Schrödinger's Butterfly: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

Compare: [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]] and [[Dream Apocalypse]]. Compare also [[Opening a Can of Clones]], which has this effect regarding a character's 'originality'. Contrast [[Or Was It a Dream?]]. See also: [[Cuckoo Nest]], [[Dying Dream]], [[Through the Eyes of Madness]], [[Masquerade]], and [[Brainwashed]].

 

* ''[[Paprika]]''. Where to begin? {{context}} <!-- Begin at the beginning, and work from there. -->

* In ''[[Naruto]]'', brothers Sasuke and Itachi Uchiha practice ''genjutsu,'' techniques centering around illusions. Thus, during the Sasuke vs Itachi fight, the first major stage of the battle consists of Sasuke and Itachi standing perfectly still while both add layer upon layer of illusions. The readers, of course, are ignorant of what is an illusion and what isn't until after the illusion breaks. As a result, there are several points in which the fight seems over, only for the illusion to break and reveal that the brothers ''hadn't actually started fighting yet.''

** Practically lampshaded when Sasuke breaks Tsukuyomi (Itachi's strongest genjutsu), and [[Combat Commentator|Zetsu]] pretty much lets the reader know the rest of this ''isn't'' genjutsu.

* In ''[[GetBackers]]'', in one of the episodes, an elderly homeless man asks the Get Backers to save his daughter from the mafia. {{spoiler|When they arrive the girl doesn't want to go with them, and they leave her there. Upon seeing the old man being loaded onto an ambulance, Ban catches both the old man's and Ginji's eyes before the daughter runs up to tell her father that she loves and forgives him. It is never revealed whether the daughter truly showed up, or if Ban was showing both men a pleasant illusion.}} The viewer is often confused as to what is the illusion and what is reality, only being sure when Ban reveals his trick.

** It's a dream. In the original Manga, Ginji asks him if he used the Evil Eye, and Ban replies with a dejected 'yeah'.

* This is basically the plot of ''The Red King'', the second novel in the ''[[Star Trek: Titan]]'' series. The novel features an eponymous intelligence, which resides within a protouniverse overlapping with our own. As a result of this overlap, its expansion threatens several worlds with destruction. The legends of many local races' speak of the protouniverse, or at least the associated intelligence. They describe it as a sleeping dreamer, the surrounding region of space being the content of the dream. The expansion and its resultant destruction is therefore supposedly the [[Dream Apocalypse|dream coming to an end as the being begins to wake]]. Frane, a native of the Neyel (whose world is part of the threatened region), describes the myth to Titan's crew:

{{quote|"And when it wakes, it ceases to dream. But all the worlds that surround it are part of that dream. Like Newaerth, the first world to vanish as the Sleeper begins stirring from its long ages of slumber". }}

* This is basically the entire premise of a Jostein Gaarder novel ''[[Sophie's World]]''.

* Pedro Calderón de la Barca's ''Life is a Dream,'' a 17th-century Spanish play, deals with [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|the conception of life as a dream]] particularly in the first act.

 

 

 

 

== Web Comics ==

* In [http://www.jsayers.com/thingpart/thingpart218.html this] ''[http://www.jsayers.com/thingpart/thingpart.html thingpart]'', is the boy hallucinating on a subway, is he hallucinating that he's playing with psychologist dolls, is he hallucinating that he's hallucinating on a subway, is he hallucinating that he's hallucinating on a subway from the other direction, is he not hallucinating at all and either the whole thing is a [[Mind Screw]] or the second through fourth panels or first through third panels are hypothetical, or doe the rabbit hole go even deeper in unseen panels?

** A more straightforward example: [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/011223c Waking up from the Megaman universe] is [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/011224c just a dream]

* ''[[The Dreamer]]'' relies heavily on this trope, as Beatrice and the audience is unsure whether or not her dreams are simply that, or an [[Alternate Universe]].

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:This Might Be an Index]]

[[Category:Plots]]

[[Category:Useful Notes/Schrodinger's Cat]]