History Main / RipVanWinkle

* Creator/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.
* Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''3001: The Final Odyssey'', the last and final volume in his ''Space Odyssey'' series, 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.

* 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.

* "We Won't Get Fooled Again" by Music/TheWho is an interpretation of the original story, which used the twenty-year nap to illustrate that the Revolutionary War (which happened while he slept) really didn't change anything at all, and he was basically living in the same world. It's a bit hidden in the song, but certain lyrics like "And the marching on the left/ Is now the marching on the right/ And the beards have all grown longer overnight" make it a definite reference.

* ''Series/WandaVision'' has Comicbook/MonicaRambeau waking up from a nap in a hospital room, and discovering five years have passed. During that period, she was outright non-existant, being among [[Film/AvengersInfinityWar half the population of the universe that was wiped out by Thanos]] (something that happened as she dozed off), and thus revived [[Film/AvengersEndgame when the Avengers reversed that decimation]] - the reason why she was in the hospital, her mother Maria, even died three years prior.

* In the backstory for ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'', a previous princess named Zelda (separate from the one encountered in the [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaI preceding game]]) had a cruel brother who mistreated the citizens of Hyrule with the help of an evil wizard. When Zelda refused to tell her brother what she knew about the location of the Triforce, the wizard tried to kill her with a spell that instead killed him and put Zelda in a deep slumber. The remorseful brother placed his sister in a castle tower in the hope that she would one day be woken up. The plot of the game involves Link finding the Triforce of Courage to do so.
** And again in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild''. Only this time Link's the one sleeping, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ6jisr1Nlk for a hundred years!]]

* A medieval legend told in various versions tells of a monk who comes to doubt God because he cannot wrap his mind around the Biblical verse "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." ([[Literature/EpistlesOfPeter 2nd Peter 3:8]]) (or alternatively "For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past", [[Literature/BookOfPsalms Psalms 90:4]]). Deep in thought, he wanders into a forest and forgets of the time (depending on the version, he may fall asleep while sitting down for a rest, or be entranced by the song of a beautiful bird). At evening, he hurries back to the monastery, only to discover that during his stay in the forest, three hundred years have passed. He realizes that God has done this to demonstrate His power, and [[RapidAging dies soon after]]. The best-known modern adaptation of this legend is the ballad "[[https://www.bartleby.com/270/8/70.html The Monk of Heisterbach]]" by Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter.

* The German legend "[[http://www.kellscraft.com/LegendsRhine/legendsrhine082.html The Monk of Heisterbach]]" tells of a monk who comes to doubt God because he cannot wrap his mind around the Biblical verse "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." ([[Literature/EpistlesOfPeter 2nd Peter 3:8]]; alluding to a similar verse in [[Literature/BookOfPsalms Psalms 90:4]]). Deep in thought, he wanders into a forest and forgets of the time (depending on the version, he may fall asleep while sitting down for a rest). At evening, he comes to and hurries back to the monastery, only to discover that during his stay in the forest, three hundred years have passed. He realizes that God has done this to demonstrate His power, and [[RapidAging dies soon after]]. Modern variants of the legend are generally based on the ballad "[[https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_M%C3%B6nch_von_Heisterbach Der Mönch von Heisterbach]]" by Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter.

* In ''VideoGame/DisgaeaHourOfDarkness'', the main character Laharl planned to take a ten day nap... and slept for 2 years. He would have slept longer, but his 'loyal' vassal Etna woke him up.

** Played straight in "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 [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext sheep have become the dominant species]].

* 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 [[WeirdAlEffect whose meanings have long vanished into history for the modern viewer]].
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' did this.
** So did one of the original comic strips.

* The premise of ''TheMunstersToday'', as told in the opening theme song, was "We went to sleep some twenty years ago / And woke up with a brand new show!"

* 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 TimePassageBeard.

* In the film ''Merlin's Apprentice'', [[Myth/{{Merlin}} the titular wizard]] rests out in a cave after Camelot comes to peace and wakes up 50 years later to find Camelot in ruins and Arthur dead.

* {{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}: Pizza delivery boy Fry accidentally [[{{HumanPopsicle}} freezes himself]] during New Year’s Eve of 1999. He wakes up a thousand years later, kickstarting the whole plot of the show.

* ''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 from the latter's body.]]

* In a supporting-character example, Wulf Saxon from the [[Creator/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.

* ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' 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]].]]

A character settles down for a nice nap. When he wakes up, it's several decades later. He sees the effects of his absence. Anything he did wrong can now never be fixed. Those who loved him, if still alive, are miserable, and everything has changed. TheFutureIsShocking trope may ensue.

This is OlderThanFeudalism. [[Literature/RipVanWinkle The story it's named after]] is an old American folktale, which itself is derived from an earlier Dutch folktale, having variants stretching back to the third century CE.

Compare the KingInTheMountain and HumanPopsicle. Compare ColdSleepColdFuture and AsleepForDays. See also YearOutsideHourInside, where the victim doesn't sleep away the years but spends them in an enchanted place. When the character is conscious during this it's TheSlowPath. An extreme version of this trope is SleptThroughTheApocalypse, where the [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt world has ended]] while the protagonist slept. If you want to add humor when that person wakes up, use RipVanTinkle. When someone is deceived into believing this trope it's FakedRipVanWinkle.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' did this in an early episode where the boys discover a man frozen in the ice of a cave. He'd been trapped there for 2-3 years, but everybody treats him like a defrosted caveman. When he tries to return home to his wife, he discovers she's remarried (after a few weeks) and has a pair of (somehow) nearly teenage children with her new husband.

"No. She won an Oscar, and he's a Congressman!"\\
"GOOD''NIGHT''!" (flatlines)

** 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 they 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]].