Morning Routine

Wake up. Take shower. Comb hair. Brush teeth. Trim nosehair. Get dressed. Eat breakfast. Miss bus.

Look familiar? It should. Sequences that show a character following their average Morning Routine are incredibly common. It's a standard story opener, for several reasons: it's a way to introduce a character immediately, it shows the normal routine (to better contrast when wackiness ensues), and it's something we're all pretty familiar with—even those of us who rue mornings.

This can also be used as an Establishing Character Moment — we know a character is Obsessively Organized if they follow a strict schedule down to the minute, and a slob if they sniff their armpit and decide they can skip the shower.

Like the White Void Room, it's something of a cliche and is commonly perceived as an opening that serves until the plot takes hold. Then again, like all tropes, it can be used to great effect — for instance, the opening sequence of Dexter. Surprisingly, Slice of Life works can avoid this for quite some time — mainly because there's a choice of other routines.

Synchronized Morning Routine is a subtrope. Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World isn't. See also Day in the Life. Compare Easing into the Adventure, Good Morning, Crono. Often ends with the character Late for School or work.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Rohan's routine before drawing manga is stretching his arms while opening and closing his fingers.
  • The JoJoLands: Dragona goes jogging on the beach every morning after eating a watermelon for breakfast.
• In the beginning of Fruits Basket, Tohru Honda is shown waking up, admiring the beauty of the day, and then saying good bye to the photo of her mother and taking a walk before she goes to school.
• Some Sailor Moon episodes tend to start this way, usually as a set up to a "Usagi is late" joke.
• Azumanga Daioh had this with Chiyo-chan in the episode that was focused on her, showing how she gets up early so she can prepare her lunch and then goes to wake up her parents.
• Chainsaw Man: Aki wakes up, grind and brew coffee, and read the newspaper while smoking on the balcony, all before Denji wakes up (and Power moves in).
• Episode one of Puella Magi Madoka Magica shows Madoka's morning routine, starting with her waking up from a strange dream, waking up her family members, getting dressed, eating breakfast; all sorts of everyday normal activities. Used to show Madoka's roots in normality, and provide contrast for the changes the come.
• In From Up on Poppy Hill, Umi is introduced by her morning routine of making food for the family and hissing the flags. This routine is shown or varied several times again.
• Goblin Slayer wakes up before dawn, puts on his armor, and inspects the farm's perimeter. After, that he trains until the sun comes up, then uses the light to do maintenance on the defenses. He sits for breakfast with Cow Girl, then goes into town. If he were to ever find a skulking goblin, he would kill it with 100% certainty.
• In the first episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Nanoha is shown waking up and getting ready for school. The same scene plays out in her first scene of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, but with indications that Nanoha is eagerly awaiting the day she can see Fate in person again. 14 in-universe years later, the first episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid would have a similar scene following Nanoha's adopted daughter Vivio as she gets ready for her first day of fourth grade.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: In "A Human Work", this is done to compare Misato's slobbish ways with Shinji. Then the same sequence happens again, but with Musicalis Interruptus and a mutual Jaw Drop from Shinji and Pen Pen as Misato exits her room done up neatly in her uniform because she's attending a conference.
• In Girls und Panzer, after the Action Prologue that takes place a few episodes after the start of the show, the first scene is of Miho, the main character, waking up in the morning, and hastily going through her daily routine before realizing that she's not at home anymore.
• Episode 3 of Free! Dive to the Future shows Rin waking up, making breakfast, and jogging from his apartment to the Sydney Aquatic Center.
• Full Metal Panic! juxtaposes Kaname's mourning routine against Sousuke's to highlight how damn weird the latter's mindset. While Kaname has exactly the routine one would expect from any Ordinary High-School Student, Sousuke wakes up under the bed immediately pointing his Pillow Pistol at a cat on his windowsill, makes himself a "satisfying breakfast" consisting of several slices of salami and a tomato, and checks to make sure he's packed an adequate amount of C4 and ammunition in his schoolbag.

Asian Animation

• Simple Samosa: In the morning, the alarm clock wakes up Samosa and he gets out of bed, brushes his teeth, and takes a shower. This is shown in the episodes "Sumo Momo" and "Pimple Samosa".

Comic Strips

• A regular gag in Blondie is for Dagwood to oversleep then run out of the house to his carpool. Hilarity Ensues.
• Zits: One strip alternates between Jeremy and his girlfriend, showing the her putting on makeup, combing her hair, etc. while Jeremy takes several panels to emerge from sleep. The final panel has Sara, now a living exhibition of cosmetic technology, asking Jeremy how he gets his hair to look as if he got out of bed, to which he confusedly replies that he gets out of bed.

Fanfic

• In Dirty Sympathy the morning of the Vera Misham trial opens with both Klavier and Apollo getting ready for the trial in their homes. They style their hair, pick out their clothes and go over their plan to have Kristoff lose the jury's sympathy to cover up that they framed him.
• In Beautiful Fiction's Babylon begins with Ed and Al getting ready for the day while Edward struggles and hides his chronic pain and terminal illness. He shaves, he dries his hair using alchemy and has breakfast with Al.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: As revealed in chapter 20 of the sequel Picking Up the Pieces, Blazen Sun's starts with his awakening exactly at sunrise, and then performing his morning meditations before eating and reporting to work.

Film - Animated

• Up had one of these with Carl after the death of Ellie.

• Shrek starts out with how Shrek spends his morning - the opposite of cleaning himself up, since he's an ogre.
• The beginning of Tangled has Rapunzel sing through her morning routine, including spending a lot of time brushing her hair.

Film - Live-Action

• Legally Blonde opens with two stories during the opening credits: Elle's friends delivering a letter to her, and Elle getting ready in the morning.
• The Devil Wears Prada offers not just Andy's morning routine but the routine of about a dozen other women as well, to contrast the way she gets ready to the way the other women do.

• The film Zodiac has this, complete with the child of the cartoonist confessing to swallowing his toothpaste. The sense of panic among the populace over the school bus threat is reflected in the cartoonist taking his kid away from the bus at the last minute and driving him to school.
• The opening scene of Turner and Hooch shows Turner's morning routine which establishes his character as an absolute neat freak.
• The film version of Grease begins with an animated montage of all of the main characters going through their morning routine to get ready for school.
• Hairspray opens with Tracy waking up, coiffing her hair with copious amounts of hairspray, and preparing for school, all while singing and dancing.
• Hairspray (2007) opens with Tracy waking up to her alarm clock, getting up and getting ready for school, then walking there while singing, dancing and greeting people who, judging by their reactions, appear to be used to seeing her every morning.
• Shaun of the Dead had one of these at the beginning, showing the protagonist going to the store across the street to get a Coke. Later on, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, the exact same routine is repeated... except now there are zombies and bloody traces around, which Shaun fails to notice and just grabs a Coke as usual.
• Mishima A Life In Four Chapters starts when it's protagonist wakes up for the last time. The prolouge is over by the time he's dressed and out the door.
• In All That Jazz, Joe Gideon's morning routine includes Vivaldi's "Concerto Alla Rustica" on cassette tape, eyedrops, smoking in the shower, taking pills with Alka-Seltzer, and finally declaring into a mirror: "It's showtime, folks!"
• Oblivion (2013) interweaves Jack's morning routine with his voice-over about the end of civilization. He takes off for work in his Bubble Ship, and then the movie's title card is shown.
• The film American Psycho opens with Patrick Bateman's everyday morning routine, showing the materialistic and sociopathic nature of our Villain Protagonist, who is putting on his Mask of Sanity.
• The Seventh Continent has lots of repetitive shots of the main family doing mundane morning activities in part one and two, emphasizing the emptiness and loneliness that they are going through.
• The Ipcress File opens with Palmer calmly getting out of bed and going through his morning rituals of getting dressed and having breakfast - all to the tune of John Barry's insanely cool theme music.
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure details Pee-Wee's morning routine, particularly the whimsical Rube Goldberg Device he uses to prepare breakfast.
• Electra Glide in Blue opens with Frank's routine, which involves putting on some music, cooking two pork chops, and cleaning his dentures, before he's murdered. We then see Wintergreen's routine, which involves having sex with his girlfriend Jolene, working out, and putting on his uniform.
• Godzilla vs. Kong opens with a rather humorous sequence showing Kong waking with a yawn, taking a leisurely stroll through his (at this point danger-free) territory, washing his head in a waterfall with a relaxed groan — hearing "Over the Mountain (Across the Sea)" by Bobby Vinton further sells it. And then we see Kong fashioning a tree into a spear and hurling it at the containment dome's fake sky in anger, with a later scene in the film showing he's made several more identical impacts during the time skip.
• Catch Us If You Can opens with Steve and his flatmates being woken up by their organ alarm clock, getting ready for the day, and exercising in a nearby playground.
• Trading Places opens with Louis Winthorpe's morning routine: getting served breakfast in bed by his butler Coleman, who shaves him with a straight razor, gets him dressed, and then drives him to work at Duke & Duke Commodities Brokers.

Literature

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy starts this way, with Arthur Dent getting out of bed and starting his routine before being interrupted by a bulldozer trying to tear his house down.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone starts off by showing the Dursleys' morning routine. ("Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work.") Although the second chapter takes place on Dudley's birthday, it's apparently a fairly typical morning for Harry as he's woken up by Aunt Petunia and forced to make breakfast.
• Seb from Haze has a strict routine that involves lying in bed for exactly four minutes after his alarm goes off. If his routine is off by even a minute, the whole day feels wrong.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow: The episode "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak" opens with a Training Montage of Oliver Queen training Roy Harper, Laurel Lance learning boxing from Ted Grant, and Malcolm Merlyn teaching Thea Queen, causing Thea to wonder what normal people do in the morning. Answer Cut to Felicity Smoak doing sit-ups before a workout video and brushing her teeth.
• The Boys (2019). In "The Big Ride" there's a Contrast Montage between celebrity superhero Starlight in her luxury apartment versus her boyfriend Hughie Campbell, now a fugitive, doing his Morning Routine in the subbasement cleaning closet of a gangbanger hideout.
• The Dexter opening sequence is Dexter's typical morning, but shot so that his normal morning routine reminds viewers at every turn of who he really is; his floss becomes a garrotte, him pulling on his shirt becomes a sheet laid over the face of a corpse, and so on. It's very effectively creepy, and won an Emmy.

• Monk did this in the opening credits for the first season. Adrian Monk's morning routine serves to demonstrate his OCD tendencies: his closet is full of identical suits, he disinfects his toothbrush with boiling water before brushing his teeth, etc.
• Given an interesting twist at the very beginning of The West Wing. We see Sam wake up in the morning. Next to a prostitute. Who is asking who POTUS is - and why he has such a funny name. It's the President of the United States.
• Lost:
  • In the first episode of season two, a stranger (later revealed to be Desmond) is going about his routine until he hears an explosion. The shock reveal is that his seemingly normal living space is actually inside the hatch that the main characters just blew up
  • In Season 5, Pierre Chang's morning routine occurs as a member of the Dharma Initiative.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The morning after demons steal everyone's voices in "Hush", Buffy goes through her morning routine in the fraternity dorm, noting only a distraught woman rushing past. It's only when she tries to talk to Willow that she realises something is very wrong.
• Angel: The A Day in the Limelight episode "Harms Way" shows Harmony's morning routine with a uniquely vampire twist — she vamps out so she can brush her teeth easier (not easy to do when you can't see yourself in the mirror) and uses her Super Strength to pick up a dresser to retrieve her shoe.
• The second season opener for Community quickly flashes through all the rooms of the various study group members as they get up. Their decor and morning routine tells us a lot about them (e.g. Jeff is exercising in an almost bare room, Shirley is cuddling with her two children, Pierce has a trippy looking water-mattress, Annie's is perfectly pretty and organised, but has bars on the window, etc.)
• Daredevil (2015):
  • The episode "Shadows in the Glass" has Wilson Fisk's morning routine done as a Rule of Threes, showing his luxurious but lonely life. The third time is different as Vanessa is now living with him.
  • "The Perfect Game" shows Agent Poindexter's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with this. Along with Undercrank to make his movements look alien and robotic, the opening scene underscores how odd Dex is by showing how everything in his apartment has to be absolutely perfect. When he's done reading the newspaper, he puts it on a perfectly squared pile of other newspapers. He rinses his coffee cup, puts it on a rack to dry, then makes sure the handle is perfectly aligned with its neighbor. When he closes the door to his apartment that causes a framed photo to fall off-kilter, so he opens the door back up to fix it.
• The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "Making Friends and Influencing People" has Simmons' morning routine now she's left SHIELD, including her getting up, exercising, choosing her outfit, going to work and saying hello to a friendly security guard at the HYDRA lab she now works at.
• The Good Place episode "Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By" opens with a montage Doug Forcett going about his morning routine set to the Mama Cass song of the same name. The editing and choice of music are a reference to the Lost episode mentioned above.
• For All Mankind:
  • The Establishing Character Moment of Margo Madison has her waking up and going through her morning routine in her own office, showing how she is Married to the Job.
  • Recycled IN SPACE! when Edward Baldwin is shown going through his daily routine while alone on the Moon base. This suggests that he's holding it together despite everything that's happened, but unwanted interuptions to his routine (like a Soviet cosmonaut infringing on 'American' territory) soon bring out the worse in him.
• The 1967 Carl Reiner sitcom Good Morning, World about two morning DJs for an LA radio station, started with a kind of stop-motion animated photo montage of Dave's alarm clock going off at 4:30, his eyes opening, stumbling around, shaving, pulling on (mismatched) socks and a suit & tie, driving (still dark out), arriving at the station, putting on a record and hailing "Good Morning, World!" into the microphone. (This was based on writers Bill Persky, Sam Denoff and William B. Williams' personal experiences on WNEW. Williams used to say "Hello, world!")
• Home Improvement: Tim and Al discuss their respective morning routines in one episode. Al's is to get up, say "Oh boy, another wonderful day of working side by side with Tim." And the next part is to consider calling in sick. Tim's is to get up, scratch and get in the bathroom.

Music

• In Rebecca Black's infamous Friday music video, she sings about getting up, getting fresh, and eating cereal. Although she does none of this.
• The Beatles, "A Day In The Life".
  Woke up, fell out of bed
  Dragged a comb across my head
  Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
  And looking up I noticed I was late
  Found my coat and grabbed my hat
  Made the bus in seconds flat.
• This also happens at the beginning of Kesha's "Tik Tok."
• Jewel's "You Were Meant For Me"
  I hear the clock, it's six a.m.
  I feel so far from where I've been
  I got my eggs I got my pancakes too
  I got my maple syrup, everything but you.
  I break the yolks, make a smiley face
  I kinda like it in my brand new place
  I wipe the spots off the mirror
  Don't leave the keys in the door
• Chop Suey! by System of a Down starts out referencing this:
  Wake up!
  Grab a brush and put on a little makeup!
• Jill Scott, "The Way"
  Woke up this morning
  With a smile on my face
  Jumped out of bed
  Took a shower, dressed
  Cleaned up my place
  Made me some breakfast, toast, two scrambled eggs, grits
  Grabbed my keys, grabbed my purse, grabbed my jacket off to work
  Beaming all the way down 3rd
• Dolly Parton, "9 to 5":
  Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen
  Pour myself a cup of ambition
  And yawn and stretch and try to come to life
  Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin'
  Out on the street the traffic starts jumpin'
  With folks like me on the job from nine to five

Video Games

• Heavy Rain lets you play through such a routine as a twisted Tutorial Level of sorts.
• The main character of the Gamecube Custom Robo gets up to go to work each morning. Getting dressed takes three seconds. But whether he gets woken up by his landlady, by cellphone, or by himself carries some amusement.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: A recurring element throughout "The Circus" is Stolas waking up in the morning to establish his mood and the current state of his life. He wakes up as a child in a bed full of toys, wakes up 25 years later groggy and alone, wakes up by being startled by Blitzo running away from a night of passion in bright daylight, and wakes up in the present day alone but in darkness.
• The subject of a Strong Bad Email where Strong Bad gets up at noon, answers an email and keeps eggs on the couch.

Webcomics

• In Yokoka's Quest, Grace is introduced with her morning routine: Her phone alarm going off (possibly for the 5th time), begrudgingly getting up, having a shower, drinking a coffee, getting dressed, and applying makeup. The first hint that she's not your average girl is the conspiracy board in the background as she's leaving the house.
• Huckleberry's first issue uses half a page to show the protagonist waking up, singing "awful shower songs", and having a big breakfast. The following issue also shows him waking up... then skips ahead to the actual plot.
• In El Goonish Shive, the Squirrel Prophet storyline ends with part of Sarah's morning routine.
• Rain:
  • Chapter 1's opening page has Rain feeding her pet rabbit Puddle, taking a shower, drying her hair, putting on her bra falsies, and then applying makeup.
  • Mirrored and subverted by Gavin in the opening page of Chapter 3, where he barely does anything besides smashing his alarm clock. Heck, he only dresses up when his mother tells him it's time.
• Sleepless Domain: Undine's morning routine is shown more than once throughout the series, subtly showing her progress as she tries to heal emotionally from a traumatic event. Just before leaving, she turns to look in the mirror and affirms to herself:
  "You are okay."

Western Animation

• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: In "The Morning Zoo", Principal Pixiefrog has a daily routine, where he'd rummage into the office, throw his hat in Mrs. Warthog's face, and give a completely disrespectful, apathetic announcement.
• Rick and Morty: In "Final Desmithation", Jennith Chunt has a morning routine, consisting of... sleeping on a bed of loose grains and dragging herself across Chinese silver grass.
• Many Spongebob Squarepants episodes begin with him getting up to his blasting foghorn alarm clock and ready for work. "Rise and Shine" focuses on Patrick's morning routine. Hilarity Ensues.
• Looney Tunes: Ralph Wolf has his morning routine, from wake-up to clocking in for work, down to a Rube Goldberg science in one of Chuck Jones' wolf/sheepdog installments.
• The Shaun the Sheep opening credits show a rooster crowing, and then Shaun, Blitzer and the Farmer all getting up and getting ready for the day, with the Farmer shaving, Blitzer putting on deoderant and Shaun blow drying his wool, then Blitzer standing to attention as the Farmer leaves the farmhouse, and getting hit with the door, while Shaun leads the other sheep in aerobics, and finally Blitzer grabbing a cup of tea while the Farmer unlocks the barn and the flock immediately start acting like normal sheep. Two variations on the scene also appear in The Movie.
• TrollHunters: Jim's first appearance shows the busy morning routine of a homemaker. Waking up at 6 AM, he dashes around the house cleaning stains, changing light bulbs, expertly cooking breakfast and caring for his mother, packing lunches... and ends up being Late for School.
• Many of the Wallace & Gromit films (particularly The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit) has Wallace being woken up and prepared for the day by one of his Rube Goldberg Devices.
• Around the World with Willy Fog opens with Fog getting up on the morning of October 2 1872. He is shown doing some stretching exercises, then making a cup of coffee and deciding (after one sip) that it needs "precisely two more drops of milk", which he promptly adds. (Normally, making Fog's morning coffee would be his butler's job, but Fog has just fired his butler, though he hires Rigodon as a replacement that very morning, unknowingly hiring Rigodon's friend Tico at the same time.) This scene establishes that Fog is very particular, especially when it comes to punctuality, and its very ordinariness provides a contrast with the adventure he will shortly be embarking on.

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Wait, why do they brush their teeth before they have breakfast? Food tastes better that way.