All Just a Dream: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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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]]''}}
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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
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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* 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.
* The second season of ''[[Shakugan no Shana]]'' starts with Yuji trapped inside a dream (created by the real first villain of the season). Yuji picks up on some deja vu, but when complete scenes and defeated villains from the first season start showing up, then he knows something's wrong. No one will listen to him or tell him anything
* Repeatedly used in several episodes of the anime series ''[[Ergo Proxy]]'', due to {{spoiler|the proxies, god-like beings who can shape-shift and invade human minds with horrifying ease.}} Several characters are subjected to this trope, but none more so than the main character, Vincent Law, to the point that when unexpected things happen in ''reality'' he assumes it's yet ''another'' dream. Half the time he's correct. Other times he's outright ''told'' he's being subjected to a dream, or is it a dream within a dream, [[Or Was It a Dream?|or has it been reality all along?]] It's a wonder this show made any sense at all.
* One episode of ''[[Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch]]'' was a very, very strange New Year's dream in which Lucia uses her [[Idol Singer]] powers to become famous.
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** The entire series turns out to be just a virtual dream in the end.
* Frequently subverted in ''[[Nightmare Inspector]]'', though grandly played straight in the end when the characters learn that {{spoiler|not only is Mizuki's brother Azusa, vessel for the Baku Hiruko before Chitose took over, still alive, he's been concocting the biggest, darkest, and most twisted nightmare ever, hoping that it will consume him and [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|he can finally rest in relative peace]]. Turns out? Chitose was a figment of his imagination. Everything that happened since Chitose took over was all just Azusa's nightmare, that Mizuki and Hifumi were trapped in.}}
* In ''[[Ranma ½]]'', Ranma dreams that Jusenkyō dried up and wakes up terrified that he won't be able to lift the curse. He, Saotome, and Happōsai then use a [[Magic Mirror]] to [[Time Travel]]. They first visit a future where Ryōga and Akane are married with children, then visit Jusenkyō to prevent their past selves from falling in the spring in the first place, but Happōsai sabotages it after he's left behind. Then Ranma wakes up
* ''[[Baki the Grappler]]'' has a humorous example: the fight between Oliva and Guevara ends with Guevara the winner, then being introduced to the president of the United States, who begs him for forgiveness, and Yujiro, who tells him he's the strongest warrior in the world. He marvels, at this, saying it all seems like a dream...which, of course, it is. A dream he had after Oliva knocked him out with a punch that embedded him in the ground.
* Episode 287 of ''[[Bleach]]'', but with a twist. We're initially led to think that it's Ichigo's dream {{spoiler|but it turns out to be a [[Dream Within a Dream]] of Isane Kotetsu's.}}
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** Happened straight in the comic that came with UNMASKED. {{spoiler|Ulquiorra dreams up the memories of his past.}}
* 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 "
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|Tomoya]] of ''[[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]].
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== Comics ==
* The last issue of ''[[Gen 13]]'', vol. 1 combined this with a [[Downer Ending]]: The
* 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 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!"<br />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]]
* ''[[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."
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* Open to interpretation in ''[[Click]]''. Just as the main character {{spoiler|is about to die, he wakes up at the Bed, Bath, and Beyond he laid down for a short while at the beginning}}. However, {{spoiler|Morty and the magical remote turn out to be real. It could be that this was more of his imagination. Given the prevalence of time travel in this film, it could also be that Morty simply reversed time to the exact point at which he laid down in the bed.}}
* Tacked on at the end of 2002 Hong Kong flick ''Undiscovered Tomb''.
* ''[[The Matrix]]''. The entire world the film starts in is
** Some have suggested that even Zion is just another level of the Matrix, satisfying many beyond the official interpretation as it explains the liberties taken in the third movie.
* ''[[Labyrinth]]''. Invoked and then subverted: Sarah, after hours of weirdness, finds herself in a place that looks exactly like her room. She cries out in delight, jumps on the bed and wraps the pillow around her head... then looks up in wonder and realizes the whole thing was just a big dream! She goes to open the door to the hallway... and is greeted by a goblin, while the other side of the door is a junk heap at night-time.<br />Played straighter by the end, where you could interpret the entire thing as a dream, then subverted ''again'' when {{spoiler|the creatures show up in her room and everyone has a dance party while Jareth watches in owl form outside the window.}}
* At the ending of ''[[Jacob's Ladder|Jacobs Ladder]]'', we discover that {{spoiler|the lead character is experiencing the entire events of the movie as a hallucination as he lies on a cot dying in a military action.}}
* Some have argued that an alternate interpretation of ''[[The Sixth Sense]]'' is that the entire movie is a dream, from the time of the shooting to the end where we "rewind" back to the shooting, and thus the little boy who "sees dead people" doesn't even exist.
* Each sequence of ''[[Film/Living In Oblivion|Living In Oblivion]]'' is revealed to be
* ''Lunatics: A Love Story'' uses a lot of this for humor. "''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|You're having a nervous meltdown!]]''"
* Subverted and then unsubverted in ''The 13th Floor''.
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* ''[[The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T]]'', with one or two hints that it wasn't.
* ''[[I Married an Angel]]''
* Happens three times in ''13 Seconds''. First, the main character is attacked by demons, and wakes up in bed. Later, a demon [[Groin Attack|grabs his groin]] and drags him under the bed; he wakes up again. As for the third time,
* Everything but the last couple of minutes in ''Nightmare City'' is in the main character's dream, and the movie ends with the beginning of his dream playing out in real life, with an end card reading "The nightmare becomes reality..."
* At the end of the Italian Horror movie ''Shadow'', we learn that {{spoiler|the main character has never left Iraq, and was under anesthesia as the camp doctor (the evil creature in the dream) and nurse (who is the girl he met in the dream) worked on him. He survives, but loses his legs and his left eye. The two hicks who the evil creature tortured and killed are revealed to be fellow wounded soldiers who died of their wounds}}.
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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. Chesterton|GK Chesterton]]'s ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]: A Nightmare''. You can't say he didn't warn
* [[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.
* In [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]' ''[[The Great Divorce]]'', the narrator meets with [[George MacDonald]]
* In [[Julio Cortazar]]'s "La noche boca arriba", this trope is played with. The narrative switches between two characters, one of which is a boy in a hospital, and the other a man about to be sacrificed by Aztecs. {{spoiler|The ending reveals that the boy's life is actually a dream of the man, who keeps falling unconscious.}}
* Happens in-story in ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya|The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya]]''. They're making a movie, and events have unfolded that require the title character to in some way admit that the film is fictional. Koizumi suggests to end the movie with an All Just a Dream ending, thus forcing Haruhi to admit that the movie is impossible.
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** 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>
** 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.
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* 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)" to ''think'' he had been dreaming. Mork also visited in a subsequent episode during the run of ''Mork and Mindy'' to tell Richie that he was living on Earth in "the future" (i.e. [[The Seventies]] when ''[[Mork and Mindy]]'' took place, and when both ''[[Happy Days]]'' and ''Mork and Mindy'' were made and first aired).
** The episode "They Call It Potsie Love" had
* ''[[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.
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** "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 Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'', an alien artifact which turns out to be a monument to a long-dead race gives Picard the experience of living the life of one of its makers in less than an hour. In an unusual twist, Picard leaves the dream with at least one skill he didn't have before entering
** 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 Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode "Frame of Mind".
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** In TOS episode "Death Ship", an astronaut stranded on another planet dreams that he has returned to Earth and everything's all right. His commanding officer bodily enters his dream and literally drags him back to wakefulness. The [[Karmic Twist Ending]]? He and his commander are actually dead, and his dream was actually the afterlife he should have gone to.
** In another episode, "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3MfyuNspe4 Shadow Play]", a man on Death Row tells everyone they are all figments of his dream based on people from his life, and that when he's killed, he'll dream the same dream again, with everyone in different roles. As it turns out, {{spoiler|he's right}}.
** An even more sadistic episode -- "{{spoiler|The Midnight Sun}}"
* In ''[[Blackadder]]'' (3rd season, 2nd episode) Blackadder dreams that he overslept and Dr. Johnson is arriving, whose dictionary has been burned. Then, Dr. Johnson suddenly confesses that he never liked the dictionary anyways, then things get really surreal... and then he really wakes up. Of course, he has overslept, the book is still burned, and Dr. Johnson is arriving.
* In one episode of ''[[Lost]]'', Locke causes Boone to hallucinate that his step-sister/{{spoiler|lover}} is being mutilated and killed by ''smearing goop on his head''. Allegedly to teach Boone a lesson.
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** In ''Los Amores...'', which was a comedic soap that swung between the [[Affectionate Parody]] and the [[Deconstruction]], the whole thing was played for laughs, with the ghost characters of the people who died during the story lampshading the [[Twist Ending]] and openly decrying it in a full rupture of the [[Fourth Wall]]. However, the series gives not only a whole chapter after the reveal to close the few loose plots and point out the parallelisms between the "dream story" and the "real life", but also gives a happy ending for the heroine and the story: maybe her life isn't as exciting as it was in her "dream", but she is now truly happy with her son and her beloved husband.
** In contrast, in ''Pecados Ajenos'' (who was ''non''-comedic and pretty gloomy for a traditional soap) not content with using this trope to reset the whole story, also used the reset to put the heroine in a worse condition than the one she began with. It also [[Karma Houdini|left unpunished some of the worst villains of the story]] (a big no-no in traditional Hispanic soaps), and leaves the unsavory feeling that all the grisly, tragic and creepy things that happened during the soap [[Groundhog Day Loop|are going to happen in the same way]]. Naturally, none of the viewers were happy with this.
* Or US [[Soap Opera
* 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?!?"}}
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* The Spanish comedy ''Los Serrano'' finished this way, with the main character waking up to discover the entire series has been all just a dream. Fans were not pleased.
** A critic saw it in a slightly different light: if all was just a dream, that means that the atrocious [[Boy Band]] that [[Spin-Off|spun off]] from the series never existed at all.
* A segment on ''[[The Daily Show]]'' featured [[Steve Carell]]'s greatest fears (including [[Stephen Colbert]] [[Hilarious in Hindsight|taking over the show]]), leading to him waking up in
* ''[[The Wild Wild West (TV series)|The Wild Wild West]]'' episode "The Night of the Man-Eating House". Near the beginning, the characters discover and approach the title house. After a series of terrifying events, at the end the characters wake up and discover that the horrific events in the house were All Just a Nightmare. In the last scene, they find themselves [[Or Was It a Dream?|approaching the house again]].
* The [[Halloween Episode]] of ''[[Dark Angel]]'' started fairly normal, then became progressively more wacky until the end revealed it was All Just a Dream.
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* In an episode of ''[[The 4400]]'', main character Tom dreams of a world where the 4400 abductions never happened. As it turns out at the end, {{spoiler|the "dream" was actually a power of one of the 4400, whose alternate reality powers allowed him to have an eight year relationship with her in an extremely short time, allowing them to know everything about each other despite only meeting once.}}
* ''[[Freddy's Nightmares|Freddys Nightmares]]'' overused this to the point of inverting it. All Just a Dream was so ridiculously commonplace that [[Twist Ending|the real twist]] was when an episode ''didn't'' turn out to be just some random character's dream/hallucination/daydream/DyingDream.
* Several ''[[Round the Twist]]'' episodes ended this way, as a result of being adapted into a continuing series from standalone stories. A particularly odd example is "Santa Claws," which not only has Pete falling asleep in the first scene, thus establishing
* Spoofed in the final episode of ''[[Ace of Cakes]]'' after building a giant cake replica of the BTTF Delorean the final scene has Duff noticing the lights in the flux capacitor are on the fritz so he opens it up and messes with the wires, next scene he wakes up at his job at a factory, turns to Geoff and tells him about the wierd dream he had 'where you and I worked at a cake shop making all sorts of wierd cakes"
* In ''[[Dollhouse]]'', the events in the Attic are
* "For Whom The Bell Trolls" in Season 1 of ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]''. It's left ambiguous as to whether "The Wild Wipeout" in ''[[Power Rangers Ninja Storm]]'' was this or not.
* ''[[Growing Pains]]'' had two episodes featuring this. In "This is Your Life" (season 3, episode 10), Ben is afraid to get a tonsillectomy. So, he sneaks out after getting anesthesia, only to find that he's been replaced, since he didn't get the procedure done. Luckily, this was an anesthesia induced dream. In "Meet the Seavers" (season 6, episode 21), Ben gets in trouble, and wishes that he lived in a TV show, because then he wouldn't be in trouble. He wakes up the next morning to find that he is Jeremy Miller on a show called ''Meet the Seavers''. This is a nightmare for him, as his family isn't a family anymore, and his house isn't his home. He wakes up to find that it was all just a dream.
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* The {{spoiler|''entire premise''}} of ''[[Toku|Choukou Senshi Changerion]]'' is this trope, which sparked a number of angry letters to Toei!
* The ''[[Boy Meets World]]'' episode where the characters get trapped in a slasher movie scenario is actually a dream Shawn has while sleeping through detention.
* The last episode, "Home", of ''[[The Legend of Dick and Dom]]'' starts with
* The series ''[[Awake (TV series)|Awake]]'' mixes this with [[Or Was It a Dream?]], and [[Alternate Reality|dual realities]] as its main premise.
* The pentultimate episode of ''[[Without a Trace]]'''s third season does this, as {{spoiler|Jack Malone}} is trying to deal with his demons.
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* Converge's music video for "Eagles Become Vultures" probably applies, though it's more of a waking fantasy than a dream.
* The video for [[Three Days Grace]]'s "Animal I Have Become".
* The music video for [[Evanescence]]'s "Bring Me To Life" suggests
* The music video for Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" ends with her on the bed next to someone whom we are to assume is her boyfriend.
** The same thing happens in "Hot & Cold", though that was a daydream.
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** Ditto for ''Shattered Memories'', where {{spoiler|the plot is just a fantasy conjured up by Harry's daughter, and Harry died in a car accident 18 years earlier.}}
* Even ''[[Samurai Warriors]] 2'' does this. At the beginning of Nagamasa Azai's last stage in his story mode, the Battle of Kanegasaki, the story up to that point is revealed to be a dream he was having right before the battle. The entire thing being brought on due to how torn he was between helping his friends, the Asakura, and potentially betraying Oichi's love by attacking her brother, Nobunaga. Of course most of 'final chapters' of story mode are events that never happened due to the historical character dying, captured, or otherwise defeated. Or are nostalgic "best times" events that happen earlier in the chronology. This same game also features an entire sequence in Magoichi Sakai''s story mode in which he 'dreams' (or Fuma's ninja trickery) of bandits and chaos overwhelming the country after Nabounaga Oda's death.
* ''[[Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]]'' sort of pulls this in the final episode. Having slain Trogdor, whose very existence was causing the entire [[Homestar Runner]] world to fuse with the Videlectrix video game world, Strong Bad wakes up outside the ''Trogdor!'' arcade cabinet with everyone standing by him. He starts telling them about this wild dream he had [[And You Were There|pointing out how everyone standing there was part of it]]
* The whole point to ''[[Tsukihime|Kagetsu Tohya]]''. Shiki figures out more and more often than he's living in a dream right now where days repeat instantly. Yesterday is the same as today and today is the same as tomorrow. {{spoiler|Of course, everyone ''inside'' is actually apparently the same people he knows and even have their own versions of a nightmare ie. Dark Elesia for Ciel. Also, Len, who is making the dream. It's just a dream, but Shiki can't leave until Len dies (he doesn't want that) or he can make a contract with her so she doesn't feel the need to maintain the dream.}} In the original game, Shiki has dreams of himself killing people yet wakes up in the morning right where he was without having left his bed. Only the people he saw die are really dead. {{spoiler|Even worse, the one time he doesn't remember his "dream" he wakes up with his hands and arms absolutely covered with blood, because he really did go out and kill people that night.}}
** There's also the first [[Eroge]] scene in the original game, which turns out to be All Just A Wet Dream.
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* 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]]'', [http://www.rhjunior.com/NT/00519.html hoping things turned out well.]
* In ''[[Minion Comics]]'', there's a [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]].
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* Naturally, ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' has parodied this numerous times.
** In the season six episode entitled "Lisa's Rival", Lisa is competing against a new student, Allison, for the first chair saxophone position when she faints in the middle of it. After "regaining consciousness", she's told that Allison got the chair and Lisa screams. The screen then blacks out and she really wakes up... only to be told the exact same thing with the added disclaimer, "And believe me, this is not a dream!"
** In the episode after Mr. Burns is shot, Smithers wakes up in his apartment to find [[Shout-Out|Mr. Burns in the shower]], perfectly fine, and concludes with relief that it was all a dream. Burns then informs Smithers that they are the stars of a 60s detective show called ''Speedway Squad'', at which point Smithers wakes up again and realises, "Wait, ''that'' was all a dream!"
** Even the specific tendency of soap operas to rely on this trope is parodied. In one episode, Moe lands a role on [[Soap Within a Show|a soap called]] ''[[Soap Within a Show|It Never Ends]]'', only to stumble upon a future script in which his character is killed off. He angrily confronts the producer.
{{quote|'''Producer:''' ''(holds up script)'' You idiot! Pink pages always mean a dream!
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** In a season episode, Ed has a nightmare about Jonny. But then the episode ends with ''Jonny'' waking up in horror. So Ed had a dream that he was scared of Jonny, but then it's really Jonny having a dream that Ed had a dream that...he's scared of Jonny...uhm.
* ''[[South Park]]''
** First appeared in the episode "Flashbacks", which twisted the conventional [[Clip Show]] by having each clip end with a completely different situation from its original episode, ending every time with [[Running Gag|a reference to ice cream]] among other things. This was all [[Framing Device|framed]] with the kids telling stories while the bus lies on the edge of a cliff. At separate points, they flash back on a [[Happy Days|Fonzie]] stunt they witnessed (which never happened on the show) and an earlier moment in the framing device itself. When the bus finally falls into the chasm, it inexplictibly lands on a giant tub of ice cream. All of this, including an unrelated subplot surrounding Ms. Crabtree, were all part of a dream by Eric Cartman which ended with him eating beetles and ice cream once again being brought up, thus revealing that the entire episode was a dream within a dream conjured by Stan. ("Dude. That's a pretty fucked up dream." "Yeah, I must be having some real emotional problems.") After ''that'' was established, however, the episode returns one last time to Ms. Crabtree's subplot, where her love interest Marcus -- [[I Have Many Names|or was it Mitch?]]
** Subverted at the end of the "Imaginationland" series of episodes. Butters wakes up and starts telling his parents about the dream he had that he saved Imaginationland. His parents tell him that it really happened and they read all about it in the morning paper.
** Also subverted earlier on, in the first chapter. Kyle wakes up and assumes that the Muslim terrorist attack on Imaginationland and Butters being left there was all a crazy dream, but when he calls up Stan, he finds out that he had the exact same dream. Then Butters's parents come into Stan's house worrying about Butters. Finally, the Pentagon reports that our imagination was taken over by terrorists, complete with a videotape showing proof. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|And Cartman still wants his balls sucked by Kyle.]]
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'''Jeremy''': That would explain the talking zebra.
'''Candace''': Oh, no, I see ''him'' [[Running Gag|all the time]]. }}
** Invoked and subverted in the [[Christmas Episode]]: Phineas [[Catapult Nightmare|sits up in bed]] and exclaims, "It was all a bad dream! [[Saving Christmas|Christmas isn't cancelled]] after all!"
* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' has an episode where Mrs. Puff goes to jail. At the end, it's revealed that it was all a dream, and Spongebob is going to jail. Except that was all a dream, and she's in the boat with a random person from prison. After that, she just gives up, and the episode ends.
* In the ''[[Invader Zim]]'' episode "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom", Dib receives supernatural powers from the alien race of the Meekrob, to help him stop Zim and the Irken invasion. {{spoiler|The episode portrays Dib's following life being a celebrated Hero and the most successful paranormal investigator in the world, until old age, where in a TV interview he confesses having tossed a muffin at Zim in the school cantine once, upon which the moderator pulls of a mask revealing Zim's face laughing at him. Dib wakes up in Zim's laboratory realizing all of this was just a dream, programmed and simulated by Zim.}}
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* ''[[Eek the Cat]]'' has an episode called "Rocketship to Jupiter", in which Eek gets a large box dropped onto him by Sharky, and ends up in [[Show Within a Show|the Squishy Bears]] World, where the Squishy Bears leave their rocketship and house. He saves the Squishy Bears, but is met by the Giant Who Thinks Bears Might Taste Good, so he tricks the Giant when it's raining (by Professor Wiggly). After that, Eek and the Squishy Bears try to fly to Jupiter on their rocketship, but the lever was mistakenly switched to the sun by one of the bears, so they fly to the sun instead, where Eek is about to burn. But then, Eek was suddenly waken up by JB, who serves him a bowl of cat food. He realizes it was all a dream.
** 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
* In the "Leave it to Munchy" story of ''[[PB and J Otter]]'', Munchy Beaver prevents all of Lake Hoohaw from being flooded, but it turns out to be just a dream. This becomes very obvious when the characters are shown freely swimming about, talking to each other and even doing the iconic "Noodle Dance" underwater without any special gear.
* In the episode "On the Run" of ''[[Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat]]'', the protagonist and her friend accidentally wondered into a town where cats are illegal by getting on a traveling puppet show cart. After various scary scenes that would've blown several fuses on the brain of toddler-aged viewers to which the show is targeted, the entire prior happenings are revealed to be a dream. The owner of the puppet show noticed them halfway through the journey and had turned around to return the protagonists to their own town.
* [[Once an Episode|Every single episode]] of the French animated short ''Ernest le vampire'' ends with the title vampire waking up from a [[Catapult Nightmare]].
* ''[[Danger Mouse]]'': In the episode "Danger Mouse Saves The World...Again," things kept getting worse until DM was stuck in a room full of bombs and
* The end of Disney [[Wartime Cartoon]] ''[[Der Fuehrer's Face]]''.
* This happens a couple of times on ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'': first in a surreal episode where Brain creates numerous black-and-white duplicates of himself to form a Celtic dance troupe, and later in "You'll Never Eat Food Pellets in This Town Again," which portrays the two mice as actors playing in their own show, which then slides downhill due to [[Executive Meddling]]. (The latter, though, ends in an [[Or Was It a Dream?|Or Was It?]] moment.)
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** 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).
* The trope may have arisen from a dream those grieving a deceased loved one often experience. In the dream, the griever learns that the loved one is not dead and that the "death" was nothing but a very bad dream. The griever then wakes up, only to realize that the death really took place and the "miraculous survival" was in fact the dream. Although not every griever experiences this dream, it's common enough to be considered a normal part of the grieving process. Children who experience the dream may not be able to differentiate the dream from reality and therefore may suspect that the deceased person didn't really die (a common fallacy among bereaved children). ''Books'' by reputable scientists have been written on this phenomenon.
** Interestingly, it's possible to have an inversion of
* A [[Subverted Trope|Subversion]]: After [[Daniel Radcliffe]] learned that he had gotten the part of [[Harry Potter (film)|Harry Potter]], he woke up in the middle of the following night. He woke up his parents to ask them if he'd really gotten the part or if it was a dream.
* The philosophy of existentialism holds that how one views the world is subjective to one's experiences. Existentialists believe that truth is in the eye of the beholder, as is even the existence of the world around us. It's the basis for the scene in ''[[The Matrix]]'' in which the boy in the Oracle's apartment tells Neo, "There is no spoon."
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