Nap-Inducing Speak

"It put this reviewer in a deep sleep. And I awoke that I was spared attending the aging matinee idol's ranting and posturing."

— Oliver Larding on Edward Lionheart's acting, Theatre of Blood

Sometimes a speaker, be it a speaker delivering a speech, or just a person conversing, is so boring or uninteresting that the people listening to them can't stay awake.

This trope is used to drive home just how boring the speaker is being. It's often played for laughs, especially when the speaker fancies themself to be interesting or profound. It usually, but not always, occurs when the speaker is delivering a long monologue.

In general, the speaker isn't aware that people are falling asleep on her at first. Sometimes this fact will be revealed to the audience but not to the speaker, as a way to clue the audience into the irrelevance of what the speaker is saying. Other times, the speaker and the audience will discover the listeners' sleepy state together (often in the form of a sudden loud snore).

Upon discovering what has happened, the speaker may magnanimously cover his sleepy victim with a blanket or tuck them into bed.

Oftentimes the speaker is a Windbag Politician or The Bore. Can result in Asleep in Class. The Principal's endless boring speech in the entrance or graduation ceremony is an almost obligatory joke in Japanese high-school comedies. Related to Long Speech Tea Time, but this trope is about characters unintentionally falling asleep on the speaker rather than deliberately ignoring them.

This trope is not the same thing as a lullaby, which is a deliberate attempt to lull someone to sleep (and thus carries none of the embarrassment for the singer that this trope carries for the speaker).

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Examples

Advertising

• Parodied in a Priceline commercial featuring Kaley Cuoco. When she starts giving one of these, the computer she uses to sell travel ideas engages sleep mode. Kaley snidely responds "Oh, am I boring you? Hello?"
• In an ad for Progressive, Flo's sister summons her to her home with a text saying she wants her to come over and talk about insurance. When she gets there, her sister is wearing Flo's nephew in a pouch. Flo starts talking about insurance and she tells her "Keep saying your words." As she completes her next sentence, the baby stops crying and nods off and her sister closes the doors. "Shhhhhhh. Sleeping baby."
  Flo: [outside the closed doors] I love you too!

Anime & Manga

• Bikini Warriors: In the 7th OVA, Black Knight decides to tell the heroes the story of how she came to this world despite them saying they don't care about her backstory. When she is done, everyone, including her companion Necromancer, has fallen asleep.
• Dragon Ball: Man-Wolf attacks Jackie Chun and goes on a long rant about why he hates him. Jackie gets so bored he says he can barely stay awake.
• In Jormungand, this happens to Tojo when he tries to explain to his comrades the significance of the Defense Intelligence Headquarters' SR unit. Unfortunately, his talk made Jonah fall asleep. He was later criticized for the long speech that also tried to make the others doze off.
• In One Piece, when Jimbei tells Luffy and co a 7-chapters long Exposition, Luffy (in his usual fashion) is revealed to be sleeping at the end.
• Vlad Love: Mitsugu tries to donate her blood, but the nurse lectures her that her blood is unsuitable. Mitsugu falls asleep, causing the nurse to slap her.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In Season 5 episode 29, Careful S. gives a speech for Doctor H. that goes on for three hours. By the end, he finds that the robots who were listening to his speech took the time to get some sleep, with one commenting that this is the first time he's gotten a good sleep uninterrupted.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who: Used for Comedic Sociopathy in "Beneath the Viscoid" when the Master, posing as the Doctor, threatens to put himself to sleep while giving a Patrick Stewart Speech. He quickly blames his yawn on exhaustion.

Comic Books

• Ended up being averted in one story of 91:an Karlsson. Furir Rickard Revär intends to put his men through one of these meant to break them by forcing them to listen to a lecture from one of the most infamous bores around. However, said bore ends up being late, and with the soldiers already getting angry and irritated, being the coward he is, the bore decides to put himself on the soldiers' good side by allowing them to watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day instead. Suffice to say, Revär is not happy when he finds out.
  "You were supposed to have a miserable evening, and I am gonna make bloody sure you get one!!"
• Asterix in Switzerland features an assembly of chieftains who take turns making long-winded speeches while the others sleep peacefully. Our heroes try to hide from pursuing Roman soldiers by pretending to be asleep as well.
• In Bone, Fone Bone's favorite book is Moby Dick. Any time he tries to read one of his favorite passages from it, his audience immediately falls asleep (unless it's the rat creatures, who find his reading voice debilitatingly painful). At one point, they even weaponize it by having Fone Bone read out a passage in order to knock out an attacker.
• One Superman one-shot starring Mister Mxyzptlk has him taking down an enemy from an even tougher dimension by baiting them into a copy of The Zzzandman, where a parody of Morpheus quickly puts them to sleep with a long, boring fairy-tale.

Comic Strips

• Beetle Bailey: Beetle himself is a champion napper who might fall asleep during anyone's speech. That aside, the General's speeches sometimes bore people to sleep. With Chaplain Staneglass, it's a minor Running Gag and Exaggerated Trope, so his sermons can even put wildlife to sleep. Combining these elements makes it even worse: When the Chaplain tries to talk to Beetle about his tendency to fall asleep during sermons, Beetle falls asleep at the start of the talk, and when the Chaplain and the General have a chat, both fall asleep.
• Inverted in one Calvin and Hobbes strip. Calvin decides to count all the rocks he can find. Next panel he's up to a billion and one. Then he wakes up since it was All Just a Dream.
  Calvin: Wow, I bored myself awake.
• In one Dilbert strip, Dogbert shows Dilbert the comic book he's making, "The Adventures of Boron: The Most Boring Man in the Universe", in which Boron (who looks like Dilbert) slays the entire marketing department by explaining asynchronous protocols. Dilbert is annoyed and starts explaining why asynchronous protocols are important — and Dogbert promptly falls asleep.
• Garfield:
  • Happens frequently when Jon tells stories to Garfield about his boyhood on the farm. During one week of strips Garfield has insomnia and is trying to get to sleep, but can only actually fall asleep when Jon does this. Later invoked by Garfield when he gets insomnia again, he actually goes to Jon and tries to get him to do this.
  • When Garfield has a hard time sleeping in the May 2, 2022 strip, he tunes in to a boring program instead of going to Jon to remedy it.
    Announcer: And now, a 4-hour documentary on the history of certified public accounting.
• Invoked in a The Muppets comic strip when Statler can't sleep at night so he asks Fozzie for a video of his last monologue.
• De Rechter: In one comic, the Lawyer practices his speech in front of the mirror. Then his own reflection falls asleep, much to his dismay.

Fan Works

• The Discworld of A.A. Pessimal develops the canonical witch-skill of pig-boring. This is a humane form of slaughtering animals that consists of a suitably trained Witch speaking or reading to the animals in such a monotone voice that they eventually lose the will to carry on living, sink into sleep, and die out of sheer tedium. A witch from the Discworld's "South Africa" discovers that reading the Stock Exchange figures, in the most monotonous voice she can manage, despatches the animals three times faster.
• Joked about in Gym Leader Wiki. Erika is narcoleptic. While being a guest question teller on one of Blaine's shows, she fell asleep. Blaine joked that the contestants were boring her.
• This The Owl House fanart has Amity falling asleep during a sleepover while listening to Gus' book, much to his chagrin.

Films — Animation

• In A Goofy Movie, some of the students start dozing off while Principal Mazier gives his speech, particularly when he says "we don't want to waste our vacation sleeping..."
• Leo: Summer tends to do this whenever she lets herself ramble on and on about things, to the point where anyone else listening to her rambling will try to tone her out, be bored out of their skulls, and fall asleep (even characters in a movie she's watching aren't immune). This gets weaponized in the climax, when Summer uses her rambling to bore a persistent alligator to the point of exhaustion.
• Though Katie's heartfelt speech in The Mitchells vs. the Machines is anything but to the audience, PAL can't seem to stay out of sleep mode due to how boring she thinks it is. Everyone's a critic, it seems, especially foul-mannered AI.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Dr. Robotnik's long-winded speech — about how the Robot Factory in The Land of Darkness needs to be shut down or there will be a massive explosion — puts everyone (the President, Princess Sara, Sonic, Tails, even his own robots) to sleep. He wakes them up by popping his demonstration orb.

Films — Live-Action

• In After Hours, Kiki falls asleep and starts snoring while Paul is rubbing her shoulders and telling her a story about being burned.
• Inverted in The Big Green: During one of Miss Montgomery's lessons, the class decides to show her she's wasting her time trying to teach them by all of them faking snoring sounds.
• Blazing Saddles. After Bart finishes telling Jim his life story, Jim snores because he's fallen asleep. Bart says "Always like to keep my audience riveted."
• Ben Stein has made an entire cinematic career out of playing such characters, starting with his role as... anyone? anyone? ...the economics teacher in... anyone? anyone? ...in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: When Indy and Mutt discuss their respective relationships with missing professor Harold Oxley, Mutt comments that he was great to have around because Ox's long academic monologues would put him to quickly put him to sleep when he was having trouble going to bed as a child.
• The stinger in Iron Man 3 reveals that Tony Stark has been unburdening himself by narrating the entire story to Bruce Banner — and that Bruce had been asleep through most of it.
• J-Men Forever. A scene in which a roomful of military brass are subjected to Knockout Gas is Gag Dubbed as an all-night 'bull session' that puts them all to sleep.
• Induced in Man on the Moon, which includes a portion based on Andy Kaufman's real reading of The Great Gatsby to an audience who assumed he was going to do some comedy skits. Those people who actually stayed through the whole thing are shown yawning and stretching to get up as he finishes the book.
• In The Master of Disguise, during the historical montage of the Disguisey family, Abraham Lincoln was a boring campaign speaker causing the audience to fall asleep. An ancestor in disguise helps him get elected president by performing a dance.
• In Mrs. Doubtfire, a cameraman filming a children's television show begins nodding off (and the screen shifts for a second) because the host is so boring.
• The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear: Near the end, Dr. Meinheimer finally presents his environmentally-friendly recommendations for an energy policy... and promptly causes everyone to fall asleep. Inverted a little later, when he's given a trashy pornographic novel to read to them, and everyone promptly wakes up.
• Michael Jordan delivers a never-say-die speech to the morose Looney Tunes at halftime of the Ultimate Game in Space Jam. The result puts every 'toon to sleep except Bugs Bunny, who remarks, "Great speech, Doc. You had them riveted."
• In the 1979 Disney comedy Unidentified Flying Oddball, a NASA astronaut travels back in time to the days of King Arthur, and tries to explain how he got there by describing everything that's going to happen between the discovery of America and when he first blasted off. His long rambling lecture only confuses the King and puts his court to sleep until Merlin loses his temper and suggests they Burn the Witch!
• In Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, Georgie, who suffers from severe insomnia, has his long-suffering accountant Irwin read him the quarterly earnings report because it's the only way he can get to sleep.

Jokes

• General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev is on the third hour of a speech to the Party Congress when the KGB arrest several American spies in the audience. Brezhnev congratulates them, but wants to know how they were able to identify the spies. The KGB reply, "Comrade General Secretary, as you yourself have often stated, the enemy never sleeps."

Literature

• The Bible: Falling asleep in church is practically as old as the church itself. In The Book of Acts, the combination of a late night, warm lights, and Paul's preaching sends a young man off to sleep... and right out of the third-story window where he's sitting. He gets better.
• Bored of the Rings: When Frito and Spam first meet Goddam, he starts telling them a boring hard luck story. Spam immediately falls asleep, and Frito has to keep himself awake by slapping himself in the face. Goddam continues with his story and Frito falls asleep too.
• During an important Cadre meeting in The Cold Moons, the lazy leader Eldon falls asleep partway through.
• The Discworld has the witch-skill of pig-boring, a humane form of slaughtering animals that consists of a suitably trained Witch speaking or reading to the animals in such a monotone voice that they eventually lose the will to carry on living, sink into sleep, and die out of sheer tedium.
• The Epic of Gilgamesh: After Gilgamesh makes an epic journey to meet him and try to gain immortality, Utnapishtim promises to make him immortal if he can stay awake for seven days. Utnapishtim decides to tell the story of how he survived The Great Flood. Gilgamesh falls asleep while listening and fails the test.
• Harry Potter:
  • Professor Binns, the History of Magic teacher, is so boring that students routinely sleep during his class. He can't remember his students' names, and the only clue that he may have noticed that he's dead (continuing to lecture as a ghost) is his entering and leaving the room through the blackboard. He's thus really surprised when Hermione actually asks him a question in the second book, as it's the first time in a while that he's seen a student react to anything he's said.
  • Professor Trelawney apparently isn't too far behind on the boring scale. When Harry admits to Dumbledore that he fell asleep during one of her classes, Dumbledore is quite understanding.
• "Officer Buckle and Gloria": The students of the Napville schools don't find Officer Buckle's pre-Gloria safety talks very interesting and tend to fall asleep while he's giving them.
• In Scrapped Princess, this happens when Zeferis tries to explain the reasoning behind her and Natalie's actions against Shanon and the others, and her resulting conflict of interests, to Pacifica who just doesn't get it. This is because her explanation consisted of Technobabble set to holographic imagery, so Pacifica fails to understand any of it. Instead, it causes her to nod off and fall asleep. Zeferis even has to tell her to wake up so she can repeat it; this time, in simpler terms that Pacifica can understand.
• In The Underground Empire by James Mills, a federal agent is complaining about how difficult it is to explain the complications of the international drug trade to US politicians, who would rather just be told about a Big Bad they can hate. In one case, a senator actually fell asleep during his presentation.

Live-Action TV

• An episode of Bizaardvark involves a teacher who constantly bores everyone to sleep, even if he's teaching a class on dinosaurs. He's actually aware of the problem, having been fired from all his previous teaching posts because of it. He decides to give up teaching and start making sleep-aid tapes. Amelia notes that he's going to do fine.
• The Cry of Mann: Jouglat pours his heart and soul out to Agent Martinez, who responds by going to sleep in the middle of his monologue.
• Family Ties: During his Falling-in-Love Montage with a music student he's tutoring, Alex can be seen droning on about economics while she's dozing off.
• In the Full House episode "Crimes and Michelle's Demeanor", Danny, Uncle Jesse, and Joey try everything to get Michelle to go to sleep, but nothing works. Eventually, Danny gives Michelle a lecture on the importance of sleep, and she promptly falls asleep. This is brought up towards the end of the episode, when Michelle gets punished for the first time after bringing her kiddie pool into the kitchen.
  Danny: Listening to me talk is not punishment, although it does seem to help you go to sleep.
• The Goodies: In "Scatty Safari", the Goodies suggest kidnapping a famous stand-up comedian during his act after everyone falls asleep, but it's pointed out that the last time they tried that trick, they fell asleep too.
• Invoked in Leverage. In one episode where the team gets arrested by Col. Vance, and old acquaintance of Eliot's, he starts going down everything he could charge them with until he gets to Parker, who he finds asleep. Eliot comments that she gets bored easily. Turns out a minute later that she wasn't actually asleep, she was just getting out of her handcuffs.
  Col. Vance: [while arresting the team] Parker here...
  Parker: [snores]
  Vance: Is she asleep?
  Eliot: She bores easy.
• Leverage: Redemption: While Fake Nate/Milton isn't able to hold a candle to Nate Ford's ability to plan heists, he does have the ability to recite bureaucratic regulation in such excruciating detail that anyone listening to it will fall asleep. This proves incredibly useful to the team and eventually lands him a position helping out the sub-teams mentioned in the first episode.
• Lizzie McGuire: On a school camping trip that Lizzie's mom Jo is chaperoning for, she takes the girls group on a hike and begins reading from the nature manual when they spot a specific type of bird. The scene then switches to B-plot of Matt and Sam at home, and when it cuts back to the camping trip, the group are all asleep as Jo finishes reading about the bird. The inner animated Lizzie segment shows her and said bird snoring against each other.
• Inverted on at least two occasions in M*A*S*H:
  • In "Henry, Please Come Home", Henry gives an impromptu acceptance speech after being awards the Special Citation of Merit for the efficiency rate at the 4077th cracking 90%. Hawkeye pretends to nod off during Henry's speech, though Trapper still nudges him.
  • In "O.R.", Frank goes into another one of his little mini-rants, to which Trapper remarks, "Keep talking, Frank. I could use the sleep."
• Season 4 of The Masked Singer has a Running Gag of panelist Ken Jeong rambling on who he thinks the Giraffe contestant is, but one episode exaggerates it by having the Giraffe and panelists Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger lie down to sleep as Ken goes on, the show cut to a commercial break, then returning with Ken still rambling.
• Mr. Bean: In one episode, Mr. Bean tries desperately to stay awake during a sermon at church.
• The Professionals: In "The Female Factor", as Doyle starts saying, "When I was in the Drug Squad...", his partner Bodie pretends to fall asleep on the spot.
• Rowan Atkinson Live: In "It Started With a Sneeze", Atkinson plays a church parishioner who tries to stay awake. Reused in the Mr. Bean sketch mentioned above.
• When Nicky expresses interest in becoming a school principal during the Saved by the Bell: The New Class episode "Private Peterson", Mr. Belding escorts Nicky into his office to tell him about how he became one. One Gilligan Cut later, Mr. Belding, unaware that Nicky had fallen asleep during his spiel, finishes his speech by loudly closing a book, waking up Nicky, who notes to himself that the speech lasted for 3 hours and 27 minutes. Near the end of the episode, Liz asks Mr. Belding how he became a principal, and the scene ends with Mr. Belding ushering her into his office, heavily implying that she'll go through what befell Nicky earlier.
• In one episode of Scrubs, a patient keeps getting light-headed and passing out, but it only happens when he yawns. Dr Cox, trying to prove a point, orders JD to tell him a story. Halfway through the first sentence, the patient falls over. Halfway through the second sentence, Dr. Cox falls over.
• Played with in Sesame Street regarding Professor Hastings. His lectures are so boring that he himself falls asleep while giving them.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Schisms", Riker interrupts Data's poetry reading "Ode to Spot" with a snore. (It's not entirely because of Data's poetry; Riker hasn't been getting a good night's sleep lately for reasons revealed in the episode.)
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: In the episode "Graduation", Cody's valedictorian speech puts all of the attendees to sleep.
• Sometimes the end result of an energy vampire feeding in What We Do in the Shadows (2019) is the victim becoming drained and lethargic if they don't pass out altogether. Colin Robinson deliberately cultivates a persona of being a Troll and The Bore to feed. Other energy vampires have similar tactics of obnoxiously indulging in long winded tangents on niche topics.
• In the Yes, Minister episode "The Devil You Know", this is why the Minister for Employment is going to be dismissed.
  Sir Arnold: He keeps falling asleep in Cabinet.
  Sir Humphrey: I thought they all did.
  Sir Arnold: Yes, but not while they're actually talking.

Music

• The Everly Brothers song "Wake Up Little Susie" describes the narrator's predicament after he and Susie fall asleep at a boring movie. After waking up, they realize that nobody will believe that there's an innocent explanation for being out hours after Susie's curfew.

Mythology

• Classical Mythology: Hermes was once ordered to kill Argus, but Argus is almost impossible to sneak up on because his body is covered with eyes, and normally, only half of them close when he sleeps. Hermes approached him and told a boring story, so boring that Argus fell asleep. He continued talking until all of his eyes closed, then Hermes killed him.

Podcasts

• The podcast Sleep With Me invokes this: it's meant as a cure for insomnia.

Print Media

• In a Cracked parody of Diff'rent Strokes, Arnold is feeling self-conscious about his height, so Mr. Drummond launches into a homily on how height is irrelevant to one's worth, whereupon Arnold falls asleep. Upon awakening moments later, Arnold assures his father his advice was "very wise" and that he'll be sure to remember it until next week when he has the same problem all over again.

Video Games

• Day of the Tentacle requires Hoagie to read Bernard's textbook to put a talking horse to sleep to take his dentures.
• When Cisse attempts to tell a story to Kari from Dead In Vinland, she falls asleep almost immediately. In fairness, she'd already told him she was trying to sleep. Amusingly, she recovers from extra Fatigue that night.
• Deltarune:
  • The combat system allows players the pacifist option of lulling opponents into being calm enough for the character Ralsei to cast a pacify spell and put them to sleep, taking them out of combat. A variation of the trope occurs in combat with the Rudinn enemy, players are given the option to "Lecture" him which bores all enemies and allows Ralsei to pacify each of them. Players can also use the Manual item in combat, which bores certain enemies enough that pacify can be used on them as well.
  • At the start of Chapter 2, Berdly sends Kris to sleep in class while reading a book, skipping time forward to the end of the school day.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics, there is a talk skill called "Mimic Daravon" which puts the target to sleep. Daravon is the NPC who narrates the game's tutorials and tells the backstory to the player, and it is implied that he is an instructor with a tendency to give long boring lectures.
• In Five Nights at Fuckboy's, one of Vile's skills allows him to put his enemy to sleep by discussing science (and politics) with them.
• Frederic: Resurrection of Music has a character who boasts that nobody can sit through one of his concerts without falling asleep.
• Played for Laughs in Grand Theft Auto IV. Roman is so disinterested in Niko's talking about the war and the old country in the opening cutscene he falls asleep.
  Niko: Roman! Are you sleeping, you fat fuck? Wake up!
• In Heroes of the Storm, one of Deckard Cain's Heroics is "Stay Awhile and Listen", where he tells a story that puts any enemy heroes in front of him to sleep.
• In Hogwarts Legacy, there is a side mission where your character attends History of Magic Class. This is so boring that you need to pass a quick-time event titled "stay awake", and failing it has your character pass out.
• There is an old woman in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask who tells Link one of two stories, but Link is not able to remain awake for it unless he is wearing the All-Night Mask. This can be used by the gamer to quickly jump ahead a day or two.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, when you first travel to the Old Owl Well, you encounter Grobnar Gnomehands, a recruitable gnome bard who is first seen singing and dancing in the middle of an open field in an attempt to get the attention of so-called "Wendersnavens", creatures that — according to him — are invisible and immaterial, and are "everywhere and nowhere". He then goes on to introduce himself, eventually trailing off into a long-winded story from his past. As you can guess, as soon as he gets into the details, the entire party falls asleep and wakes up a couple of hours later, just in time to see Grobnar finish his story. He remarks that you seemed very concentrated on the story, although the sounds you were making were rather strange, almost like snoring...
• Octopath Traveler II: Osvald's final boss Harvey has a skill that puts a party member to sleep called "Lecture".
• Pajama Sam in No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside: Otto the boat offers some "Gratuitous Educational Content" in the form of an overly-detailed explanation of how geysers work, which causes Sam to briefly nod off.
• A Running Gag in the Paper Mario series, where Mario will always fall asleep during the extended explanation of some plot critical detail (the player always hears the important parts). To date, only one speaker actually realized he fell asleep.
• In Chapter 5 of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 when Marle is telling the others about what she remembers about Squares and herself, Amitie ends up falling asleep. That said, it has less to do with Marle being The Bore and more with Amitie being The Ditz and not understanding any of the complexities of the story.
• In Scrapland, the Mayor of Chimera has the power to put other robots to sleep via long-winded speeches.
• In The Sims Medieval, a quest line involves "testing your endurance" by listening to Buzz Killington without falling asleep. The first time your Sim tries it they will become sleepy, but afterwards they realize they can take an Energy Potion, and when you go back after taking one you can stay awake during his speech.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth has the Optional Boss battle against Al Gore, who opens the battle with a presentation on Global Warming that will put the characters to sleep unless guarded.
• In Wild ARMs 3 your party falls asleep (even Clive) after Gallows' grandmother Halle gives a three hour lecture on the location of the World Footprint. To say she was not pleased is a huge understatement.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: The final movie in the theater, Life of Sheep, is a documentary about a man with a sheep head described as causing movie-goers to fall asleep for unexplained reasons.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: In "Ultron VS Sigma", Boomstick almost falls asleep when Wiz tries to explain what ionic energy is. Boomstick then tells him to quit with the nerd-speak.
• Homestar Runner: In "In Search of the Yello Dello", Strong Sad lures the Yello Dello into sleep by telling long, rambling stories about his life. It works so well, it knocks Homestar Runner and Pom Pom unconscious in the process. There's also a version of the cartoon with In-Character Commentaries—and Strong Sad monologues over this particular scene, making the other commentators fall asleep as well.
• Love of the S*n: Crown nearly falls asleep when Charger Block starts explaining why they shouldn't trust the Operators.
• Smash Bros. Lawl:
  • The Final Smash of The Irate Gamer is to start a videogame review that puts his enemies to sleep.
  • The Wilford Brimley assist trophy make enemies too close of him fall asleep. He also spawns healing food when he's over.

Webcomics

• In the webcomic version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Greg gets put in Mr. Peters' class for Botany. His big brother Rodrick (and even their dad when he was in school) could never stay awake in Mr. Peters' class because of how slowly and quietly he talks. When Greg starts the class, he finds out that Rodrick wasn't joking. He describes the effect of Mr. Peters' voice as "swallowing a whole handful of sleeping pills".
• Josh from A Girl and Her Fed deliberately fakes a "Sixth-Grade Geography" in order to interrupt someone who's Holding the Floor. Unfortunately for him, he misjudged the hardness of the solid oak table.
• Girl Genius: Prof. Foglio's ability to make people fall asleep with his rambling stories earns him a position at the hospital in Mechanicsburg, telling stories to rooms of patients to get them to sleep without the use of drugs.
• In this A Modest Destiny strip, an intruder is momentarily bored to sleep by an evil snake god's "who dares" speech.
  Zonkafth: I am all knowing! All powerful! All...hey, are you listening to me?
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Happens early when Vaarsuvius is telling a roomful of goblins how powerful V is and how thoroughly V will destroy them. The other party members actually decided that V must have been casting an extremely powerful area-effect sleep spell.
  • After Redcloak finishes his long explanation of his battle strategy he finds Xykon has fallen asleep — though it's largely implied Xykon was faking it to make a point.
    Xykon: Oh, sorry I just fell asleep right in the middle of that.
    Redcloak: You're a lich. You're actually physically incapable of sleeping.
    Xykon: Which should just emphasize how boring that was!
• Unsounded: When Stockyard plys Duane with prostitutes to keep him busy Duane reads dry scripture to them until they fall asleep and then sneaks out of the building.
• Doc from The Whiteboard is apparently prone enough to this that people know to prepare.

Websites

• In one Cracked article, when describing the inventor of Autotune's previous career as a petrochemical seismogeologist, the writer himself briefly falls asleep on his keyboard.

Web Videos

• The ProZD video "trying to recommend that one niche show you love" has SungWon trying to explain the Audience-Alienating Premise of Chihayafuru to his friend, only for it to put him to sleep.

Western Animation

• The 7D: In the episode "Sleepytime", it's the time when the Academy of Spookiness gives out awards for spellcasting. The award for putting the most amount of people to sleep ends up going to the presenter, because his performance as the host bored 150 people at the award show to sleep.
• In the Adventure Time episode "Card Wars", Finn can't quite stay awake through Jake's explanation of the rules of Card Wars — understandably, since this takes hours.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: The educational video about Ancient Egypt Miss Fowl puts on in "Beach Party Mummy" is an extreme example: just a few seconds listening to it puts Principal Willoughby (who's all fired up from learning the main characters cut class to explore Egypt for real) to sleep.
• In the Animaniacs episode "Valuable Lesson", Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are so bored to death by a preschool show that they all fall asleep together◊ (rather adorably).
• In the Arthur episode "Dear Adil", Arthur gets a Turkish penpal named Adil, however, after their first exchange of letter, Arthur has an Imagine Spot, where he believes his response letter to Adil will be so boring that not only does Adil fall asleep, but so does his father, his camel, and the entire city of Istanbul (to be fair, Arthur is under the wrong assumption that life in Turkey is like depicted in fiction, and that Adil owns a camel and lives in a tent). In fact, at one point, Arthur reads over a draft of one of his letters to Adil, and remarks, "Even I'm boring myself to sleep!" D.W. even cruelly remarks that Arthur read her one of the letters he was writing, and it put her to sleep.
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Last but Not Beast", Dexter and his family have difficulties figuring out what to do to stop a giant monster from destroying Tokyo. Toshi (whom Dexter was part of a foreign exchange student program with) appears before them to tell them the story of a boy who defeated a giant monster, not by fearing it, but because of the power of his heart, which brought other people together in love, repelling the monster away. Dexter, Mom, and Dad are moved by Toshi's story, and decide they need to work together to rid Tokyo of the giant monster... all the while DeeDee had fallen asleep.
• During the DuckTales (2017) episode "The Fight for Castle McDuck!", Huey is explaining to his brother Louie his plan to find the Blessed Bagpipes of Clan McDuck. Louie claims to be in a "Huze".
  Louie: That's a snooze I take while Huey explains boring nerd stuff. [fake yawns] Trademark Louie Duck.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In the episode "Future Lost", Timmy and Cosmo fall asleep whenever Wanda tries to teach them a lesson about doing the right thing. She does this to herself at the end of the episode after Timmy and Cosmo both fall asleep again.
• In an episode of Futurama, the entire Planet Express crew falls asleep while Hermes is giving a meeting about the rise of employee sleep during meetings.
• Played with in an episode of The Garfield Show where Jon, in an attempt to find a solution for his insomnia, falls asleep whenever Odie barks because of an accidental mistake during a hypnotic process. When Liz Wilson reads a scripted speech to him and Jon pays attention to it, he falls asleep when Odie barks; so when Liz notices nobody else is hearing her speak, she mistakenly thinks Jon got too bored due to the speech and quits out of anger.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In the episode "Goodbling and the Hip-Hop-Opotamus", Mindy asks Principal Goodvibes why he is so boring, to which he retorts by claiming that he fights evil (in an RPG), collects rare memorabilia (Powerpuff Girls merch), and spend all night listening to music (from the apartment above his). When Mindy is shown again, he's since bored her to sleep.
• In the Hilda episode "The Troll Rock", everyone — including Hilda's mom — is bored during the slideshow at the parent-teacher conference... until the projector gets knocked over, causing everyone to gasp in horror.
• I Am Weasel:
  • A framing device in the episode "I.R. Wild Baboon" has Weasel defending himself with a reporter over a prison phone about how he was trying to film a documentary on Baboon's peculiar and constant migration habits (it turns out Baboon was annoyed by Weasel following him and was trying to get away from him). After Weasel finishes his story, Red Guy, as the reporter, wakes up.
    Red Guy: Huh? Oh, I'm so sorry, I FELL ASLEEP! [starts jotting notes] Now, you say it all started seventeen years ago?
  • In "Back to School", Weasel's lecture on the Theory of Relativity makes Teacher fall asleep.
• Kaeloo: A Running Gag is to have someone, usually Mr. Cat or Stumpy, fall asleep while someone else is talking.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Family Appreciation Day" has Diamond Tiara's father, Filthy Rich, give a presentation for Family Appreciation Day at the school about his business, Rich's Barnyard Bargains. It seems that the only people who aren't falling asleep (or looking like they're falling asleep) are the teacher Cheerilee, Diamond Tiara, Twist, and Truffle Shuffle.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: In “Super Sounds”, when invited to practice the Jazzberries’ latest song with them Herbie falls asleep from boredom. He “snores” by playing snoring noises on himself, so he could’ve been faking, but he reacts with genuine surprise (and a genuine “powering-on” noise) when awoken, so it’s equally possible that sleep-playing that is just how an anthropomorphic synthesizer would snore.
• This happens quite a few times in Rocky and Bullwinkle, but a couple of specific examples are as follows:
  • At one point in the "Jet Fuel Formula" story arc, Boris (posing as a hypnotist) manages to put Bullwinkle under in order to get from him the recipe for Grandma Moose's Fudgecake recipe, which also happens to be the world's most powerful rocket fuel. However, Boris makes the mistake of asking Bullwinkle to tell him everything he knows. Bullwinkle takes the command literally, and tells him everything he knows, nonstop, for twelve hours; Boris, Natasha, and Rocky fall asleep while listening.
  • In the "Topsy Turvey World" story arc, Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Captain Peachfuzz are in a plane that's losing fuel, and altitude, that is until Rocky finds a particular book on a shelf, "Hokey smokes! I'm looking at the Congressional Record! We have enough gas in here to fly us around the world!" Sure enough, a makeshift microphone is connected to the fuel line, and Bullwinkle basically reads the entire book into the mic, refueling the plane, and in the process, putting everyone in the plane — including the narrator — to sleep.
  • In the Fractured Fairy Tale short "Leaping Beauty", a witch curses the titular take on Sleeping Beauty to become The Bore, such a bore in fact that just talking about anything puts everyone, including Prince Charming, to sleep.
• Rolling with the Ronks!: When Flash, Walter, Mila, Mormagnon and Godzi are in danger of being eaten by a monster in "Go Your Own Way", Flash saves the day when his prattling on about his scientific lectures makes the monster fall asleep.
• In the Rugrats episode "Naked Tommy", Lou gives a long-winded speech about his life during his award ceremony at the Wombat lodge. Stu and Didi are so bored listening to it, that they fall asleep. It takes the reactions of the other audience members seeing Tommy walk around naked to wake them back up.
• The Simpsons:
  • Principal Skinner's morning PA announcements have been shown on one occasion to put the kids in class to sleep. Mrs. Krabappel uses firecrackers to wake them up.
  • Reverend Lovejoy's sermons also have a tendency to put the entire congregation to sleep.
• In South Park, the test for determining whether a child has ADD is to read The Great Gatsby to them, aloud, and then ask questions about it. Everyone who listens falls asleep, so they're diagnosed with ADD and get put on Ritalin to "cure" it.
  In Chapter 12, what kind of bottles did Miss Van Campen talk about? Anybody? Anybody? My God, these children all have ADD! [scribbles onto his notepad quickly]
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Exaggerated in "Naughty Nautical Neighbors" when Squidward plays his clarinet for Patrick. Patrick falls instantly asleep after the first note.
  • "Hall Monitor" opens with everyone except SpongeBob falling asleep during Mrs. Puff's class, with one student already snoring.
• Taz-Mania: After running out of orange juice, Hugh drives himself, Taz, and Uncle Drew to the store to get some more; along the way, he goes into detail about how orange juice is made, complete with a visual aid. Taz and Uncle Drew have fallen asleep by the time Hugh finishes his story.
• At the beginning of the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "A Quack in the Quarks", the students of ACME Looniversity fall asleep when Plucky tells tall tales about how he spent his weekend. Buster awakens when Plucky finally stops talking.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy:
  • A Running Gag in the episode "Bored of Education" has Kitty putting everyone to sleep whenever she talks about proper health. At one point, Keswick uses this on a bear neighbor of his so she can hibernate and he can use her pool.
  • Another episode has Keswick continually putting the other agents to sleep with his long boring technobabble speeches. Exaggerated when Keswick starts to give a long speech about why he isn't boring and promptly puts himself to sleep.
• In the We Bare Bears episode "Shush Ninjas", the Bears are called in to calm down a theater full of rowdy children. Grizzly gets everyone's attention and makes an epic, heartfelt speech about the communal experience of going to the movies. It works, but only because it flies right over the kids' heads and bores them to sleep.

Real Life

• Unless you are a huge fan of closing credits from either a movie or TV show or are patiently awaiting The Stinger, watching them can easily make you get bored and fall asleep.

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