Schrödinger's Butterfly: Difference between revisions
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Much like the [[Schrodinger's Cast|other]] [[Schrodinger's Gun|Schrodinger]] [[Schrodinger's Suggestion Box|tropes]], this plot point can also serve as an [[Author's Saving Throw]] by retroactively making it [[All Just a Dream]]. Or if the author ''really'' wants to mess with us, end the movie or film on a [[Downer Ending]], with a fading shot of the character's [[Dying Dream|dying]] or still comatose body trapped in the illusion.
The trope name is a reference to a poem by the 4th century BC Chinese philosopher [[Zhuangzi]], a Taoist philosopher who influenced Chinese Buddhism. It refers also to [[Schrödinger's Cat|Erwin Schrödinger's thought experiment relating to quantum uncertainty]]. If you can't tell, we like to be well balanced in our [[
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]].
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*** 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.)
** And again at the end of series VI in "Out of Time." Just before the cataclysmic ending, Starbug hits a "reality mine"
** Another notable instance occurs in season 8, episode 3, when they {{spoiler|return to the reconstructed Red Dwarf, courtesy of the Nanites,}} and are placed in the brig after signing agreements to participate in a trial involving psychotropic drugs that will cause them to hallucinate.
*** They engineer a daring escape before the trial and make it out into space, at which point they realize that the entire escape attempt has been a hallucination.
*** They enlist the aid of the reconstructed Rimmer and break out again... and realize that, once again, they've all been duped.
*** 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!"
* A [[Cruel Twist Ending]] from the ''[[Outer Limits]]'' [[Revival]] episode "Tempests": did the hero escape early in the episode, or at the end?
** 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.
* Played with at the end of a [[Lotus Eater Machine]] episode of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''
* 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.
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