Triple Shifter: Difference between revisions

Anyone whose description is "Normal Job By Day, Crimefighter by Night!"

 

 

{{examples}}

 

*** And then there's Teana, who puts herself through a rigorous training regimen (in addition to her regular training which in and of itself is very demanding) resulting in only sleeping four hours a night. At the end of it she's so exhausted her body needs 30+ hours of sleep to recover.

** As the [[Sailor Moon]] English [[Expository Theme Song]] tells us, the titular heroine is "Fighting evil by moonlight, [[[[Ear Worm]] winning love by daylight..." Even before becoming a warrior of love, she was having problems getting to school on time, but somehow being Sailor Moon doesn't compound it at all.

*** {{spoiler|Yukito/Yue}} plays this trope far more dramatically.

** ''[[Fresh Pretty Cure]]'' actually showed the end result of an action such as this - Love, Miki and Buki actually got themselves ''hospitalized'' because they pushed themselves between dance practice, school and being Pretty Cure.

* Lelouch/Zero from ''[[Code Geass]]''. In one episode, after schoolgirl/terrorist Kallen is publicly embarrassed due to nodding off in class, Rivalz suggests she take lessons from Lelouch, who's the undisputed master of sleeping through class without getting caught, napping through about half the school day on average. He still manages to pull a straight-B report card and somehow maintain his [[Rich Idiot With No Day Job]] public persona while secretly working to overthrow the government nights and weekends.

* Sousuke of ''[[Full Metal Panic]]'', due to the combined stresses of completing schoolwork and typing up reports for his superiors (not having slept for four days in the process) collapses with a fever in an episode of Fumoffu.

** In the second novel, he falls asleep in class with his eyes open after having spent the night dealing with a [[Humongous Mecha]] rampaging through Tokyo.

** In the later novels, his sleeping habits are shown a bit more... and they're very unhealthy. Apparently, he got into the habit of always sleeping under the bed, with his eyes open, and is always [[Crazy Survivalist|holding a weapon of some sort]]. During the time when he sleeps, he also has [[Bad Dreams|nightmares]] of his mother dying, and actually counts himself lucky when he gets six whole whopping hours of sleep that day (after wandering around until he passed out from fatigue). It definitely doesn't bode well for his life expectancy.

* [[Kekkaishi]]'s Yoshimori is constantly falling asleep in class, since he's in school during the day and hunts Ayakashi during the night. His 'breakfast' is often coffee-flavored milk.

** Oddly enough, Tokine seems to have the same schedule, but she's depicted as a model student.

*** That's because Yoshimori usually goes all out, exerting his energy while Tokine thinks things through and only does what she must. Yoshi-mori outright exhausts himself.

 

 

** In other continuities, no one bats an eye [pun unintended] because he occasionally makes a brief but memorable evening appearance as [[Eccentric Millionaire|Millionaire Playboy]] Bruce Wayne, carousing the night away with beautiful women on his arms. So he's assumed to be sleeping all day thereafter, as a [[Rich Idiot With No Day Job]].

** After the battle seen early on in ''The Dark Knight'', Bruce Wayne is seen sleeping at the table during a board meeting at Wayne Enterprises the next day.

** Batman's first apprentice, Nightwing, is allowed to be a little more human, and when he's forced to go without sleep, he suffers for it.

** In one episode of ''[[Justice League]]'', Batman hasn't slept for three nights straight...as they fight the [[Villain of the Week]] whose power is being able to attack you in your sleep. At the end of the episode, after he and [[Martian Manhunter|J'onn]] save everyone, he's seen slumped over in a chair in the Watchtower's infirmary, snoring.

*** Also gave us the [[Crowning Moment of Funny|priceless]] moment when he barges into a Starbucks to order said supercaffeinated beverage. For a moment it looks like he is going to have to wait in line but everyone gets out of his way and lets him cut to the front.

**** And cranking up the radio in the Batmobile, along with ''shattering the windshield'' to get a cool breeze going.

** Of DC's holy trinity, two members could conceivably justify not needing any sleep... yet it's the third that does all his crimefighting at night.

*** In the [[DCAU]], at least, Superman has to sleep - such as in the aforementioned episode of ''[[Justice League]]''.

*** One novelization has Superman comment that he was able to go several days at a time without sleep back in his college days, but now that he's getting older, he just goes to pieces if he doesn't get a full ''one hour'' of sleep per night. So he does need to sleep, just, not very much. In fact, some continuities appear to use that to explain how he finished college and had time to go walk the earth. He didn't sleep and studied instead!

** Tim Drake, the third Robin, doesn't appear to have had time to sleep in 5 years. He spent his days at school, his evenings socialising, his nights as Robin and his weekends at the Teen Titans - who train and fight supervillains and cults and hordes of their own members who've turned evil day and night. As Red Robin, he simply cut out his friends and family (most of whom had died), not to mention school, to superheroing and sleeping. And brooding. A lot of brooding, about how many people he knows who are dead (a lot) and how many of those are his fault (perhaps half).

** In the old days of Batman (The old-old days, but not the original days, wow. [[Sarcasm Mode|Retcons make tenses fun]]) this was a little more justified. He ended his activities before 4am, and typically wouldn't start them until 11pm-12pm, only working for a four hour block every night. Assuming he's one of those people who can get by on 4 hours sleep a day with occasional longer periods asleep then his schedule would be entirely manageable (back at Wayne Manor by 4:30am, asleep immediately, awake again at 8:30am ready for the day. Also, it doesn't seem in the early issues like he's doing it every night, maybe only three or four nights out of the week, which for a man in the his mid-20s wouldn't be too outlandish. It's only later when he starts working at Wayne Enterprises from 7am to 10pm, changing into his costume at night and going out for a full night of crime fighting before returning in a new suit the next day.

* [[Spider-Man]] also does this, though he isn't as lucky as [[Batman]] and is constantly harassed as Peter Parker for being sleepy.

* [[Daredevil]] is perhaps a still more brazen example of this trope. While most other heroes have at least some sort of justification for it (Bruce Wayne has the luxury of sleeping through most of his work days, Peter Parker might not need as much sleep as a normal human, and Superman almost surely doesn't need any sleep at all), Matt Murdock has no superhuman stamina, and a very demanding day job as a defense attorney. One can only imagine the hundreds of mistrials that'd result if the world ever found out that he's apparently been representing his clients in a groggy, sleep-deprived daze.

** He usually ''wins'' his cases, seeing as he's known as one of the best defense attorneys in Marvel's version of the Big Apple. Which makes it even more of a brazen example.

* ''[[Paperinik New Adventures|Paperinik]]'', the superhero identity of [[Donald Duck]] whose authors generally know how ridiculous they're being, gets off easy: his regular identity is a layabout loser who arouses no suspicion by catching "Z"s during the day.

* The hero of the comic ''[[Hero By Night]]''. He's a [[Legacy Character]] with a [[Magic Ring]], which grants him superhuman vitality. This translates into enhanced physical abilities and toughness, but also a removal of the need to sleep. He does need to meditate, as his predecessor did, to stay sane with no ability to dream.

 

 

== Film ==

* ''[[The Dark Knight]]'' shows that Batman's constant triple shifting are wearing him down and making him a little sloppy at the beginning of the movie. He also complains of exhaustion at least once.

{{quote| '''Zed:''' You get used to it. Or suffer a psychotic episode.}}

** Theoretically possible, and perhaps even preferable. A couple of studies done where people are locked in rooms with no sense of time show them adapting naturally to anything from a 20-30 hour day. It's still a little short of the [[The Men in Black|Men in Black]] day but if they were also extending their sleep cycles or taking multiple naps(it's not saying they're awake for 37 hours, just that the day is 37 hours long) then they probably could adapt.

 

 

== Literature ==

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

** In a Danish parody, Jack spends the first 12 episodes sleeping. The dramatic highlight comes along in episode 13, were he is finally awakened by the mailman's arrival, only to receive a huge telephone bill.

** "I have at least three lives right now, none of which mesh. It's like oil and water and... [[Buffy-Speak|a third unmeshable thing]]."

* [[Dexter]] Morgan seems to ignore this problem entirely, with no apparent problems. By day, he's a skilled forensic scientist, and have never been shown to doze off at work. In the afternoons and evenings, he spends time with his girlfriend/wife and her kids, or go bowling with the guys from work. At night, he stalks people he suspects of being murderers, and once he is sure, abducts them, kills them, and cuts them into little pieces he can dump in the sea. Sleep? Optional.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** They can also switch off a half of their brains at a time, keeping themselves awake while they sleep.

*** Though the daily rituals of a space marine as posted on the Lexicanum wiki allocate four hours for sleep, not one.

** ''[[Persona 4]]'' has the dungeon-exploration take place during the day, avoiding this (and if you do it you can't do anything that night out of exhaustion). But the characters seem to have no trouble staying up until midnight several nights in a row to watch the Midnight Channel.

*** They could've easily take a nap and set the timer to wake them up in time, or sleep in until the very last minute the next morning.

** There's a one-week break {{spoiler|(which seems like a minute to Gordon, so maybe not...)}} at the start of Anti-Citizen One, and he's in stasis again by the end of the story, giving him unknown hours of sleep between the end of ''Half-Life 2'' and the start of Episode 1. The same applies to the gap between Episode 1 and 2; it appears the same again will be true of Episodes 2 and 3. He does manage to go for three whole days without sleep, but the episodes are a different affair.

* Doesn't exactly fit with the crime fighting description, but earlier [[Harvest Moon]] games allowed you to stay up all night working, only being forced to "sleep" at the hour when you wake up every day so that you can have breakfast. Loss of stamina could be easily remedied by eating food or bathing in the hot spring, so it was common to go the whole game without sleeping for any reason other than skipping days to reach a particular event. This has been averted in later games however by the inclusion of sicknesses from going without sleep for too long and the difficulty in increasing stamina, not to mention the crippling effect that low stamina will have on your character, making it near impossible to perform any task worth staying up for.

 

== Webcomics ==

 

 

** In the new comics, it's revealed that SHUSH gave Darkwing a pension.

* In ''[[An American Tail]] 2: Fievel Goes West'', Fievel doesn't get any chance to sleep in the two and half days between the time he falls off the train to the end of the movie.

** Elisa comes pretty close to this at times. True, she works the night shift, but during the Avalon Voyage, she seems to be pulling day shifts as well as staying with the gargoyles at night. This is also true when Elisa is suddenly (though temporarily) shifted to the day shift.