History Main / RipVanWinkle

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' features it happening on a soap opera, with a guy who fell into a coma in the '70s.

* ''{{Pac-Man}}'': The cartoon's ep #42, "Pac-Van-Winkle."

* HGWells' ''The Sleeper Awakes'', where 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.

* Happens to [[spoiler: Shinji Ikari]] in the third 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 PostApocalypticWasteland, most of his friends are dead, and those who aren't are ten years older and now hate his guts for the afore mentioned catastrophe, including his former ParentalSubstitute who gives him the no-son-of-mine treatment and puts an ExplosiveLeash on him, and his former friend/comerade/flat mate who tells him in no uncertain terms that she despises him, shattering a wall of security glass to do so.

* A common theme in MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic fanfiction is taking advantage of the fact that this effectively happened to Luna as a result of her being SealedEvilInACan for a thousand years.

* Spider Robinson's ''The Time Traveler'' 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.

* Jeannie from IDreamOfJeannie technically qualifies. She wasn't asleep, but she was trapped in her bottle for 2,000 years before Nelson found it, and she clearly had no contact with the outside (as proven by the fact that she couldn't speak English until he wished for her to be able to).

Compare the KingInTheMountain and HumanPopsicle. Not to be confused with [[Music/VanillaIce Rob van Winkle]] or a certain [[{{Hellsing}} Nazi vampire]]. Compare ColdSleepColdFuture, where the duration is longer, and AsleepForDays, where it's shorter. See also YearOutsideHourInside, where the victim doesn't sleep away the years but spends them in an enchanted place.

* In a supporting-character example, Wulf Saxon from the [[SimonRGreen Hawk & Fisher]] novel ''The Bones Of Haven'' got trapped inside a booby-trapped magical portrait for 23 years while attempting to rob a sorcerer. No time passes for him, but by the time he's set free, his family are all dead or penniless, his friends have become callous and hostile, and the city he'd once hoped to reform has become a WretchedHive far worse than he remembers.

* In ''Webcomic/BrawlInTheFamily'', {{Kirby}} wakes up after eating a Noddy. Another Noddy tells him that he's been asleep for years, and in that time King Dedede has conquered Dream Land [[BewareTheSillyOnes without Kirby to oppose him]]. Kirby, guiltily, sets forth to fix the problem. [[spoiler: Turns out he's only been asleep for a few minutes, the Noddy was teaching Kirby a lesson]].

* In the ''GIJoe'' cartoon, Shipwreck awoke to find himself gray-haired and long retired from the military, and living in suburbia with a wife and children. He's told that he's suffering a relapse of amnesia, due to a head injury he'd suffered when the Joes took down [=COBRA=] once and for all. [[spoiler: It's all a [=COBRA=] hoax using synthoids, designed to get him to reveal a formula which a scientist had locked inside his head via hypnosis.]]

** Played straight in "Up All Night 2: Up All Day - The Reckoning", where the beavers struggle to get to sleep after "stupidly staying up for a bazillion years". When the finally manage it, they end up sleeping for [[HereWeGoAgain the same amount of time as they spent awake last time]], only this time [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext sheep have become the dominant species]].

* A ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoon (The Old Grey Hare) featuring Bugs Bunny and letting 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 [[WeirdAlEffect whose meanings have long vanished into history for the modern viewer]].

* A ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoon (The Old Grey Hare) featuring Bugs Bunny and letting Elmer Fudd sleep 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 [[WeirdAlEffect whose meanings have long vanished into history for the modern viewer]].

* A ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoon (The Old Grey Hare) featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd let Elmer sleep 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 [[WeirdAlEffect whose meanings have long vanished into history for the modern viewer]].

* The [[ExecutiveMeddling original ending]] to ''[[Franchise/EvilDead Army of Darkness]]'' had Ash take too much of the potion that was to return him to his own time. He overshoots his own time by one hundred years and awakes to a post-apocalyptic world.

* Justified in ''CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', where [[spoiler: 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 SHIELD put on the radio to put him at ease).]]

* Spider Robinson's ''The Time Traveler'' is a variant on this - the protagonist hasn't been sleeping, but he 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.

* In one ''WinnieThePooh'' comic book story, the other characters fake the idea of this trope for AprilFoolsDay by attaching a beard to a sleeping Pooh and pretending to be their own {{Identical Grandson}}s.

* Inverted in an episode of ''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 extreme version of this trope is SleptThroughTheApocalypse, where the [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt world has ended]] while the protagonist slept.

* ''Literature/Sleeping Beauty'': 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.

* * ''Main/Sleeping Beauty'': 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.

* Spider Robinson's ''The Time Traveler'' is a variant on this - the protagonist hasn't been sleeping, but he 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.

* Tom Canboro (Gary Busey) 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 Time Passage Beard.

* Tom Canboro (Gary Busey) 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.

* 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]] (orginally 1964) by ComicBook/TheAvengers.
* Pretty much [[{{Shazam}} Captain Marvel]]'s whole cast. He, his family, and many of his enemies took long naps as an explanation of how they transfered from [[ComicBookTime the Golden Age]] to [[ComicBookTime the Modern Era]].
* 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.