Dream Apocalypse: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"One thousand little worlds die one thousand little deaths as you brush past the veil of your eyelids."''|'''Narrator''', ''[http://www.rockpapercynic.com/littleworlds/ Little Worlds]''}}

So, the whole episode's been [[All Just a Dream]]. The [[Big Bad]]'s subjugation of Canada never happened, the [[Will They or Won't They?]] couple [[Ship Tease|didn't really get together]] and, unfortunately, [[The Scrappy]] didn't actually die. So, it's [[Status Quo Is God|all back to the status quo]], right?

 

 

Any one of a number of things can now occur: perhaps the characters of the dream conspire to keep the hero asleep forever. Perhaps the hero himself tries to force himself never to wake-up. Or, if the writers don't feel like writing a [[Downer Ending]], there'll be [[Or Was It a Dream?|a hint that it wasn't just a dream after all]]. If the writer wants to go for a less traumatic ending, those involved may realize that the same dream can happen more than once and/or have the same cast of characters, so once the dreamer goes to sleep again tomorrow night they'll all "wake up".

 

'''Warning for spoilers, as this is often tied into [[All Just a Dream]] endings.'''

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

 

* ''Zoku [[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'' uses this trope while playing with [[All Just a Dream]]: the characters realise it's a dream and if Sensei wakes up, they'll all die. [[Murder Is the Best Solution|So they try to kill him instead]]. [[Fridge Logic|Don't think too hard about what happens if they succeed]].

** [[Hamlet|To die, to sleep-- / To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub! / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause. There's the respect / That makes calamity of so long life.]]

* Inverted in ''The Melancholy of [[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' when {{spoiler|[[Reality Warper|Haruhi's dream starts replacing reality]]. Kyon has to convince her that their original world is better than her new dream world ([[Nightmare Fetishist|even though her dream world has such cool giant monsters terrorizing the city]]).}}

** Also, [[Fridge Logic]] plays this straight in the movie, {{spoiler|where Kyon implicitly (but necessarily) deletes all of the people in the alternate reality by choosing to revert to the original one}}.

* The title character of ''[[Battle Angel Alita]]'' is trapped in a [[Lotus Eater Machine]] and shown an idyllic alternate world with Ido and a friendly Desty Nova. She breaks free after a while despite regrets about no longer being with Ido.

 

* In the ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' fanfiction [http://hetalia-kink.livejournal.com/13125.html?thread=31767621#t31767621 ''A Dream is a Wish your Heart Makes''], Denmark is put in a [[Lotus Eater Machine]] dream world, because of the Black Mercy plant infecting him. {{spoiler|At one point, he becomes vaguely aware that he's in a dream, during a nearly successful attempt by the other nations to remove the plant. When the attempt fails and the dream world is stabilized, the dream version of Iceland pleads with Denmark to stay with him forever, because the plant needs Denmark to stay asleep to continue to feed off of him. Iceland creepily reminds Denmark of this promise towards the end, when the nations dose him with LSD to try to scare him awake, and the dream world gets really freaking terrifying.}}

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Vanilla Sky]]'' {{spoiler|ends with the revelation that most of what happened in the movie was [[All Just a Dream]] and the main character, David, had been cryogenically frozen and put into a permanent state of lucid dreaming. The dream turns into a nightmare and the protagonist ends up accidentally murdering his girlfriend. When he realizes it is a dream, he is given the choice to start over again with everything happy again, but chooses to wake up instead. His girlfriend appears and he realizes that though he didn't really kill her, she has long since died of old age. However, it is hinted at that they will see each other again as she says she has something to tell him "in the next life, when we are both cats."}}

** {{spoiler|When the [[Lotus Eater Machine]] was revealed, a psychologist, David's only confidante, argues vehemently that he is not a figment of David's imagination. The dream technician explained to David that he shouldn't feel bad for him, because he is just a superficial character inspired by a movie David once saw. This was proven when the psychologist was unable to recall the names of his beloved two daughters, because David had not thought of them}}.

 

== Literature ==

* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', when Donna is caught in a [[Lotus Eater Machine]] in "Forest of the Dead," she starts panicking when she realizes that her two children don't actually exist. Then they start saying, "When you're not looking, we disappear." And then the entire world goes white and she's shown desperately trying to hold onto her husband, who might not be real either. {{spoiler|Turns out, he is real, but she just doesn't know}}.

* This shows up repeatedly in ''[[Star Trek]]'' in various ways.

*** And they there are people from Barclay's simulation...

* Canadian kid drama ''The Odyssey'' featured the hero falling into a coma and arriving in a dream world that reflected his mental state. Oddly enough, even after he woke up, the parallel world continued on without AND with him, complete with a dream version of himself continuing to live there.

* ''[[Dollhouse]]'' provides an interesting example of this with the imprinting and wiping of the actives. It's even lampshaded by the "Did I fall asleep?" dialogue whenever actives return from an engagement.

== Video Games ==

 

** The manga version develops this angle a bit more, with Link fully realizing what will happen and actually abandoning his quest when he learns about the dream world, only for Marin (who doesn't know the truth but had her own issues with dreams) and the [[Exposition Fairy|Ninja Butterflies]] (who do know) to encourage him to get back on track.

** The [[Play Station 3]] version makes it possible for this to be played straight- if you lose the final fight, Chopin wakes up, then is hinted to [[Tear Jerker|die with all his dreams killed.]]

* Possibly the case (subverted by the ending) in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' too, according to [http://squallsdead.com/ one online theory].

* In the [[Touhou]] fan-game ''[http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Concealed_the_Conclusion Concealed the Conclusion]'', {{spoiler|Gensokyo is a dream of Reimu Hakurei, and will cease to exist when she wakes up}}. In the [[Bittersweet Ending|Good End]], {{spoiler|it is revealed that the game's protagonist (Marisa Kirisame) is also from outside Gensokyo and is sharing the same dream}}.

** In the [[Bonus Stage|Extra and Phantasm Stages]], {{spoiler|Suika Ibuki managed to survive Gensokyo's destruction, and has started putting the world back together again piece by piece}}.

* In the Game Gear version of ''[[Ristar]]'', one of the bosses seems to be a dream master. When he is beaten, the background, which was a fairly normal world becomes overrun with lightning and storm clouds, thus hinting at what happens to the world Ristar is in when he beats the boss.

* Played with in ''[[Ultima VII]]: Serpent Isle'', there's an entire town that was shoved into the dreamworld after an evil sorcerer's magical experiment went awry.

* In [[Drawn to Life|Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter]], where the whole damn world is revealed to be {{spoiler|The dream of a boy in a coma. When going home from the fair, the car he was in was involved in an accident which killed his parents. And it turns out he has a sister named Heather with a bandage across the left side of her face - the area where Raposa!Heather had the darkness.}} And to top it all off? {{spoiler|The Raposa are based off the toys he and Heather won at the fair - Mari and Jowee.}}

* One of the episodes of [[Show Within a Show|Night Springs]] in [[Alan Wake]] discusses this subject. A man has entered his own dream, only to find many other people conspiring to keep a man asleep. It turns out that it's all [[Dream Within a Dream|a dream within a dream]], and that if this man wakes up too suddenly, everybody in the dream will be wiped out. The show ends as an alarm clock sounds.

** The DLC "The Writer" also uses this. {{spoiler|Both DLC episodes take place in Alan's dreams as he tries to wake up to avoid being driven mad from isolation. Along the way, you're helped by a dream version of your friend Barry...who then becomes the final boss to keep you from waking up.}}

 

== Webcomics ==

 

 

== Western Animation ==

** Although Green Lantern at first attempts to apologize to the freed citizens for destroying the utopia-illusion, this was shown to unambiguously be the ''right thing to do'', unlike most examples. An ice cream truck driver brushes off GL's apology, revealing that the people were trapped in the illusion against their will, and freeing them finally gave them a chance to live their own lives and repair their world. "Being stuck in an ice cream truck for 40 years, ''that's'' a nightmare."

* Another example from ''[[Justice League]] Unlimited'' (adapted from the [[Alan Moore]] classic ''"[[For the Man Who Has Everything]]''"): Superman was caught by a [[Lotus Eater Machine]] in plant form, called the Black Mercy, which had him dreaming he was on a still-existing Krypton with a wife and son, forcing him to consciously will the planet's destruction if he was to escape and save his [[Incredibly Lame Pun|superfriends]]. One of the last images from his dream is Krypton exploding as he clung tightly to his dream-son.

** Black Mercy gives you the strongest possible reason not to leave until it's done eating you.

* ''Rarg'', from an episode of "Long Ago and Far Away", is a perfectly happy world where the sun doesn't come up until everyone's had a good night's sleep (don't think about it too much). Then scientists probing the nature of reality discover that their world is all a dream in the mind of someone asleep in the real world, and will probably vanish when he wakes up. To prevent this, they manage to open a portal to reality and bring the sleeper though.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Dream Tropes]]