Schrödinger's Butterfly: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

{{quote|''Once I dreamt I was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with myself and doing as I pleased. I didn't know I was myself. Suddenly I woke up and there I was, solid and unmistakably myself. But I didn't know if I was myself who had dreamt I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was me.''|'''[[Zhuangzi]]'''}}

 

 

This serves as a source of mystery and speculation in a story. Did the heroes really break the spell cast by the [[Master of Illusion]], or are they all imagining it? Did they escape the [[Convenient Coma]] that trapped them in a [[Happy Place]]... or merely trade a perfect illusory world for a more realist one? These doubts may never be resolved until a [[Sequel]] comes out or [[Word of God]] clarifies it. Sometimes, the ambiguity works in favor of the story, leaving it [[Leave the Plot Threads Hanging|open to interpretation.]]

 

 

 

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]].

{{examples}}

* 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'.

* [[.hack//Sign]] ends with {{spoiler|Helba forcibly deleting Net Slum in a desperate effort to stop Skeith, causing everyone to be ejected from the game as the server crashes. This results in Tsukasa finally logging out of the game for the first time in the entire series and having a heartwarming meeting with Subaru in the real world...but when their hands touch, a distinctly cyberspace-y hexagon grid appears, and it then cuts to a scene of what appears to be the ruins of Net Slum (which is very similar to the very start of the first episode), with a mysterious monologue from Morganna. It doesn't help either that the "real world" segment of Tsukasa leaving the hospital and meeting Subaru has a somewhat surreal tone to it, what with the whole silent movie style and all. Ultimately, it's not really clear until later installments in the .hack series whether or not Tsukasa actually ever managed to log out.}}

* {{spoiler|Aizen}}'s zanpakutou ability in ''[[Bleach]]'' Its very essence is to [[Master of Illusion|warp a victim's perception of reality]].

* Never really happens in [[El Hazard]], but at one point Makoto wakes up after having a weird dream. Since he's not entirely sure that [[El Hazard]] itself isn't a dream, he gets a bit confused on the subject.

* "[[Vision of Escaflowne]]": Every episode for the first half or so of the episodes starts with ""Was it all just a dream? Or maybe a vision... no, it was real!". In addition on several occasions she does go to the other reality in a dream

While in Gaea she has several dreams where she is back with her friends in Japan. }}

* Are we all (as in, all of objective reality, not just the reality within the series) but a dream of [[Haruhi Suzumiya]]? At least Koizumi sets this as one of the possible theories.

 

== Comic Books ==

* In Neil Gaiman's ''[[The Sandman]]'', Dream subjects a character (who'd accidentally captured Dream in an attempt to seal Death and gain immortality) to a punishment of "eternal waking". The character in question continually dreams that he's woken up, only to see some nightmarish thing that tells him he's still dreaming, only to wake up from that dream... {{spoiler|For five real-time years!}}

* Invoked in one ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' strip, when he wakes up, gets dressed, eats breakfast, walks outside, and hears his mother telling him to get up. Then he wakes up again in his bed.

** And [http://i.imgur.com/kuiCm.jpg later played for laughs and drama] when he puts on a coat, walks outside, trips over a rock, and falls off a cliff miles into the air. Then he wakes up, gets dressed, leaves the house, and falls out the door through the sky. Then he wakes up, and is clearly ''terrified to get out of bed.''

* ''[[Garfield]]'''s [http://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/26/ delusional Halloween strip week, anyone?] While [[Word of God]] has apparently stated that this was a one-off event and that the comics aren't really the result of a delusional Garfield, some fans still speculate.

* The Nexus from ''[[Star Trek]]: Generations''. In fact, see the [[Star Trek/WMG|Trek]] [[Wild Mass Guessing]] page for one interpretation of this.

* ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' shows our sociopathic "hero" getting great praise for his shoot out, right after being probably gunned down. Even if he really did live, you can bet he's still crazy.

* ''[[Total Recall]]'': Is it a memory implant gone awry, or all real?

** In the short story ''We Can Remember It for You Wholesale'' that inspired this (can't say based on, can't even say very, very loosely based on), it ''did'' really happen. As for the movie, [[Word of God]] and a pivotal, though seemingly throwaway, line from a Rekall technician early in the film suggest that it was indeed [[All Just a Dream]].

* ''The Thirteenth Floor'' has someone invent an artificial virtual reality world at the beginning, then {{spoiler|reveal that their world is also a virtual reality world.}}

* ''[[The Matrix]]''.

** One of the comics also references the [[Trope Namer]] in a short comic where a monk or something beats up some agents.

* The deleted scenes of ''[[X-Men]] 2'' show that Jason didn't just make Xavier think he was back at the institute, he made him think that he succeeded in convincing Jason to let him escape from the [[Lotus Eater Machine]].

** Considering that the former is surreal and bizarre, while the latter is mundane and somewhat explains why {{spoiler|a disturbed person might dream up the former to escape her reality}}, [[Occam's Razor]] says the last half-hour.

* ''[[The Fly]]'': Far into his physical transformation Seth Brundle starts to think that he had always been an insect, and only imagined that he was a human being. Only in his mind though.

* ''[[Mystic River]]'' itself isn't an example, but at the end one of the characters proposes this as a possibility: The recent events are too bizarre for it to be reality, so what if it's all a dream that he is/they are having to shut out a darker reality: {{spoiler|that all three of them were kidnapped and still being molested}}.

* This is the entire premise of ''[[Jacob's Ladder]]'', too. The main character keeps bouncing back and forth between two realities, each of which shares some people and places in common, but both of which seem to have demons in them as well. {{spoiler|It's finally shown that he had died in Vietnam, and this was all just an in-your-head Purgatory.}}

* This is a concern in ''[[Inception]]'', so those involved take precautions.

** {{spoiler|it's also the cliffhanger ending}}

* ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'', to a very small and brief degree, when Susie Salmon {{spoiler|Is attacked by George Harvey in the underground trap, she is seen running from the scene as though she has escaped and is running for her life.}} it is not until a little later we realise {{spoiler|that she is actually dead and this is her ghost's immediate projection of what she wanted to happen. She had actually been killed in the underground lair, but she has no recollection of the event happening.}}

** This is absent in the original book version, where Susie remembers everything exactly how it happened, and describes it in painful detail.

* In the ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]'' sequel, [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''Through the Looking Glass'' the question is repeated brought up as to whether this is all the Red King's dream, and [[Dream Apocalypse|what might happen if the Red King wakes up while Alice is still in it]].

** In ''[[Sylvie and Bruno]]'', the narrator explicitly thinks it:

* 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.

* The book Liar is told from the point of view of a chronic liar. The make it worse, every now and then,she tells you shes lied about something and promises not to do it again, then a few chapters later she's confess to lying again. By the end of the book, you're really unsure if any of it actually took place.

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune", the mirrors nearly trap [[Kull]] in another world.

* Polaris by HPL is based on this entirely.

* The ''[[Goosebumps]]'' book ''I Live In Your Basement'', to the point of being a [[Mind Screw]].

* Several times during the course of ''[[The Circle Series]]'', Thomas Hunter actually asks himself whether he's dreaming or not. {{spoiler|He never does figure out which he's actually living in.}}

* [[Stephen King|Stephen King's]] ''[[Pet Sematary]]'' includes a heart-wrenching scene in which the protagonist has exactly this kind of dream.

* In [[Michael Flynn]]'s ''[[Spiral Arm|The January Dancer]]'', the [[Compelling Voice]] can make you forgot things. As a consequence, you can't be sure that anything you know really is true. Perhaps the person with the Dancer has taken over the galazy and you just don't realize because you've been ordered not to.

 

*** The season 7 episode "Extreme Measures" does this exact thing with O'Brien and Bashir, when Sloan's mind tricks them into believing they've returned to reality (when in actuality they are still inside his mind, slowly dying with him).

** A similar concept would also be used in the 6th season episode "Far Beyond the Stars" in which Sisko hallucinates that he is Benny Russell, a pulp fiction writer, whose latest story stars none other than Sisko. It gets even more extreme in that Benny Russell has hallucinations about being Sisko. At the end of the episode Sisko is telling his father that for all he knows he is a figment of his own (alter-ego Benny Russell's) imagination.

*** This appears to describe an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'' involving a species which spend their entire life dreaming. Only [[Magical Native American|Native American spirit magic]] can free the crew... or something.

** In another episode of Voyager, the crew falls prey to a gigantic space pitcher plant. It makes the crew see what they want to see (a worm hole to Earth) but they would actually be flying into it's stomach. Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman are the only ones immune because Seven was a Borg since childhood and Naomi was born on the ship; [[You Can't Go Home Again|the whole "getting home" thing]] is not either's ultimate ambition. However, at one point Seven believes the ship has escaped. It turns out that it is just the creature showing her what she wants to see (that is Voyager outside the creature, because not getting eaten is ''very much'' something Seven and Naomi both desire.

** Another ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode, "Frame of Mind", both explores and inverts this trope, nearly driving Commander Riker insane.

* ''[[The X-Files]]'' episode "Field Trip" dealt with this trope.

* This also appears in one episode of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' (season 5, episode 6) where the crew dies, only to see the "Game Over" text appear and shortly afterwards wake up in VR-game chairs... The series continued after that episode, of course.

** Probably a reference to [[Lotus Eater Machine|Better Than Life]] from Season 2, and at least one novel. By the end of the series, it's impossible to tell whether they've really escaped the game, or the game just lets them ''think'' they have. (It does explain a lot of the [[Lampshade Hanging|self-admitted]] [[Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness|implausible science]].)

*** Better Than Life was the Season 2 version, played almost entirely for laughs. Back to Reality is the Season 5 finale that played a similar concept very seriously. Not only did this sort of go hand in hand with the series "growing up" over time, it also helped create multiple levels of mindscrew.

*** It should be noticed that the book version was much darker. The show version was basically the Holodeck driven by whatever your surface wish was; no mistaking it for reality. The book lets us go a good while thinking the cast has fully made it home. Over much of the rest of the book they manage to escape, and find that things were still a ''little'' too good to be true. When they escape for ''real,'' a message left by the creator of the game appears to congratulate them, and they finally return to the real world. Hopefully. Apparently, they ''wanted'' to do it this way all along in the show but budget or something didn't allow - in "Future Echoes," elderly Lister has "U=BTL" etched into his arm. No attention is called to it at the time (or ever, in the show. In the book, we see this happen in book 1 and Lister notices. Better than Life is book 2.)

*** When they finally make it out of their hallucinated trial, Rimmer asks, "Is this reality? But how can we be sure?" Cat poignantly states, "Why do we care? Nothing makes any sense no matter where we are!"

** Happens [[In-Universe]] as part of a condemned criminal's sentence: he's doomed to have nightmares of being murdered by his victim over and over again, "waking up" from one nightmare to the next.

* In the American version of ''[[Touching Evil]]'', Creegan befriends Cyril, a homeless man who believes that he's dreaming the show's reality, and that when he goes to sleep, he's really waking up in the "real" world, the space colony Alpha 9.

* An episode of ''[[Farscape]]'' has Chiana introducing John to a buggy VR program based on his memories. John manages to find an exit, only to end up getting captured when [[Magnificent Bastard|Scorpius]] escapes from confinement and takes everyone hostage. After a great deal of [[Couldn't Find a Pen|bloodshed]], John finally breaks out of his cell... only to realise that he's still playing the game when he finds one of the hint-vouchers in his pocket.

* ''[[Angel]]'' has a mini-version of this in a Season 4 episode. {{spoiler|1=Angel is seen to defeat the demon and (finally) go to bed with Cordelia. Then we realize it was a dream designed to make Angel lose his soul in a moment of perfect happiness (understandably, sleeping with Charisma Carpenter = perfect happiness).}} It intersects with [[Your Mind Makes It Real]]; it qualifies here because the audience doesn't realize it's a dream until it's over, and this event blurs the lines between (in-show) reality and dream.

* The basic premise of ''[[Awake (TV series)|Awake]]'', in which Detective Michael Britten has one life in which his son died and his wife is still alive, another where it's vice versa. Both are equally real to him.

 

 

== Music ==

* Jonathan Coulton's song Creepy Doll ends something like this:

And far too late you see the one inside the box is you. }}

** This is actually (or also) a reference to the original ghost story the song is based on, in which the doll drives its owner insane enough to try destroying it once and for all, and when they do, it takes over their body (or just vanishes, its mischief complete, depending on the retelling) and leaves the owner in the form of a new doll, ready to do the same to the next person who picks it up.

 

 

 

 

* Maribel Han in the [[All There in the Manual]] material for ''[[Touhou]]'' has a dual existence in a grayer Earth and in Gensokyo. It's menitoned that she visits the rest of the cast often, however we have never seen her directly in Gensokyo. It is [[Wild Mass Guessing|speculated by some]] that she has a [[Reality Warper|different identity]] when dreaming.

* Zhuangzi's poem is the source of all the butterfly symbolism in the ''[[Persona (video game)|Persona]]'' games, as referenced by ''Megami Ibunroku Persona's'' intro. The remake even references this in the opening lyrics.

* ''[[Silent Hill 1]]'s'' Bad Ending shows us the protagonist dying in his broken car; apparently all the game was just [[Dying Dream|a dream he had between the car crash and his death]]. Other endings are less unhappy, though... except for the one where he kills his daughter and he and an [[Innocent Bystander]] get roasted alive in a collapsing [[Dark World|hell-dimension]]. Oh, and there are four sequels; he's revealed to have survived in the third {{spoiler|[[Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome|only to be killed off-screen]]}}.

* Part of the ending of the Ciel route in ''[[Tsukihime]]'' involves Shiki in a mental dream world where there are no vampires, Ciel is just a normal girl and he doesn't have his [[Evil Eye|Eyes of Death Perception.]] He catches on pretty quick and has a little chat with his Nanaya side over whether he wants to leave or not, because leaving most likely means death.

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening]]'' - The island is nothing but one big dream, and the point of gathering the 8 dungeon items this time around is to wake both you and the Wind Fish up. Link is oblivious to this since you aren't directly told that it's a dream until late in the game, but the owl and boss monsters don't really try to hide this fact from you.

** It should also be noted that at one point you end up in a dream sequence ''inside'' the dream world in order to get the Ocarina.

* Occurs in a particularly soul-crushing way at the end of [[Realms Of The Haunting]].

* Parodied in [[Chrono Trigger]] in the Kingdom of Zeal.

* In [[Mass Effect 3]], Joker discusses this trope after [[Player Character|Shepard]] {{spoiler|takes a virtual trip through the geth consensus}}, wondering if you really came back out or if you're still in there and everything you're seeing now is an illusion. It becomes [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] when you consider some of the [[Epileptic Trees|fan theories]] that came out about the ending of the game.

 

== 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]] ==

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* Bender in ''[[Futurama]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshades]] this when the episode ''Obsoletely Fabulous'' turns out to be just a dream while he gets a compatibility upgrade:

''Bender then walks out into a world of magical beer fairies and cigar trees while whistling.'' }}

** Then there's the Fing-longer episode, where we see several characters' theoretical scenarios play out on the Professor's 'What if" Machine, only for it to be revealed at the end that the whole episode was one big "What if" scenario for the Fing-longer itself. This raises certain questions when the "What if" Machine makes a repeat appearance in a later episode.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:This Might Be an Index]]

[[Category:Plots]]

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