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Insomnia Rule: A "free stay at the inn" is never really free. Expect to be woken up in the middle of the night for a mandatory plot event.

It's not easy being The Hero. Sir Bob has to worry about Saving the World from Baron von Evilpants, and his Legions of Hell. So, after a climactic battle, Sir Bob decides he deserves a good night's rest at the local Trauma Inn. Too bad it isn't guaranteed (especially if the innkeeper tells you it's on the house). Sir Bob will either...

  1. ...be awakened in the middle of the night by Mooks looking for a very important person or thing, or
  2. ...get trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine-type dream, with a liberal application of Nightmare Fuel, a Duel Boss battle, or both for good measure

The most obvious sign of Inn Security segment is when party members make a big deal about resting somewhere, or the inn NPCs make a big deal about having party members rest in the Inn. The second most obvious sign is the stay being free this time around.

It usually takes place during the beginning or middle of the game, supposedly to provide a little more Backstory for the sleeping character.

Not to be confused with Inn of No Return, where the inn's proprietors themselves are attacking guests, either for robbery or even more sinister reasons. May also be a Treacherous Checkpoint if the Inn stay is necessary to save the game. See also Hell Hotel.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Fan Works 
  • In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, every single time the four stay at an inn or hotel, they get attacked. Repeatedly. Despite major security and assurances of safety. It gets so bad that they accept an invitation to visit the Guardians partly because they won't be attacked inside the Guardians' city.

    Game Books 
  • In the second book of Sorcery! (a series of four linked Fighting Fantasy gamebooks) you normally end up staying at an inn, and wake up tied up to an elaborate trap created by the innkeeper. Make the wrong choice and a guillotine blade decapitates you.
  • Fighting Fantasy House of Hell has you, the hero, starting out in a horror movie cliche (Car breaks down, massive thunderstorm, finds an old mansion and asks to use a phone). You end up meeting the host, with the many dialogue trees you get you will ultimately end up captured either due to drugged wine, drugged food, or if you constantly refuse both and insist to use the phone, the host gets pissed. In which the butler chloroforms you.

    Literature 
  • In The Lord of the Rings, the events at the Prancing Pony make Strider paranoid enough to have the hobbits sleep in his room instead of their own. This turns out to be a good thing; in the morning they discover the hobbits' rooms have been ransacked and the stables opened and their ponies gone; both the Peter Jackson movie and the much-maligned Ralph Bakshi movie depict the Nazgûl sneaking into the inn and attacking the hobbits' room, though the book itself indicates it was Breelanders within their thrall.
  • In the first The Wheel of Time book, Rand and Mat are trapped in their room and nearly killed by a darkfriend and his goons in the village of Four Kings. They're saved at the last second by a freak lightning strike caused by Rand unknowingly channeling the One Power.
  • In the fifth Slayers light novel, Lina is enjoying a peaceful stay at an inn when Mazenda tries to kill her by burning the whole building down. She escapes by jumping out a window.
  • In Stardust, Yvaine is taken in by the kindly wife of an inkeeper and looked after. Unfortunately, the "inkeeper's wife" is really a witch queen who wants Yvaine's heart to make herself young again and the whole inn is an elaborate ruse to that end.
  • The protagonist in H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is attacked while staying at an inn in the eponymous town. He is sufficiently restless/paranoid that he barricades the room long before they try to enter by force and escapes without even getting a good look at his attackers until later on.
  • In For Love of Evil, when Parry is sheltered by a poor woman after his wife is murdered, some guards kill her and burn down her house because she sheltered him. He barely escapes.
  • While inns don't seem to exist in the Redwall universe, there have been countless situations where characters bunking down (whether in the wild, or staying at someone's home) wake up captured. Though it works both ways, many times mooks of the villains wake up being captured by the heroes.
  • Murderess features Chopped Tree Inn, where Lu stops to eat and rest. She’s greeted by a boy speaking in Creepy Monotone, a mysterious figure which may or may not be malevolent gives her some basic details about the Land of the Sea, and she’s awoken in the middle of the night to be given some instructions on her journey in a rather creepy way. Subverted, as she was never in danger; the mysterious figure was Déaspor, who is one of the good guys.
  • Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms : Alluded to in The Sleeping Beauty: the innkeeper of the inn Leopold takes Siegfried to pays a magician to keep an anti-thief spell on the inn at all times. It's not cheap, but he makes it back with the guarantee that his customers won't get robbed in the night.
  • In the sixth Spellsinger novel Time of the Transference, in which Jon-Tom and Mudge are sleeping in a free lodging by a rather Cajun-like village, they are woken up in the middle of the night by a Raccoon, who warns them that the leader of village is going to double-cross them and rat them out to a band of pirates while they sleep.
  • Happens to Conan in one short story. Conan of all people was concerned about safety in the city he was staying in (he noticed that there was a severe lack of beggars at night) and so he makes sure to spend the night at the inn he paid for. When he's asleep, a secret door opens in the room and a cannibal comes inside to murder Conan.

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • Perhaps the earliest example is found in Destiny of an Emperor. Normally you have to conquer a town before you enter it, but you can stroll right into Gui Yang. Unfortunately, all of the buildings except the palace are blocked by townspeople who all have the same message: "My lord has sent me to welcome you with open arms to his humble castle. Our simple accommodations will surely be inadequate but we are a modest folk."
    • If you accept the lord's humble hospitality, he poisons your troops and attacks you in the middle of the night.
  • An example of the first comes from Final Fantasy IV: An hour into the game, Dark Knight Cecil carries an unconscious Rydia into Kaipo's Trauma Inn. While they're sleeping, the Baron Guards burst in and attempt to kill her. Much asskicking ensues.
    • Later on, the second type occurs when Edward faces down the Fake Anna. It would be a Duel Boss scenario if a) the doppelganger were not just an ordinary mook, and/or b) Edward wasn't (at that point in time) a total wuss in combat.
    • And in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, the same thing happens in a major case of Deja Vu, with Baron soldiers attacking Ceodore and the Hooded Man in the same Inn.
  • Surprisingly averted in Final Fantasy V, when the party travels to the character Bartz's home town and are offered a free stay at the inn, no plot or strings attached. From The RPG Cliches Game:
    Free Inn Rule. When an inn is free for no reason, don't stay there. Somebody will steal your money during the night. Does not apply to inns that are free for a reason (i.e., you saved the town, main character's hometown, etc.).
  • Happens several times in Final Fantasy VI:
    • When you rest for free on your first visit to Figaro, the party awakes to find the castle under attack by Imperial troops.
    • The inn in Vector is free; however, there is a chance for the innkeeper to steal several thousand Gil from you while you sleep.
      • The proper place to heal is a smaller unmarked building. The owner there, on the other hand, tries to kill you. But fortunately, after taking out their mooks, are more cooperative. In a way both playing the trope straight and subverting it.
    • After Strago provides you with a cheap stay at the inn (one gil) in Thamasa, the party is forced awake in the middle of the night to rescue Relm from a burning building.
      • This one is a subversion, since the one-gil price is maintained for all future visits to Thamasa.
    • If the party rests in the ruins of Doma after the Cataclysm, and Cyan is in the party, he becomes possessed by a monster and the rest of the party must enter his dreams to free him.
    • Subversion: If you have Shadow in your party, and find any ridiculously underpriced inn, DO stay there: You will be treated to a scene on Shadow's backstory.
  • Final Fantasy VII had a stay in an old woman's house. Unusual as it isn't until morning that Cloud wakes up, and when he does the event has no real sense of urgency.
    • Earlier in the game, he is allowed to sleep at Aerith's house. He has a text-only Dream Sequence, heavy with Foreshadowing, and then wakes up in the early hours of the morning and has to sneak out under Aerith's mother's orders.
  • Final Fantasy XII has both the "bad/plot stuff when you try to heal" and the "free use of normally pay-per-use mechanics equals plot relevant" sides of the trope, independently of each other.
    • The "heal" side pops up in the form of "Crystal Bugs", who looks just like the save-heal-and-teleport crystals you usually use — untill you try to use 'em, and instead find yourself under fire. Particularly sneaky since you're liable to be short on HP at that point...
    • The "Free" side happens when you first leave Jahara. You are offered a free chocobo rental, and about five cutscenes later (well within the rental time if you don't dawdle), you're required to cross a chocobo only path to go farther in the plot.
  • In the Gameboy game Final Fantasy Adventure (also called Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden) you can sleep for free in a certain castle, but when you do the girl that you've had tagging along with you will be kidnapped by a vampire. So, not only is the stay not free, you also lose access to the free on-demand healing that she provided. Fortunately, she teaches you Cure magic beforehand, so you can still heal yourself, but it costs MP.
  • An innkeeper tries to rob you Breath of Fire, but if the characters has a certain item in their inventory — a purse that's described as impossible to steal — they will catch the innkeeper robbing them and effectively blackmail him for a large amount of gold.
  • An example of the second type: One of the save points in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a trap, and triggers a boss fight against a succubus posing as Alucard's dead human mother, Lisa. This is glaringly obvious because not only is this "save point" colored differently, there's a real one two rooms over. Yet, you have to use it to proceed through the game... at least if you want to get the good ending.
  • There are a couple of examples in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars:
    • A free stay in Rose Town ends up with the innkeeper's son's toy coming to life and wandering out into the woods, prompting Mario and company to follow. (Said stay is free because, while it's still a toy, the innkeeper's son accidentally uses it to KNOCK MARIO OUT.) After you defeat Bowyer, if you go back to Rose Town the innkeeper will still let you stay for free because Mario is a nice person who played with her son. Oh, and because you saved the entire town from an endless rain of arrows that made it so most townsfolk were too scared to even leave their houses—and most of the rest were frozen in place.
    • Before you save the townsfolk at Seaside Town, staying at the inn is free...if you can handle the phony innkeeper's creepy voyeurism as part of the deal.
      • After you save them, though, the innkeeper will let you stay, even if you don't have enough coins to pay the fee.
    • The Three Musty Fears would like to play a flag game with you, but only if you stay in the free Monstro Town Inn.
  • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has the team waking up from a free night in an inn to realise one of the party members has snuck out to go on a suicide mission.
    • And if you're so inclined to get one of the optional party members, you get woken up in the middle of the night by said optional party member stabbing your pillow an inch from your face.
  • Star Ocean: The Second Story has an aversion. You get to stay at an inn for free early in the game and...nothing really happens during the night. Rena wakes up to spy on Claude, but that's it.
  • This is rarely in the Tales of... series. You are frequently offered free rests at inns, but the result is almost never dangerous or detrimental. More frequently, it is used to advance the plot.
    • Tales of Phantasia used the trope both directly and in variation repeatedly. Near the beginning of the game, you have to rest at your uncle's house, and the resulting cutscene kicks you into the dungeon. On the other hand, the game also offers you a free rest when something has to happen "tomorrow" or "in a while," such as when you're waiting for an NPC to return to the inn to meet him, or when your characters decide to meet in the inn to discuss the plan to infiltrate a castle (well, the first one's free - you have to pay to visit the cutscene if you decide to hold off on the mission).
  • In Terranigma you are required to go to bed four different times. The first two and the fourth are free, but the third isn't: after the game instructs you, you'll have to pay the usual pittance to go to bed.
    • In one of these, it seems kindly enough, but the town turns out to have a dark secret: namely, that everyone in it is the living dead, and the town's living appearance is a mirage generated by one very powerful little girl.
  • In Sword of Vermilion, the inns cost a surprisingly high amount and only get more expensive as you go. This makes the free inn in a cursed town seem awfully tempting... but for each time you abuse the hospitality of the absent-minded owner, he'll jack up the price of the inn when you finally break the curse.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Morrowind:
      • Once you've reached a certain point in the main quest, you may start getting attacked by Ash Zombie assassins when you sleep in civilized areas. Your only options are to sleep away from civilized areas (and risk getting attacked in your sleep by wildlife) or locate the area's Sixth House base and kill the leader. (The latter has the added benefit of waking any "Sleepers" in the area as well. Speaking with them will net you a valuable Reputation point.)
      • After installing the Tribunal expansion, you may be attacked by a Dark Brotherhood assassin while you sleep. (On PC, this can occur at any time, even to a brand new character. On X-Box, this will only happen once you've reached level 6.) The only place you are safe from the attack is if you sleep in the tutorial area bedroll. (While inconvenient, it may be wise to sleep there until you've acquired the equipment necessary to fend off an assassin.) The assassins are level-scaled, but even a low-leveled assassin is a threat because they come wearing a full set of quality light armor and generally use enchanted short blades. A skilled player can turn these assassin attacks into a Disc-One Nuke situation by sleeping repeatedly and farming the valuable weapons/armor to sell.
    • Oblivion:
      • If you choose to stay in an inn in (say that out loud three times fast) the Imperial City, it's not only attacked but, because it's actually a boat that's just been tethered to the waterfront, it's also put out to sea thereby forcing you to kill the raiding party just to get back to land. You do get a cool-looking sword out of it, though.
      • There are three quests that will wake you up almost immediately to tell you whatever: the Hermaeus Mora Daedric quest, and the starting quests for the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood.
      • Should you happen to get a room at Moslin's Inn in Hackdirt while looking for Dar-Ma, you will be rudely awoken by a bug-eyed creep trying to club you on the head. This is a homage to "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as Bethesda loves using H.P Lovecraft homages.
      • The Benrius Manor house quest has the player chased out of his slumber by the resident ghosts. Undead are bad enough, but when they won't let you sleep? The worst.
    • Skyrim keeps the tradition alive. If you do what Aventus Arentino in Windhelm says, which is to kill Grelod the Kind, a courier will eventually come and deliver an ominous note. If you fall asleep for any length anywhere, be it your home, at an inn, or in an anonymous bedroll, Astrid, the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, will kidnap you and bring you to an abandoned shack to begin the Dark Brotherhood questline.
  • Mother:
    • In EarthBound Beginnings, sleeping in the hotel in Spookanne/Halloween is free... but you have to fight a Starman in the morning, and, since the Starman was disguised as the innkeeper, you can never spend the night there again.
    • There's a variation in EarthBound (1994), where zombies take over the local Trauma Inn to trap you there. But they don't wait for you to go to sleep.
  • The Hordes of the Underdark module for Neverwinter Nights starts out with you waking up while a Drow steals all your equipment, teleporting it away before you kill her. You even have the option to spend the rest of the game bitching about it and claim its your only motivation in taking on the Matriarch. Eventually you can find them all in a chest in the level before you meet the crazy mage.
  • Might and Magic
    • In most of the games, inns are the only truly safe place to sleep; anywhere else, you have to "spend" your supplies and might be ambushed by monsters. None are free, however, the cost being proportionate to how dangerous the wilderness is and reduced by the lead character's score in the Merchant skill.
    • In the seventh game, sleeping in your castle once it's repaired does not cost supplies and is reasonably safe; you still might be ambushed, but only by goblins or rats, monsters you should be able to handle easily by then. For added protection, doing the "Build a Golem" promotion quest results in the golem patrolling the main hall and fighting on your side if any hostile monsters show up there.
  • Ordinarily this is averted in Neverwinter Nights 2: the Sunken Flagon, your base of operations in Neverwinter, is pretty safe due to being frequented by adventurers and off-duty Watch officers. The exception comes at the end of Act I, when the githyanki that had been bothering you periodically for the length of the chapter attack the inn and kidnap Shandra Jerro because they think she has information about some plot coupons.
  • In Dragon Quest VIII, there are some places where you can sleep for free, but most charge. A free night at one of the places which normally charges ends with one of the party members having run off having been possessed by the Sealed Evil in a Can.
  • In Romancing SaGa, this can occur in South Estamir after/if you've agreed to investigate a reviving assassin's guild. This can turn into a Player Punch if you're currently playing as Jamil... if you let Dowd leave beforehand.
  • In Skies of Arcadia, the only times you'll ever get the chance to sleep for free (outside of your own base or your mom's house) are when something plot-relevant (and usually dangerous) happens as soon as you wake up.
  • Finding Li'l Cactus enough times in the Trials of Mana remake will let you stay at any inn free of charge, but that's not this trope. Even so, there are instances which better fit in this and the original version.
    • The inn stay in Jadd is free because the town is forcibly occupied by Ferolia and the innkeeper can't turn a profit with them around. This also introduces the player to the day/night mechanic, since the occupying force transform into frenzied beasts at night which aren't as prone to enforcing lockdowns.
    • The boat ride out of Jadd is also free since it's an effort by the local shipwrights to get as many people out of Jadd as possible. Not everyone leaves, but those stuck behind manage to rally enough of a force to lock up the remnants.
    • Once Laurent is liberated from its Nevarlan occupiers, you get a free ride out of Palo Port. This one turns out to be a ghost ship that attacks your party whenever you try most beds, and ultimately dumps you on Beuca Island when it sinks. Given his statements when you find him, Malocchio may have orchestrated the ghost ship picking you up to funnel you into the deathtrap.
  • Happens to Jack in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, except the invaders are trying to kill him. He at least has the sense to bolt the doors before going to sleep.
  • In Suikoden, on Mt. Tigerwolf there's an Inn the player stops in. It soon becomes obvious that the Innkeep is up to not good when you are forced into drinking his tea (which naturally knocks everyone out). Of course, everyone's okay because the guy's boss recognizes one of you and forces the Innkeep to make an antidote.
    • Later on, your party will avert another guy's attempt to Drug-and-Rob you in an Inn.
  • While healing up at a Pokémon Center is always free, if you get the special item for the Darkrai event in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, you gain entry to a hotel where you're immediately beckoned to sleep...then proceed to wake up on Newmoon Island where Darkrai is waiting.
    • And you have to face Darkrai just to leave the island. Not even Fly will work.
    • Subverted in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. An old lady suggests you spend the night, and as soon as you wake up she suggests you spend the night again. This repeats infinitely until you say no. As suspicious as it seems, that's all it is- suspicious. She doesn't rob you, she just likes having company.
  • Not an inn, but your party camp effectively serves as one in Dragon Age: Origins. About two-thirds of the way through the game, Shrieks will attack you in the camp. There's an additional plot revelation then if you're a Dalish elf.
  • Most inns in Betrayal in Antara charge you, but there are two exceptions. First, the inn owned by Aren's parents, which is very useful in all chapters you can get to it, and second the inn you stay in in chapter 3, but only after you have triggered all the major plot flags for the chapter. That time, you don't get charged, but you do get woken up in the middle of the night and dragged into the next chapter.
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, you can ride the Excess Express for free, which leads everyone in the party to figure that all you'll have to do to get the Crystal Star is take a luxury train for a three-day ride. Over the course of those three days, you have to help a ghost move on, find some stolen items, foil a bomb plot, find Doopliss and bust his disguise, unblock the train tracks, and finally save the passengers from some creepy, black monster things. Of course.
  • Played With in Golden Sun. Nothing actually happens during your "free stay" in Garoh's inn you're forced to stay at for plot purposes, but you don't get any sleep, so you don't heal at all. If you stay again, paying this time, you heal up just fine.
  • Subverted in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, which openly plays up the "something big's going to happen" factor when the party discovers that the city of Harapa is barricaded at night and they're stuck until morning. Sleep at the inn... and in the morning everything's back to normal and you can freely proceed. Subverted again during the Grave Eclipse, since the barricades are automatic and triggered by darkness, so now all the survivors are sealed into the town... but at least the monsters prowling outside the town can't get in.
  • Averted in the adventure game Darkstone, in which you can spend a night (for about ten seconds) with Perry the Publican to completely restore your health and food levels.
  • Magicka parodies many RPG tropes and exaggerates this one. Staying in the inn in Havindr is mandatory and you'll be woken up by a meteor smashing the inn!
  • In Return to Krondor, towards the middle of the game you have a wide open world map (actually a very tiny corner of Midkemia, especially compared to Betrayal at Krondor) to explore for a while to get some grinding and looting done before getting back to the main plot. You have to stop at an inn near the center of the world map for a much-needed rest and restock... only for the place to be set on fire and turn into a combat encounter before the night is over.
  • Dragon's Dogma gives you a free night at the inn the first time you rest at The Encampment in the beginning of the game. You're then woken up by a hydra, of course.
  • The Sega Saturn RPG Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean has an innkeeper in a desert town offer a free stay to the party shortly before an assault on the Disc-One Final Dungeon. During the night one of the party members becomes seriously ill. Fortunately, a recurring character, a traveling merchant, shows up with a treatment... at the cost of all of the party's gold. Not a major plot twist, but losing all of that money is annoying.
  • Resting can be hazardous in LISA: The Painful RPG. You might wake up to discover that one of your party members has been kidnapped, find an unwelcome guest, or other creepy incidents.
    • Subverted in the only actual inn in the game. The owner charges you a packet of mags, looks creepy and is doing a lot of Hand Rubbing, but the inn is actually one of the only guaranteed safe places to rest in the game. You can even recruit a party member there by resting multiple times!
  • The main character in Brothers stays at an inn shortly after leaving his mentor and wakes up to find somebody stealing his Fire Ring.
  • In Luigi's Mansion 3, Mario, Luigi and princess Peach are offered a free week's stay at a luxury hotel. Waking up at night, Luigi finds Mario and the princess missing and the hotel full of ghosts, including King Boo.

    Visual Novels 
  • During the stay at the ski lodge on Barbarossa in Double Homework, it’s clear that Dennis has some kind of sinister plan for the girls there, but things take a turn for the worse when the fiber optic cable gets cut, severing communication with the outside world.

    Webcomics 
  • Happens near the beginning of No Need for Bushido when Yori and Ina stop at an inn. The "Foreboding Ninja Death Inn," to be exact. Lampshaded later:
    Ina: I say we find a place for the night.
    Cho: Perhaps one without ninja assassins?
    Ina: There was once a time when I thought that was possible.
  • The Order of the Stick.
    • While traveling with Miko to Azure City, contrary to Miko's suggestion to sleep in the ditch, they stay at an inn. Cue Roy being target of an assassination for being mistaken for someone else.
    • In On the Origin of PCs, Elan, acting as herald for a paladin, passes over better options to stay in at the Rob-U While-U-Sleep Inn. They wake up in the morning to find that they've been robbed.
  • This page of Our Little Adventure.


Alternative Title(s): Dangerous Inn, Your Bed A Splode

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