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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Spongebob:''' Squidward, you don't need television. Not as long as you have... [[
A person with a huge imagination, who spends most of the time in his or her own imaginary world, frequently out of touch with reality. Often the main character, and usually a [[Cheerful Child]] and/or a [[Cloudcuckoolander]]. A show with them has lots of imagination sequences (like a [[Dream Sequence]], [[Power Fantasy]], or extended [[Imagine Spot]]). May have an [[Imaginary Friend]]. In many (but not all) instances, the imaginative character is a [[Reality Warper]], and his/her odd daydreams can temporarily become real.
{{examples|Examples}}▼
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Osaka from ''[[
** Sakaki is prone to this as well.
* Ryou and Fuu from ''[[Sketchbook]]'', who manage to inhabit their imaginary world ''together''. This is more pronounced in the manga than in the anime, though.
** Sora is also this to a lesser extent.
* Yotsuba from ''[[
* [[Mr. Fanservice|Hosaka]] from ''[[Minami-ke]]'', usually centered around his obsession with [[Ms. Fanservice|Haruka]]. He even fantasizes that her younger sisters are his daughters after being told Haruka "had kids."
* Julia from ''[[Strawberry Shake Sweet]]'' often has very vivid fantasies about Ran.
* Keitaro from ''[[Love Hina]]'' was pretty bad about this, at least early on in the series.
* The character Vincent from ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' [[The Movie]] lives in a constantly delusional psychosis that makes him see butterflies everywhere. This is ''[[Deconstructed Trope|not]]'' [[Deconstructed Trope|played for comedy]], as his unstable mental state led him to become a [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]].
* Kisaragi from ''[[GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class]]'' has the tendency to withdraw into her rather extensive fantasies, which often involve kittens or bunnies.
* Bud from ''[[Transformers Cybertron]].''
* Suzu from ''[[Amuri in Star Ocean]]'' has an elaborate escapist fantasy world in her mind, complete with and [[Imaginary Friend]] named General Panda.
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Fight Club]]'': A darker variation on this is the adult (and apparently sane) {{spoiler|main character}}.
* ''[[Brazil (
* The main character, Babydoll in ''[[Sucker Punch]]'' spends most of the movie in imaginary dream sequences (in which she is engaging in erotic dancing). Near the end, we find the trope amplified since {{spoiler|she was lobotomized early in the film}}.
* The eponymous character from ''[[Amelie]]''.
* Antonia's daughter from ''Antonia's Line''. For example, she imagines an angel statue hitting the priest with a wing, and imagines her dead grandmother sitting up and singing at her funeral.
** Later, Antonia's great-granddaughter has a similiar vision the day Antonia dies, seeing family members long dead happily visiting a family picket. Note that only two people in Antonia's line have the visions: the artist (the daughter) and the great-granddaughter (hinted to become a writer). The two that don't have any visions are Antonia (a farmer) and her graddaughter (a mathmatician).
* Alice, in [[A Nightmare
* Kitten from ''[[Breakfast On Pluto]]''.
* James Barrie spends much of ''[[Finding Neverland]]'' imagining a more fantastic version of the events he's experiencing, ranging from games with the Llewelyn Davies boys (a western shootout with the boys as cowboys and James as a native; a pirate ship with the boys as pirate captives of James and Sylvia) to "enhanced" versions of the events he's seeing (raining in the theater as his play bombs; the boys starting to fly as they jump on their beds).
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* Johnny Maxwell, the young teenager from the [[Johnny Maxwell Trilogy]] (''Only You Can Save Mankind'', ''Johnny and the Dead'', ''Johnny and the Bomb'') by Terry Pratchett. He is rather introverted, quiet, sober and has few friends. He isn't one of the cool kids, he isn't uncool, he's socially invisible. Of course, in the books reality is much stranger than Johnny's imagination, or sometimes his imagination spills over into reality. He listens, and the silent people begin talking to him; video game aliens speak to him in his dreams, he can see the spirits of the dead while walking home from school through the cemetery of his small English town, and he learns the ability to travel through time and to take others with him, from an old "differently sane" trolley (a shopping cart, for Americans) lady. In other cultures and times, Johnny would have been a shaman, or a visionary.
** When asked if the events of the books were "really happening", or were merely Johnny's imagination coping, [[Word of God|Pratchett replied]] that it was probably both: "He deals with all the problems on their own terms and half the time he's projecting reality onto fantasy. So: is what happens in the books real? Yes. Does it all happen in Johnny's head? Yes."
* Perhaps a better Pratchett example would be Adam from ''[[
* An alternate interpretation of the novel/film ''[[American Psycho]]'' is that Patrick Bateman is an horrifically morbid example of this trope.
* Harold from ''Harold and the Purple Crayon'' and other books.
* Billy Fisher from ''Billy Liar'' and ''Billy Liar On The Moon'' by Keith Waterhouse, and various adaptations.
* [[
* Anne Shirley of L.M. Montgomery's ''[[
** All of her children fit this trope as well, though her middle son, Walter, is closest.
* The [[No Name Given|strictly speaking unnamed]] child protagonist in [[The Moomins|Tove Jansson]]'s short story "A Tale of Horror" ("En hemsk historia"), who is very imaginative and can't tell apart reality and the things he imagines. After being left without dessert for claiming his little brother has been eaten by a snake, he decides to run away. He encounters Little My, who freaks him out by imagining even more horrible things than he does. Afterwards he's quite affronted that anyone could say such things when they are not really true.
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* Leslie Burke from [[Bridge to Terabithia]] .
* [[Deconstructed Trope|Deconstructed horribly]] in ''When the Windman comes'' By Antonia Michaelis. Pareidoile definitely has imagination - but since she imagines ''bad''' things (like {{spoiler|the titular Windman}}), she lives in constant fear and is unable do many things other kids can.
* Tre from [[
== [[Live
* J.D. of ''[[Scrubs]]'' is one of the most well-known and highly-developed adult examples of this trope, to the point where it's hard to use [[Imagine Spot
* Elmo from ''[[
** Grover before him, so much that he'd often let his imagination run away with him.
* The kids from ''Barney and Friends''.
* Blue the dog from ''Blue's Room'' a spin-off of Blues Clues.
* [[Bunny Ears Lawyer|Lieutenant]] [[Bunny Ears Lawyer|Barclay]] from ''[[Star Trek:
* A ''constructive'' variation is in the old Tvontario educational series, ''[[Write On]]!'' where half the episodes were of Henry, a young reporter, gets reamed out by his editor on a mistake in writing and suddenly has a Walter Mittyesque daydream where he is a dashing hero having strange adventures that illustrate the particular writing lesson. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6eD2POru0s&feature=related Here's a complete episode with one such daydream].
* The title character in ''[[The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin]]''.
* Andy from ''[[
* Possibly the first example on a television series, John Monroe (William Windom), the protagonist of ''My World and Welcome to It''.
* The main character from the Doctor Who episode "Love and Monsters.". Also an unintentionally darker example, as it could also be a slight [[Sanity Slippage]].
* This is definitely played with in [[House MD|a certain medical drama.]] The titular character, who already has a good deal of psychological problems, is also blessed with a tendency to experience massive hallucinations, {{spoiler|mostly because of his drug (ab)use.}} This can lead to '''''[[Mind Screw|very]]''''' [[Mind Screw|weird]] situations, including (but not limited to) the end of season five, where House {{spoiler|hallucinates his intercourse with Cuddy}}, and the end of season two, where House {{spoiler|ends up hallucinating ''an entire episode'' after being shot}}.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* Calvin from ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. His imaginary alter egos include Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, Tracer Bullet, the World's Most Powerful Computer, and numerous monsters and animals (dinosaurs seem to be his favorite). Not that he truly needs a dual identity to explore using his imagination.
* [[Garfield]], especially in the TV specials, Garfield's Babes and Bullets and Garfield's Feline Fantasies.
* Snoopy from ''[[Peanuts]]'' was deliberately created as a canine [[Expy]] of [[Older Than They Think|Walter Mitty.]].
* Alice Otterloop from ''[[Cul De Sac]]''.
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* Probably half the people here.▼
** Definitely everyone at [[Wild Mass Guessing]].▼
* Many people in the entertainment business and fiction authors of any genre, which are two fields that require a large and constantly expanding imagination in order to be successful. ▼
* Anyone who's been to [[Disney Theme Parks|Epcot]] might recognise these lyrics: "'Cause at the start/of everything that's new/just one spark/lights up for you..."▼
* In the [[Myers Briggs|MBTI]], most people who get typed as a INxx type will usually fall under this trope, though INFPs tend to be the quintessential example.▼
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* In Steve Jackson Games' ''[[Toon (
* Dreamers in ''Grimm'' were like this in the real world. This is ''mostly'' a good thing in the Grimm Lands, as it's based on imagination and fairy tales. Not only do they [[Genre Savvy|understand it better than anyone]], but they're experts at reshaping it to their
== [[Theatre]] ==
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al
** Lily is like this in the sequel.
* Deconstructed in ''[[Chaos
* The title character of the NES game ''Day Dreamin' Davey'', since his imaginative daydreams often lead to trouble at school.
* The title charachter of [[American McGee's Alice]] and [[Alice: Madness Returns]], as per [[Alice in Wonderland|the source material]]. Slightly deconstructed in that she has obvious issues and is pretty delusional due her [[Break the Cutie]] backstory in an insane asylum.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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** It was introduced originally as a euphemism for being drunk.
** Pickle Inspector has the highest IMAGINATION stat, which grants him [[Reality Warper|potent reality warping powers]] while in the imagination world. [[Squishy Wizard|This is at the expense of his VIM (strength) stat.]]
* The main character Lucy is this in ''[http://www.adayoflucy.thecomicseries.com/ A Day of Lucy]''
* Unnamed Character from [http://www.walfas.org/ Walfas.]
** [[Catch Phrase|Imagination Sequence, go!]]
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* Many episodes of ''[[Rugrats]]'' are centered on the babies imagining some mundane task as a great adventure, with occasional flashes of what is really happening interrupting it.
* [[The Simpsons]] did it. Lisa occasionally drifts off into a fantasy world to avoid the grim reality of living life in Springfield. It?s also subverted, as Bart has lost his ability to use his imagination along with his ability to focus? on? um? ah forget it let's watch some TV.
* Stacy and Bradley of ''[
* The characters from [[The Backyardigans]].
** They're also quite the "[[Five
* Bobby from ''[[Bobby's World]]''.
* Eliot from ''[[Eliot Kid]]''.
* The title characters from ''Little Bear'' and ''Franklin''.
* ''[[
{{quote|
* Ellen from ''[[Ellens Acres]]''
* ''[[Jibber Jabber]]''
* ''[[Doug]]''
* It is implied that [[The Chick|Isabella Garcia-Shapiro]] from ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' spends much of her time daydreaming about her crush, [[Redheaded Hero|Phineas]], turning into a centaur and carrying her off along a rainbow. She calls this fantasy, "Phineasland," and can drift off even while Phineas is ''[[Completely Missing the Point|actually talking to her]]''.
** Also Phineas, and to a slightly lesser extent, Ferb. Anything they set out to do, they ''will'' do it, even though it seems to break the laws of logic and indeed, physics.
* The premise of the childrens' show ''Billy''.
* The "Magnificent Muttley" bits on ''[[Dastardly and Muttley
* [[Fanboy and Chum Chum]].
* Jake of ''[[
* Arnold from ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'' started out as this, before the show expanded and began to put the spotlight on its [[Loads and Loads of Characters]].
* The eponymous ''[[Mona the Vampire]]''.
* Eddie Storkowitz, the lead character of ''[[Birdz]]'', spends a lot of his time fantasizing that his peers are in movie settings.
* Rufus is this in spades in the pilot for ''[[The Dreamstone]]''. Oddly despite being a dominant trait, and the key reason he gets a job assisting the Dream Maker, it is only refered to in a handful of episodes afterwards.
* Mac of ''[[
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
▲* Probably half the people here.
▲** Definitely everyone at [[Wild Mass Guessing]].
▲* Many people in the entertainment business and fiction authors of any genre, which are two fields that require a large and constantly expanding imagination in order to be successful.
▲* Anyone who's been to [[Disney Theme Parks|Epcot]] might recognise these lyrics: "'Cause at the start/of everything that's new/just one spark/lights up for you..."
▲* In the [[Myers
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:Youngsters]]
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▲[[Category:Trope]]
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