http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KingInTheMountain

Frederick Barbarossa stirs, sending a boy to see if there are still ravens flying about the mountain; he will wake when there aren't.



That should Wales ever need someone bold

I'll rise up to help them — mind you, I'm six hundred years old!" Horrible Histories , "Owain Glyndŵr" "Welsh legend holdsThat should Wales ever need someone boldI'll rise up to help them — mind you, I'm six hundred years old!"

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A legendary form of Faux Death: the Long Dead Badass is not really dead, but asleep. Usually, but not necessarily, under a mountain. Islands and a Magical Land are other possibilities. At any rate, somewhere difficult to access.

He will come again in his country's hour of need to play Big Damn Heroes Up to Eleven. The original folkloric motif generally referred the hero's awakening to The End of the World as We Know It; the rise of nationalism altered the focus from the entire world to merely the nation.

The implicit power is such that this trope is usually not played out to the end; the king is alluded to, or seen asleep, but seldom wakened during the course of a story.

See also Awakening the Sleeping Giant, which comes into play when it does happen; while not technically neutral, they are effectively so because they are not in the fray. Sister Trope to Sealed Good in a Can and Sealed Badass in a Can; they overlap in those rare stories where the king does wake. Compare Sealed Evil in a Can. Compare Rip Van Winkle and Year Outside, Hour Inside.

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Subtrope of Eternal Hero.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

Captain America, who slept for X note Sliding timescale means that X=the amount of time between 1945 and about ten to fifteen years ago years until our greatest need...

years until our greatest need... In an Iron Man story featuring Doctor Doom and Time Travel, Stark and Doom find themselves in a future England (this was a sequel to an earlier storyline that had seen the same two characters go back to Arthurian times). Merlin is back, as is Arthur. Only due to genetic engineering and such Arthur was literally reborn to two Yuppie Britons and so is a spoiled young brat. So guess who has to take his place?

Camelot 3000 takes the King Arthur legend described above and runs with it. Arthur does indeed return in the hour of England's greatest need: an alien invasion in the year 3000.

In DC One Million and All-Star Superman, our Superman goes into the sun in order to rebuild its heart and leaves the superheroing to his many descendants who he blesses with extra-extraordinary powers. He returns after 851,000 years and brings New Krypton into our solar system.

In The Books of Magic, Tim Hunter and Doctor Occult encounter The King Under The Mountain. When they ask which king, they're told he's all of them. The bard under the mountain specifically name-checks Barbarossa and Arthur, among others.

The Elseworlds story Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table re-imagined Batman as a knight in King Arthur's court. At the end of the story, the dying Batman is enchanted to sleep and awaken at the hour of Britain's greatest need. The final page shows the Batplane battling German fighters during the Blitz.

Batman Black and White: "Legend" is set in 'the far future', where a woman tells her child a bedtime story about how the great warrior Batman finally banished evil from the world, then went to sleep in the Batcave, having promised to awaken if evil ever returned. Then she starts crying, because the world they live in is beset by evil apparently victorious. The final panels show a malefactor looking around in surprise and then alarm as a familiar pointy-eared shadow falls over him...

Eastern Animation

Suur Toll, being an animation of the myth of Toell The Great, has his decapitated head announce that he will one day return to protect Saaremaa, but without those troublesome kids mucking it up.

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Films — Live-Action

In the director's cut of Army of Darkness, Ash does this, complete with his car and boomstick, but wakes up 100 years later than planned and misses humanity's demise.

Viva Zapata!: The film ends with the counterrevolutionary government putting Zapata's dead body on display to crush the spirits of the peasants. It doesn't work. The peasants who see Zapata's mangled corpse refuse to believe that he is dead. They say that it isn't him, that "he's in the mountains", and that if the people ever need him, he'll come back again.

The Field Guide to Evil: At the end of "What Ever Happened to Paganus the Pagan?", Paganus is shown seated asleep and covered in cobwebs in 'The World Below'.

Jokes

A 201_ joke playing 194_. Churchill: "King Arthur, who is Brexit?"

Literature

Live-Action TV

Myths & Religion

Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40,000: The God-Emperor of Mankind has been confined to the arcane life-support systems of the Golden Throne for ten thousand years, and there's a number of theories and heresies about the circumstances of his possible revival. Some believe he will rise again one day to begin a new Great Crusade, while others hold that if everyone would just let his ruined husk die, the Emperor could reincarnate into a healthy new form. The Inquisitor rulebook mentions a theory that the Emperor could have been recalled to his body as early as a year after being placed on the Throne, but those ruling in his place prevented it to preserve their own power and the stability of the Imperium. Of course, the complicating factor is that the Golden Throne is part of the psychic beacon called the Astronomicon, without which it would be impossible to navigate through the Warp, leading to the collapse of galactic civilization... Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines, was put in a stasis tomb after being terminally poisoned, but nevertheless the chapter maintained for millennia that he was slowly healing. In the waning days of the 41st Millennium and the disaster of the 13th Black Crusade, the Tech-Priest Belisarius Cawl was able to, with Eldar aid, revive and heal Guilliman completely, provided he remains in a specially-crafted suit of power armor. Jaghatai Khan, primarch of the White Scars, disappeared while pursuing Dark Eldar reavers into the Webway, and his chapter believes he is still out there somewhere, ready to return when needed. Leman Russ of the Space Wolves abruptly departed with all but one of his bodyguard to search for a cure for the Emperor's condition, but promised that he would return during the "Wolftime". This legend causes some problems in the novel Grey Hunters — the Spear of Russ is the Space Wolves' most cherished relic, prophesied to have been left behind by the Primarch for his return. So when Ragnar destroys the Spear by using it against a resurrecting enemy, even Ragnar, convinced that he did the right thing, is disturbed by the idea of his Primarch not having the Spear for the destined battle. The whole thing is rendered moot when the spear is repaired and recovered at the end of the series. There's also another twist; according to members of the lost Great Company that Ragnar encountered, the real reason the spear was left behind was because Russ hated the damn thing but couldn't just discard a gift from his father Lion El'Jonson, primarch of the Dark Angels, is a literal case since he is sleeping in a hidden chamber of the Dark Angels' asteroid headquarters to wait for the final battle. In an interesting inversion, the Dark Angels aren't aware of this and actually believe that his body disappeared during his duel with Luther. The only people who know the truth are Luther (who is mad), the Emperor (who can't talk) and the Watchers in the Dark (a race of silent, mysterious robed creatures). The Salamanders' Primarch Vulcan also has one of these legends. Given he has Resurrective Immortality as an established power (and his last recorded death is something Perpetuals can explicitly recover from) this one is almost certainly true. Most likely he took the opportunity to hide better so people would stop interrupting his retirement. The Iron Hands have an odd variation of this. Their primarch, Ferrus Manus, was confirmed killed in the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan, and Horus was even presented with his severed head, but the Iron Hands insist that their primarch escaped somehow. In Henry Zhou's novel Emperor's Mercy, the ancient xenos artifact the Old Kings is supposed to produce the Star Kings at some point.

Warhammer: The dwarfs believe that their ancestor gods Grugni and Valaya disappeared into the heart of the mountains, to return when needed. Likewise, High King Snorri Whitebeard, the first ruler of the dwarfs, vowed on his deathbed that he would return one day when the dwarfs' foes would be at their gates. Many dwarfs believe that the enigmatic dwarf hero Grombrindal, who appears sporadically to lead dwarf armies to victory over dangerous foes, is in fact Snorri himself, returned to fulfill his promise. Dragons also have a habit of hibernating for centuries at a time (they're not adapting to the planet's changing climate well), and can only be roused by powerful mages. Hence why High Elf "dragon princes" ride into battle on horses with dragon-themed barding these days. Gilles le Breton, being Warhammer's King Arthur, was taken to a ship on his death that sent him to the Lady of the Lake, and it is said that he will return in Bretonnia's time of need. A lot of people in-universe speculate that the Green Knight, a mysterious warrior who challenges Questing Knights and occasionally appears to aid Bretonnian armies when they need help, is actually Gilles. And they're right. It's rather darkly subverted in the Grand Finale ; by the time he returns Bretonnia is beyond saving, and all he can do is lead a doomed Last Stand off-screen while the real battle for the fate of the world happens elsewhere Sigmar, the first ruler of the Empire, gave up the throne and went into the mountains to the east, never to be heard from again. He is said to have ascended to godhood. Which he actually did, and in The End Times, he comes back too. Though not in the way you'd think. The orcs and goblins have a version of this concerning the legendary goblin warlord Grom the Paunch, who vanished after his invasion of the high elven homeland was defeated. Among the numerous theories on his eventual fate is the rumor that Grom will one day return and lead the greenskins to great victory over the other races.

In the GURPS Technomancer setting, Stalin turned out to be this for the Soviet Union. He awoke after the fall of the USSR and tried to Make the Bear Angry Again.

Theater

In the opera Rip van Winkle, the chorus calls Rip "King of the Mountain" as he begins his twenty-year sleep in the Catskills.

Toys

Transformers: Most versions of Primus, the god of Transformers, are asleep, and have been for several billion years, sworn only to revive when "all are one". So, given the nature of Transformers, he's not waking up any time soon. Usually it takes something pretty drastic to get Primus directly involved (like, say, shooting him in the face). Of course, there is a pretty good reason for his long nap: If he wakes up, Unicron will instantly know where he is and make a beeline straight for him. And Primus has a pretty bad track record with regards to fighting his nemesis...

Video Games

Web Comics

The Dreamland Chronicles: Keeping King Arthur alive but out of the way is crucial to Nicodemus .

. In the backstory of Drowtales Queen Sharess made a promise to the Dark Elves that she would return and lead them back to the Surface from the Underworld once it was safe again after demonic wars had made it uninhabitable before she departed into the Netherworld to seal the gates. After 1000 years there are no signs of her returning and the Dark Elves and those who believe in her are largely extinct outside of the Kyorl'solenurn clan. However, Sha'sana actually has been keeping Sharess' body the entire time and has her own plans to bring her back to unite the clans .

. Leif & Thorn: Variation in which Ceannis' Arthurian national hero Rhódon is dead — but reincarnation is a known thing, and she has come back several times . It's believed she will reincarnate again if and when the nation needs her.

Western Animation

The Avatar Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender accidentally seals himself and Appa, his flying bison, in ice for a hundred years. He does indeed return to save the world, although judging by what Zuko says in the first episode, everyone probably expected an old man in hiding rather than a Keet Cheerful Child.

In Beast Wars, the original Optimus Prime (in stasis lock) sits in his command chair in the Autobot ark, which crash-landed and buried itself under a dormant volcano, awaiting a revival millions of years in the future.

In The Boondocks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is revealed to be this, awakening from a coma 40-odd years after being shot. In a pretty dark subversion of the trope, he turns out to be pretty disappointed with the direction that African-American culture has gone in his absence.

As with the legend, this happens to Gargoyles' version of King Arthur. And when King Arthur came out, the Magus replaced him after using so much magic without a channel like the grimoire.

In X-Men: Evolution's take on Captain America's origin, his role as a King in the Mountain is made even more explicit. Instead of being accidentally frozen in an iceberg and presumed dead for years, he's intentionally placed in cryogenic sleep when it turns out that the super-soldier serum is slowly killing him. The implication is that he will be revived to fight again when S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists find a way to cure him.

On The Venture Bros., it's lampshaded how Nazi's are simply obsessed with cloning or resurrecting Hitler in one way or another. As mentioned in the Real Life section below, this may count as an evil version of the trope.

Quentin Trembley, of Gravity Falls, may be the most bizarre example of this ever written. He is the founder of Gravity Falls and 8 1/2th President of the United States, and disappeared after riding his horse over the edge of a ravine, backwards. It eventually transpires that he preserved himself in peanut brittle, believing it could sustain his life, and hid himself away in a secret chamber, leaving a series of cryptic and nonsensical clues as to how to find him. He is finally awoken, after a couple of centuries, when the protagonists have need of him.

Real Life