History Main / InstantWakingSkills

* Apparently Winston Churchill had the same knack as Creator/ElijahWood, too.

* Some anecdotes attribute this skill to Bill Clinton, saying that he could wake up, and five minutes later be fully dressed, coiffed, and on his way to a meeting.

* In some ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' games, certain characters (usually Sonic, Tails, or both) will fall asleep if left idle for too long; they wake instantly if you press a button.

* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' averts this, and leaves anything which recovers from unconsciousness (whether from sleeping or pain) stunned for a few turns and needing to use one turn to get up.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'':
** In an aversion, the last time Zuko saw his mother was when she woke him up, told him something, and left... but the whole thing happens before he can compose himself, so he doesn't pay attention and falls back asleep shortly.
** Played straight with Zuko at other times in the series. For instance, when falling asleep waiting for Iroh to finish a meeting, when the door opens, Zuko goes from asleep to battle-ready in half a second. (Of course, at that point he'd had a certain amount of need to develop the skill.)

* During the peak of Creator/KelseyGrammar's substance abuse problems, his costars in ''Series/{{Cheers}}'' claimed he would be near catatonic between takes only to instantly spring to life and perform whenever someone called "Action".

* Sōsuke from ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'' actually trained himself to do this; while it's ProperlyParanoid for someone who grew up on battlefields around the world when he's posing as an OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent it just tends to cause trouble.

A similar scenario to this trope is the tendency for patients who have just been brought out of cardiac arrest to instantly pop back into wakefulness thanks to the CPR and [[MagicDefibrillator defibrillator]] being used on them. Unlike the examples given above for normal sleepers, many people who go into cardiac arrest tend to fall unconscious shortly after their heart stops, and they tend to be very groggy and confused for quite some time after resuscitation, if not still unconscious.

* The Masai warriors were legendary for being able to go from asleep to battle-ready within seconds.
* Just for fun, [[SchmuckBait try grabbing a Marine by the throat]] while he is asleep and then once you recover, try to figure out how long it took him to wake up and hand you your ass. Sometimes it happens before they are fully awake. Of course, that is only if the Marine doesn't kill you to begin with.
* In line with that, ANYBODY who was ever in boot camp can attest to having or developing instant waking skills. In addition to [[HellIsThatNoise Reveille,]] there's just no sound quite like the heels of your DrillSergeantNasty's boots [[OhCrap softly padding towards your bunk]].
* Grab ''anyone'' by the throat and they'll wake up instantly, usually with adrenaline pumping.
* If you wake up suddenly, you will really be fully alert for a few seconds; if you don't get up and get the adrenaline pumpin', you will get sleepy and lose the InstantWakingSkills. That's why you usually stumble slowly out of bed but can jump out of it when you're late. In a similar fashion, some people can ''will'' themselves awake, albeit only when planned in advance and at a similar time to when they usually get up.

* This is not an uncommon skill among doctors, picked up during residency when they had to work those 36-hour hospital shifts (now only slightly reduced). In order to get the job done, they'd have to learn to be able to wake up immediately at the sound of the pager ''and'' be able to think clearly enough to prescribe correct dosages of medicine.
* Sailors also tend to be able to do this. When you're on watch, you're on watch, and someone can call all hands any hour of the night. And ten minutes into anchor watch you're starting to conk out again because it's so damned dull. Well, until it isn't.
* If you wake up at the right point in your sleep cycle, you pretty much have these. An alarm clock app exists for smartphones that use an accelerometer to calculate how deeply asleep you are and wake you at the optimum point.
* Firefighters who've been on the job for some time tend to pick up this habit. Firefighters who carry radios or pagers and are sleeping at home can sometimes snap awake in the very brief time between the slight hiss of the radio activating and the actual signal coming through. Firefighters sleeping at halls will wake up because they hear the sound of the alarm or speakers powering up.
* Many mechanical or semi-mechanical alarm clocks make a specific tick-like sound a second or so before the alarm goes off. People who sleep regularly with these can reach the point where the tick fully wakes them, either to get up or shut off the alarm before it starts.
* Turn the volume of your alarm down every week until it's at its lowest setting. You'll still be waking up to the alarm, despite it being so quiet someone sleeping in the same bed won't notice it. Get your partner an alarm clock with a different-sounding alarm and try this trick. Eventually, you'll each be trained to wake up to your alarm, while sleeping through your partner's.
* It's possible to train this in anyone, to any cue, if one tries. One may be a heavy sleeper who can sleep through any racket outside, and yet wake up to a very quiet sound that they have 'trained' themselves to listen to, such as the opening of the door to their room or the sound of their name. The human mind actually already does an amazing job of filtering inputs to decide when one should wake up, so all it takes is reinforcing the brain's natural ability. Ever notice how you will wake up to your phone ringing even if it's quieter than the thunder, lightning, police sirens, and shouting going on outside of a hotel's walls? If you're expecting an important phone call, you will be 100% awake when the phone rings, no matter what you usually sleep through.
* Many mothers report being instantly awakened by a sound from their children (even past the child's infancy) while being able to sleep through other household sounds.

* In the ''Franchise/DocSavage'' novels, Doc could do this. Justified, in that he had been specifically trained in the ability by an aged Ubangi tribesman.

Contrast HeavySleeper and NotAMorningPerson. Compare WakeUpFighting. A {{Sleepyhead}} has the corresponding ability to fall asleep instantly.