Heavy Sleeper



"''Please don't wake me

''No don't shake me

''Leave me where I am

I'm only sleeping"

- The Beatles, "I'm Only Sleeping"

The character does not so much sleep as fall into a coma for eight or more hours. The alarm clock that could rouse them has yet to be built. Yelling does not wake them. Physical trauma won't even do the job, although sometimes the scent of food will.

This condition may sometimes follow a heavy meal, and hence is often applied to the Big Eater. Sometimes it also affects the Cloudcuckoolander, the Man Child or someone who's Brilliant but Lazy.

To some degree, Truth in Television: see Narcolepsy, a chronic sleep disorder (a dyssomnia) characterized by overwhelming daytime drowsiness and sudden attacks of sleep.

Also, see Not a Morning Person, where the character does wake up... just not exactly early and easily. A particularly heavy sleeper may have Slept Through the Apocalypse.

Compare Good Morning, Crono. See also Deep Sleep. Sometimes overlaps with, but should not be confused with, Sleepyhead.

Anime and Manga

 * In Axis Powers Hetalia, in every World Conference, Herakles (Greece) is seen calmly and soundly napping on his seat, while all the other nations bitch at each other loudly.
 * Canada (Matthew), too. One strip has him speaking to someone else, then they both fall asleep all of a sudden. And his first line ever in the webcomic was apologizing for sleeping in.
 * Beet from Beet the Vandel Buster has the ability to stay awake for three days straight, but at the end of the third day, he will fall into an almost comatose sleep from which he cannot be awakened for a full day.
 * Ranma Saotome in Ranma ½ (who on occasion has been known to sleep through full-on fights he participated in).
 * This has led to some wild theories on how well him being married to Akane might work out. Some people sleepwalk, Akane sleepfights. Think about it.
 * Hilariously used when Nabiki pours cold water on him when he's sleeping to take pictures of his girl self, then adds hot water so he'll turn back to normal. Ranma later wakes up and thinks he has peed in his sleep.
 * Mihoshi in Tenchi Muyo!.
 * Rock Lee from Naruto is known for sleepwalking for days, keeping a fighting spirit when unconscious as a result of insane training of reflexes, as well as being part-time asleep while accidentally drunk-fighting (as either a ruse or really falling asleep in them middle of a fight and waking from incredible reflexes repeatedly, not sure which).
 * Natsumi Tsujimoto from You're Under Arrest.
 * Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece. In one instance, his crew member Roronoa Zoro bounced off his belly without rousing him.
 * We later see that Luffy's brother, Ace, is also a Heavy Sleeper. He once feel asleep while in the middle of eating a feast. The others around him thought he had been poisoned by the food, until he snapped back awake a moment later.
 * Don't forget about Garp either, who remained asleep despite being sliced across the chest by a giant axe. Eneru on the other hand dosed off as his opponent did his best to kill him (stabbing a spear through his head and slicing him in two for starters). Then again, he was simply showing off his invulnerability.
 * Even Zoro, who once slept through a high-seas storm.
 * Snoozer in Hamtaro, who takes this to extremes in that every time we see him, he's either asleep or talking in his sleep.
 * However, he fianlly woke up for a short time in one episode to confront Bijou, who was crying.
 * Shiki from Tsukihime is one. Its hard to believe that he is Hisui doesn't even bother trying to wake him in the morning due the impossibility of such task.
 * Nayuki in Kanon. The Visual Novel explains the psychological reasons behind her behavior: . This leads to some amusing non-thudding non-sequiturs delivered in her barely-ambulatory state.
 * This aspect of her character is used for both of her forms in Eternal Fighter Zero. She has a "sleepy" form that parodies the Drunken Boxing fighting style, and an "awake" form that unleashes her huge alarm clock collection for her Final Memory attack.
 * Speaking of Key Visual Arts, Riki of Little Busters does have narcolepsy.
 * Carlos from Gun X Sword is an old man who is nearly always asleep - even at the controls of his part of the Combining Mecha. He wakes up exactly twice: the first time is at the end of the episode introducing the El Dorado V, and the second time
 * Nozomi, in Yes! Precure 5, once launched Coco across the room in her sleep when he tried to wake her up.
 * Jiroh Akutagawa from The Prince of Tennis is often sleeping outside of the courts, and it's so bad that Kabaji often has to carry him on his back so he doesn't arrive late to his matches. And there's also Akaya Kirihara, who once fell asleep in a bus and crossed all the way from Kanazawa to Tokyo...
 * One of the most common running gags of Slam Dunk is how Kaede Rukawa falls asleep anywhere and at any time, unless during practice or games (once he even fell asleep while riding his bike to a game and trashed it). And waking him up is NOT an option, since he actually becomes violent when he doesn't finish his naps.
 * One episode of Magical Project S opens with Ginji, Sasami, and Ryo-Ohki all sleeping through crashing over a cliff into the water and drifting onto an island.
 * Ivan Whisky/001 from Cyborg 009. Justified Trope, though: he's a very powerful telepath and telekinetic trapped in the body of a baby, so he logically requires long rest after he uses his power for too long.
 * Bean Bandit. In the Riding Bean movie, his partner tries and fails to wake him up for breakfast with a taser applied to his neck. Since Bean is Made of Iron this only momentarily jolts him. She then takes the pan she just finished frying eggs in and holds it to his face. That works.
 * Poppu Harukaze from Ojamajo Doremi. One of the principal reasons why she couldn't catch up with the other Ojamajo despite her natural witchcraft talents was because the Ojamajo level tests were scheduled during the night, but Poppu simply would NOT stay awake no matter how many precautions she took and how many times Doremi and the others tried to wake her up. As a result, she doesn't take her first test until a few episodes into Sharp.
 * This could have been justified if the other girls were old enough to stay up that late, but they are elementary school kids.
 * Chief Komui Lee in D.Gray-man. Nothing can wake him when he sleeps, save one thing: mentioning that his sister, Lenalee Lee, is getting married. (He's rather overprotective about her.)
 * Kyou Sohma from Fruits Basket can sleep through a hurricane. However, he seems to be an early riser.
 * Yuki Sohma also is a heavy sleeper. During a schooltrip, his classmates hardly manage to wake him up. Further, Kyou claims that Yuki's even stronger, when he's drowsy, for he can't control his strength. (Which Yuki proves on the spot.)
 * Negima!? have this as a trait to Asuna Kagurazaka. In the series, she actually wakes up early every day for newspaper delivery, making up on weekends (thus, she's more of Not a Morning Person).
 * In the Mahou Sensei Negima manga, and later the Ala Alba OVA, Negi can sleep through quite a bit of manhandling. In chapter 180, he was kicked across a room at least twice and tied up and slung around in a rhythm dancing ribbon without waking up.
 * To top it all off, Negi somehow managed to sleep through that entire fight, even though he was at one point literally knocked unconscious, recovered asleep, and was beaten into unconsciousness again. He woke the next day achy, bruised, and very confused.
 * Tsukasa Hiiragi from Lucky Star habitually wakes up at noon.
 * Midnight, a villain in Fairy Tail, can fight in his sleep, and has yet to be depicted awake several chapters into the arc.
 * Nemu from Haibane Renmei got her name because she even slept in her final dream before emerging from her cocoon. A few of the other Haibane tease her because of this.
 * Amae Koromo of Saki. To wake her up for the tournament, her teammates set five alarm clocks around her. She slept through every one of them then went on to sleep away the entire day.
 * School Rumble's Yakumo has a tendency to fall asleep anywhere, giving her the nickname "Sleeping Beauty".
 * It's also a bit of a Deconstructed Trope, since it does interfere with her daily chores, like purchasing groceries or doing housework. When The Ditz of the show is worried and tells you that you've got a problem, it oughta be a serious deal.
 * Ryu "The Owl" in Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, to the point where his sleeping on the job has landed him in big trouble more than once.
 * In Pokémon Special, Yellow is sometimes seen yawning and dozing off. True, overusing her powers will force her to fall asleep, but you have to wonder how the fook she managed to start napping after she got grabbed and lifted into the air by several Lickitung when she wasn't using said powers the moment before.
 * Bayleef's flowery scent lulled her into sleep, and the expression on Bayleef's face shows how random it was. However, she woke up pretty fast that time. Most other times, it's less "asleep" than it is "unconscious".
 * And, of course, a list of examples from Pokémon just wouldn't be complete without Snorlax. He's the page image for a damn good reason.
 * Three characters in Strike Witches have this for different reasons. Sanya is simply a night shifter, and thus sleeps through the daily ruckus. Francesca is just lazy, but can be woken up with enough prodding. Erica, however, is lazy and disorganized, and not even her roommate's prodding can get her up.
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist, when Ed realizes that his body is probably compensating for Al's, which is still trapped at the Gate, Al remarks that Ed does fall asleep an awful lot, and wonders if Ed is "sleeping enough for Al's share" too.
 * Rem from Bobobobo Bobobo.
 * Morita from Honey and Clover makes it a habit to sleep for 48 hours after a job.
 * Mario from Mawaru Penguindrum is often seen sleeping on a couch at home.
 * Mario from Mawaru Penguindrum is often seen sleeping on a couch at home.

Comic Books

 * Gaston Lagaffe, who's also The Slacker.
 * Basile from Leonard Le Genie, waking him up takes heavy-yield explosives or similar violence.
 * In one instance, Leonard builds an alarm-clock-contraption that injects Basile with several liters (judging by the size of the syringe) of hyper-concentrated coffee concentrate, only, once it achieves the intended effect, to tell Basile that it's Sunday and he can sleep in.
 * Donald Duck in one story by Carl Barks where he becomes a fire brigade officer, of all the jobs possible.

Film

 * From film: Bob in What About Bob sleeps through Leo asking him to wake up, then yelling, then shaking him, then imitating a rooster. Then his small alarm clock goes off and he peacefully awakes.
 * Spaceballs: Prince Valium

Folk Lore

 * One of the earliest examples would Rip Van Winkle who slept for twenty years, making this trope Older Than Radio!
 * Russian folk tales aren't averse to having their larger-than-life heroes sleep for days on end every so often. After all, all that energy that goes into slaying dragons, defeating armies, and performing other mighty deeds has to come from somewhere!

Literature

 * Jesus, who was asleep in the stern of a fishing boat during a furious squall. As the storm raged on, the waves threatened to capsize the boat, and His panicked disciples (experienced sailors themselves) woke Him up. Jesus proceeded to tell the storm to STFU.
 * The Boy of the Three-Year Nap. He's also Brilliant but Lazy.
 * We never see Shari awake in Wayside School.
 * Subverted in Who Plugged Roger Rabbit?. Eddie tussles with a heavy in an art museum, while a lazy security guard snoozes on a nearby fold-out chair, not budging an inch when the two combatants slam each other into the well mere feet from him.
 * Oblomov.

Mythology and Religion

 * Kumbhakarna of the Ramayana, Older Than Dirt, is such this trope that in India, heavy sleepers can often be referred to as the Kumbhakarna. A slip of the tongue botched up a wish for the position of the gods and he instead ended up wishing for eternal sleep, which was then changed to allow him to sleep up to six months in a year. But It Got Worse. If at any time he was woken up during his sleep, then he would be doomed to die. Being a giant, it took the stamping and goading over 1000 elephants across his body, the goading of hundreds of soldiers, the beating of thousands of musical instruments normally to be used in the middle of a war to get him to wake up.

Live Action TV
"Dr Cox: Well, you're clearly in need of help, but goshdarn it I'm not gonna give it to ya. How sound a sleeper you think he is?
 * Elliot from Scrubs. NOTHING can wake her up before she wants to.
 * JD being a sound sleeper is the basis of at least one joke. When Dr Cox and the Janitor are drinking and talking about how much he annoys them, the Janitor reveals that he regularly sneaks into JD's room while he's asleep and moves things around to mess with him.

Janitor: Well, watch this. (kicks the foot of JD's bed)"


 * Star Trek: Enterprise. Dr Phlox, thanks to his Bizarre Alien Biology, hibernates five to six days a year (placing it between weekly episodes if required, which is convenient). On one occasion the crew have to wake him up with an injection. Phlox simply gives a nonsensical diagnosis and collapses back into unconsciousness.
 * In the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "Strangers in the Night," the husband doesn't fully wake up even when his wife right beside him is being simultaneously propositioned by five men and a mariachi band.
 * Ken Clean-Air Systems. "When Ken is in a really deep sleep like this one, the only way to wake him up is to saw his head off."
 * Kintaros from Kamen Rider Den-O is practically narcoleptic, sometimes falling asleep in mid-conversation and being nigh on impossible to wake. The only thing to consistently rouse him is any word that sounds remotely like "nakeru" (to cry).
 * Drake and Josh: Josh claims he's not a heavy sleeper, but a video shows he really is. Megan and her friend take advantage of this and host a web show featuring them doing stuff to Josh when he's asleep.

Newspaper Comics

 * Garfield. Never forget Garfield.
 * He has slept through entire strips, entire days, entire decades, and earthquakes.

Video Games

 * The Pokémon Snorlax is notorious for doing two things: sleeping for months at a stretch and devouring entire islands worth of food when it's awake. The first game has a Broken Bridge of one falling asleep on a road and blocking all traffic from either direction because nobody can get it to move.
 * Snorlax appears to be loosely based off of a D&D monster known as the Tarrasque. In one of the sourcebooks (the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, I believe) it is described as sleeping for years on end, then waking up extremely hungry and eating everything for several miles. Including the odd civilization or two. It isn't easy to wake up, but if you do... time to get out a clean character sheet.
 * In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Luigi manages to sleep through an entire meeting and an attack from Bowser. He only wakes up when Bowser inhales him after breaking into Peach's castle for a second time.
 * Not to mention General White in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, who first has been followed across the entire world map, Mario missing him by seconds, then woken up by Mario's attacks to get permission to use the cannon at Fahr Outpost. Funnier yet, he was trying to find Mario the entire time...
 * Laharl from Disgaea is implied to be a heavy sleeper. When he wakes up from his two year "nap" at the beginning of the game (after Etna tries bludgeoning him with a variety of weapons), he doesn't seem too fazed about it, and one of his nameless henchmen mention that it's pretty typical for him. Furthermore, he comments that he was only expecting to be asleep for ten days.
 * In "Etna Mode" of the PSP port, Etna is unable to wake him until she actually kills him.
 * Shiki from Tsukihime, at least in the game. It's bad enough that his Meido refused to attempt to wake him earlier on the grounds of it being impossible.
 * It's worse that both she and Arcueid, on the occasions they first see Shiki asleep, briefly worry that he'd actually died some time in the night.
 * Yukari Yakumo of Touhou spends about three quarters of her time sleeping, at the very least. Just as well for the rest of characters, because when she's awake she's a nigh-omnipotent Trickster Mentor (or just a trickster depending who you ask) who loves messing with people.
 * In many fanworks, Hong Meiling, the door guard of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, is like this, which often incurs the wrath of Sakuya and her knives. In canon, however, when Meiling wakes up, she shows no mercy to whoever tries to get into the mansion without the permission of her mistresses.
 * Komachi Onozuka is also often portrayed like this, due to her laziness directly causing the Incident of Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
 * Yuka also sometimes gets portrayed as this, as you fight her first when she hasn't properly woken up. And yes, it is easy to lose to someone who is still pretty much asleep.
 * Played for dark laughs in Overlord with Oberon, the Fallen Hero of Sloth. Tiring of a life of fighting, he was convinced to not get involved with the war between the Elves versus Dwarves, choosing instead to take a long rest upon a tree. This eventually led to him getting entangled with the tree's roots and his nightmares corrupting the forest.
 * Forde from Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones is such a heavy sleeper that he takes naps in the middle of battles. This is revealed in his support conversations with Vanessa, who naturally assumed he was wounded and needed help. When told how irresponsible he's being, his excuse is that it's a just ploy to draw enemies close for an ambush.
 * He's also Genre Savvy enough to specially outfit his horse saddle so he can sleep on horseback and not fall off.
 * General Haar from Fire Emblem Tellius.
 * The Player Character in Knights of the Old Republic starts the game by managing to remain asleep through a General Quarters call, a pitched space battle and the crippling of their ship. They only finally awake when the Star Trek Shake gets bad enough to hurl them out of bed.
 * Kyoko from Crescendo. The protagonist, Ryo, also seems to skip classes frequently so that he can sleep in the nurse's office.
 * Talon in The Legend of Zelda series. He's usually found sleeping, in which case a cucco or a megaphone are needed to wake him up.
 * In Yggdra Unison, after, Nessiah sleeps through the entire war he wanted to take advantage of unless you find his lost spellbook, upon which he will immediately wake up (and be rather disgruntled about it). Seeing as finding the Revelation can be a massive Guide Dang It, the game developers are kind enough to make Nessiah stay awake for all subsequent playthroughs once you've found him.
 * Annie of Atelier Annie. The game opens with she is being hauled across a mountain and an ocean by her grandfather's homunculi, during which she doesn't wake up at all. When she arrives at Sera Island, she is still sleeping, which causes her Fairy Companion Pepe to resort to some mild violence to wake her up (and he has to do it again once or twice throughout the game).
 * Solid Snake won't wake up unless you point a gun at his head... no, wait... Solid Snake will wake up the instant you point a gun at his head.
 * Senel from Tales of Legendia can sleep though an earthquake that threw him off his bed on to the floor. The first floor his bed was on the second.
 * The goal of the online game Grow Cannon is to wake up the little guy after he smashes his alarm clock. It's harder than you might think, as the guy turns out to be able to sleep right through being doused by water, stepped on by a giant foot, electrocuted by a magic staff-wielding man, run over by a train, and being blown up into a crater by a rocket.
 * A minor female vendor NPC in Solatorobo spends the entirety of the game dreaming of money and talking about it in her sleep. She even manages to sleep through a kaiju attack and the final large scale battle at the climax of the game.
 * It's even a trait in The Sims 3. Sims with it can sleep through nearly anything: radios, fires, burglaries, crying babies....
 * Suzu Suzuki from Katawa Shoujo. This is justified, since she has narcolepsy.

Webcomics

 * Agatha in Girl Genius. Early on she was even more competent as a builder of mad science devices in her sleep and the most astonished one when those devices show up later! As well as known for building and shooting death rays in her sleep - making huge holes in mountains in the process. Oops!
 * Tiffany from Precocious, when she's not destroying things or doing random acts of chaos.
 * X of A Magical Roommate decided that sleeping every night was inconvenient, so she found a way to stay awake for months at a stretch and then hibernate. It takes a magic potion to wake her up before she's ready once she decides to sleep.

Web Original

 * Bill and Morgan in Commodore HUSTLE. Morgan will not be roused by bullhorns in his face, yelling, or shaking - the only reliable way to wake him is to uncap a sharpie in his presence. Bill is much the same; he can only be woken by ninjas, or Morgan holding his nose.
 * According to the season one DVD commentary, this is more or less truth in television. There are only three ways to reliably wake the real Bill: hold his nose, roll him over a full 360 degrees, or push him out of bed.

Western Animation

 * SpongeBob SquarePants' friend Patrick.
 * Ahito from Galactik Football will happily fall asleep in goal. This does not necessarily stop him from saving the ball when he needs to.
 * A scene in Family Guy has a team of deaf athletes forfeiting the Special People's Olympics because they slept through the alarm.
 * Buster Baxter in Arthur.
 * Bill Dauterive in King of the Hill in one occasion. During the night when Cotton and Didi's baby was crying all night disturbing the neighbors. Bill was still sleeping with the squirrel entering the opened window.
 * Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes. Samy's repeated attempts to wake her only results in her having Dream Sequences about Jimmy.
 * X-Men: Evolution has Kurt, who not only spends almost an entire episode asleep when he gets the flu, but also teleports in his sleep every time he sneezes. This leads to him and Kitty popping up all over town in their pajamas. When he finally wakes up, he thinks it was All Just a Dream... at least until Kitty starts wailing on him with a pillow.
 * As in his Newspaper Comics incarnation, Garfield of Garfield and Friends is also a textbook Heavy Sleeper. Nothing can wake him up - unless, of course, you're trying to hide food from him.

Other

 * "Wake up Jeff!"

Real Life

 * Louisa Ball, a 15-year-old English girl who has the Kleine-Levin syndrome, causing her sleep for weeks.