History Main / TripleShifter

* The tale of Sir Coffee in ''Webcomics/{{Oglaf}}'' is about a knight who is simply too good at saving fair maidens and whose reputation - and whereabouts - are too widely known to allow him any rest. or sleep. Read it '''[[http://oglaf.com/sircoffee/here]]'''

* In the maze level of [[BaldursGate Watcher's Keep]], the party runs into a mad elf [[ThirdPersonPerson referring to himself in the third person]] as Yakman. He's so paranoid about the dangers of the maze that he hasn't slept in all the time he's been there. Elves don't ''sleep'' as such in DungeonsAndDragons, but they do need to enter a meditative trance for a few hours a night ([[OurElvesAreBetter half as long as humans need to sleep, naturally]]). As [[AnAdventurerIsYou CHARNAME]] can note, "You can't just not sleep for two years, you'd...go...crazy."

** ''[[{{Film/Spider-Man}} Spider-Man 2]]'' deals with this directly, as Peter finds his daily life falling apart so badly that he unconsciously shuts off his powers just to get a break. Once he regains his confidence and gets the girl, though, all his problems with sleep deprivation and scheduling conflicts vanish again.

** In other continuities, no one bats an eye [pun unintended] because he occasionally makes a brief but memorable evening appearance as [[EccentricMillionaire Millionaire Playboy]] Bruce Wayne, carousing the night away with beautiful women on his arms. So he's assumed to be sleeping all day thereafter, as a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob.

* By the beginning of ''Film/SpiderMan II'', Peter is falling asleep in his college classes, missing some, and turning assignments in late due to this. Dr. Connors considers Peter to be [[BrilliantButLazy another trope]], and is on the brink of failing him.

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

* Video game example: ''{{Persona 3}}'' features a group of (mostly) high-school students who can only fight the world-threatening evil during a slice of non-time accessed at midnight. The resulting exhaustion is a status effect that puts a massive crimp in a Tired character's performance. The status effect lasts into the next day as well, can degrade further into being Sick [even worse than tired], which further interferes with classwork for the day. Bit of an aversion compared to the usual "Doze off in class, feel 100%".

** ''{{Persona 4}}'' has the dungeon-exploration take place during the day, avoiding this (and if you do it you can't do anything that night out of exhaustion). But the characters seem to have no trouble staying up until midnight several nights in a row to watch the Midnight Channel.
*** They could've easily take a nap and set the timer to wake them up in time, or sleep in until the very last minute the next morning. It's also an infrequent event and a lot of reasonably healthy teens have little problem staying up until 12:05am and then getting by on 5 or 6 hours of sleep for several days every once in a while.

** As the SailorMoon English ExpositoryThemeSong tells us, the titular heroine is "Fighting evil by moonlight, [[EarWorm winning love by daylight...]]" Even before becoming a warrior of love, she was having problems getting to school on time, but somehow being Sailor Moon doesn't compound it at all.

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

Anyone whose description is "Normal Job By Day, Crimefighter ([[NaughtyByNight or other things]]) by Night!" probably doesn't have a lot of time to sleep.

So we'll see them doing stuff during day and night -- constantly. Don't they ever ''[[TheSleepless need to take a nap]]?'' The actual physical consequences are rarely taken seriously, except maybe by showing a teacher or boss annoyed that the character is dozing off from time to time. Rarely anything else happens: if it ''is'' shown as a constant issue of exhaustion, it will usually be school or work that suffers, as opposed to their night-time adventures, even though being tired mean they should have a much harder time fighting. Night is naturally the time for saving the world when you WakeUpGoToSchoolSaveTheWorld.

Anyone whose description is "Normal Job By Day, Crimefighter ([[NaughtyByNight or other things]]) by Night!"

So we'll see them doing stuff during day and night -- constantly. Don't they ever ''[[TheSleepless sleep]]?'' The actual physical consequences are rarely taken seriously. There may be an episode or two where a teacher or boss is annoyed that the character is dozing off; rarely anything else happens. Night is naturally the time for saving the world when you WakeUpGoToSchoolSaveTheWorld.

Of course, one could assume that Evil doesn't strike ''every'' night. But it sure seems that way. Also, if it ''is'' shown as a constant issue of exhaustion, it will usually be school or work that suffers, as opposed to their night-time adventures. If this is averted it's a case of PlotPoweredStamina.

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

-->'''Janson:''' I'm not going to get any sleep tonight, am I.
-->'''Wedge:''' Sleep when you usually do. [[MildlyMilitary During pilot briefings]]. [[AcePilot During missions]].
-->'''Janson:''' Oh, right.
* Hermione does her level best to achieve this [[HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban The Prisoner of Azkaban]] with her time turner, but can't quite pull it off. She receives special dispensation to use the time turner to travel in backwards in time in limited amounts in order to take more classes than there are scheduled periods in the day. Being a thirteen-year-old girl with (aside from the whole magic thing) no other special abilities, the stress of keeping up with her schoolwork takes its toll. Harry and Ron, not privy to what she had been doing all term, notice that she becomes increasingly distracted and short-tempered, culminating in a fairly minor nervous breakdown. At the end of the book, she turns in her time turner and does not use it again for the remainder of the series. Presumably, she is restricted in its use and cannot, for example, use it to extend the sleep and/or leisure time that she cuts into keeping up with her heavy workload.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

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

** Batman's first apprentice,{{Nightwing}}, is allowed to be a little more human, and when he's forced to go without sleep, he suffers for it.
** In one episode of ''JusticeLeague'', Batman hasn't slept for three nights straight...as they fight the VillainOfTheWeek whose power is being able to attack you in your sleep. At the end of the episode, after he and [[MartianManhunter J'onn]] save everyone, he's seen slumped over in a chair in the Watchtower's infirmary, snoring.

*** They could've easily take a nap and set the timer to wake them up in time, or sleep in until the very last minute the next morning.

* Between the start of [[{{Crusader No Remorse and the start of No Regret]], six months pass. Though never spelled out, this is alluded to in ''No Remorse'' by the player character being able to go to the bar to catch up with his fellow rebels, go to his footlocker (presumably at the foot of his bunk), and so on. However, there is no such downtime in ''No Regret''. After spending 48 hours in a cramped lifepod, the Silencer then appears to go full-tilt for the next few days to a week, depending on how quick you play through each level. This understandable; he's one of those SuperSoldier shooter-protagonist types. What's not so easily explained is how his entirely human VoiceWithAnInternetConnection companions not only stay on the line the whole time but, when they trade off, also go on missions of their own (including two of them who were just in the not-so-tender care of the Lunar Mining Cartel for months...).

* Many a MagicalGirl does this; curiously the matter of sleep is only an personality issue. One may be a HeavySleeper or always LateForSchool; but that's more about them and less about fighting monsters in the middle of the night. Her companions sleep as little as she does, and don't seem to have any problems.

*** That's because Yoshimori usually goes all out, exerting his energy while Tokine thinks things through and only does what she must. Yoshi-mori outright exhausts himself.

* {{Batman}} is of course the TropeCodifier. In some continuities it's explained that he ''doesn't sleep'' but rather engages in a 30-minute trance every day that "gives the equivalent of a six-hour sleep."

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

* Became a point of contention between Bruce and Terry in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond.'' The original {{Batman}} doesn't seem to understand that Terry still needs to sleep, go to school, do homework, help his mother (a widow), look after his kid brother, ''and'' maintain his social life while fighting crime.

** The matter of sleep was actually addressed in the third episode of ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'''s first season, with [[MentorMascot Yuuno]] telling Nanoha to take a break since she's exhausting herself. Naturally, that led to her missing a [[MineralMacguffin Jewel Seed]] [[MyGreatestFailure that proceeded to damage her town]]. Also, in the second season, the Wolkenritter go out searching for Linker Cores at night, because they spend their days with Hayate, who is not supposed to know about their nightly trips. Justified by them being artificial constructs who might not need sleep at all.

--> '''Bruce Wayne:''' [[NotAMorningPerson Bats sleep during the day, Alfred!]]

--->'''Zed:''' You get used to it. Or suffer a psychotic episode.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Although she often complains about it, and it seems that most of her bad-guy-fighting is done in the evenings rather than smack in the middle of the night. It's assumed by many that "getting by with very little sleep" is a minor Slayer ability except, of course, when the plot requires her to have a prophetic dream. Her friends actually do have problems matching her schedule, they mostly seem to go to bed once the club closes.

** The fourth season starts out with him completely exhausted, to the point of dozing off while driving away from a kill. Things continue to spiral out of control from there, but the lack of sleep is noted.

* Became a point of contention between Bruce and Terry in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond.'' The original {{Batman}} doesn't seem to understand that Terry still needs to sleep, go to school, do homework, help his mother, ''and'' maintain his social life while fighting crime.