Dreaming of Things to Come: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''the prophetic soul

 

Dreams get omitted from fiction unless they are significant. When they are not [[Bad Dreams]] about the past, the dreamer will often be Dreaming of Things to Come.

'''Dreaming of Things to Come''' can be ''sent'' -- [[Dream Weaver|by a god, by an oracle, by someone with magical or psychic ability other than the dreamer]]. This may shade into [[Talking in Your Dreams]].

 

Often a way of [[Foreshadowing]]. Can be a [[Portent of Doom]].

 

 

{{examples}}

* The title character of ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'' frequently had these, most pointing to the same event involving her, [[Tokyo Tower]], and a [[White-Haired Pretty Boy|beautiful silver-haired man]] [[Winged Humanoid|with wings]].

** [[Flanderization|In the manga she only has that dream once]].

* In ''[[Detective Conan]]'', Heiji becomes disturbed by a recent dream he had of Conan dying, so he lends him a charm. The dream becomes accurate when the suspect manages to stab Conan but Conan's life was saved by [[Pocket Protector|the charm.]]

 

* Franklin Richards of ''[[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]'' has "special dreams" which are prophetic. May be symbolic: before a clash among the Fantastic Four, the [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] and Doctor Doom, he dreamed of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men dying, and his father turning into Doom, which foretold aspects of the clash. May also be literal: in his first meeting with [[Power Pack]], they deduce why an alien is chasing them—Katie Power is carrying an alien artifact that could be traced—he recounts how he had dreamed that the alien chased ''him'', and so they give him the artifact, which leads to their victory.

* This was the lone "superpower" of Wesley Dodds A.K.A. The Sandman. He would dream about crimes that had not yet been committed.

* Luke had something like one of these after ROTJ, in the [[Marvel Star Wars]] comic "The Dream". He had [[Recurring Dreams]] where he saw Vader, was terrified, saw Vader starting to take his helmet off, and desperately pleaded with him to stop. He always felt guilty, then, and like there was some great wrong he had to set right. At last he spoke to the spirits of his teachers and his father and confronted this apparition again - it was a new Sith Lord he'd never seen before, and he did indeed have to set things right when he faced him.

 

* Anakin Skywalker from ''[[Star Wars]]'', on at least two different occasions, had prophetic dreams: first with his mother, then with his wife. Both predicted the woman pictured would die, both of them showed the woman in question calling for him, both of them came true.

** And one of them happened precisely because he [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|went out of his way to try and stop it]] after having the dream.

{{quote|'''Fievel''': I dreamed that we moved out west where I became a famous gunslinger!}}

 

* In [[Eleanor Cameron]]'s ''The Court of The Stone Children'', the heroine dreams of a room, and seeing children in it; one says she wants to show her something. Later, she sees the room and tells the dream, resulting in the X-raying of a picture and a discovery about it.

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' uses dreams a lot as a foreshadowing tool, usually those are understood to be magical "green dreams" or otherwise sent by the gods. Perhaps. The system of magic in ASOIAF is anything but functional.

** Both ''[[The Thrawn Trilogy]]'' and the ''[[Hand of Thrawn]]'' Duology have Luke, early on, voluntarily entering a trance state to try and receive visions of what's to come. He gets them, but they're fragmented and confusing enough that while they do help, he doesn't do this often.

* In Frank Herbert's ''[[Dune]]'', Paul Atreides had dreams about the future (including later events on Arrakis) before gaining his full prescient ability.

* Several of the characters in ''[[Watership Down]]'' have dreams full of symbolic foreshadowing.

* E. F. Benson's ''The Room in the Tower'' is all about this trope, thanks to what appears to be an {{spoiler|odd psychic connection between the protagonist and a suicide-turned-vampire.}}

* A variation: The night before the climactic concert in [[The Taqwacores]], Amazing Ayyub relays a (possible) hadith about how the last widow of the Prophet dreamed of seeing her husband weeping and grief-stricken. She asked why, and his response is is that he had to dig a grave for his grandson and his companions. The next day was the Tragedy of Karbala (of which the Day of Ashura is based), resulting in the massacre of the Prophet's grandson and his companions. The reason this is a variation is that its placement in [[The Taqwacores]] is intended to foreshadow {{spoiler|the concert devolving into a riot, resulting in the lynching of [[Crazy Awesome|Jehangir]] by [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Bilal's Boulder]].}}

* In [[Eleanor Cameron]]'s ''The Court of the Stone Children'', Nina dreams of a time when her home is taken apart and sent to a museum. [[Talking in Your Dreams|Her dead father appears to tell her something]].

* In ''Such A Pretty Girl'' Andy has a dream that he's walking up to his girlfriend Meredith (he is paraplegic) who is reading a dictionary when she looks up and says "'Now' I get it!" This scene is forgotten until the end of the book, where these events happen.

* In Teresa Frohock's ''[[Miserere: An Autumn Tale|Miserere an Autumn Tale]]'', all dreams are prophetic. Most people don't dream, and if you say that you have dreamed, you get attention.

 

* Ben from ''[[Carnivale]]'' has these pretty much every time he closes his eyes.

* In ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', only Slayers have prophetic dreams (although the dreams all the Scoobies got in "Restless" were pretty prophetic; that might have just been the influence of the First Slayer).

** One of S3's dreams only makes sense after S5. It's one of those Buffy and Faith dreams, and it actually refers to the coming of Dawn, when Faith not only says, "Little sister is coming," but the more cryptic, "Little Miss Muffet counting down from seven-three-oh." Season five started 730 days later.

*** And given the relative position in both seasons, it could also be taken as Faith looking forward to {{spoiler|Buffy killing herself to save the world}}.

** Not really fair, as the finale pretty well wrapped up what most, if not all, the dreams were going on about.

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'': Peter Petrelli dreams the future constantly throughout the first season. In Season 3, we learn that got this power (the first of many) from {{spoiler|his mother, Angela, whose power was unknown up to that point}}.

* In ''[[Power Rangers Wild Force]]'', Max has a recurring dream of the Megazord being defeated, and a strange voice telling him to "use the Spear of Pardolis", which later comes to pass (The "Spear" in question being a new Zord).

 

 

* ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' has the Dream merit which allows characters to receive prophetic dreams in the form of symbolic hints about coming dangers or how to overcome a problem. If the meditate on a subject prior to sleeping, they can specifically invoke such dreams. The Seers of the Throne are able to acquire an alternate form of the merit, where their dreams are specifically instructions from the Exarchs (although they have one faction which seeks out [[Muggles|sleepers]] who receive apparently prophetic dreams, which they believe are more accurate ways of determining the Exarchs' will).

** Other games in the [[New World of Darkness]] have similar ways of dreaming the future. ''[[Promethean: The Created]]'' has the Elpis Merit, which allows a Promethean to gain information from their dreams of the milestones necessary to [[To Become Human|complete the Pilgrimage]].

* ''[[Exalted]]'' has an inversion with the Yozi Sacheverell, the Abhorrent Prophet Unimagined. While he dreams, he sees everything BUT the future. Were he to wake, he would perfectly see the entirety of what is to come, locking the world into absolute predestination. Pretty much everyone agrees that this would be a Bad Thing, quite possibly even Sacheverell himself.

 

* It's practically a tradition for the [[Kingdom Hearts]] games to open up with protagonists having cryptic dreams (that become a lot clearer as the story progresses) that foreshadow major events in the story and (later on in the series) past and/or related games.

* In ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers]] of Time/Darkness'', the main character has this ability. Turns out that the main character and Grovyle the thief are really {{spoiler|a human from the future and a Pokemon friend who's actually a good guy, respectively}}.

* In ''[[The Last Express]]'', Robert Cath dreams of his recently deceased friend Tyler Whitney, he lies in his bed, sits up, produces an egg from his mouth, and says "Why don't you make it sing?" {{spoiler|It is an egg, the Firebird, that Kronos tells you to make sing in the end. A violin makes it produce a music box tune, but a whistle will only bring death!}}

* Many of the character's in the [[Chzo Mythos]] tend to have this type of dream to foreshadow the eventual bloodbath.

* A bit of an interesting take in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' when [[Player Character|Commander Shepard]] is touched by the Prothean Beacon. S/he starts having visions and nightmares of the Protheans being wiped out by the [[Eldritch Abomination|Reapers]]. [[Vicious Cycle|But it's a perfect look]] [[Oh Crap|at what's coming.]]

 

* ''[[Narbonic]]'' did this [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic/series.php?view=archive&chapter=9807&mpe=1&step=1 every] [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic/series.php?view=archive&chapter=9899 year] of its run on the [[Sunday Strip|Sunday]] nearest December 31, with a "Dave in Slumberland" strip, which in addition to being a ''[[Little Nemo]]'' parody, gives a symbolic foreshadowing of the following year. It also [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue|ended on that day of the year]], with a suggestion that the origin of the dreams was that Dave could subconciously create [[Foundation|psychohistory]] algorithms.

* In the ''[[Penny and Aggie]]'' arc "There Are No Rules," Aggie is puzzled by her dream of being in love with a mall mannequin. After an argument with her [[Ambiguously Gay|ambiguously bisexual]] best friend Lisa about [[I Didn't Mean to Turn You On|mixed signals]], complicated by Aggie's feelings of discomfort over two other girlfriends making out in her presence, she makes up with Lisa at the mall and gives her a hug. While doing so, she recalls her prior history of [[Single-Target Sexuality]] with regard to men, having shared the same crush as a now out-gay friend. Then, still in mid-hug, she looks up at a suspiciously familiar mannequin..."Uh oh."

* Karcharoth of [[Cry Havoc]] experiences these occasionally while unconscious.

** Technically anyone whose dreamself is on Prospit can see these visions, but Jade is the only one shown to use them extensively. They have a tendency to be vague as well.

** Derse dreamers get a bit of this too, though instead of prophetic visions they get the whisperings of the [[Eldritch Abomination|gods]] in the [[Eldritch Location|Furthest Ring]], which tend to be prophetic in nature. And players with dead dream selves have the middleman cut out for them and dream directly of the Furthest Ring. Though in this case, it's true for both Prospit and Derse dreamers.

* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'', during the Sleepy Time storyline Elliot dreams of becoming a superhero, later {{spoiler|he gets a [[Gender Bender|superheroine]] spell}}.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* In ''[[The Gamers Alliance]]'', both [[Wandering Minstrel|Leon]] and [[Plucky Girl|Kaisa]] have dreams about things that will happen in the future. Leon tries to actively stop these bad visions from coming true, but Kaisa is more clueless because her dreams deal with even more obscure things than Leon's and don't necessary have as bad an aura around them.

 

* [[Kid Appeal Character|Cheetor]] has a few psychic dreams over the course of ''[[Beast Wars]]''. In ''[[Beast Machines]]'', Optimus Primal has one of these, prophesising of new characters who appear in the second season.

* In ''[[Code Lyoko]]'', Aelita starts having significant dreams once she's materialized in the real world (and thus can sleep and dream). At first, those are about memories of her past life slipping past her [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]]. In the penultimate episode, however, she gets a genuinely prophetic dream... {{spoiler|of her father's death.}}

* Subverted in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. While there is much prophecy, spirit walking, and visions of the future, nobody actually has a prophetic dream, but Aang and Katara take Sokka seriously when he warns them that he's had a dream that going into the market is a bad idea. Then he reveals that his dream revolved around "Food eats people!" and they dismissed

** Actually, Iroh had a dream about conquering Ba Sing Se in his youth. At the time, he thought it meant that he would conquer it for the Fire Nation, but he ended up ''un''conquering it ''from'' the Fire Nation.

** Zuko's [[Angst Coma]] featured a dream where Azula and Iroh (in the form of dragons) each try to persuade him to follow them. The same thing happens in real life two episodes later, but without the dragons.

** In the swamp, Aang has a vision, although he's awake, of a young girl in a fancy dress with a flying boar. {{spoiler|The girl turns out to be Toph, his earthbending teacher who he will soon meet, and the flying boar is the symbol of her family. Aang actually uses his vision to find her, so it is kind of a [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|self-fulfilling prophecy.]]}}

* In the ''[[Lite Sprites]]'' pilot, the sprites go off to find their lite wands after Prisma tells them about her dream where they did just that. Played with in that they get stuck a couple of times when they encounter something that wasn't in Prisma's dream (a fork in the path, an unexpected cave-in), but eventually cover everything.

 

== Real Life ==

* [[Paul McCartney]] dreamt the melody of "''Yesterday''" one night and for a long while he thought it was just a vague memory of some song he heard when he was younger. But it turned out he completely thought it up himself.

* [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] dreamed the plot for ''[[The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]]''.

 

{{reflist}}