History Main / ConverseWithTheUnconscious

* Invoked by the GenreSavvy MagnificentBastard {{House}} in a fifth season episode. The team is taking care of a man who is conscious, but has lost all motor function. Each team member spends time by his bedside, monitoring him, and when he finally regains function, House reveals that he had planted a recorder under the patient's pillow. He now has his team's private thoughts on tape!

* In one ''{{Rocky}}'' movie (II, I think)
** Yes, ''Rocky II''. He was talking to Adrian after she spent time in a coma following a complicated childbirth. Fortunately, [[IGotBetter she got better]], but not well enough soon enough to be present for his rematch with Apollo Creed.

* Ianto gives a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3VyRerhKL4 heartmelting speech]] to an [[spoiler: unconscious Jack]] in the ''{{Torchwood}}'' radio play "The Dead Line". (Link contains spoilers)

** Of course, those letters help give Reuben a reason to live, and Basher's not at all ashamed or embarrassed of them.

* Near the end of season 4 of ''{{Angel}}'' Connor tracks down the hidden and comatose Cordelia to explain his motives for the first time. When she eventually wakes up there's little to indicate she heard any of it though.

* ''BattlestarGalactica''. Starbuck goes in to see a brain-damaged and comatose [[spoiler:Anders, admits that she doesn't care whether he's a human or a Cylon, and then pulls out her gun to give him the MercyKill, which is only averted by Anders suddenly grabbing her arm and babbling like a MadOracle.]]

* There is a touching scene from {{The X-Files}} episode "One Breath" that invokes this trope. Scully is dying after being returned from her abduction, and Mulder spends much of the episode trying to save her. Her family decides to honor her living will and take her off life support. As she is slowly fading away, Mulder is at his home waiting for people from the Syndicate to break in and steal important files. Scully's sister Melissa arrives and encourages him (loudly and angrily) to stop wallowing and tell Dana how he feels. Mulder does, and he has a lovely conversation with the unconcious Scully:

* SeptimusHeap is a very good example of this. He spends much time every day to talk to the unconscious Syrah.

* Variation on ''{{Supernatural}}'': Sam and Dean have an actual conversation while Dean is in a coma, because Dean is [[NearDeathClairvoyance astrally projecting]] and can communicate via Ouija board.

* A nigh-screaming variant happens in ''FullmetalAlchemist'' when [[spoiler:Riza's throat is slashed. She loses so much blood she slips into unconsciousness, and Roy basically demands that she not die and leave him.]] This does bring her back, albeit in an indirect fashion. [[spoiler:May Chang overhears the anguished Colonel, and interrupts her own agenda to perform the alkahestry ritual that will close Riza's wound and save her life.]]

** Technically, [[spoiler: she didn't actually wake up, and Connor wasn't around at the time anyway.

-->'''Janitor''': ''[After Kelso slips on a wet floor]'' I liked the way blond-haired-doctor looked. She brightened my day. But you don't care about that, do you? No...because you're unconscious.

* ''{{Anime/Monster}}'': Tenma talks to Johann in the hospital twice in this manner. [[spoiler: The first time he happens to be conscious, and [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor takes it upon himself to help the doctor out.]] The second time he remains unconscious. [[OrIsIt Or does he?]]]]

* Aeryn speaks to John while he's unconscious during ''{{Farscape}}: The Peacekeeper Wars''. When he wakes up he gives no sign that he heard her, though in fairness she wasn't saying anything particularly suprising considering [[spoiler: they were already married with a child]] at the time.

* It happened in ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'' when Lenier was knocked out while saving Londo from a bomb. Londo sat by his side and spoke to him, and later Lenier woke up by finishing a joke Londo told earlier.

** In the episode ''Seperate Vocations'' Wiggum gives a pre-arrest one-liner to an unconscious thug named Snake.

--> '''Lou''': "He's unconscious, Sir."
--> '''Chief Wiggum''': "Ah they can still hear things."

* In the ''DoctorWho'' story "Battlefield", the Doctor cradles the apparently-killed-by-exploding-daemon body of [[spoiler: Brigadier, and later Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart]] bemoaning the pointlessness with the comment "you should have died in bed." Obviously he got better, gave the Doctor a tart retort "Really Doctor. Do you think I'd have been so stupid as to have stayed inside?" and went back to his gardening. As for his eventual fate (according to the expanded universe) - yeap the Doctor was right. In bed. Aged roughly 125 (after being rejuvenated by accident, and becoming a lord in the Human Dreaming (kind of like Avalon in the marvel Universe)).

* In DanAbnett's {{Eisenhorn}} novels, Eisenhorn never confessed to his love to Bequin while she was conscious -- "I was a psyker, she an Untouchable. That way pain and madness lay." -- but when she is rendered comotose, he confesses to her before leaving her under medical treatment. (She does not recover, not then, not even years afterward, in the {{Ravenor}} novels.)

* In DanAbnett's GauntsGhosts short story ''In Rememberance'', both Corbec and Rawne talk to the severely wounded and unconscious Gaunt: Corbec saying that he thinks that Gaunt did the right thing on Tanith, and Rawne saying HowDareYouDieOnMe, he was TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou. Gaunt woke during the second.

* Squall in ''FinalFantasyVIII'' has a fairly extensive one-sided conversation with Rinoa while she is in a coma. Of course, Squall is [[InnerMonologue used to having extensive one-sided conversations]]. The irony is that he actually ''wants'' a conversation now and can't have it - and he even makes the observation that "its like talking to a wall". A callback to his blow-off of Quistis early in the game.

* In ''Ocean's 13'', since Basher is stuck monitoring the tunnel-digger that the crew is using to set up their caper, he writes a series of letters which he asks Linus to read to the catatonic Reuben. Linus only manages to read a few lines before the [[TastesLikeDiabetes unbearable sappiness]] makes him give up and leave the letters on Reuben's nightstand.

--->'''Mulder:'''I feel, Scully... that you believe... you're not ready to go. And you've always had the strength of your
--->beliefs. I don't know if my being here... will help bring you back. But I'm here.