History Main / RipVanWinkle

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'': One Silver Age story, aptly named "Rip Van Superman", sees Superman rendered unconscious in an accident involving Kryptonite. After remaining in his coma for centuries, he awakens far in the future. It gets PlayedForDrama as Superman quickly realizes that he has long since outlived the people he knew and loved in his own time. This spurs the natives of the future to return him to his own period using a time machine, allowing him to miss only a week.

* In a Chinese legend, a lumberjack in a forest stumbles upon a group of Immortals playing checkers. Fascinated by the play, he stops to watch it, and when the Immortals finish, the lumberjack realizes the handle of his ax has decayed. This legend is referenced in Medieval Japanese [[Literature/ThePillowBook The Pillow Book]].

Someone is settling down for a nice nap. When he wakes up, it may take a while to realize it's several years or several decades later. He sees the effects of his absence. Anything he did wrong can no longer be fixed. Those who loved him, if still alive, are miserable, and everything has changed. TheFutureIsShocking trope may ensue.

* Happens to [[spoiler: Shinji Ikari]] in the third ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'' movie, who has the misfortune of spending fourteen years -- more or less as long as he'd even been alive before -- as a HumanPopsicle, with the double whammy of finding out that he [[NiceJobBreakingItHero accidentally annihilated the Biosphere]] in a [[spoiler: futile]] attempt to [[AlwaysSaveTheGirl save his love interest]]. The Earth is a post-apocalyptic Wasteland, most of his friends are dead, and those who aren't are ten years older and now hate his guts for the aforementioned catastrophe, including his former ParentalSubstitute who gives him the [[IHaveNoSon no-son-of-mine treatment]] and puts an ExplosiveLeash on him, and his former friend/comrade/flat mate who tells him in no uncertain terms that she despises him, shattering a wall of security glass to do so.

* At the end of Part I of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', [[PlayerCharacter Byleth]] falls into a deep chasm during [[spoiler:the Empire's attack on Garreg Mach]] and while their allies do try to look for them, they NeverFoundTheBody until Byleth washes up not far downstream from Garreg Mach [[TimeSkip five years later]], where they learn that the war has been fought to a standstill in their absence. The fact that they were sleeping so long while recovering from their injuries greatly surprises most of their allies, except for [[spoiler:Seteth and Flayn. [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Nabateans]] are also shown to be able to put themselves in a stasis for years at a time to recover from severe injuries, during which time they do not age. This is why Flayn, aka Saint Cethleann, still seems to be almost a child despite having fought and been severely injured in the War of Heroes [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld over a thousand years ago.]]]] [[spoiler:That Byleth is able to do this as well plays up their AmbiguouslyHuman nature by implying that they're Nabatean enough to access this power, something Seteth certainly seems to believe when they reunite at the beginning of Silver Snow.]]

* ''VideoGame/TwistedWonderland'': [[spoiler:An infant Silver was placed into a hundred-year sleep by fairies to keep him safe from wars. When he woke up still an infant, he was discovered and eventually adopted by Lilia.]]

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* Invoked by some train robbers in ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "The Rip Van Winkle Caper". The robbers' intent was to remain in gas-induced suspended animation until their theft of gold bullion had been forgotten.

* In "How Things Smurf" from ''Fanfic/TheSmurfetteVillage'' series, Hefty and Toughette are trapped in a CrystalPrison for half a millennium, and wake up to find themselves in the modern world circa 2005 with their fellow Smurfs Brainy and Brainette now elderly.

* Epimenides the Cretan, according to Diogenes Laertius (early 3rd century AD), was sent to a farm to get a sheep but went to sleep for 57 years. When he woke up he thought only a few hours had gone by so he continued on his quest for the sheep. When he arrived at the farm he found it had been sold and the style of dress had changed. It is also said he died at the age of 157.

* Happens to [[spoiler: Shinji Ikari]] in the third ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'' movie, who has the misfortune of spending fourteen years -- more or less as long as he'd even been alive before -- as a HumanPopsicle, with the double whammy of finding out that he [[NiceJobBreakingItHero accidentally annihilated the Biosphere]] in a [[spoiler: futile]] attempt to [[AlwaysSaveTheGirl save his love interest]]. The earth is a post-apocalyptic Wasteland, most of his friends are dead, and those who aren't are ten years older and now hate his guts for the aforementioned catastrophe, including his former ParentalSubstitute who gives him the [[IHaveNoSon no-son-of-mine treatment]] and puts an ExplosiveLeash on him, and his former friend/comrade/flat mate who tells him in no uncertain terms that she despises him, shattering a wall of security glass to do so.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In "Future Imperfect", Riker falls unconscious after exploring a cave that was flooded with toxic gas and waking up to discover that at that moment he had contracted a strange alien disease that apparently wiped all his memories between the time he fell unconscious and the 16 years since. However at the end [[spoiler:it turned out to be an elaborate holographic illusion created by a lonely alien who had captured Riker and was impersonating his fictional future son.]]
** ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager'':

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* Happens to [[spoiler: Shinji Ikari]] in the third ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'' movie, who has the misfortune of spending fourteen years -- more or less as long as he'd even been alive before -- as a HumanPopsicle, with the double whammy of finding out that he [[NiceJobBreakingItHero accidentally annihilated the Biosphere]] in a [[spoiler: futile]] attempt to [[AlwaysSaveTheGirl save his love interest]]. The earth is a post-apocalyptic Wasteland, most of his friends are dead, and those who aren't are ten years older and now hate his guts for the aforementioned catastrophe, including his former ParentalSubstitute who gives him the [[IHaveNoSon no-son-of-mine treatment]] and puts an ExplosiveLeash on him, and his former friend/comrade/flat mate who tells him in no uncertain terms that she despises him, shattering a wall of security glass to do so.
* ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'' has a controlled example where [[spoiler:Asuna]] willingly went to sleep for one hundred years to help strengthen the base of the Magical World. [[spoiler:Since she's a HeavySleeper, she overslept by thirty years, and woke up to discover that her {{Vitriolic Best Bud|s}} Ayaka had died the year she was supposed to wake up ([[IWillWaitForYou having kept herself alive through sheer willpower in hopes of seeing her one last time]]). [[TearJerker Asuna didn't take that revelation well]].]]
* In ''Manga/DrStone'', all of humanity has been TakenForGranite, and the ones that wake up find out they've been unconscious for around 3700 years, with most evidence of modern society wiped away by time and nature. Only a few of them had [[SubvertedTrope remained conscious during this state]], such as Senku, who spent the time counting the exact amount of seconds he's been petrified.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''ComicBook/TheBeano'' in an early comic strip called Rip Van Wink about a man who had been asleep for 700 years so was completely unused to the then modern world.
* ComicBook/CaptainAmerica. Believed to have died in [=WW2=], he was in fact kept alive as a HumanPopsicle in an iceberg in the Arctic. His super-soldier serum kept him from [[HarmlessFreezing freezing to death]] for decades before being found and rescued in [[ComicBookTime the Modern Era]] (originally 1964) by ComicBook/TheAvengers.

* ComicBook/RichieRich dreamed one time that he somehow slept into his old age and now appeared on Jackie Jokers' version of "Here Is Your Life" with all his friends, family members, and even adversaries being much older.

* One of the articles featured in ''Marvel Year-In-Review '92'' was titled "ComicBook/Marvel2099: What You ''Won't'' Be Seeing". Among the joke {{spinoff}}s presented is "ComicBook/SquirrelGirl 2099":
-->The fun-loving mutant rodent teen (and let's face it, a squirrel ain't nothin' but a rat with a fluffy tail) finds that she accidentally hibernated for over a hundred years! What a crazy nut! Can she survive in the far-flung future? Will buckteeth be "in" with the squirrels of 2099? Just how good is she at chewing nuts? And why should anyone care?
* The premise for ''La Belle Endormie'' is set up this way; Oxana, a young ballerina dancer from the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep sleep after being cursed. She wakes up 100 years later, [[LaserGuidedAmnesia with her memories gone]] and in a completely unfamiliar time period.

* In "How Things Smurf" from ''Fanfic/TheSmurfetteVillage'' series, Hefty and Toughette are trapped in a CrystalPrison for half a millennium, and wake up to find themselves in the modern world circa 2005 with their fellow Smurfs Brainy and Brainette now elderly.
* Sassette in ''Fanfic/EmpathTheLuckiestSmurf'' was actually a real female Smurf who was trapped in a CrystalPrison for a century since she was a little Smurfling and awakened by Nat, Snappy, and Slouchy with no knowledge of how she became trapped in there in the first place. In "Little Sister Smurf Lost", though, she does find out that an evil wraith named Avengelica put her into the crystal, since Sassette expressed a desire to get even with the male Smurfs who at that time were mistreating her, and thus her hatred for them resurfaces as she exacts her revenge against them, particularly against her older brother Hefty.
* ''Fanfic/ShantaeANewGenie'': [[spoiler: Thanks to the voice, Harmony]] was forced into one of these. The amount of time was not stated, but [[spoiler: the voice]] states he put her to sleep as a child and she is now in her early twenties.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* One of the earliest narrative films ever made, ''Film/RipVanWinkle'', is a 4 1/2-minute film dramatizing the Trope Namer's visit with some strange spirits, followed by his 20-year nap and revival in the woods.
* Tom Canboro (Creator/GaryBusey) in the Christian film ''[[Film/{{Apocalypse}} Tribulation]]'' (from the Apocalypse series) wakes up a few years into the Tribulation period after being in an automobile accident, complete with TimePassageBeard.

* Joe "Not Sure" Bauers in ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'' is cryogenically frozen, supposedly only for a year … but no one defrosts him for ''500 years''. When he wakes up he's shocked to discover that the world is now overpopulated with pathologically ''stupid'' people. Ditto for fellow test subjects Rita [[spoiler:and Upgrayedd]].
* Justified in ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', where Steve Rogers gets frozen in the arctic in the 1940s and is woken up again in modern times. Needless to say, he's a bit surprised when he puts it together (because Steve had been at the baseball game S.H.I.E.L.D. put on the radio to put him at ease).

* The TropeNamer is the 1819 short story "Literature/RipVanWinkle", in which Rip goes into the woods, meets some strange beings, drinks of their liquor, and takes a 20-year nap. He winds up pretty pleased about it, as he has outlived his nagging shrew of a wife and gets to live the life of a respected senior citizen.
* ''Literature/SleepingBeauty'': Due to a curse, the title princess falls asleep. She wakes up 100 years later. Much has changed since then, including the fashions - the prince notes how outdated her dress looks.
* The novel ''Son of Rosemary'' brings the heroine of ''Rosemary's Baby'' up-to-date by having her awaken from a twenty-plus year sleep, just as her demonic son's plotting to bring about TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

* In ''Literature/TheSleeperAwakes'', a man previously in a coma for centuries happens to awaken to find himself now not only in a bleak, dystopian future, but also the richest man in the world due to the compound interest on his bank accounts which had been compiling for so long.
* ''Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries'': The last and final volume, ''3001: The Final Odyssey'', finds Frank Poole -- previously killed by HAL in the first book -- discovered by a space-tug after floating about the Kuiper Belt for a millennium; the absolute zero temperature of deep space having preserved his body, which the ultra-advanced society of 3001 is able to heal and bring back to life.

* Spider Robinson's "The Time Traveler" in ''Literature/CallahansCrossTimeSaloon'' is a variant on this - the protagonist hasn't been sleeping, but he is imprisoned by a dictatorship in the early Sixties and not allowed any contact with the outside world. When he's released in the early Seventies, the culture shock between the era of JFK and the era of Vietnam/ Watergate makes him contemplate suicide.
* ''Literature/SholanAlliance'': Thanks to spending 1500 years in an alien stasis cube, Rezac and Zashou get to experience a mix of this trope and ColdSleepColdFuture.

* In ''Literature/TheDeadZone'' Johnny Smith falls into a coma in October 1970, and wakes up in May 1975. He's shocked to learn that during this time Nixon had to resign, the Vietnam War was won by the Communists, and on the personal front, his girlfriend got married and had a son. He even compares himself to Rip van Winkle.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In "Future Imperfect", Riker falls unconscious after exploring a cave that was flooded with toxic gas and waking up to discover that at that moment he had contracted a strange alien disease that apparently wiped all his memories between the time he fell unconscious and the 16 years since. However at the end [[spoiler:it turned out to be an elaborate holographic illusion created by a lonely alien who had captured Riker and was impersonating his fictional future son.]]
** ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager'':
*** In "Living Witness", a backup copy of the Doctor stored in a piece of the ship that had ended up in an alien museum was reactivated and discovered that 700 years had passed since Voyager left the planet. From his point of view, he was on Voyager just yesterday.
*** In "Timeless", the Doctor is reactivated 15 years in the series' future and discovers that he, Harry and Chakotay are the only three members of the crew still alive.
** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', episode "Twilight." Captain Archer wakes up many years in the future, after the destruction of Earth, to learn that he contracted an alien disease causing a form of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia anterograde amnesia]]: every six months, he wakes up with no memories since he contracted the disease. It all ends with a ResetButton as they use TechnoBabble to ''retroactively'' cure the disease, returning us to the [[StoryArc plot arc]]. It's really just an excuse to run an AlternateUniverse plot about the Enterprise's mission failing.

* Parodied on ''Series/TheKidsInTheHall'', where they had a sketch where a man fell asleep for 20 minutes and woke up to a world largely the same, except for everyone, including the man, acting as if years had gone by. And "the Elongulator," which is not described any further.

* Series/RedDwarf enforces one upon main protagonist Lister, as while he has been rendered a HumanPopsicle as a punishment, a deadly gas strikes the ship, killing all the humans, so the computer keeps him on ice until it can get rid of the gas completely. Which takes 3000 years.
* ''Series/RoswellNewMexico'': [[spoiler:Rosa is revived in the second season, nearly a decade after her death, and struggles with her relationship with her younger sister Liz who is now older than her.]]
* From ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', Creator/AidyBryant plays 13-year-old Melanie, who goes to slumber parties only to fall for her friend's father each time. It's slowly built up on when she mentions that her father is "like 72 years old", and she had to take a Vicodin after hurting her back once, but then Vanessa Bayer as her mum arrives to deliver the WhamLine.
-->"She's not 13, she's 25. We lied to her about how long she was in that Vicodin coma; she's all horned up now and doesn't know why."

* The song "L Dopa" by Music/BigBlack is about a girl who falls asleep in her teens and wakes up as an old woman. The woman decides that she'd rather die than continue living since she literally slept her entire productive life away, however the doctors feel that all life is worth saving regardless of the patient's input on the matter, so she's unable to have her request fulfilled.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'', [[HeroicMime Chell]] gets caught in cryogenic stasis for an indefinite amount of time (the "hotel room" she was in started out intact, and afterwards was severely decayed) at the start of the game.

* In the backstory to ''VideoGame/BloodstainedRitualOfTheNight'' Miriam fell into an enchanted sleep right before she was supposed to be sacrificed in a ritual to cause HellOnEarth, only to wake up ten years later. One decade is a short turnaround for this trope, but the UsefulNotes/IndustrialRevolution is in full swing during that interval, and Miriam is surprised and fascinated by things like primitive photography.
* ''VideoGame/BugFables'': Leif the moth is rescued from a spider's web in Snakemouth Den by Vi and Kabbu. After the trio deliver Snakemouth's artifact to Queen Elizant II of the Ant Kingdom, Leif reveals that he had gotten trapped in the web back when the queen was Elizant I decades earlier. He's a bit shocked at both the technological developments that have happened and at the tenser political environment of modern Bugaria (namely, the Ant Kingdom no longer being on friendly terms with the Wasp or Termite Kingdoms). Worse for him personally, he seems to have outlived his wife Muse. [[spoiler:It turns out the "Leif" introduced in the present is not the original Leif, who died in that web all those years ago, but a cordyceps fungus modified by Roach scientists that escaped their hidden lab and took on the memories and personality of the original Leif by entering the latter's body.]]

* In the ''Webcomic/PokeyThePenguin'' strip ''[[http://www.yellow5.com/pokey/archive/index87.html Rip Van Pokey]]'', Pokey gets a 20-minute power nap to find out he is no longer welcome in the Arctic Circle.

* A ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoon (The Old Grey Hare) featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd has the latter sleeping for over sixty years to reach the [[ZeeRust unimaginably distant year 2000]], where he and a geriatric Bugs still battled each other amidst pop culture references [[ParodyDisplacement whose meanings have long vanished into history for the modern viewer]].

%%* ''Series/TheSuperMarioBrosSuperShow''

* Inverted in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers''. The two beavers spend the entire episode trying to stay up all night, only to realize their clock is broken. When they go outside, decades have passed and they can see a futuristic city on the horizon.
-->'''Norbert:''' ''Dag!'' How long have we been awake?!
** Played straight in the SequelEpisode "Up All Night 2: [[ColonCancer Up All Day - The Reckoning]]", where the beavers struggle to get to sleep after "stupidly staying up for a bazillion years". When they finally manage it, they end up sleeping for [[HereWeGoAgain the same amount of time as they spent awake last time]], only this time, not only have they become old and grey, but [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext sheep have become the dominant species]] as well.
* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' episode "[[BadFuture Future Tense]]" did this to Goliath. [[spoiler:Fortunately, it was AllJustADream.]]
** Also, the protagonists spent centuries as stone statues in the backstory before Xanatos breaks their curse.

* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', episode "Twilight." Captain Archer wakes up many years in the future, after the destruction of Earth, to learn that he contracted an alien disease causing a form of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia anterograde amnesia]]: every six months, he wakes up with no memories since he contracted the disease. It all ends with a ResetButton as they use TechnoBabble to ''retroactively'' cure the disease, returning us to the [[StoryArc plot arc]]. It's really just an excuse to run an AlternateUniverse plot about the Enterprise's mission failing.
** ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG]]'' also previously did a somewhat similar story with the episode "Future Imperfect". It had Riker falling unconscious after exploring a cave that was flooded with toxic gas and waking up to discover that at that moment he had contracted a strange alien disease that apparently wiped all his memories between the time he fell unconscious and the 16 years since. However at the end [[spoiler:it turned out to be an elaborate holographic illusion created by a lonely alien (played by the kid from ''Dream On'') who had captured Riker and was impersonating his fictional future son.]]
** ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' did one as well: a backup copy of the Doctor stored in a piece of the ship that had ended up in an alien museum was reactivated and discovered that 700 years had passed since Voyager left the planet. From his point of view, he was on Voyager just yesterday. There's also "Timeless," in which the Doctor is reactivated 15 years in the series' future and discovers that he, Harry and Chakotay are the only three members of the crew still alive.

Someone is settling down for a nice nap. When he wakes up, it may take a while to realize it's several decades later. He sees the effects of his absence. Anything he did wrong can no longer be fixed. Those who loved him, if still alive, are miserable, and everything has changed. TheFutureIsShocking trope may ensue.