However, the sleeping sickness that appears in The Sandman was based on a very real disease that took the world by storm in the 1910s and 1920s — and whose cause remains a mystery to this day...

But even those that managed to escape the deep, endless slumber still faced tremendous risk. Years would go by until seemingly cured patients presented signs of the chronic form of the disease. The symptoms included involuntary movement of the eyes, psychiatric disorders that could go from euphoria to psychosis, and, perhaps most prominently, a great stiffness of the upper body denominated post-encephalitic parkinsonism. With time, patients would stop moving entirely, their bodies still and their faces frozen in a kind of mask....

Oddly enough, though, the paralysis caused by the chronic form of the sleeping sickness could be circumvented by things such as throwing a ball to the afflicted person or putting on some music. The external stimulus would cause the sick to lift their arms to catch the ball or even dance for a while. This kind of response to the outside world led neurologist Oliver Sacks to believe that there was something more to the disease than what was known at the time....

Dr. Sacks recounted his experience at Mount Carmel in the 1973 book Awakenings. One of the stories he tells is of a patient identified as Rose R., who went to bed one night as a 21-year-old, in 1926, and was only able to get up after 43 years.

Throughout the first season, a range of LGBTQ+ characters is introduced. Revealed in a casual way, none of them are defined by their sexuality or gender identity; it’s just one aspect of who they are, in line with Gaiman’s initial approach when he wrote the comics. “We didn’t really change anything”, offers Gaiman, “that was how they were when I wrote them, that’s always how I’ve written characters. At the time, I remember getting a very grumpy letter from the “Concerned Mothers of America”, informing us that due to the number of gay characters in Sandman they would be boycotting us and we had to repent. We never repented and the sales just went up, and up, and up! ...

“When I was writing it—and today—I had gay friends and I had trans friends”, Gaiman continues, “I wanted to see them represented in the comics that I was writing and it felt to me like if I wrote comics and left them out, then I wouldn’t be representing my world, or the world that I was in, or the world I was perceiving accurately, bravely, or truly. And that’s the point of art. So for me, it was just a given.”

Allan Heinberg, who has long been a fan of Gaiman’s work, discovered the first issue of The Sandman in his local comic book store when it was first published. “I think part of the reason that I loved Sandman when it was coming out”, Heinberg told The Queer Review, “was because it was representation at a time, especially in comics, where there was none. Northstar didn’t happen for quite some time, and it wasn’t the same. So I, as a queer person, always felt seen, and heard, and held by Sandman and obviously I wanted the show to do that for the LGBTQIA+ community. A number of people in the writers rooms for both seasons one—and we’ve started talking about season two—are nonbinary, and gay, and lesbian, and bisexual, and trans. Everybody was able to read these stories in 2021 and 2022 in a fresh way and say, ‘This still works, it really works’.”

Neil Gaiman isn't gay, despite what his last name may lead you to think.
Allan Heinberg is the co-showrunner for the TV series, so there is a gay person "in charge," but every LGBTQ+ character/relationship so far has been adapted from the source material, so they're not changing and adding in more LGBTQ+ content.