RPG characters and sleeping

Yes, I told you I'd be doing something like this. Well, here it is. Some of you may have seen enough of these things in every JRPG you have played, I certainly know I have! Some of you may be aware of The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches. I'm not gonna link it, it's a pretty easy find, and you can even check tvtropes.org for more in-depth looks at these cliches. So let's look at number 1, which is the Sleepyhead Rule.

What does this entitle? Well, look at Chrono Trigger. Crono is woken up by his mother by having the windows open; she wants to tell him about the fair happening. Good for her. The description of this rule is this: "The teenaged male lead will begin the first day of the game by oversleeping, being woken up by his mother, and being reminded that he's slept in so late he missed meeting his girlfriend."

Well Crono is one such character, and Serge from Chrono Cross follows in Crono's footsteps as someone woken up by his mom. Cless from Tales of Phantasia also falls to this. Ark from Terranigma is actually woken up by his girlfriend, but she still counts. Even Link, in a Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, has this cliche going for him, whether its his uncle or Marin doing the waking up. The key to this is being woken up by someone who's clearly a figure to the main character in some way, and not abruptly. The figure is basically telling them they might just be late to something important. Not a total emergency, but something important to the main character.

This is why Stahn from Tales of Destiny doesn't really count. He's an extreme example of a sleeper, one who was found as a stowaway aboard a ship. Even moreso when he knows no one aboard anyways. And Ryu from the first Breath of Fire, despite being woken up by his grandmother, also doesn't count, because it is abrupt because their village is burning down. So no real emergencies can make this one qualify.

All in all, despite being memorable for the two Chrono games enough that it's often considered cliche, especially in other series like Zelda, what you see isn't really all that common. It's only a cliche that happens once, and never really seen again for the rest of the game. And this trope isn't entirely that bad, the waking character is always a good character telling them they might want to, you know, wake up and see the sunshine or go out and have an adventure. That's pretty much a par for the course for any protagonist, wake up, have a nice adventure, and revel in it. They may or may not see the figure that wakes them up frequently, but that's fine.