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{{quote|''"I've been having these dreams lately. Like is any of this real, or not?"''
|'''Sora'''|''[[Kingdom Hearts (video game)|Kingdom Hearts]]''}}
Around fifty minutes into the program, really weird stuff starts happening, like little people juggling while riding a tricycle around a bewildered protagonist. Then the protagonist realizes, just as you do, that this has all been a dream, a really bad hallucination, or some other escape from reality.
Sometimes, the character awakes after the dream, realises it was all "just a dream" (often actually saying this to himself, which rarely happens in real life), sighs with relief, and then sees an artifact lying next to him that was ''in'' the dream. This usually will leave protagonist and audience wondering "[[Or Was It a Dream?]]", however it may also be an opening gambit in a [[Dream Within a Dream]] sequence. Sometimes the dream lasts longer than one episode—entire seasons have been known to turn out to be dreams. Often, when the dreamer awakens, the really epic events (death of a major character, etc.) from the "dream season" will [[Reset Button|be reversed]]. Or maybe the [[
If other characters start acting out of character or otherwise just don't seem to be quite themselves during the dream sequence, expect lots of finger-pointing and exclamations of "''[[And You Were There]]!''" when the dreaming character awakens.
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{{endingtrope}}
{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* The delightful Kia Sorento commercial "[http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2010/kia-sorento-joy-ride/ Joyride Dream].
* Don't forget the Pepsi Twist commercial when [[Ozzy Osbourne]] notices his kids drinking Pepsis, only for them to actually be Pepsi Twists, and that his kids are actually the ''Osmonds'' in [[Latex Perfection|full rubber bodysuits]]. Ozzy starts screaming, only to wake up and realize that it was just a nightmare, though the Pepsi Twists are still real...
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* One of the DVD specials for ''[[Durarara!!]]'' cleverly inverts this trope. The opening scenes show downright absurd scenes, like UFO sightings. As these are shown, Walter muses that most people would call his fantasies a pipe dream. The rest of the episode is narrated chronologically backwards, revealing that the strange occurrences at the beginning of the episode are ''not'' part of Walter's fantasy.
* The Season 2 opening of ''[[Genshiken]]'' starts with Sasahara opening a book... and then goes into an opening for a Mobile Suit Gundam-like series starring the Genshiken characters, including a helmeted Madarame as the antagonist. Then Sasahara wakes up and we see that he was looking at a sketch of the club members.
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* Nastily inverted in ''[[Berserk]]''. In the midst of the massacre under the Eclipse, Corkus becomes convinced that the entire plot of the series was just a dream. After all, (present horror excluded) it was much too good to be true. His absolute certainty did not prevent his brutal death.
* The episode "Haruhi in Wonderland" of ''[[Ouran High School Host Club]]'' is all Haruhi's dream, but though the ending of the episode treats it as "All Just a Dream", it's obvious from the beginning that it is either a dream or at least a nonsense episode based on [[Alice in Wonderland]]. What makes the episode really neat is its use of [[Fridge Logic|dream logic]] and the way she wakes up by slowly realizing that people and places are not exactly as they are in real life. The final realization that causes her to awaken is {{spoiler|trying to hug her mother who was already dead when the series began}}.
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|Tomoya]] of ''[[Clannad (visual novel)|Clannad]]'s'' first season has a dream that can only be described as trippy, of course to him it all seemed fairly natural. Makes one wonder what it was that Kotori put in the pie he ate before he passed out.
* In the fourth arc of ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'', there is a very memorable scene in which Maria kills her mother Rosa repeatedly and grotesquely. From the context, it is to be inferred that the entire scene is a dream. However, it's never stated explicitly, [[Mind Screw|just like a lot in this series]].
* In ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'', [[Moe Anthropomorphism|Japan]] tries to convince himself that the [[Ho Yay|"Private Lesson"]] with close friend [[Chivalrous Pervert|Greece]] was [[Crowning Moment of Funny|All Just A Dream]]. Even when he woke up naked—[[Did They or Didn't They?|or at least shirtless]]—next to him...
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** In the un-animated skit ''High School Girls are Funky -- Tolerance'', {{spoiler|[[Always Second Best|Yanagin]] again dared NAGO to test how long can they stay in the sauna. While most of the skit showed Yanagin won over NAGO... it turned out Yanagin fell unconscious earlier than NAGO, Ikushima and Habara; what we saw for the previous pages were just her dream while she was unscious.}}
== Comic Books ==
== Comics ==▼
* The last issue of ''[[Gen 13]]'', vol. 1 combined this with a [[Downer Ending]]: The team—along with various other gen-active teens they'd met along the course of the series—has one last hedonistic, live-like-there's-no-tomorrow-cuz-there-ain't good time before "The End". Turns out this was all in Caitlin Fairchild's head, an extended hallucination brought on by the effects of another gen-active's powers in the split-second before a [[Death Trap]] disintegrated them all (they got better).
* This has happened innumerable times in [[Superhero]] comics as an "out" for a wacky story that doesn't fit into canon. So much so that it was common to include the blurb "Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!" on covers to reassure readers that no such cop-out would be used. Of course, since [[Covers Always Lie]], they'd usually find some ''other'' cop-out that meant the events still weren't what they seemed.
* The current{{when}} high-profile ''[[Batman]]: RIP'' storyline is (among other things) an attempt to bring the wackier [[The Silver Age of Comic Books|Silver Age]] adventures of the Dark Knight in-canon by explaining them as hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation experiments. An original quote from one of those Silver-Age tales is a prominent part of the storyline (and very typical of the trope): "It would be far easier to consider this a dream... but how can I? For in my hand, I hold the Bat-Radia!" Noteworthy in that the sensory deprivation experiment was not a [[Retcon]], but was ''itself'' a framing device in an actual Silver Age story. An alternative explanation provided for some of these episodes is the insinuation that they were hallucinations brought about by exposure to Joker toxin, Scarecrow's fear gas, etc.
* ''[[Tom Strong]]'' issues 29 & 30 had the eponymous hero awaken from his superheroic life into a gray world with no wonder or adventure where he was just a factory worker with a case of bad self-esteem. Then the clues mount that he really is a superhero - only to discover that he was a failed military experiment and [[Cuckoo Nest|all of his memories of a heroic life were delusions]]. But at the last moment, he breaks out of the hallucination - back into the superheroic world where the [[Big Bad]] of the story had been forcing him to hallucinate. He said later that he knew the world he had been in wasn't real because it was all gray, with no sense of hope or wonder in it. (Of course, a cynical person might just say that he was unable to cope with the truth and retreated into his dream-world ... à la that much-referenced episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''.)
* A two-week storyline in ''[[FoxTrot]]'', parodying ''[[The Metamorphosis]]'', has Jason waking up one morning to find he's turned into a miniature version of his sister, Paige. Midway through the story, he [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this trope by saying he's figured out that he's dreaming, because he thinks that if this were real, [[The X-Files|Mulder and Scully]] would've come to investigate. (Dream-Peter then points out that Mulder and Scully [[This Is Reality|are TV characters]]—and therefore [[Comically Missing the Point|only investigate incidents appropriate for primetime shows]]. Turning into a teenage girl is too horrific.)▼
* ''[[The Sandman]]''. Quite a bit of it really is just a dream, but that doesn't make it any less real. "I give you - [[wikipedia:List of characters in The Sandman#Alex Burgess|eternal waking]]..." Brrrrr...
* Two ''[[Spawn]]'' issues written by [[Neil Gaiman]] and [[Grant Morrison]] has Spawn dying accidentally after a fight with an angel warrior, and goes to a special level of Hell, where he finds all [[Marvel Comics]] and [[DC Comics]] superheroes imprisoned, and with help of [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo|Superman]], who gave him his power, he sets them all free. Next issue happens back on Earth, with the narrator saying "Let's come back to reality. Spawn has a bad dream last days."
* From ''[[Bloom County]]'', after a long-awaited wedding, Opus is knocked out when his nose collided with Lola's when they kiss. While unconscious, Opus dreams about Lola leaving him twenty years later with twenty-three tube-grown kids. At another point, Opus ends up wandering lost in the desert. Suddenly, he's back home in Bloom County. He announces how happy he is it was all just a dream. Milo then says "No. ''This'' is the dream. You're still in the desert." And sure enough..▼
* ''[[Little Nemo|Little Nemo in Slumberland]]'' ends every strip with Nemo waking up in bed. There were continuous storylines despite this. And when Nemo gets into trouble it does not feel as safe as a dream. No no no.▼
* ''[[Drabble]]'' pulled this twice, then subverted it ''hilariously''. The first time, Ralph dreams that his job as a mall cop is more like [[Batman]]. The second time, Norman goes to a piercing salon with Wendy and ends up with multiple ear, nose, and other rings. The third time, Norman and Wendy run off to Vegas and get married on a dare. Norman is about to invoke this trope when the next panel reveals the cartoonist has already used up his chances to use it. The plot gets resolved another way.▼
* Sometimes used as a [[Cold Opening]] in ''[[Quantum and Woody]]''. For example, issue #5 starts with Woody, Quantum, and Amy working together as a tightly-coordinated counter-terrorism team to stop a criminal called Othello. In reality, it's a dream induced after Quantum was accidentally blasted off of a building in the previous issue.
* A story of ''[[The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers]]'' from the early '70s has the trio staging a violent assault on a prison to free an incarcerated friend. Fat Freddy ends up cut off and bludgeoned to death by a horde of cops - but it's all just a dream, and Franklin is beating him with a rolled-up newspaper for eating a whole batch of hash cookies. Then, some seven years later, an extended story where they take a cross-country trip in a vintage RV ends in a full-scale riot at a Greenwich Village Halloween parade - but it's all just a dream, and Franklin is beating Freddy with a rolled-up newspaper...implying ''everything'' that happened between the two stories was Fat Freddy dreaming!
* There's a ''[[The Punisher|Punisher]]'' story where Frank goes back in time to the 30s thanks to Reed Richards and Nick Fury. He quickly infiltrates [[Al Capone]]'s gang and kills every last mobster in Chicago along with Al, the idea being that by breaking the mafia's hold early on, there'll be no gang shooting in Central Park in the late twentieth century, saving Frank's family and preventing his [[Start of Darkness]]. Then he wakes up.
== Fan Works ==
* In ''[[Nobody Dies]]'', {{spoiler|much of chapter 66 is Shinji having a dream (really more of a nightmare) about Zeruel slaughtering everyone.}}
** Forget about that, {{spoiler|the
* [[Inverted Trope]] in ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'', where Kanae was having a recurrent dream with parts... off. It was until after {{spoiler|she kissed Kyon}} that she realized she was awake.
* In a parody fanfiction about ''[[Dragon Ball GT]]'', right after Goku's [[Heroic BSOD]] and [[Big No]] when learning that {{spoiler|after his 100 years with Shenron, his family and friends are dead.}}, we return to {{spoiler|Goku and Chichi's bedroom and he explains to her the ''entire events of GT'' as a nightmare!!}} Then, it becomes a [[Dream Within a Dream]] as Goku has a run in with {{spoiler|''[[
* The ''[[Star Trek:
* ''[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/545/Equestria Equestria]'' is a ''[[My Little Pony:
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6515261/7/Dalton Chapter 7] of ''[[Dalton]]'' starts out like this.
* One "episode" of ''[[Calvin at Camp]]'' features Calvin falling asleep and dreaming that he is in an [[Affectionate Parody]] of [[Lost]]. The readers are aware the entire time that it is a dream.
== Film ==
* Some have suggested that the events of ''[[The Polar Express]]'' were all just a dream, though others feel that the presence of the bell from Santa's sleigh as a present for the Hero Boy signifies that they were really real.
* Poor poor ''[[An American Tail|Fievel Goes West]]'', written off as a dream Fievel had in the third ''An American Tail'' movie. Which is a headbanger [[Retcon]] as there was an entire TV series with the Wild West theme that aired prior to the third movie. What, was Fievel in a coma or something? The dream lasted a whole TV series!
* ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'' is the most famous film example, of course, though there is a ''wee'' bit of room for alternate interpretation. It should be noted that in the book it is definite that Oz '''was''' real and Dorothy returns there several times in other books; Oz was changed to an elaborate dream in the film because producers [[Viewers are Morons|felt that the 1930s audience was too sophisticated to accept a straight on fantasy like that]].
* Two of Laurel and Hardy's short films used this example: ''The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case'' and ''Oliver the Eighth''.
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* Reality and dreams are blurred in ''[[The Science of Sleep]]''.
* ''Stay (1996)''
* Throughout ''[[Pan's Labyrinth|Pans Labyrinth]]'', there are strong suggestions that certain aspects of the plot may be All Just a Dream. [[Word of God]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20090228234339/http://twitchfilm.net/archives/008507.html debunks that possibility], though that same god also explicitly tells you not to listen to him so in the end it looks like nobody's happy.
* In ''[[The Shining]]'', it sometimes got difficult to tell what was real and what were projections of the family's minds. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110104151920/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
* Subverted in ''[[The Butterfly Effect]]''. At one point near the end of the film it looks like the story is gonna go out with a [[Twist Ending]]. As Evan's doctor explains that there are no journals, he asserts that everything that we've apparantly seen so far is a delusion that Evan created to cope with the guilt of killing Kayleigh, describing alternate universes with colleges, prisons, and paraplegia. Then it turns out that the mental time travel ''was'' real when Evan goes back one last time.
* ''[[The Descent (film)|The Descent]]''. Did the crawlers exist, or was Sarah unable to handle the claustrophobia and stress of the already bad situation, causing her to imagine them and kill all her friends? All that can actually be said is that there was dreaming going on; where it started or ended is never made clear. (Their existence is confirmed in the sequel.)
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* The first twenty minutes of the ''[[Halloween (film)|Halloween]] II'' remake ends up being nothing more than a nightmare that the main character was having.
* The last third of ''[[Repo Men]]'' - {{spoiler|in the last two minutes or so, it's revealed that Remy suffered brain damage from getting hit in the face by a hook, and Jake then had Remy hooked up to the M5 Neural Net to live the rest of his life in happiness - everything that happens between the hook to the face and the reveal is part of the happy illusion Remy is living because of the neural net.}}
*
== Literature ==
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** Speaking of Dickens, this is also one interpretation of ''[[A Christmas Carol]],'' though Scrooge doesn't think so.
* An in-story example occurs in one of the ''Henry Huggins'' books where Henry has to play the lead in the school Christmas program about a boy going to the North Pole to visit Santa. He hates the role- a six-year-old boy, the costume- footy pajamas, and the ending- where it turns out he dreamed the whole thing. [[Beverly Cleary]] didn't seem to like this trope, either.
* [[G. K.
* [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]'' [[Nietzsche Wannabe|plays with this]].
* Chris van Allsburg's ''Just a Dream'', obviously. Although whether or not the author intended the dreams to be actual premonitions of potential futures is debatable.
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* [[Alexander Pushkin]]'s short story ''The Undertaker'' is an [[Older Than Radio]] example.
* [[The Box of Delights]] ends this way. The action supposedly takes place during Kay Harker's school holidays, but at the end he wakes up still on the train.
== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[The Dick Van Dyke Show
* ''[[The X-Files]]'' is fond of doing this.
** In one episode, Mulder and Scully have [[Lotus Eater Machine|fungus-inspired hallucinations]].
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** Another One involves Al taking a job as a janitor for a Private Eye only to become one himself and solve a diamond case, getting a big fat check as reward. Of course, [[Status Quo Is God]] and it was just a dream of his (this one was the season-erasing resolution).
** Another has Al making a deal with the Devil (Robert Englund) to lead a football team to the Super Bowl. He gets his wish but is killed in a tackle and taken to Hell where his family and friends also end up (as a result of improbable accidents after his death, oddly enough). After three hundred years in Hell, Al can't take it anymore and challenges the Devil to a football match. The Devil picks some of the world's worst historical figures for his team. Al manages to win (even though given an offer to go back with beautiful women and loads of cash which, in a rare moment selflessness, he passes up). Al then wakes up back where he was before the Devil appeared and it appears to be a dream to him... least until he pulls out some Red Hots candy the Devil had given him.
* Sent up by Robert Rankin in ''[[Far
* The last episode of ''[[St. Elsewhere]]'' reveals that the entire series has taken place in the mind of an autistic child. If you accept that crossovers between shows imply that they occupy the same fictional universe, an argument can be made that no fewer than [https://web.archive.org/web/20060824200044/http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html 282 shows] were figments of Tommy Westphall's imagination, including ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. The aforementioned site seems to have a very low threshold for calling a show a cross-over, however; it includes minor [[Shout-Out
* This trope's application in the ''[[Newhart]]'' episode "The Last Newhart" resulted in what is widely considered one of the best series [[Grand Finale|finales]], ever. In the end it was revealed that the entire show was a nightmare of Robert Hartley, the star of ''[[The Bob Newhart Show]]'', also played by Bob Newhart. Interestingly, ''[[The Bob Newhart Show]]'' received a crossover from ''[[St. Elsewhere]]'', which combined with the previous entry could make ''[[Newhart]]'' a [[Dream Within a Dream]].
** If that's true, explain {{spoiler|the parody at the end of his 1995 episode of ''[[Saturday Night Live]]''.}} Was that a [[Dream Within a Dream]], too?
* In season 4 of ''[[Angel]]'', an entire episode takes places in Angel's head, in which {{spoiler|the events of the dream actually solve all the problems of the season's arc, right down to a soapy heroic happy ending.}} When the episode reveals to the viewers that it was all "just a dream", {{spoiler|it's when the dream climaxes with Angel experiencing a moment of perfect happiness, causing him to lose his soul, waking up as the evil Angelus.}}
* The second failed resurrection of ''Crossroads'',<ref>Buried, as it were, at the crossroads.</ref> a British [[Soap Opera]], ended by revealing the entire series had been the dream of a supermarket worker. Whether the first resurrection was just a dream as well is up to viewer interpretation.
** The closing scenes show a number of characters who made their debut in the first resurrection also working in the supermarket... except the character having the dream didn't appear until the second resurrection. (Maybe the first resurrection was one of the other workers' dreams, explaining why [[Aborted Arc|none of the cliffhangers were resolved]]?) And just as you're getting your head around that, a customer at the supermarket, who looks like another character who's been around since the first resurrection, is identified as "Tracey from ''Crossroads''" by the staff. Um... huh?
* The season 1 finale of ''[[Reno 911!]]'' ended on a [[Cliff Hanger]], which was revealed in the season 2 premiere to be a dream, in what turned out to be a [[Dream Within a Dream|dream sequence itself]] Dangle wakes up from the dream, to discover himself in bed with Kenny Rogers. This turns out to be a dream Garcia is having in the meeting room at the sheriff's station.
* ''[[The Cosby Show]]'' did a number of these, normally precipitated by Cliff's consumption of a large sandwich near bedtime.
* ''[[Smallville]]'': The episode "Slumber" both uses and subverts this trope, as a girl with dream-walking powers can only contacts Clark through dreams. Although occurrences in the episode were fantasy, the dreams do serve a purpose to the plot.
** Used as a bit of a fake-out in season 6's {{spoiler|Lana/Lex wedding. The episode begins with a ridiculously melodramatic wedding/murder/suicide scene, which is immediately revealed to be a dream. The rest of the episode tells the story out of order chronologically, with many of the scenes using the same lurid gothic style, faking the viewers out into thinking these scenes are ''also'' just a dream; unfortunately, ''none'' of them are. Instead, when the episode is over and no-one wakes up from the terrible dream, the viewer is left with the slow, horrible realization that the gothic awfulness ''actually happened''.}}
* An episode of ''[[MacGyver]]'' in which the title character dreams of his [[Identical Grandson|lookalike ancestor]] ends with an [[Or Was It a Dream?]] moment when he woke to find he now possessed his ancestor's distinctive pocketknife.
* ''[[Happy Days]]'' somehow managed to [[Spin-Off]] ''[[Mork and Mindy]]'' from an All Just a Dream episode. Though [[That Was Not a Dream]] as shown by Mork's presence at the end of the episode, where he told his contact on Ork that he tricked "the human (Richie Cunningham)"
** The episode "They Call It Potsie Love" had Joanie—who had developed a crush on Potsie—falling asleep and dreaming she marries him.
▲* ''[[The Dick Van Dyke Show|The Dick Van Dyke Show's]]'' classic ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' parody "It May Look Like a Walnut."
* British surreal comedy series ''[[The Brittas Empire]]'' concluded with the revelation that the entirety of the programme, all 53 episodes, had been a dream. The title character had fallen asleep while on the train to the interview for the job that he'd had throughout the series. The other people in the dream (apart from his wife, who was the same in the dream and in real life) were actually people on the train with him, and he projected them into the dream.
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' as a whole has the "All Just a Holodeck Simulation" version.
* ''[[Star Trek:
** Interestingly used when Chief O'Brien is arrested by aliens and serves out a 20-year prison sentence within a dream that lasts only hours. The rest of the episode shows him dealing with this experience and how it has changed him.
** "Far Beyond the Stars" and "Shadows and Symbols", where a science fiction writer in the 50's dreams about Deep Space Nine. It's also lampshaded in the dream when someone suggests making Benny's story turn out to be a dream to get around complaints about the hero being black. In fact, the producers toyed with the idea of making the entire series a figment of Benny Russel's imagination
** In "Inquisition", the investigator creates an elaborate holo-simulation that tries to trick Bashir into believing that he was a spy for the Dominion. Most of the episode occurs in the simulation
* Similarly, in an episode of ''[[Star Trek: The
** Unlike most of the examples on this page, this is usually considered one of the series' best episodes. Quite probably because we were shown Picard lying on the floor of the bridge dreaming from the start of the episode while the crew struggles to wake him up.
* A slight variation of this happens to Commander Riker in the ''[[Star Trek: The
* ''[[Star Trek:
{{quote|'''B'Elanna:''' But I was on ''Voyager'' with my crew!
'''Klingon:''' That was the ''naj'' -- the dream before dying. When we can't accept that we've died, we create the illusion of life to hold on to.
'''B'Elanna:''' ''(seeing the helmsman, Kortar)'' He slaughtered my friends!
'''Klingon:''' No. He slaughtered the dream. He dragged you from the illusion of life. This is where you belong. }}
{{quote|'''B'Elanna:''' Look at this -- The eleventh tome of Klavek. It's a story about Kahless returning from the dead ''still bearing a wound from the afterlife''. A warning that ''what he experienced wasn't a dream''. The same thing happened to me!}}
* ''[[Life On Mars]]'' makes use of this, both as (seemingly) the circumstances of the main character (in a coma, dreaming the entire thing), and side instances where Sam wakes up in bed after being harangued by the [[Creepy Child|Evil Test Card Girl]]. Not to mention the fact that... {{spoiler|in the end Sam's adventures in the past turn out to be just a dream. One Sam ''commits suicide'' to get back to... if you believe that interpretation of the ending instead of [[Epileptic Trees|one of the dozens of others]].}}
** Something very similar occurs in {{spoiler|''[[Ashes to Ashes]]''}}.
** In the finale of the [[Life
* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'': There's nearly always a quick way to tell that House is dreaming. If he limps, then it's sad reality. If he doesn't, then it's a dream or an hallucination.
** In Season One there's a scene where House told Vogler, whose whole role was making House miserable, that he had cancer and was going to die soon. The fact that Vogler calmly and gratefully accepted the news, even when House made a crack about jumbo-sized coffins, as well as the fact that House was walking without a limp, quickly revealed the scene to be a dream.
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* In the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' season 6 episode "[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Recap/S6/E17 Normal Again|Normal Again]]," it is suggested that the entire series is a [[Cuckoo Nest|hallucination of the main character]], who is living in a mental institution and has power fantasies of saving the world with her imaginary friends. The episode's end leaves room for interpretation as to which existence (Buffy's life as a vampire slayer, or her life as a mental patient) is really All Just a Dream. [[Word of God|Joss Whedon]] [[Mind Screw|has outright stated that either one is a definite possibility]].
* The first episode of ''[[Terminator]]: [[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' starts out this way. Just so you know. Also, in the second season episode "Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep", Sarah is taken captive and interrogated by a man she had killed in an earlier episode. It is then revealed that this was in fact a dream, and that Sarah was admitted to a sleep clinic, because of her insomnia. She keeps having this dream, while she suspects something bad is going on at the sleep clinic. {{spoiler|Eventually, we find out the sleep clinic was in fact the dream, induced by the drugs given to her by the man who abducted her, for real - him having survived the earlier episode against the odds.}}
* In the ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20121103034017/http://cycling.finial.com/stuff/mpcyclingtour.php "Cycling Tour" sketch], a bicyclist (Mr. Pither) ends up in a Soviet prison cell about to be executed. He is suddenly woken up by his mother and says "So, it was all a dream!" His mother says "No dear, this is the dream, you're still in the cell." He then wakes up for real, still in the cell.
* Likewise at the end of ''[[The Young Ones]]'' episode "Interesting" where Neil experiences something similar as he is about to be kicked in the head by skinheads.
* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]''
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* Used rather drastically on ''[[Seinfeld]]'' when, after Kramer persuades him to get an illegal cable hookup, Jerry dreams that he is graphically gunned down by the FBI. Then he wakes up and discovers the plane he's on is about to crash, which is real.
{{quote|"What have you done to my little cable boy?!?"}}
* A ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' Digital Short parodied this. [[
* Also done on ''[[Mad TV]]''. It begins with the children of an elderly couple shocked by their parents' dirty dancing and ends with Stephnie Weir waking up from a dream "about a skit that has no ending".
* In ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' Jackson and Lilly end up dating after Miley tries to sabotage it. At the very end, despite it being a fairly normal story line and not all that much changing, it still turns out to be a dream.
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** It also appears in another episode. When Frasier meets a supermodel-zoologist on an airplane, he comments that "This is usually the part where I wake up." Cut to Frasier opening his eyes - [[Subverted Trope|and the camera panning out for a]] [[Bedmate Reveal]].
* ''[[Roseanne]]'' essentially ended the series with a version of this.
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* At the end of the fourth season of ''[[Oz]]'', Tobias Beecher is up for parole. His lawyer enters the room and tells Beecher the Parole Board have approved his release. Everyone cheers as he returns to Em City, and a last minute assassination attempt by the Aryans is barely averted. Beecher is then shown walking out into the sunshine (showing the exterior of Oswald Prison for the first time) then playing with his daughter and new girlfriend in the park. Then he wakes up in his cell, and we flashback to his lawyer telling him that the Parole Board did ''not'' approve his release.
* One episode of the Charlie Drake [[Britcom]] ''The Worker'' has the title character experiencing an increasingly surreal series of events which culminate in his arrival at a TV studio, where it turns out that he's the leading actor in a TV [[Sitcom]] called ''The Worker''... Drake liked this plot so much he reused it in a later episode. A more conventional use of the trope occurs when the Worker gets hit on the head by a boomerang and has a surreal dream about Aborigines (possibly inspired by Drake's earlier comic song "My Boomerang Won't Come Back". Except this time it did).
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* The pentultimate episode of ''[[Without a Trace]]'''s third season does this, as {{spoiler|Jack Malone}} is trying to deal with his demons.
* ''[[Kamen Rider Ryuki]]'''s Hyper Battle Video ends with this. For good reason too, since the Kamen Riders [[OOC Is Serious Business|were acting like a Sentai team]] and Ryuki wound up crossing over with [[Kamen Rider Agito]] to fight an [[Evil Twin]]. With those outlandish concepts, how could it ''not'' be a dream?
== Music ==
* Aaron Carter's upbeat song "That's How I Beat Shaq" relates the singer's adventures as he beats Shaquille O'Neal in a one-on-one basketball match, and ends with him waking up in bed. ("But if it was a dream, and it wasn't real... [[Or Was It a Dream?|how'd I get a jersey with the name O'Neal?]]")
* [http://www.mesozoicmind.com/ "Mesozoic Mind"], by the Charmers.
{{quote|''Last night I had a crazy dream, I fell out of my bed! I missed the floor entirely, I fell through time instead!''}}
* [[Britney Spears]], "Baby One More Time". [[Fetish Fuel|What?]]
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* [[REM]] , "Losing My Religion":
{{quote|''I thought that I heard you laughing
''I thought that I heard you sing
''I think I thought I saw you try
''But that was just a dream
''That was just a dream'' }}
* Porter Wagoner/Tom Jones's song "Green Green Grass of Home" has the subject of the song seemingly returning home after being away for a long time, enjoying his return, only to wake up in prison awaiting his execution, only to return home dead and buried there.
* The Billie Holiday version, and most subsequent English-language versions, of "[[Driven to Suicide|Gloomy]] [[Brown Note|Sunday]]".
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* Airbourne's "Blonde, Bad and Beautiful" turns out to be this, in a video that was [[Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll|filled with alcohol, stripping and a bit of pole-dancing]].
* The [[Barenaked Ladies]]' video for "Shoebox" is a dream of the girl who sneaks out on her date.
* [[Dokken]]'s video for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee2YFJKYF8Y "Dream Warriors"] winds up being a nightmare that [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|Freddy Krueger]] is having.
* The video for Live's "Run To The Water" turns out to be Ed Kowalczyk's dream.
* The video for [[Miley Cyrus]]' "Start All Over" is established as being a dream in the very beginning; it starts with her going to sleep and waking up in the dream world, and ends with her going to sleep in the dream world and waking up in the real world. [[Or Was It a Dream?|Then pictures she took while in the dream world start coming out of the printer.]]
* The video for [[Maroon 5]]'s "Makes Me Wonder" features this. With gratuitous [[Fan Service]].
== Oral Tradition, folklore, Myths and Legends ==
* Certain branches of Hindu philosophy hold that because truth is unchanging, and the world is constantly changing, then the world is not real. Hence, [[Real Life]] is just a sort of dream state.
▲== Newspaper Comics ==
▲* A two-week storyline in ''[[FoxTrot]]'', parodying ''[[The Metamorphosis]]'', has Jason waking up one morning to find he's turned into a miniature version of his sister, Paige. Midway through the story, he [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this trope by saying he's figured out that he's dreaming, because he thinks that if this were real, [[The X-Files|Mulder and Scully]] would've come to investigate. (Dream-Peter then points out that Mulder and Scully [[This Is Reality|are TV characters]]—and therefore [[Comically Missing the Point|only investigate incidents appropriate for primetime shows]]. Turning into a teenage girl is too horrific.)
▲* From ''[[Bloom County]]'', after a long-awaited wedding, Opus is knocked out when his nose collided with Lola's when they kiss. While unconscious, Opus dreams about Lola leaving him twenty years later with twenty-three tube-grown kids. At another point, Opus ends up wandering lost in the desert. Suddenly, he's back home in Bloom County. He announces how happy he is it was all just a dream. Milo then says "No. ''This'' is the dream. You're still in the desert." And sure enough..
▲* ''[[Little Nemo|Little Nemo in Slumberland]]'' ends every strip with Nemo waking up in bed. There were continuous storylines despite this. And when Nemo gets into trouble it does not feel as safe as a dream. No no no.
▲* ''[[Drabble (comics)|Drabble]]'' pulled this twice, then subverted it ''hilariously''. The first time, Ralph dreams that his job as a mall cop is more like [[Batman]]. The second time, Norman goes to a piercing salon with Wendy and ends up with multiple ear, nose, and other rings. The third time, Norman and Wendy run off to Vegas and get married on a dare. Norman is about to invoke this trope when the next panel reveals the cartoonist has already used up his chances to use it. The plot gets resolved another way.
== Puppet Shows ==
* ''[[Captain Scarlet]]'' has an episode where The Mysterons actually come to Cloudbase to attack it, leading to Captain Scarlet's death and the destruction of Cloudbase. We then find out this was all a dream one of the Angels was having after she'd been shot down over the desert earlier in the episode. When repackaged in a [[Compilation Movie]] for the American market, the episode ended up with the [[Reset Button]] treatment.
** Gerry Anderson is all over this one (he was once quoted as saying "I wish somebody would make a film of my dreams"). There are at least two episodes of ''[[Stingray (1985 TV series)|Stingray]]'', one of ''[[Joe 90]]'', two of ''[[UFO]]'' as noted under Live-Action TV, and one of ''[[Space: 1999]]'' where the events of the episode turn out to be dreams, hallucinations or implanted visions. The ''[[Thunderbirds]]'' episode "Security Hazard" manages to invert this by having International Rescue convince a boy that his real-life trip to Tracy Island has only been a dream.
== Radio ==
* There's an episode of ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]'' in which one of the children characters goes on an adventure in the Imagination Station (a virtual reality machine) that seems to be the same story over and over again, just set in different genres. At the end of the episode it's revealed the character is actually in a coma, reliving the events that put him in a coma, with the "bad guy" being Death coming for him and the friendly helper in his dream actually being a guardian angel trying to prevent an early death for him.
▲== Stand-Up Comedy ==
* Comedian Emo Phillips {{spoiler|inverts this trope when he}} talks about a dream he had. He describes a long series of really bizarre, Emo-Phillipian events, that ends with him getting knocked unconscious. "And that's when I had my dream...."
== Tabletop Games: [[Trading Card Games]] ==▼
▲== [[Trading Card Games]] ==
* ''Hecatomb'' had a literal "It Was Only A Dream" card which can eliminate practically any card your opponent has out, essentially making them have never happened.
== Theater ==
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* Shakespeare played with this. Most of the main characters in ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream|A Midsummer Nights Dream]]'' believe this to be the case (or they just decide to pretend it is). Then, in the final lines, Puck advises the ''audience'' to do the same if they disliked the play.
{{quote|''If we shadows have offended,
''Think but this, and all is mended,
''That you have but slumber'd here
''While these visions did appear.
''And this weak and idle theme,
''No more yielding but a dream. }}
* Alan Ayckbourn's 1985 play {{spoiler|''Woman in Mind''. The entire play. From start to finish. Really.}}
== Video Games ==
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Link's
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass|Phantom Hourglass]]'' '''looks''' like it pulls this in the ending
* In ''[[Super Mario Bros. 2]]'', upon completing the game, the characters celebrate... and then we see that Mario has been dreaming the entire game. Seems hokey today, but at the time (1988) having ANY sort of twist ending in a game was pretty revolutionary. Most of the enemies themselves and other elements do exist in the ''Mario'' universe, though, indicating that the dream is based on what the titular character has seen through his life. Wart was most likely an actual creation from Mario's imagination, though.
* The ending of ''The Magical Quest'' reveals that [[Mickey Mouse]] has been dreaming the entire adventure all along. Oddly enough one of the bosses in the sequel is a painting of Emperor Pete, the final boss from the first game, with music and all.
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* A common fan interpretation of ''[[Rule of Rose]]''; the events were real, but messed by the protagonist's subconsciousness: Jennifer was a young child, not a 19-year old teenager during the actual events, the events did not take place on a giant airship and the imps were just creepy dolls and doodles and/or other children wearing masks, not inhuman monsters. {{spoiler|Unfortunately the Stray Dog was real.}}
* In the Konami arcade game ''Devastators'', the entire events of the game were actually parts of a movie somebody was watching.
* The chapter
* The opening to ''[[Dragon Quest VI]]'' starts off as this... {{spoiler|until you learn that what happened in the Hero's dream actually happened, and the world the Hero awakens in is actually a [[Dream Land]].}}
* ''[[
* ''[[Fate/hollow ataraxia]]'' ...Maybe. What's dream and what is real can be difficult to separate.
* ''[[Corpse Party]]'' has this as one of its Wrong Ends. {{spoiler|It turns out to be a case of [[Or Was It a Dream?]] and [[Groundhog Day Loop]].}}
* Conversed in ''[[Escape From St. Mary's
* Happens in ''[[SNK Gals Fighters]]'' for the Neo-Geo Pocket Color, specifically in [[Fatal Fury|Mai Shiranui's]] ending. Winning the tournament and the [[Plot Device|K' Talisman]], means somehow that she can now marry Andy, who appears just in time... {{spoiler|to "reveal" that he has been secretly a woman all of these years}}. Shocked, Mai [[Catapult Nightmare|awakes to reality]].
* In a rare example where this is actually a step ''up'' in continuity, part of the [[Continuity Reboot]] for ''[[Soul Series|SoulCalibur 6]]'' makes the events of the forgotten and previously non-canon spinoff ''[[SoulCalibur Legends]]'' into this. Iska, the main antagonist of ''Legends'', reappears in new story chapters added by the last update and serves as a secondary antagonist for a few characters'; one sequence of dialog in Nightmare's story describes one of the dreams that Soul Edge used to corrupt Siegfried into Nightmare which matches the plot of ''Legends''.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* This [
* As does [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic_plus/series.php?view=archive&chapter=29025#110861 this] ''[[Narbonic]]'' strip.
* The brief [http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=030707 "Magic Flap"] arc from ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' ends like this.
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* ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'' [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2008/12/11/episode-1070-what-were-you-expecting/ had one of these] as a fake final episode, since its author loves [[Anticlimax|jokes that are on the reader]]. Except that what was intended to cause [[Internet Backdraft]] instead resulted in numerous fans genuinely pleased with the horrible ending, as it fit the comic perfectly, and ''thanking'' the author for years of free entertainment.
* ''[[YU+ME: dream]]'' has a [[Wham! Episode]] (and [[Broken Base]] inducer) in the middle when this happens, leading to a [[Coming Out Story]] having a [[Genre Shift]]; instead of the usual dream revelation being at the end and nothing in the real world having changed, the dream is the turning point of the story and the main character is greatly affected by what happened. The comic was conceived after its author experienced this trope for real: she met a girl and fell in love, only to wake up after what felt like months of being with her.
* ''[[Silent Hill: Promise]]'' uses this in the beginning, before getting to the real horror.
* [http://explosm.net/comics/1590/ This] ''[[Cyanide
* ''[http://www.tru-lifeadventures.com TRU-Life Adventures]'' is currently suggesting everything that happened since the first time travel story has been Bob's dream.
* [http://dizzy.pestermom.com/?p=thcomic55 This] ''[[Touhou Nekokayou]]'' comic turns ''Concealed the Conclusion's'' All Just a Dream into a [[Mind Screw]], simply by switching the "all" and the "dream."
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* Grace of ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'', [http://egscomics.com/?date=2007-05-23 goes through her first day of highschool] then wakes up disappointed that it was a dream but still hopeful the experience would be close.
* This happens twice in ''[[My Milk Toof]]'' with the episode of "villainous ickle" who goes around breaking everything and when they go fishing they fall asleep and dream of catching a fish.
* [[Evil Diva (webcomic)|Evil Diva]]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20111117131934/http://www.evildivacomics.com/?p=282 Victorious and popular, as she isn't]. Apparently you should [[Be Careful What You Wish For]].
* Happens every year in [[Rhapsodies]] with [[Cloudcuckoolander|Kevin]] getting shanghaied into helping with Santa's Christmas rush. This always ends with him waking up... Though occasionally there's a few details lying around to make the audience wonder.
* In ''[[Nip and Tuck]]'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20120527073040/http://www.rhjunior.com/NT/00519.html hoping things turned out well.]
* In ''[[Minion Comics]]'', there's a [https://web.archive.org/web/20130122160601/http://www.meetmyminion.com/?p=921 short dream sequence] involving Dingus's fantasies about predators, aliens, and the holy grail.
* In [[Greg (webcomic)|Greg]], Greg dreams he's a swashbuckling slayer of beasts and a suave ladies man, too bad the reality is so different, [http://gregcomic.com/2012/02/23/world-of-gregcraft-page-14/ here].
* In ''[[L's Empire|Ls Empire]]'', the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] during the April Fools Day special was actually a movie directed by [[M. Night Shyamalan]].
== Web Original ==
* At the end of some cutscenes in ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Special Edition]]'', people are seen waking up. This has no bearing on gameplay whatsoever.
* More than once this has been used for ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' characters, usually in imagining a rescue. However, on one occasion it was used to make it appear as if a particular character had died, only for it to be revealed that it had been a dream.
* Most of the second half of ''[[The Tale of the Exile|The Third Night]]'' takes places during Gaven's hallucinagen-fueled [[Mushroom Samba]]. [[
* [[The Nostalgia Critic]]'s review of ''[[Surf Ninjas]]'', in which every stupid scene (but one) was greeted with increasingly fervent cries of "Genius!", was eventually revealed to be a dream.
** The end of the review of ''[[Full House]]'' when the Olsen twins came [[He Knows Too Much|to silence him]] was revealed to be a dream. Then they showed up again, which was revealed to be a dream. And so on.
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1007. That whole Expedition to the Barrier Peaks? [[Dream Sequence]]. }}
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s "[http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/why-saved-by-bell-all-dream-conspiracy-theory/ Why 'Saved by the Bell' is All a Dream: A Conspiracy Theory]" explains why ''[[Saved by the Bell]]'' has to be an escapist dream of a character in ''Good Morning, Miss Bliss'' (the pilot that was retooled into ''SBTB''), using clues from the [[Expository Theme Tune]].
== Western Animation ==
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'''Moe:''' I thought dreams was on goldenrod.
'''Producer:''' No, goldenrod is for [[Adventures in Coma Land|coma fantasies]]! }}
** Happens in "Treehouse of Horror" episodes which are already [[A Day
* In the ''[[Little Lulu]]'' cartoon "[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151675/ Musica-Lulu]", Lulu sneaks out to play baseball instead of practicing her violin, and when knocked out by a foul ball, she wakes up in a land of musical instruments, [[Kangaroo Court|who arrest, try and imprison her]] for her misdeed. When she breaks out of the jail, she is chased and terrorized by the musical instruments. It turns out to be a dream.
* ''[[Futurama]]''
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* One episode of ''[[Kim Possible]]'', "Rewriting History", repeatedly [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] the increasingly unlikely coincidence that [[Generation Xerox|all the cast's grandparents]] were involved in a plot at the start of the century, with a last minute solution that "seemed like something from a dream" - because that's what it all was. Which is sad, because [[Generation Xerox]] plot seemed pretty cool. Though, oddly, the episode did end with a rather absurd [[Generation Xerox]] being canon.
* ''[[Squidbillies]]'' plays with this trope in the first episode. It first portrays Rusty spending his childhood being [[Raised by Wolves|raised and repeatedly mauled by wolves]], and then blowing them up along with him when he just had enough. That was revealed to be all just a dream, and then shows him as a party-hardy drinker who goes to rock concerts. That is also just a dream, and then shows him still living with Early's sister Lil (which was before all the dreams), who calls him out on his lack of manhood. That, too, was just a dream. Rusty raping some small creature... that really happened.
* ''[[Eek!
** In "Eek Goes to the Hot Spot", while being chased by Sharky, Eek is run over by an oncoming truck and gets killed, and thus he mistakenly gets sent to hell (instead of heaven). There, Eek confronts [[The Devil Is a Loser|its ruler, Fido]], for a long time, who forces him [[Impossible Task Instantly Accomplished|to clean out an infinitely large litterbox for three seconds]]. Then Eek finishes this task, and happily goes to heaven (with two angels flying down and carrying him away), waving goodbye to Fido. But just then, [[Death Is Cheap|Eek wakes up from all this lying in the backyard]], and gets chased by Sharky once again.
* Lampshaded in an episode of ''[[Sheep in The Big City]]'' where two scenes turns out to be dream sequences—much to the annoyance of the [[Narrator]], who complains about this being "[[Rage Against the Author|lazy writing]]!"
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* Happens in an episode of ''[[CatDog]]'', where Cat plans to make Dog and Shriek fall for each other, hoping that the Greaser Dogs will thereby leave him alone. The rest of the episode is Cat's dream of what the consequences are: Dog marries Shriek, which causes the Greaser Dogs to move into their house and generally making Cat's life a living hell.
* {{spoiler|The better part of episode 20}} in ''[[Wakfu]]'', which thoroughly confused the non-French-speaking people watching it without subtitles, though it could only have been [[Disney Acid Sequence|one other trope]] if not this one.
* ''[[
* ''[[American Dad]]'' has one when Stan accidentally crapped himself in a pool party and concocts a scheme to get [[Barack Obama]] to do the same. It was a dream moments before he actually jumps... and craps himself. It's implied that this was not the first time he's done it too.
* The ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' episode "[[Pandaing to the Audience|Panda-Monium]]".
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* The events of the 2003 ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003]]'' episode "Bad Day" are simply a form of [[Mind Rape]] conjured by the Foot Mystics.
* The 1988 ''Ninja Turtles'' episode "Shredderville" had the Turtles supposedly taken to an alternate world where [[It's a Wonderful Plot|they never existed and thus Shredder conquered the world]], only for it to have been a dream that all four of them had at the same time.
* The episode "The Binky Show" of ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'' is this. It ends with
== Real Life ==
* Some people believe that "real life" is really all just a simulation using technology that doesn't yet exist in real life/this simulation. This is based on the belief that technology is likely to get to the point of being able to perfectly simulate real life while making the subject forget real life while in the simulation and that since once this technology exists it will result in more virtual worlds than the one real one the odds are that this is a simulation and not real life.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20081204055726/http://www.simulation-argument.com/ The Simulation Argument] postulates that: it is overwhelmingly likely that ''either'' 1) we are living in an "ancestor simulation" created by our descendants ''or'' 2) humanity can never be technologically advanced enough to stage ancestor simulations. Neither conclusion is very palatable.
** "Perfectly simulate real life while making the subject forget real life"? Why are we talking about ''[[The Sims]]''?
** An interesting counterpoint is the idea that [[wikipedia:Simulated reality#Relativity of reality|"real life" is a meaningless term]], since any reality must be absolute from the perspective of its inhabitants (if we are indeed simulated beings, this is still the highest level of nested realities we can exist in).
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Dream Tropes]]
[[Category:Script Speak]]
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[[Category:Ind Ex Machina]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
▲[[Category:All Just a Dream]]
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