo-kai Watch 2: Nate, Jibanyan, and Whisper go to Nate's grandmother's house in Harrisville, and late at night, Jibanyan awakens with the urge to pee. He wakes up the protagonist to take him to the outhouse. The protagonist groggily asks for five more minutes, but they become fully awake when Jibanyan says he can't wait any longer.

Web Animation

• GoAnimate:
  • In Caillou grows Hair, Caillou realizes that he's finally grown hair and yells with joy, waking up his parents and Rosie in the process. Boris angrily asks why he's shouting at seven in the morning.
  • In The Wiggles - Murray Plays Guitar on Roof/Grounded, Murray plays his guitar on the roof, waking up the rest of the Wiggles in the process. They are not the least bit amused, and they all ground him.
• Helluva Boss: In "The Harvest Moon Festival", Blitzo calls Moxxie in the middle of the night to invite him and Millie to the titular festival. Moxxie hangs up the first time, and answers with annoyance the second with Millie waking up excitedly upon hearing the invite. Then it turns out that Blitzo was calling them from inside their house.
• Homestar Runner: In the earlier days, when buying something from the store, an animation plays of a character thanking you for your purchase. If you make a purchase in the middle of the night, Homestar will groggily thank you for your purchase but also tell you to go to bed.
• PONY.MOV: In "Party.MOV", it turns out Pinkie Pie does this to her friends with a demonstration of her calling Spike and drunkenly demanding him to do various obscene things only for Spike to tell her that it is 3 am. Then she starts arguing with a mirror, leaving Spike even more frustrated.
• Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy: In "Name That Animal Penis", a guy named Kevin calls his father to ask him about a photo of a mountain lion's dick. His father grumbles, "Kevin, it is the middle of the night!"

Webcomics

• Steven the rabbit from Nip and Tuck is asked by his neighbors why he has so many offspring. Steven's answer: "Trains." Every morning at 5:00 am, a freight train goes rumbling by, waking up Steven and his wife. It's too early in the morning to start the day, but too close to dawn to fall back asleep. "So," begins Steven, until his wife bellows his name before he spells out how he and the missus Take a Third Option.
• Ally in Sunstone, upon being told by Lisa that she would like to meet her, excitedly shares the news with Alan, her best friend, at an unspecified but ungodly hour as he is trying to sleep.
• Schlock Mercenary: The galaxy lacks a standard time, instead each planet operates on its own local time. A long-standing Running Gag in the series is a character (usually UNS military) wanting to inform someone elsewhere in the galaxy only for an AI to pipe in that it's past midnight for whoever they're calling.
  Admiral Deveraux: Manny, get me a direct line to Admiral Chu.
  UNS Manicouagan: It's 0300 local time for him.
  Deveraux: That's why I'm letting you wake him up for me.

Websites

• SCP Foundation: In the final days of SCP-7955, Dr Magdaleno is woken up at three o'clock in the morning and dragged back to 7955's room for unknown reasons. Needless to say, he's extremely grumpy with his research assistant for waking him up, especially since he's only gotten about two hours of sleep. It turns out that SCP-7955 is undergoing terminal lucidity and wanted to say goodbye to Magdaleno before it finally expired.

Web Videos

• Stuart Ashen: In the video "25-Year-Old Microwave Cake Mix", Ashens calls Chef Excellence by phoning him up on a special superhero-style phone. Unfortunately, he phones him up really early in the morning, resulting in a Cluster F-Bomb from the chef when we wakes up.
  Ashens: Well, I think there's only one chef in the world drunk enough to take on the challenge of trying to cook a twenty-year-old microwave horror cake. [grabs a phone with "An Excellent Hotline" written on it haphazardly in biro pen]
  [Batman-style transition]
  [klaxon sounds]
  Chef Excellence: [bolting awake] What the f— [switching the light on] What the fuck?! It's 3AM! You fucking idiot! Oh, for fuck's sake, you fucking idiot, why are you doing this at 3AM in the fucking morning?! Oh, Stuart!
• SuperMarioLogan:
  • In "Shrek's Homemade Cheesecake", Shrek wakes up at 2:09 A.M. when he has a nightmare where he runs out of cheesecake. He finds himself hungry and goes to the kitchen, only to find there isn't any cheesecake in the refrigerator, so he wakes up Mario, hoping he will get him cheesecake. Mario refuses to get Shrek more cheesecake until after work tomorrow, but tells him to get Chef Pee Pee to make him cheesecake if he's so hungry.
  • In "Bowser Junior's Happy Meal 2", Junior is woken up at 2:00 A.M. by his stomach, which grumbles. Junior then wakes up Chef Pee Pee to take him to McDonald's to get a Happy Meal. Chef Pee Pee refuses at first, since all Junior wanted from the Happy Meal last time was its toy, but when Junior tells on him to Bowser, Bowser beats Chef Pee Pee up, forcing him to go to McDonald's.

Western Animation

• Bluey:
  • Parodied in "Hotel", where Bandit Heeler is pretending to be a sleeping hotel guest and his daughter Bingo pretends to wake him up by playing music and saying Non Sequiturs.
  • In "Camping", Bingo wakes Chilli up in the middle of the night to take her to pee behind a bush. Chilli turns on a lantern, and Bandit groans loudly in annoyance.
  • In "Sleepy Time", Bingo keeps waking up the rest of the family at night with her tendency to sleepwalk, much to their dismay.
• Chip and Potato: In "Chip's Holiday", the Pug family are all awakened by coconuts loudly landing on their camper van and are not pleased about it. They spend a good amount of time trying to find ways to stop the coconuts from falling out of the trees.
• Clifford the Big Red Dog: In one episode where T-Bone attempts to impress a dog he likes named Mimi. He howls for Mimi in the middle of the night only to end up waking up her owner. Mimi tries to tell T-Bone to be quiet but kept on howling until her owner tells him to quiet down and slam the window shut.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog:
  • At the beginning of "Revenge of the Chicken from Outer Space", Courage wakes up from a nightmare with a scream. He wakes up his owners, Eustace and Muriel, up in the middle of the night. An annoyed Eustace kicks Courage out of the bedroom and into the hall.
  • In "Perfect", Courage has many nightmares and wakes up screaming from each one, which awakens Eustace almost every single time. Eustace eventually gets tired of this and kicks him out.
• Dan Vs.:
  • Due to Dan's single-minded obsession with Revenge, he will often wake up Chris, and by extension, Elise, in the middle of the night to drag them into his revenge missions.
  • "Dan Vs. The Animal Shelter": Dan's motivation for vengeance upon the animal shelter is being woken up by all the noise coming from the animals therein, including an elephant. When he successfully blows the place up, he has the same problem with a 24/7 firing range.
  • "Dan Vs. The Telemarketer": As part of the Telemarketer's plan to drive Dan over the edge, he calls Dan at all hours, day and night, preventing him from getting sleep. To get away, Dan crashes at Chris and Elise's house uninvited, which wakes them up. Chris, being Chris, is more bothered by being rushed out than being woken up.
    Chris: You do NOT ask me to make cocoa in the middle of the night, then leave before it's ready. SIT DOWN!
• In the Donald Duck cartoon "Trombone Trouble", Donald is kept awake by his neighbor Pete playing the trombone. The noise also wakes up the Roman gods Jupiter and Vulcan, who see Donald suffering as well and decide to give him some of their godly power so he can deal with Pete. Unfortunately for them, once Donald is done with Pete, he decides to try the trombone as well.
• The Dragon Prince:
  • In the first episode, when Viren wakes Harrow up after learning of the assassins, Harrow's asks "Viren, didn't I tell you that if you ever woke me up this early again, I'd have you executed?"
  • In the second episode of season 5, unlike Callum, Rayla is not enthusiastic about getting up so early for their trek to Xadia and it takes getting thrown from her mount and a sip of "Hot Brown Morning Potion" to get her fully awake.
• Family Guy:
  • A cutaway from "Petarded" has Peter confronting Timer (from ABC's Time for Timer cartoons) about keeping him up with his singing.
  • In "Hannah Banana", Chris calls Peter a worse father than an alcoholic elephant, leading to a cutaway of an elephant getting a late-night phone call from his dad asking him to drive him home from the bar.
• Futurama:
  • In "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Morgan comes into Fry's apartment at three in the morning. He complains about the hour, but then they end up having sex.
  • The Teaser for "A Fishful of Dollars" has Fry being kept up by an incessant squeaking in the next apartment. He bangs on the wall and tells whoever's there to quiet down, and it's revealed to be two robots with rusty springs for midsections playing poker.
• Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids: In "Mr. Peeler's Butterflies", a boy named Alexander wakes up his sleepy parents by making excuses not to go to bed, much to their annoyance.
• Hey Arnold!'': In "Baby Oskar", Oskar and Suzie have to look after Baby Oskar, their infant nephew. When Oskar and Suzie try to sleep, Baby Oskar wakes them up in the middle of the night with his crying. An annoyed Oskar pushes Baby Oskar's crib out of his and Suzie's apartment to get some peace and quiet, but an unamused Suzie pulls the crib back in and scolds Oskar.
• Jelly Jamm: In "Royal Roommate", the King keeps waking the Queen up at night with his requests (he's scared of the dark and can't get them himself), to her chagrin. He later visits Bello's house and repeatedly wakes him up to ask for ludicrous favors. Bello soon reaches his Rage Breaking Point and kicks him out.
• The Looney Tunes Show: In the B-Plot of "The Black Widow", Daffy Duck and Porky Pig go to Tacapulco for Spring Break (never mind the fact that it's only for school students), and get arrested and thrown in jail for Streaking (nobody bats an eye until Daffy points out that he and Porky are naked, since they're cartoon animals). Slowpoke Rodriguez, the sheriff of Tacapulco, allows them to make One Phone Call. Daffy first tries calling Bugs Bunny to tell him that he and Porky are in a Mexican jail, but as Bugs is trying to help Lola return the Elmhurst Diamond she stole (long story), Bugs ends up getting detected by the museum's guards and arrested for breaking and entering. Fortunately for Daffy, Slowpoke allows him to make another phone call since Bugs didn't answer, and this time, Daffy calls Speedy Gonzales, who is sleeping. It's 3:34 A.M. when Daffy calls Speedy, and Speedy asks himself who is calling him so late. He also makes an eerily accurate guess that Daffy's in a Mexcian jail. Speedy arrives at Tacapulco to bail Daffy and Porky out, where he reunites with Slowpoke after so many years, and Tacapulco throws a Fiesta in Speedy's honor for being both the fastest mouse in Mexico and a successful restaurateur.
• The Loud House:
  • In "Bummer Camp", the Loud siblings are trying to help their grandfather run his camp. At one point, he wakes them up at four in the morning, making them all grouchy.
  • In "Health Kicked", Rita and Lynn Sr. wake their children up too early to have them exercise, and they complain about how early it is.
  • In "Feast or Family?", Lynn Sr. wakes his daughter Luan up in the middle of the night to cook, and she complains about the late hour. She also notes that her sister and roommate Luna has been banned from playing the gong at night.
• Martha Speaks:
  • In the episode of the same name, during the montage of Martha bothering the Lorraines, she wakes up Helen in the middle of the night to tell her about a poodle she wants to meet.
  • In "Itchy Martha", Martha scratches her ear in the middle of the night. This wakes up the Lorraines (except Jake), and Helen complains that it's the middle of the night.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic : Spike is known to hate early wake-up calls. In "Winter Wrap-Up", Twilight Sparkle is eager to get started on the titular activity of ushering out winter and welcoming spring, and Spike is grumpy at being woke up so early. When Twilight hurries him outside, we see it's still dark — obviously very early and Celestia hasn't even raised the sun yet. Spike turns around to go back in and back to sleep for a bit longer.
• The Non-Adventures of Safety Queen: Discussed in "Toilet Flush". Safety Queen warns a boy that if he tiptoes down the hallway to the bathroom, the creaking of the floorboards will wake up his parents and they'll turn on the TV, thus leading to a chain reaction of the neighbors all turning on their TVs and everyone getting cranky from being woken up. By the time she's done talking, however, the boy has already used the bathroom and it seems that nothing bad has happened.
• The Patrick Star Show: Granny Tentacles is sometimes woken up by Patrick's show. In "The Starry Awards", the spotlights from the awards show, and the crew installing them in her house, wake her up late at night and this leads her to sabotage the show. In "Get Off My Lawnie", Patrick performing an annoying song late at night wakes her up, and she insults his show directly on the stage.
• Peppa Pig: In the episode "My Birthday Party", Peppa wakes up at the crack of dawn and proceeds to wake up her entire family in her excitement; Daddy Pig remarks with dismay that it's 5 in the morning when this happens.
• The Pink Panther frequently suffers with this or keeps others from sleeping:
  • In "Pink a Boo", a rat living in the Panther's house throws a party with the food from Pink's fridge and keeps him awake until 1:20 a.m. When Pink shows the mouse how late it is, the little jerk breaks the clock and knocks him out with a punch.
  • In "In The Pink of the Night", Pink buys a cuckoo clock to wake him up early. Unluckily, the cuckoo insists on waking him up at every ungoddly hour, going as far as ringing the bell and playing a band in front of Pink's door with a "wake up" sign. Pink tosses the clock in a river with the bird in it, but can't sleep thinking of the cuckoo drowning. He looks for him, unaware that the cuckoo got loose and rowed his clock back to dry land and home. They eventually make peace, with the cuckoo adopting Pink's sleeping habits.
  • In "Pink Trumpet", Little Man and Pink rent rooms next to each other in a motel. The panther first knocks on the wall to complain at LM's radio; but, when the man goes to sleep, Pink insists on playing trumpet aloud, in spite of evertying LM does to silence him. The panther ends up making him leave, but runs off when a gorilla comes from nowhere to play his trumpet.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Night Mayor", the Mayor wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and goes to the Utonium household to tell them about it. The Professor and the Powerpuff Girls are not pleased that he woke them up just for that.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016): In the short "Run, Blossom, Run", Blossom wakes up at 7:30 and mistakenly thinks she and her sisters are late for school (it's actually the weekend), so she tries to wake up Bubbles. Bubbles slaps her hand away, and in a angry yet calm tone of voice, warns her not to wake her up this early again.
• In the Ready Jet Go! special "Back to Bortron 7," Mitchell wakes his dad up at 2 AM PST to show him that the Propulsion house is gone. However, the house hologram conveniently comes back. Mr. Peterson isn't pleased.
  Mitchell: There's... there's something very wrong with this!
  Mr. Peterson: What's wrong with this is we're standing outside and it's 2:00 in the morning!
• The Real Ghostbusters:
  • In "Baby Spookums", the Ghostbusters get a call in the middle of the night, and Peter Venkman spends most of his time on said call complaining about the late hour and how he'd rather be in bed.
  • In "Future Tense," Ray gets a TV that predicts the future. He and Slimer watch it at night, and when they go to tell the rest of the Ghostbusters about it (still at night), they angrily throw pillows at them.
• Rugrats (1991):
  • In "Bow Wow Wedding Vows", Tommy wakes up his little brother Dil in the night to have a conversation with him. Dil says, "Tommy? Night-night time!".
  • "Angelica Breaks a Leg": Angelica pretends to break her leg so Stu and Didi will dote on her, and gets her wish due to a mix-up in the medical records. Throughout the episode, Angelica torments Stu and Didi with ridiculous demands, at one point, waking Stu up at 3:00 A.M. so he will get her some chocolate pudding, only to later decide she doesn't want it after all.
  • In "Accidents Happen", three-month-old Dil cries in the middle of the night. His father Stu enters and starts singing him to sleep, but the song he sings goes, "Rock-a-bye, Dilly. Daddy is here. Maybe I'll get some sleep by next year."
  • In "Sleep Trouble", Tommy and Chuckie are having trouble sleeping because Stu told them the story of the Sandman, believing he will bury them in sand. The stormy weather outside doesn't help matters, so they come to Stu and Didi's bedroom in the middle of the night. Stu and Didi try many different methods of getting the two toddlers back to sleep, courtesy of Dr. Lipschitz, including lullabies, bedtime stories, and even sock puppets. None of these attempts work, as Stu and Didi are asleep before Tommy and Chuckie are.
  • In "The Odd Couple", Tommy is having a sleepover at Chuckie's house, but wakes him up in the night to ask how they make green jello green, to Chuckie's annoyance.
  • In "Real or Robots?", Tommy and Chuckie wonder if Stu is a robot in disguise after they watch a scary movie about robots. When Stu is asleep, they sneak into his bedroom. Tommy sticks his fingers into Stu's nostrils, awakening him. The surprised and disgruntled Stu takes them back to bed. Soon afterwards, Tommy takes out a wrench and pinches one of Stu's nipples to see if it'll open his chest plate, causing him to wake up screaming. We don't see his reaction afterwards, but he clearly was not pleased, as it is shown that he taped the crib shut to keep the kids from climbing out again.
• The Simpsons: In "Bart Sells His Soul", Bart goes to Milhouse's Grandma's apartment at 2:00 in the morning in order to ask him for his soul back. His family is not happy about being woken up at such an hour. Unfortunately for Bart, Milhouse already sold his soul to to someone else, causing him to run away screaming.
  Kirk: Milhouse! Give him back his soul! I've got work tomorrow!
• The Smurfs: Gargamel's sentient book of spells can be awaken only during the final phase of the full moon, when he (grudgingly) helps his owner for one day. In "The Winged Wizard", Gargamel summons him when it's still dark, infuriating the book, who tells him to come back when it's dawn. The wizard still tries to open the book by force, but the latter stops him with a barrage of lightning bolts.
• South Park: In "Woodland Critter Christmas", the titular forest critters wake up Stan to talk about their plan to bring the child of their savior to life. Stan is less than pleased, especially since he has to get up early for school in the morning.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: This happens all the time, especially to Squidward, thanks to living between the incessantly energetic and immature SpongeBob and Patrick.
  • In "Home, Sweet Pineapple", nematodes attack SpongeBob's pineapple house in the middle of the night and suck out the juice, causing it to shrink. A panicking SpongeBob calls Squidward for help, who sarcastically asks "Is it time for you to ruin my day?"
  • "Jellyfish Jam": SpongeBob spends twelve hours dancing with a jellyfish, which keeps Squidward up. At least SpongeBob does decide to call it a night, but the jellyfish itself brings its friends and they keep the party going another six hours and Squidward can't get any sleep at all.
  • "Don't Look Now": SpongeBob and Patrick watch a scary movie about a fisherman, and it's said that he comes at midnight. SpongeBob and Patrick don't make it home before midnight and are terrified that he'll come for them, and their frightened antics wake up Squidward who complains about them, especially when they start screaming out for each other from each other's houses.
  • One example keeps him from getting any sleep at all. In "Graveyard Shift", Squidward is disgruntled about having to work 24 hours a day and asks who would want a Krabby Patty at 3 a.m. Cue an Answer Cut to Patrick excitedly waking up at 3 and eating a Krabby Patty.
  • In "Pet or Pests", SpongeBob goes to Squidward's house to ask him if he wants to adopt some baby worms. Squidward answers the door wearing nothing but a shower cap and towel, saying nothing but "Don't you know that it's 7 in the morning?" three times.
  • In "Snooze You Lose", Squidward is incredibly sleep-deprived, having not slept in 3 days due to his nervousness about an upcoming orchestra audition. SpongeBob and Patrick, who burp loudly from chugging a bunch of fizzy soda, keep him awake at night.
  • In "Something Narwhal This Way Comes", it's late at night and Squidward is kept awake by all the narwhals that moved in near SpongeBob's house. He packs a suitcase and puts a "Free House" sign on his door, then walks away.
  • In "Sandy, SpongeBob and the Worm", SpongeBob gets a shock in the middle of the night when his house gets devoured by an ALASKAN! BULL! WORM!
  • At the beginning of "Breath of Fresh Squidward", Squidward is awoken at 3:47 by SpongeBob and Patrick sitting in his bedroom waiting to watch the sunrise... something they've been doing every morning.
• Tiny Planets: In "Night Light Sleep Tight", Bing and Bong go camping. Bong wakes Bing up twice to take him to the outhouse at night, and Bing is shown to be quite tired and exasperated.
• Tom and Jerry frequently do that to each other.
  • In Solid Serenade, Tom wakes and ties up Spike (named Killer in this episode) to woo a neighbour cat by singing "Still My Baby" and playing bass in the late of the night. The vibrations of the bass not only wakes Jerry but destroys his room in the cellar. Of course he doesn't let Spike/Killer stay bounded for too long...
  • In "Rock N' Rodent'', Jerry plays in a jazz band in a bar beneath Tom's apartment for the entire night. Tom's attempts of silence the annoying music only get him in trouble with the dog living in the apartment next to the bar, so he tries to muffle the sound by putting corks in his ears and wrapping his head... and then the music stops, because it's morning.
• Total Drama: One of Chris' favorite ways to torment the contestants is to wake them up at extremely early times. Sometimes this isn't even for challenges or food, just because he wanted to torture them.
• VeggieTales: In the opening of Esther, The Girl Who Became Queen, Haman asks former Queen Vashti to make King Xerxes a sandwich, to which she annoyedly responds by saying it's 3 in the morning. After further refusal, Haman responds by booting the queen out of the castle, thus kickstarting the plot-instigating search for a new queen.
• Winx Club: In "Betrayed", Flora wakes up Stella very late at night to inform her about Bloom's recurring nightmares. Flora is especially worried because Bloom is transforming in and out of her fairy form in dreams, so she starts to ramble about what to do. This prompts Stella, who is constantly yawning and only up due to Flora's insistence, to yell at her to calm down. Downplayed because Stella is concerned too and initially patiently hears Flora out, it's just that Flora overwhelms her and her sleepiness makes her even more irritable.

Real Life

• Militaries like to do Recall Exercises, which is when everyone is called to duty to check response times and how long it takes to get the unit up to the point where's there's enough staff to accomplish the mission. Military personnel will assure you that these exercises always kick off at 4 in the morning...
• Most telemarketers will call at inappropriate hours to perform a scam. It is often suggested to report any suspicious and unfamiliar numbers that call during the night.
• Joseph Stalin usually sent his Secret Police to arrest dissidents and purge victims in the middle of the night.

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