Counting Sheep

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    Trying to get to sleep by lying in bed, closing one's eyes and counting imaginary sheep jumping over a fence, and hoping to drift off to sleep from the boredom and repetition of the activity. Cartoons may show the sheep in an Imagine Spot. Proven by science as ineffective.

    This trope is rarely ever played straight, but more often deconstructed (with the character concentrating into counting sheep so intently that they forget to sleep, if ever interrupted, cue swearing or recounting), parodied (flocks of sheep have a soporific effect because people will try to count them) and/or exaggerated (using some weird method in counting sheep, like counting something else, or the sheep is doing something else other than jumping, or using calculator, or counting to 338,547 sheep, or setting up an animation of sheep jumping using a computer...). Usually, it will be Played for Laughs. When it's ineffective, the trope can also be used to show how serious the character's insomnia is. When it's too effective on the other hand, it shows how easily the character drifts off to sleep.

    Examples of Counting Sheep include:

    Advertising

    • A series of mattress commercials by Serta featured counting sheep who were constantly annoyed that people stopped needing them since the mattress was so comfy, they'd had an easier time falling to sleep.

    Anime & Manga

    • In the first episode of Haruhi-chan, Kyon has a dream, and Mikuru is a sheep that Haruhi is cruelly trying to force into jumping over the fence through a ring of fire so Kyon can count her.
    • In the second episode of Ah! My Goddess TV, when Keiichi and Belldandy are trying to sleep in a car, he explains the idea of counting sheep to her. He ends up awake all night, as Belldandy doesn't realize why you do it. She ends up counting over 38,000 when we last see it.
    • In an episode of Pokémon, James, Jessie and Meowth are up in a tree spying on a rancher and his field full of Mareep, which are basically electric sheep. As usual...

    James: "One Mareep, two Mareep, three Mareep... *yawn* ..."

    • In Kurikosan Konnichi Wa, the titular Kuriko prefers to imagine her husband jumping the fence.

    Kuriko: Ten Yoichi's, eleven Yoichi's...
    Yoichi: Make it sheep, will you?

    Film

    Cowardly Lion: I haven't slept in weeks.
    Tin Man: Why don't you try counting sheep?
    Cowardly Lion: That doesn't do any good -- I'm afraid of 'em.

    Literature

    • In Winnie the Pooh, Pooh tries to put himself to sleep by counting Heffalumps [creatures that resemble elephants] but every Heffalump takes a pot of his honey, and when "the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalumps were licking their jaws, and saying to themselves, 'Very good honey this, I don't know when I've tasted better', Pooh could bear it no longer".

    Live Action TV

    Ernie: 43,891... 43,892...

      • One "Number of the Day" sketch had the Count count sheep until an elephant appears, with said elephant indicating that number (for example, if the elephant appears after five sheep, then the Number of the Day is five, for zero only the elephant appears).
    • Mr. Bean once did this, but instead of imagining them, he uses a photograph of a field full of sheep. After continually losing count, he counts the number of rows and columns of sheep, does a quick calculation, and instantly drops off.
    • In a Season One Kids in The Hall sketch, a kid says he can't sleep and his father suggests counting sheep. The kid starts crying about all the slaughtered sheep. His father says they're live sheep. The kid says, "You didn't tell me they were alive. Dad, I was up all night tagging their toes!"

    Newspaper Comics

    • In Dilbert, a co-worker notes that he used to own a sheep farm. Asked how many sheep he had, he says every time he tried to count them he fell asleep.

    Music

    • Counting sheep apparently does nothing for Adam Young.

    Theatre

    • In Once Upon a Mattress, Winnifred, having failed to find any comfortable position on the bed, counts all through the night and by the next morning has reached several thousand without getting any rest.

    Video Games

    • In LSD Dream Emulator, sometimes, instead of starting a new dream, you are instead shown an animation. One of these shows sheep jumping over a fence.
    • In Worms 3D, the objective of one of the missions is to cure your leader from his insomnia by using the sheep weapon to make him count some sheep.
    • The game Pokémon Channel has an entire channel devoted to showing Mareep (electric sheep) jumping over a fence. Pikachu has a tendency to fall asleep while watching it.
    • One microgame in Wario Ware: Twisted! is called "Falling Asheep", which has you timing sheeps' jumps over a fence in a boy's thought bubble.
    • Due to their association with sleep, games in the Paper Mario series have this as an item with inflicts the Sleep status.

    Web Comics

    Web Original

    Western Animation

    'Fry: Man, that's dog's gonna be hard to beat. Look at him bring in the sheep! One sheep, two sheep ... (yawns)... three sheep... (falls asleep)

    • One of the Wallace and Gromit Cracking Contraptions shorts features a device that produces sheep for Wallace to count himself to sleep. The "sheep" are really just Gromit in a sheep costume, being thrown up in front of the bed... 500 times.
    • In Cow and Chicken, Chicken tries to do this to sleep and get over the effects of too much caffeine. He ends up counting mules carrying coffee bean bags.
    • In "How to Sleep", Goofy does this unsuccessfully.
    • Ann-Margrock sings a lullabye to Pebbles about counting sheep.
    • An animated short of Ruby Gloom revolves around the characters doing this. Misery's version has the sheep jumping straight into the wall, where Misery counts with "...ow."
    • In the Disney cartoon, Aladdin was having a problem sleeping, so Genie tried to help him sleep by summoning mini sheep for him to count.
    • Johnny Test couldn't sleep, so he had Dukey dress up as a sheep and jump over his bed.
    • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, when Jimmy is trying to conquer his fear of pickles, he sleeps in bed while dreaming of pickles jumping over a fence, with a small yell between each snore.
    • One episode of the cartoon Grimmy features a gang of gangster sheep. How did they rob banks? "Count Us!".
    • In Drag-Along Droopy, sheepherder Droopy leads a massive flock of sheep who mow down all the vegetation in their path, riling the resident cattleman. On the eve of their face-off Droopy dozes, counting sheep hopping a fence. The sheep doze, counting Droopys hopping a fence.
    • In an episode of Garfield and Friends, Bo isn't sleepy, so he decides to count people until he dozes off.
    • Done with several tiny Strong Sads in the Homestar Runner animation "A Jorb Well Done."
    • One scene in "Day and Night" had several sheep jump inside Night's body.
    • On SpongeBob SquarePants, Mr. Krabs falls asleep by counting money jumping into a cash register, but keeps getting woken up by the squeaky boots he gave to SpongeBob.

    Other

    This wonderful book gives suggestions for counting Babaas and even has Babaas on each page for you to count!

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