I have a character who sleeps in coffin in a cemetery, nothing groundbreaking but I was wondering if it's cliche in games or stories.
I know in Altered Beast you 'rise from your grave' and Medievil Sir Daniel is awoken from a coffin.
Is there any more?

Is only a cliche for vampires I think.

In fact, it is such a cliche that players might assume the character is a vampire... Which might not be what you want.

I know in Altered Beast you 'rise from your grave' and Medievil Sir Daniel is awoken from a coffin.
Is there any more?

Pretty sure in World of Warcraft the "Undead" Forsaken Race awaken from the Sepulcher (tomb, grave, etc) in the city of Deathknell.

I know in Altered Beast you 'rise from your grave' and Medievil Sir Daniel is awoken from a coffin.
Is there any more?

Pretty sure in World of Warcraft the "Undead" Forsaken Race awaken from the Sepulcher (tomb, grave, etc) in the city of Deathknell.

this concept is impossible to be rationalised as something other then a cliche, simply because its generalisation is so broad that it covers quite a few different types of cliche ideas.

Yes, this is and always will be a cliche theory of an idea, but that is not important. It is what you do with this that changes it into something work-able and original, like everything it requires the patience and perseverance of manifesting the idea into something different.

Yous should be worrying less whether something in your story is cliche or not, and focus more on how you can turn it into something less tread upon while maintaining the original idea. Even leaving the idea as it is, and making what's around it something original works.

Whether something is cliche or not depends on the whole setting. The cemetery itself exists in most fantasy games I can think of. It's already beyond cliche - it's like a standard enviro element people expect. If cemetery is cliche, then so are spaceships, castles, forests, rivers, stars and main characters.

Sleeping in a coffin is something else. Here you combine elements in a way that may or may not be predictable, therefore perceived as cliche. Still, it depends on the rest of the setting. The more predictable and generic elements you place together, the more cliche it will seem. Example:

- the main character sleeps in the coffin on the cemetery because he is a vampire and the soil of his homeland gives him strength to become a bat at night and fly to town to suck the blood from virgins - mega cliche.

- the main character sleeps in the coffin on the cemetery because he ran away from home and it is the only place that gives him some privacy and he doesn't have to pay rent - perfectly ok.

Also, never think of cliche's in terms of cliche in games / cliche in movies. Cliche's are bigger than the medium you are using. If the elements you wanna place in your game have never been used in games, but are an obvious cliche in books, music or movies - it will be an obvious cliche in your game as well.