All Just a Dream: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

* 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 and Manga ==

* The {{spoiler|last}} ''[[Daily Lives of High School Boys]]'' {{spoiler|skit in the anime, ''High School Boys and ...'', was pretty much Tadakuni's dream which contained much of the fandom's desires.}} Interestingly enough, this has [[Wild Mass Guessing|generated a fair bit of discussion]] [http://i.imgur.com/a9vqT.jpg?1\], as the punchline to the skit as presented in the anime (incredibly similar to the start of a skit way back in episode 4) makes it seem that ''9 of the 12'' episodes of the anime ''never happened'', invalidating all of the characters introduced since then.

** 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 ==

* 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.

* ''[[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]]''.)

* ''[[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...

* 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 ==

* [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 ==

* 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.}}

* ''[[Robot Monster]]'' - {{spoiler|Ultimately the youngest member of the family, a boy, apparently wakes up after suffering a mild concussion, revealing that the bulk of the film had presumably been a dream.}}

 

== Literature ==

* [[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 video for [[Maroon 5]]'s "Makes Me Wonder" features this. With gratuitous [[Fan Service]].

 

* 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.

 

* 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...."

 

* ''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.

 

''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 ==

* Conversed in ''[[Escape From St. Mary's]]''. Two teachers disagree on whether it's an acceptable ending for a story, and the wo turn to blows.

* 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]].

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* 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 [[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 ==

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 ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Dream Tropes]]

[[Category:Script Speak]]

[[Category:Ind Ex Machina]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]