Follow TV Tropes

Following

Not a Morning Person

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/I_am_up.png

"It's far too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning."

Some characters get up in the morning smiling, their hair perfectly in place, ready to face their Morning Routine with a song and the help of cute animal critters.

Then there are these characters. These are probably the night owls. They don't want to get up in the morning at all if they can help it, and when they do they wobble around as if they're some sort of zombie, often sporting bags under their eyes and Messy Hair that would devour combs whole. It's best not to talk to them in the morning, because goodness knows they'll take everything you say as an insult. From the merely lethargic to the downright dangerous, these characters are just not a morning person. No Instant Waking Skills for them.

In anime and manga, it seems to often be implied that characters are this way because they have low blood pressure. In the west, these characters are more prone to desperately need coffee in the mornings instead. Of course, coffee isn't exactly known to lower blood pressure, so both can go hand in hand.

If you Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World, you will most likely be like this. Crime-fighting always beats out sleep, for some reason. Sometimes these characters are also Heavy Sleepers in general, but not always. They may also have a tendency to kill roosters and smash alarm clocks. Then again some days you really don't want to wake up early.

Is Truth in Television, as many a troper could probably tell you. Almost always doubles with Must Have Caffeine.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • Folgers made a commercial showing what morning sunlight feels like to Not Morning People: a bunch of terrifingly upbeat glowing yellow people singing an insanely catchy song with the vaguely threatening refrain "You can sleep when you are dead!" and getting in the faces of everyone who just wants to sleep in or shower or walk to work in peace. One guy, however, manages to lope to the kitchen for some Folgers coffee, and once he has a cup, he starts smiling a little and tapping his finger to the beat of the song. The ad's tagline? "Tolerate mornings."

    Anime & Manga 
  • Aokana: Four Rhythm Across the Blue: Tobisawa Misaki suffers from low blood pressure, probably so she'll have cat naps to go with her catlike smile and meow puns.
  • Azumanga Daioh:
    • While the characters are on vacation at Chiyo-chan's summer home, Osaka wakes up and announces that she's going to wake Yukari up by banging on a frying pan. However, she's not yet fully awake herself, and the implement that she retrieves from the kitchen is a large knife, much to the shock of the other characters.
    • Yukari herself is not a morning person, often needing her mother or Nyamo to wake her up for work.
  • The Big O: Roger Smith has this problem, credited both to his character and to his late-night "negotiating". Other characters have repeatedly complained about his tendency to wake up past noon. Thankfully, Dorothy's there to play a little "Run Down" on the piano...
  • D.N.Angel: A bonus story in one volume shows Satoshi's morning routine. It says that he gets up early in the morning and spends "half an hour wandering around in a daze" before he fully wakes up and gets ready for school. Again, the cause is given as low blood pressure.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: It is tiny bit of information contained in one of the Extra chapters published with the 2nd Fanbook, after the manga ended; Tanjiro informs that Zenitsu at first had to adjust himself to the early morning routine of the Kamado family after he moved into their home at the end, since Inosuke has always been a mountain boy he didn't have the same morning issue.
  • Doraemon: Nobita Nobi. This is thanks to his daily routine; he loves to sleep at day, meaning he ends up staying up overnight, which leads to this trope.
  • Fruits Basket: Yuki, to the point that he often gets up and sleepwalks in the morning. His karate-trained reflexes are still in effect however, and he'll often swing punches at his rival in his sleep without being fully aware of it. This actually makes him more dangerous because he's not holding back while in a stupor.
  • Ghost Hunt: Naru is not good when he wakes up. Then again, it's his fault for sleeping in a van (vol. 1) and being possessed by a spirit, to which Lin forces him to sleep with a series of spells and charms in vol. 8 to 9. Needless to say, he was not in a good mood when he woke up. Lin and Masako witnessed it first hand and they'll never be the same again...
  • Girls und Panzer: Mako uses any chance she has to sleep, and nothing short of a cannon salvo will wake her up at 6 a.m. That's literally — the other girls drive their tank to her doorstep and fire off the main gun to wake her up.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya: If Kyon's sister doesn't wake him up every morning with glomps, he'd most probably be late for school.
  • Hidamari Sketch: Hiro. Particularly evident in the portrayals of the "morning exercise club" in the third season of the anime; she's the last to join as she's still fast asleep when the others have woken up.
  • Interviews with Monster Girls: Hikari. Justified in that she's a vampire with a downplayed case of Weakened by the Light, which means mornings are unpleasant (but not deadly) to her.
  • Kanon: Nayuki is this, as well as a Heavy Sleeper. She says that she got her spot on the track team because she often has to run to school in the morning.
  • Naruto: In the words of Deceptive Disciple Kabuto, Sasuke "can be a bit cranky when he wakes up." Sasuke then proceeds to blow up half the base.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Asuna is known for being bad at mornings (she gets up early on weekdays for her paper route, then sleeps in heavily on weekends).
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Misato Katsuragi has this problem, even if she has not been drinking the evening before. Well, that and the fact she's incredibly lazy when it comes to household chores. Funnily enough, the thing that gets her fully alert is... more beer.
  • Ouran High School Host Club:
    • Kyouya Ootori. He's sometimes referred to as the "Low Blood Pressure Overlord" because of it. Also, Token Mini-Moe Honey is rumored to have annihilated an entire platoon of green berets, complete with bunny shaped mushroom cloud, after a soldier woke him up too early. Of course, it may not be accurate given that the narrator is not known for his reliability.
    • According to an extra chapter in the manga, Mori becomes sociable and flirty when he's sleepy. Considering his character, it's hard to say whether or not this is being played straight.
  • Phantom Quest Corp.: A large part of Ayaka's problem is that she's a heavy drinker and, usually, the only way she can deal with the resulting hangover is to sleep it off. But since she has a business to run, her assistant, Mamoru, has to find creative ways to get her out of bed.
  • Please Tell Me! Galko-chan: Galko. One skit in episode 1 shows her energy gradually increases as the day goes on and Otako directly lampshades this trope.
  • The Prince of Tennis: Ryoma. A whole anime episode was dedicated to him sleeping in before the Saint Rudolph match and his friends trying to fill in before he gets to the courts.
  • Project A-Ko: Eiko Megami (A-ko) is a notorious oversleeper, often not waking up until Shiiko (C-Ko) is ringing her doorbell to walk to school. Making up for this often has A-Ko breaking the sound barrier to get to school on time.
  • Ranma ½: Nabiki TendĹŤ is portrayed as such, especially in the anime. It tends to be played up in fanfiction. That is probably because she often gets woken up at around the crack of dawn by the sounds of Ranma and Genma sparring. If your "alarm clock" was two guys audibly beating on each other, accompanied by insults and random battle cries, you wouldn't be particularly energetic either.
  • Sailor Moon: Usagi is notorious for being late to school (as seen in the very first episode), and one time in R, she says, "Good Morning!" to Rei only for Rei to fire back that it's actually afternoon.
  • Snow White with the Red Hair: Once Obi recruits himself as Zen's newest aide, Zen and the others discover that Obi's nocturnal habits lead to Obi being very slow to wake and he is usually late without Mitsuhide or Kiki going out of their way to get him up. When he starts getting up and ready before them after Zen asks him for a favor they become concerned he's thinking about leaving the group.
  • Toradora!: It's justified with Ryuuji's mother because she works as a late night bar hostess.
  • Tsukiuta: Hajime, despite being the mature and responsible leader of his unit. His partner Haru usually has to wake him up. And the one time he's up before Haru gets there, it's worrying.

    Comedy 
  • Lewis Black:
    I know this because I took economics. And I'd explain it to you, but I flunked that course. It wasn't really my fault; they taught it at eight o'clock in the morning, and there is absolutely nothing you can learn out of one bloodshot eye. After I flunked the first two tests, I grabbed the professor by the throat and said, "WHY ARE YOU TEACHING THIS SHIT AT THIS UNGODLY HOUR? ARE YOU TRYING TO KEEP IT A SECRET?"

    Comic Books 
  • Batman, since he fights crime at night, tends to sleep in late and doze off during work meetings. This fits his cover as Idle Rich, so no-one thinks twice about it.
  • Cerebus the Aardvark: Getting out of bed is a massive struggle for Jaka's husband Rick, and even when he's finally up and moving he's slow and sluggish, with a tendency to drift right back to sleep as soon as he comes to a stop. Jaka can wake him in a hurry with a "wet willy", but he's back out soon after.
  • LĂ©onard le GĂ©nie: Basile. When left to his own devices, he will wake up at half past five... in the afternoon, and considers anything before noon the middle of the night. Leonardo tends to spend a lot of time and resources on just getting him out of bed at the beginning of every episode.
  • Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman: Reid has a whole wastebasket full of alarm clocks he's destroyed in his fury at being woken.
  • Robin (1993): Tim's late nights out as Robin mean he's loath to wake up in time to get to school on time in the mornings, and when there isn't a responsible adult making sure he does he's gotten to school late before. He also falls asleep in class often.
  • Scott Pilgrim qualifies, if only because there isn't much morning, if any, left by the time he wakes up. In fact, the one time he does get up early, it's the first sign that something is wrong.
  • Strangers in Paradise: Katchoo is not a huge fan of waking up before 10, resulting in Ring-Ring-CRUNCH! becoming a Running Gag.
  • Suicide Squad: Captain Boomerang. His reaction to being wakened before dawn for a mission was "Why have I got to be up before the sun? I ain't going to make the flowers grow!"
  • Emma Frost of the X-Men. She has specifically instructed her students (who, keep in mind, are knowingly being taught by a group of fugitives) to never wake her. There's also her hilarious sleeping position, described by the artist as "one of those totally epic destructive toddler sleeps where she destroys the bed in the process."

    Comic Strips 
  • Blondie (1930): Dagwood. A Running Gag involves him oversleeping and being late for his carpool.
  • Calvin and Hobbes:
    • Calvin. In a particularly memorable strip, his mother drags him out to the bus stop still clinging to his bedding. This trope is also inverted sometimes: if it's a weekend or a holiday and Calvin wants to watch cartoons or play outside, he'll leap out of bed at the crack of dawn. His frustrated parents occasionally remark that just once, they'd like to see him manage this on a school day. It has less to do with the common use of this trope and more with the fact that Calvin hates school with the passion only a six-year old can muster.
    • Dad is a Morning Person, but Mom most definitely is not, and both Calvin and Mom treat Dad's hobby of getting up at 6 AM on vacation and weekends to exercise or fish with scorn.
  • FoxTrot: Roger Fox, the father of the household, tends to be... rather incoherent before his morning coffee. In one strip, he remarks on the irony of needing a cup of coffee to make a cup of coffee after trying to put several pieces of the coffee maker together backwards and finally pouring the water from the pot into the toaster.
    Roger: [shuffles into the kitchen, eyes still closed] Coooooffeeee...
    Andy: The pot's over by the fridge.
    Roger: [wanders aimlessly] Coooooffeeee...
    Andy: [points] The fridge is over there.
    Roger: [continues to wander aimlessly] Coooooffeeee...
    Andy: See that thing with the little red light?...
    Jason: [as he and Peter watch the whole spectacle] Morning of the living dead.
    Roger: [off panel] Glug, glug, glug...
    Andy: [off panel] Roger, that's the answering machine!
  • Garfield is often shown to be like this. Lampshaded by the following exchange:
    Garfield: I'm not a morning person.
    Jon: Good afternoon, Garfield.
  • A Heart of the City comic deals with this. Heart comes down and complains that she hates morning people like Mrs. Angelini, who responds that it's noon.
    "Ain't summer vacation grand?"
  • Pondus had a strip where the main character's wife has to resort to drastic measures to wake her near-comatose husband up in the morning so he won't be late for work; using duct tape to rip off a stretch of leg hair. THAT got him up in a hurry.
    Pondus: AW-AKE!! AW-A-HAAKE!!
  • Sabrina at See-CAD: Sabrina falls asleep in the shower, complains about drinking decaf coffee and ends up falling asleep in class.
  • Zits: Jeremy, as amply demonstrated by the image above. For those who are not morning people, what he is describing is familiar — that time between being rudely awakened by an alarm, and actually being able to get out of bed. In another strip, he asks his mother to sign a note reading "Please excuse Jeremy from this morning's classes due to excessive gravity." In yet another, he is shown mowing the lawn in the dead of night, fully alert.

    Fan Works 
  • In Zootopia fan fics, Nick is commonly depicted as very sluggish to wake up and needing a good cup of coffee to get fully functional. The former is often Played for Laughs to make him a foil to Judy.+
  • AbraxasVerse: It's mentioned in the (non-canon) Abraxas: Empty Fullness Halloween Episode "Come Little Monster, I'll Take Thee Away" that Rodan is very grouchy early in the morning and he hates getting up.
  • Calvin and Hobbes fanfiction Attack of the Teacher Creature: Calvin's dad is this.
    Moe: That's the Teacher Creature's home! Let's just back away slowly.
    Dad: There's no such thing as a Creature.
    Mom: You are when you wake up in the morning.
  • Child of the Storm has Carol Danvers, who responds to wake up calls with mumbled profanity and has to be tricked out of bed — specifically, by Jean-Paul claiming that he's got pictures of a shirtless Rhodey or by a realisation of what might have happened the previous night (even if it didn't). Even afterwards, she's reduced to monosyllables and grumpy Buffy Speak.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction A Glass of Wine: Neither Shinji nor Asuka appreciate being woken up early every morning by the noise from the building works.
    Asuka buried her face in the pillow and waited for the city quake to cease. She had half an intention to go back to sleep when it was over, though she knew that wouldn't be the case. She was awake now and the damage was done. Still, she waited until it was over to get up, just so the city wouldn't be the thing that got her up in the morning. She wouldn't give it the satisfaction.
  • PokĂ©mon GO fanfiction Guys Being Dudes: Arlo isn't exactly coherent when he wakes up on Go Fest Day 1 and it's stated that it will take 2 hours for him to become fully sapient.
  • Infinity Train/PokĂ©mon: The Series crossover fanfiction Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily: Gladion is not a morning person, muttering that "mornings are evil" and is implied that Umbreon usually has to wake him up via attacking him with Dark Pulse.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction Just Another Morning: Now that the war is over, Katara likes spending her mornings sleeping in. Which necessitates the need for Aang to tickle her feet to give her some encouragement to wake up for an important meeting.
  • RWBY fanfiction Let Us Be Your Poison: Yang is not a morning person. Even when she went to Signal, she would always end up late no matter how many alarms her sister and father used.
  • The Loud House fanfiction:
    • Mall Rats: Lincoln Loud is confused as to Leni waking up energetic, since she usually isn't a morning person without coffee.
    • A Load of Bulk: Leni again, wakes up with "tired eyes".
    • Birthday Breakfast: The twins get up in the morning and yawn, stumble, and have "tired eyes".
  • PokĂ©mon Reset Bloodlines: In a sidestory, the Kimono Sisters of Ecruteak are not amused when early bird Falkner wakes them up at 6 am.
  • Arrow fanfiction Together: Laurel is so out of it when she wakes that she forgets she was dead yesterday; and is confused when her presence is met with shock.
  • In Hellsister Trilogy, Supergirl really hates waking up early.
    Linda woke, feeling rested but somewhat woozy, and chalked it up to her usual morning blahs. Supergirl or not, she hated rolling out of bed at 7 a.m.
  • I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What?: When her new raven familiar enters Karjn's tent in the morning, it finds her "snoring noisily, with her arms and legs pointing in the cardinal directions, her blanket half-on half-off like an extremely localized windstorm had just blasted its way through her beddings... and a figurative birds nest on her head". She is not happy when the bird decides to wake her up, either.
  • In Tales of the Emperasque, Lion El'Jonson is rather grumpy and plagued by the biggest headache in Imperium's history after waking up. Justified as he has just slept for ten thousand years.
  • A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: Artemis, according to his brother. It's to be expected, given Artemis is generally nocturnal. Luna is the same way.
  • This SUGURI fan fic portrays the title character of all people as this, often spending the first few hours of the morning in a sleepy daze and unable to form proper syllables out of tiredness. Then again, it also states that if there's a catastrophe going on outside she'll instantly wake up to go out and deal with it immediately.
  • The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Night Blade demonstrates it, only getting up early because he's meeting his marefriend. He admits to it in the sequel Picking up the Pieces, and tells Vix-Lei that it's one major difference between he and Page.
  • Ash agrees with Nurse Joy's disdain for mornings in Essence. Officer Jenny does not, which is another reason she doesn't get along with Joy.
    Nurse Joy: Yeah... things don't usually pick up until around noon. Apparently the world hates mornings.
    Officer Jenny: It's such a shame. Seizing the morning is one of the best ways to improve one's productivity.
  • A Moon and World Apart: Sunset hates waking up early, and as seen in chapter 11, Spike has to literally drag her out of bed when she's being particularly stubborn about it.
  • Infinity Train: Star Finder: Stella Zhau usually wakes up at 12 PM, so her mother is surprised when she wakes up at 10 AM when she was ready to go into a business trip.
  • As shown in "Motherhood" (a one-shot from the After the Jungle-series by Flowerprincess 11), even though Helga gets up early all the time (at least since she and Arnold got married), she clearly doesn't like having to get up so early and is pretty grumpy until she has that first cup of coffee in the morning.

    Films — Animation 
  • Princess Anna in Frozen is shown having a lot of trouble waking up for Elsa's coronation day, or, as she mumbles in her semi-conscious state, "corneration". She also wakes up sporting comically disheveled bedhead. Frozen Fever shows her the same way on the morning of her own birthday.
  • WALL•E: Played for Laughs to show just how human-like the title robot has become. When he wakes up in the morning, his battery is low and he stumbles around his trailer much like a person would: groaning, arms drooped, running into things, and fumbling for his "shoes" (his caterpillar tracks). He's not really "awake" until he has a breakfast of sunlight.
  • In Turning Red, Mei is shown to take a few minutes to fully wake up such that she doesn't notice she has transformed into a giant red panda in her sleep until she sees herself in the bathroom mirror.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The opening shots of Shaun of the Dead feature dozens of Londoners shuffling zombie-like to work, pretty much all of them looking like they're not morning people. The actual zombies blend in rather well at first.
  • Back to the Future: Biff Tannen is implied to be this. Whenever George McFly offers to go to Biff's home with the reports for Biff to copy and pass them as his own, Biff tells George not to show up too soon for this very reason.
  • In Freaky Friday (2003), Tess has so much trouble waking up Anna, that it takes Harry blowing an air horn to get her out of bed.
  • In the film Sanjuro, the character is shown to not be a morning person. Not even the time of day matters. When he first appears, it's the middle of the night and he's tired, dishevelled, yawning, scratching, stretching... the works. It's also shown in the middle of the day when he's rudely awakened repeatedly by the sidekicks slamming the door.
  • In Fly Away, Jeanne has to practically drag Mandy out of bed most mornings.
  • Jeffrey and Philip from You and Your Stupid Mate consider 11 AM to be getting up early. They are not pleased to have to meet Rossiter at 7.
  • The Suicide Squad. Ratcatcher II is introduced asleep in her cell when Amanda Waller turns up to 'volunteer' her for Task Force X.
    Waller: Cazo, will you be joining us?
    Cleo: I just woke up. I don't function well early in the morning.
    Waller: My deepest apologies for disturbing you.
    Cleo: Hmm, it's all right.
    Waller: [slamming on the door] Get your ass out here!
    Peacemaker: [scoffs] Millennials.
  • Zathura: Lisa is introduced lying in bed well past the break of dawn, looking relatively disheveled, and behaving irritably when her dad wakes her up to give her babysitting orders. Afterward, she goes back to bed for the next several scenes and sleeps through the house being launched into space. This is apparently normal for her, given how her brothers beg their dad not to wake her up on their behalf and are nervous about waking her up themselves.

    Literature 
  • Black Jewels: Jaenelle Angelline is a delightful person before her first cup of coffee. Not.
  • Nick Mallory in Diana Wynne Jones's Deep Secret and The Merlin Conspiracy is very much not a morning person. Not only is he grumpy, he can't even speak coherently or open his eyes until he's had four cups of coffee. In the latter book, it's shown that he can wake up... he just feigns being really out of it so no one will bother him until he's less grumpy. Apparently, this is based off of Jones' friend Neil Gaiman's actual morning routine.
  • Running gag in the Aubrey-Maturin books. Aubrey sleeps easily and wakes fresh as a daisy, while there's at least one book where Dr. Maturin is woken up to perform a vital surgery on a dying patient. His response? Cussing, throwing things and then refusing to go anywhere near the sick bay until coffee had been provided.
  • Stephanie Plum considers five in the morning to be the middle of the night. Most of her associates disagree, to her disgust.
  • In Child of the Hive, Will is oblivious to all of Alex's attempts to encourage him to wake up. When Alex then phones Ben, his reaction is, "Bugger off, 'm hungover."
  • In The Hunting of the Snark, this is one of the signs by which snarks can be known:
    Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
    That it carries too far, when I say
    That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
    And dines on the following day.
  • Bertie in Jeeves and Wooster is like this, complete with Must Have Caffeine. In his Establishing Character Moment, he describes being rudely woken up "in the small hours" — at half-past eleven. If you insist on waking him before noon, don't try talking to him until he's had his tea and a bit of breakfast — he's pretty patient after that, but not before.
    If I ever breakfasted at half past eight I should walk on the Embankment, trying to end it all in a watery grave.
    • Also from the ranks of Wodehouse, there's Mike from the Psmith series:
      Mike was a stout supporter of the view that sleep in large quantities is good for one. He belonged to the school of thought which holds that a man becomes plain and pasty if deprived of his full spell in bed. He aimed at the peach-bloom complexion.
  • In Galaxy of Fear, Zak objects to snooping at dawn.
    "Tash, even secret Imperial plots don't get going until after breakfast."
  • A running theme of the Garrett, P.I. novels is Garrett's intense aversion to hauling himself out of bed before noon, and his crotchety housekeeper's various ways of nagging, aggravating and/or threatening him into doing so. Made more ironic by Garrett's own need to hassle the Dead Man into waking up at any hour of the day.
  • Discworld:
    • Sam Vimes shows some signs of this, expressing some irritation at being woken up at 9AM when he normally doesn't get up "until the afternoon's had the shine worn off it" at one point in Men at Arms, but that's probably acclimatisation from spending most of his adult life working the night shift. Promotion to Commander of the City Watch brings more normal working hours... for a given value of "normal", and even that ends up being a Defied Trope.
    • Defied with Arch-Chancellor Mustrum Ridcully, who, to the chagrin of his fellow wizards, is a morning person. And a night person. Sometimes he goes from one to the other without sleeping in-between.
    • In Raising Steam, we're told that Moist von Lipwig does not believe there should be two seven o'clocks in the same day.
  • Auntie Mame.
    Morning, I soon discovered, was one o'clock for Auntie Mame. Early Morning was eleven, and the Middle of the Night was nine.
  • In The Ship Who... Searched, after waking up in the morning Alex isn't fit to talk to for some hours, even if coffee makes him functional. Tia, who likes to always have someone awake and on watch, only needs three hours of sleep in a day and likes to get those in in the mornings when Alex is grouchy and incoherent.
  • Student Council's Discretion: Chizuru's difficulty with mornings is revealed and discussed in the student council joint long-distance trip to Tokyo by train (season 1 ep. 7 in anime adaptation). She's drowsy, slow, far from the usual chirpiness and seems to want to devote herself fully to non-romantic cuddling with the Student Council President rather than getting up.
  • In John M. Ford's Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet?, "Bones" McCoy reveals that he isn't much of a morning person when ordering breakfast: "Plergb hfarizz ungemby, and coffee.".
  • The Wind in the Willows: Toad is seen to be one of these when, after insisting Rat and Mole go along with him on his latest obsession, life on the road in a gypsy cart, they have to forcibly drag him out of bed.
  • Edgedancer (a novella of The Stormlight Archive): It turns out Lift is one — when Wyndle tries to wake her up because of an emergency, it takes her a good while to remember where she is, what she's been doing there and why she's asked Wyndle to wake her up.
  • Nina Tanleven: Chris, who is shown sleeping until noon in the first book.
  • Parson in Patience and Sarah sleeps late and wakes up late. It's not uncommon for him to wake up until 9 in the morning. After a while of living with him on the road, Sarah learns that in the morning it's best not to talk to Parson until spoken to.
  • In the Warrior Cats book Tallstar's Revenge, Larksplash is grumpy on a very early patrol. As her Clanmate Ryestalk says, "She's not a dawn cat."
  • Roys Bedoys: Roys sometimes appears a bit groggy in the mornings.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Our Miss Brooks: Connie Brooks sometimes suffers from this trope.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer Willow mentions 3 PM is when Oz usually wakes up. And Buffy herself, but at least she has an excuse, having been up all night patrolling and slaying.
  • It's been established that Columbo isn't coherent until he's had his coffee.
  • Friends: Rachel is not a morning person, as Monica observes when the cockerel's early-morning crowing sends Rachel into a snarling charge for the boys' apartment. Desperate to be rid of the bird, Rachel agrees to a wager that will either force the boys to give up the birds or the girls to give up their apartment. The girls lose and Rachel ends up with Joey's room, which is next to the apartment of a man who cheerfully sings every morning to greet the rising sun. When his singing wakes her up even on the weekend, Rachel's temper again explodes, which leads to the girls reclaiming their original apartment.
    Monica: Boy, you are really not a morning person-
    Rachel: BACK OFF!
  • Captain Lewis Nixon in Band of Brothers, mostly due to frequent hangovers. He even shouts at the Singing Guy!
  • Charlie in Two and a Half Men rarely wakes up before early afternoon.
  • Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 has problems waking up when it's still dark outside — and she works on a space station. This is J. Michael Straczynski writing what he knows, as he tells on the commentary track to "Signs and Portents"; he doesn't morning at all well either.
  • The short-lived sitcom Pearl gave us this gem between Rhea Perlman and Malcolm McDowell:
    Professor: Questions about ethics can be answered with one simple thing: a mirror. [...] After the fact, can you wake up the next morning, look into the mirror, and like what you see?
    Pearl: At what time in the morning? [...] 'Cos I've never seen anything in the mirror before 8 o'clock that didn't belong in a horror movie...
  • Father Ted generally will not start his working day until at least 11 am and frequently later. Consequently, being woken at 5am with an airhorn during Lent comes as something of a shock.
  • In Red Dwarf, the reason that Lister gave for not finishing college was that there were lectures at half past twelve every day.
    Lister: Come on, who's awake then? You can still taste the toothpaste.
  • Penny in The Big Bang Theory. She has a "Don't knock on my door before eleven o'clock or I punch you in the throat" rule.
  • The very first time we meet Anna, the senior housemaid on Downton Abbey, she's groaning and clutching a pillow over her head, grumbling about how she wishes she could wake up naturally just once in her life.
  • One first-season episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 revealed that neither Joel nor Tom Servo likes mornings — in direct contrast to Crow, who does.
    Crow: Hey, good morning, Breakfast Clubbers! Heh, heh, hey! How ya doin'? Hey, here's a little morning poem: "Birdie with a yellow bill, hopped upon my window sill, cocked his shining eye and said... what's for breakfast, Grandma?" Heh heh heh...
    Tom: ...Oh, I hate morning 'bots!
  • Schitt's Creek: David Rose self describes as not a morning person, joking to Patrick that they can talk about their First Kiss anytime Patrick likes but preferably not before 10am. David is also frequently still in bed when his parents and sister are up and about, and he almost never arrives to work before Patrick.
  • The Young Ones:
    Neil: Lads? It's two o'clock in the afternoon. Maybe it's time we got up. Lucky I didn't sleep through the alarm or we'd have missed half the day!
  • When Tracy on 30 Rock goes through a brief phase of shaping up to make his wife happy, it includes getting up at a reasonable hour for apparently the first time in his adult life, but he takes to it okay. As he reports to Liz, "Did you know that in the morning they have food, TV, almost everything? It's pretty good."
  • Hawkeye from M*A*S*H tends to be extremely vocal about his dislike of mornings, particularly when he's hung over and/or exhausted from a long OR session.
    Hawkeye: No wonder they execute people at dawn. Who wants to live at 6 a.m.?
  • Jerry on Seinfeld, according to this standup routine.
  • One of Jessica Jones (2015) teasers features Jessica crashing her alarm clock at 3 pm.
  • Hunter: Hunter's informant Sporty James is a night owl. When Hunter's partner, Sgt. McCall, has asked him to meet her at a bar in the morning, he's not happy:
    Sporty: Excuse me for not standing, Sergeant, but, you know, my system is recovering from a shock of major proportions.
    McCall: What's wrong?
    Sporty: This is what's wrong. [Shows her his watch] You getting me up at the crack of dawn.
    McCall: It's practically noon, Sporty!
    Sporty: Not in my timezone, Sergeant. I work the streets and the streets don't sleep for nobody.
  • Bernard Black of Black Books has never been awake by 10:30 in the morning ("What happens?!"), and doesn't want to open his shop by then because he assumes nobody would want to buy a book that early.

    Music 
  • The song "Sleepy Snuggle" by the animated CGI character Snuggle Bunny (Schnuffel) created by Jamster. Is sang from the character's point of view of how much he prefers sleeping in during the morning and how grumpy he is when he wakes up early in the morning.

    Tabletop Games 
  • GURPS offers the Slow Riser disadvantage, in which, for an hour after waking up, your character suffers -2 to self-control rolls and -1 to IQ rolls and IQ-based skill rolls. So, in other words, they're irritable and can't think properly. They also get an extra penalty for missed sleep.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade:
    • Kindred fall asleep earlier and wake up later as their Humanity degrades, and they generally can't use more dice than their Humanity score for any action while the sun is up. Particularly wicked Kindred aren't "evening people" at all.
    • There's also a cheap Flaw, "Late Riser", that has you wake up about an hour later than usual for Kindred. It's cheap because there isn't a real mechanical drawback, but you can expect to be late to most important faction business.
  • In Chez Geek The Slacker / Unemployeed job quote: "It's only 2 o'clock, they might not be up yet."

    Video Games 
  • Grumpy-type villagers in the original Animal Crossing sleep in until around 10 in the morning, most days. In all games, they'll also gripe about it being early in the morning until around noon. New Leaf introduces Uchi-type villagers, who don't get up until 11 a.m. — and if you enter their house around that time, there's a good chance they'll still be asleep...
  • Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball: Ayane remarks that she hates mornings, and if you give her a gift during the morning you'll earn less approval with her than if you give her a gift during the afternoon or evening.
  • To quote Auron in Final Fantasy X, "Once Lady Yuna fixes her hair, we leave."
  • Sumio Mondo from Flower, Sun and Rain, as he states himself early on. He's not kidding; right after he answers Edo's phone call each morning, he can't get his brain in gear enough to get out of bed without collapsing onto the floor(although it turns out this is because he's not alone), and always has to take a cup of coffee, which causes him to miss breakfast. This goes on for a good while.
  • Harvest Moon: Animal Parade: The Wizard is not a fan of mornings. Until a certain quest event, you can only meet him around or past 2 AM. He also loves coffee.
  • Link in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
  • A Running Gag in Mega Man Battle Network is that it's nearly impossible to wake up Netto/Lan Hikari on time. On one occasion in the anime he woke up, assumed he overslept, then got all the way to school before realizing it was Sunday.
  • Ollo in The Sunny Valley Fair: Ollo doesn't like getting out of bed unless there's a good reason to.
    Narrator: Ollo was sleeping peacefully, but now it was time for him to wake up. At first, Ollo didn’t want to get up...."
  • Splatoon: Inklings are naturally fun-loving creatures who party way too hard so many times they can't wake up early many mornings. During the Great Turf War, this came to bite them, because they couldn't wake up early enough to defend themselves from the enemy.
  • Street Fighter: Rose is this. Low blood pressure...
  • Suikoden:
    • Sierra from Suikoden II likes to sleep in during daytime, as she's a vampire. That said, sunlight doesn't harm her, though she doesn't enjoy sunlight.
    • Lady Sialeeds from Suikoden V is generally a pleasant person to be around, but enjoys her sleep and gets very cranky when someone disturbs her. Servants will actually thank you for not making them wake her up and poor Lyon wound up with a black eye one time after doing so.
  • A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: When talked to, one student in bed in Alluvia will say:
    ...[long wait]Hmm?[pause for player input] Let me go back to sleep, it's not 12:30 yet.

    Visual Novels 
  • Amnesia: Memories reveals in Amnesia LATER that Ikki is not a morning person. He has trouble getting up and even staying awake, as he manages to fall asleep while in the middle of changing, much to the heroine's embarrassment when she realizes this. He also requires coffee to be ready for the day.
  • Fate/stay night: Rin Tohsaka is not quite as bad as the other examples but tends to be decidedly grumpy in the mornings... Actually, it clashes with her perfect schoolgirl image so badly that even after knowing her for awhile, people are outright shocked to see her dragging about in the morning, completely at a loss for words and unsure if what they've just seen was real. And then they forget about it. This ties into the above-mentioned Japanese stereotype of having low blood pressure, since Rin draws a measure of her own blood nightly to store her magic.

    Web Animation 
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, Sunset Shimmer has been shown pretty consistently to have trouble getting out of bed on time.
    • The "Monday Blues" music video sees Sunset waking up late for school. She throws on some clothes, doesn't do her hair or shower, and just bolts out the door.
    • This becomes a plot point in Sunset's Backstage Pass. As part of the "Groundhog Day" Loop she's stuck in, Sunset consistently wakes up later than the rest of the Rainbooms, necessitating avoiding parts of the Morning Routine of her friends to figure out what's going on. Also, one of the digital series' tie-in shorts is Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, or Applejack trying to figure out how to wake Sunset up.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender. In "Bitter Work", Toph wakes him up by firing him into the air with a rock column, and he is reduced to incoherent growling for the rest of the morning. Still in his sleeping bag.
    • The Legend of Korra: According to the heroine of the series title, "the morning is evil". Given that she's from the Southern Water Tribe, that's a given.
  • Dexter's Laboratory: Dexter's parents are like this before they have their coffee. The coffee is a magical elixir that turns them into the parents we see the rest of the time.
  • Dragon Hunters: Gwizdo doesn't wake up well in the morning, will snap at anyone who rudely awakens him (like Hector) and takes siestas in broad daylight on occasion.
  • The Dragon Prince: According to King Harrow, waking him up early in the morning is grounds for execution. It's delivered as a good-hearted joke, but his advisor Viren takes the point nonetheless and withdraws to give the king a moment to wake up properly.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy: Despite his near-manic energy, Eddy does not wake up well. In "It's Way Ed", he can be seen smashing his alarm clock (which has happened many times) and takes a few seconds to be fully lucid. In "A Glass of Warm Ed", when Edd wakes him up (in the middle of the night, mind you) he groggily complains, "Who turned off the sun?" In "Cleanliness is Next to Edness", he gets annoyed when Ed wakes him up for school when it's Saturday. And in "A Twist of Ed", he blearily staggers into his shower, not noticing that Lee Kanker is there waiting for him.
  • Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: The reason Camille's so hostile is because she's hung over from partying all night.
  • Looney Tunes: A Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog cartoon opens with Sam Sheepdog leisurely waking up and prepping for a days' work, while Ralph Wolf huddles in bed hiding from the sunrise — until his Acme gadgets propel him out, through a shower and breakfast, getting him to punch in just in front of Sam.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Princess Luna, the princess of the moon who spends her nights watching over the dreams of everyone in Equestia and protecting them from nightmares, is understandably not a morning person. Every morning, Princess Celestia makes her a beautiful breakfast — and every morning, Luna ignores it, grabs a random thing from the decorative fruit bowl, and stumbles off to bed.
    • Twilight Sparkle also sometimes has trouble waking up in the morning, usually because she has spent all night studying. She even gets an owl (a nocturnal animal) for a pet because of her habit of staying up late.
    • In the Equestria Girls spin-off, true to her name, Sunset Shimmer sleeps like a log, to the point that in one special her friends are unsure what they can do to wake her up.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): "The Mane Event" opens with the girls getting up in the morning. Bubbles and Buttercup slowly emerge — grumpy, groggy, hair in disrepair. Blossom emerges, glowing beautifully, rocking her ponytail back and forth.
  • The Real Ghostbusters: It's a Running Gag throughout the cartoon that Peter Venkman is not a morning person.
    Peter: Unghcufl.
    Winston: What'd he say?
    Egon: Sounded like "coffee", possibly "cookie".
    Peter: Tpfff.
    Ray: Translation, Egon?
    Egon: Sounded like "get out of my face or eat flaming terror".
  • Star Wars Resistance: In "Signal from Sector Six", Kaz gets woken up before dawn by Yeager for a "salvaging mission" that will take them away from the Colossus. He's so sleepy that he first makes a beeline for the caf machine, and then goes back to sleep on Yeager's shuttle as they're leaving.
  • Thomas & Friends: In the episode, "Ryan and Daisy", Daisy doesn't like getting up early, as she claims early mornings to be bad for her swerves. This results in Ryan having to do her work as well as his own. Near the end of the episode, Daisy reluctantly gets up early to do Ryan's work after Sir Topham Hatt scolds her for not doing her work.
  • The Tick: In "HEROES" (a parody of COPS), The Tick explains that this applies to criminals and super villains in general.
    Tick: You get the occasional evil morning person, but rarely before 7 AM. I don't know why that is. By 8 'clock, evil is wide-awake, but we're ready, we've been up since 6:30!
  • Undergrads: Rocko is one of these, to the point that in one episode, he is woken up by his frat brothers assembling equipment for some volunteer work and he complains loudly that they're up way too early. The head frat brother points out that it's 4 PM, and Rocko just sourly stumbles back to bed. This character trait isnt helped by Rocko's hard drinking habits.


Who the heck let the morning people run things?

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Frieren Hates Mornings

Despite being an immortal mage Frieren hates waking up in the morning and forcing her adopted daughter Fern to dress her up and get her ready basically every morning, to the point Fern jokes she acts more like a mother. Frieren waking up early on her own is such a rare occasion that Fern celebrates when it occurs, which Stark finds very odd.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (9 votes)

Example of:

Main / NotAMorningPerson

Media sources:

Report