Your Mind Makes It Real: Difference between revisions
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* [[Marvel Star Wars]] has a [[Mystical Plague]] called the Crimson Forever. A pair of very alien life forms communicate their displeasure over being separated by psychically broadcasting a signal that makes people fall into comas that progressively get deeper, to the point of clinical death. The bodies of victims fight back as if infected with a physical disease, and the shock of it usually makes people die. The only survivor was Luke Skywalker, who was able to make himself stop fighting and woke up when the aliens were reunited.
== Film
* In ''[[Brainstorm]]'', a character dies while hooked up to a tape that records thoughts and experiences. Someone else "watches" it, and has the exact same heart attack, dying in the process because they didn't disable the pain generators.
** The tape also records brainwaves and some physical indicators. So playing that tape unmodified gave the watcher the same heart arrhythmia.
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* In ''[[Tek War]]'', failing to hack a computer system results in real injuries ranging from brain damage to death. Fortunately, most hackers can spare the brain cells lost in minor skirmishes.
* ''[[Discworld]]'' codifies this trope to an extent, in that one of the explicit rules of the world is that [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|belief itself is a powerful enough force]] that enough people believing in something can [[Rewriting Reality|make it true]].
** In ''[[
** Using "Headology" (''directed''
** Susan Sto Helit uses this trope to its maximum effect, developing her wards' belief in a poker she uses to beat up the monsters that hide under the bed, rather than telling them these monsters don't exist. That is, while she realizes nothing will make them stop believing in monsters, it's much easier to make them believe she's enough of a badass to take them. (It also helps that there ''are'' monsters, and she ''is'' that much of a badass, being Death's granddaughter...)
** In ''[[
* Averted in Pratchett's ''[[Only You Can Save Mankind]]''. There's a reason why Johnny Maxwell was referred to as "The Hero with a Thousand Lives" by the inhabitants of the computer game
* A variation: In the Ben Elton novel ''[[This Other Eden]]'' a character is killed in real life while playing a VR game; inside the game his fellow player sees his dying thoughts.
* In ''Hyperion'', a cyberspace hacker's head explodes when he is exposed to a section of cyberspace inhabited by AIs, which is normally inaccessible to humans. In this case, it's a completely real security system which causes his implants to boil his brain. When people are Mind Wiped during a network crash, however, that's the trope played straight.
* Russian cyberpunk literary classic ''Labyrinth of Reflections'' used a massive VR world... based on ''DOOM''. Considering the state of the nigh-post-Soviet information network in 1991, that makes some sense.... The trick was a hypnosis program of sorts known as Deep that put the user in a trance-like state; the relatively limited visuals they were given were filled in by the brain's natural ability to add extra data (akin to limited side effects of sensory deprivation) and an immersive world was created. The trick was a very small, professional group of "Divers" who could bring themselves out of the trance-state at will, and interface with the system as it actually existed. Also there has been made a certain virus in the Deep that actually kills the users. And one that traps divers.
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* In ''[[The Saint]]'' short story "The Darker Drink", Simon Templar encounters in the High Sierras a man named "Big Bill" Holbrook who claims to represent the dream avatar of Andrew Faulks of Glendale, California. Holbrook notes that Faulks had started to have an increasingly vivid recurring dream, such that smell and tactile sensation emerged. It appears that the personages in Faulk's dream (such as a woman named Dawn Winter) had started to manifest in the waking world. Templar notices curious phenomenon which seem to support Holbrook's claim: Simon sees his own reflection fine in a small mirror, but Dawn's features are "blurred, run together, an amorphous mass"; when every single character repeats the same cluster of honorific catch phrases when they first meet the Saint; and the phenomenon of time compression that Holbrook identifies as an aspect of dream (a group of thugs searching for Holbrook and Winter say they will travel a long distance to fetch their boss from the town return in less than thirty minutes). Though one of the thugs opens fire on Templar, he has no wounds in the morning. However, when he visits Glendale, California to look up Andrew Faulks, Faulks has died after slipping into a coma.
* The main gist of the supposedly nonfiction book, ''[[The Secret]]''.
* One of Dumbledore's famous quotes from ''[[Harry Potter and
* The Afterlife in both the book and movie versions of ''[[What Dreams May Come]]''.
* In a nutshell, what {{spoiler|O'Brien}} explains to Winston at the end of ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'': that as long as the people believe it happened and there is no written evidence to the contrary, it actually happened, and screw the laws of nature if BB says so. In fact, the ideal citizen is one who can subconsciously alter his perception, memory, and experiences to meet whatever the Party says in order to make it true.
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* The mythical Tlön culture in "[[Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius]]" is capable of this.
* In a case of "Someone Else's Mind Makes It Real", in [[Anne Mc Caffery]]'s ''[[Tower and The Hive|The Rowan]]'', it was first thought that Prime level talents suffered from debilitating vertigo (known as Travel Sickness) if they attempted interplanetary travel. Then along comes Jeff Raven, an untrained Prime from a frontier colony who could bounce around with no ill effects. It was later discovered that the only one of the six known Primes that did have that condition was Siglen, who had an inner ear condition that really did cause her to fall ill. Siglen's giant ego subscribed this to "the burden Primes must bear for their power," rather than have herself checked out. Since Siglen trained or trained with all the rest of the primes, she mentally pushed her condition on the rest. The Rowan was the only one of the original five young enough to train herself past her conditioning. And then, preferred staying on her home base of Io, Jupiter's moon, unless she had to travel.
== Live-Action TV ==
*
* Also, ''[[Sliders]]'' did an episode that ripped off ''[[A Nightmare on Elm Street]]'', but with these evil nerds that called themselves "The Dream Masters". The nerds were defeated once the characters banded together, realizing that it was all just a dream, and overpowered the nerds' minds, resulting in an inability to be harmed.
** There was a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]]/[[Crowning Moment of Funny]] where Rembrandt is cornered by the nerds and is about to be killed. He goes, "I wish I had my gun right now." The gun materializes in his hand, and he blows a few nerds away.
* The classic episode of the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'', "Spectre of the Gun", has the landing party trapped in a surreal nightmare that recreates the Shootout at the OK Corral. Spock realizes the whole experience is an illusion that is only as real as their minds accept it to be, but, as McCoy says, only someone as emotionless as a Vulcan could have the [[Heroic Willpower|iron-hard certainty]]
** Another episode, "Shore Leave," is full of this - the landing party is investigating a seemingly abandoned planet as a possible "shore leave" destination for the crew. Except whatever fleeting thought anyone has, happens - McCoy makes a crack that the place is like something out of "Alice In Wonderland" and the White Rabbit comes bounding out complaining that he's late; Sulu spontaneously thinks of samurai and nearly gets run through
* One episode of the original ''[[Twilight Zone]]'', "Perchance to Dream", [[Justified Trope|justified this]]: the character at risk of death was suffering from a severe heart condition, bad enough that having a particularly scary nightmare would give him a lethal heart attack. Unfortunately for him, his last few dreams appear specifically designed to ''give'' him said heart attack...
* One episode of the most recent version (2003 series) of the ''[[Twilight Zone]],'' aptly titled "Placebo Effect", featured a doctor dealing with a chronic hypochondriac patient. Normally keen on giving him placebos, she's horrified to find he actually IS showing signs of a terrible, previously unheard-of disease. It turns out that the disease was fictional, and after reading about it in an old sci-fi novel, the hypochondriac somehow "made it real" by believing he suffered from it. Soon, everyone in the hospital has caught the disease and appear to be near death. {{spoiler|The doctor manages to cure him, and thus everyone, by telling him that a meteorite crashed which contained an antidote for the "space virus." By believing her, he is cured. However, pessimistic thoughts overwhelm him, and he believes the crashed meteorite will create a new Ice Age and destroy humanity. The final shot shows the nurse motioning the doctor outside, to see the the city besieged by a massive blizzard.}}
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "Avatar": Teal'c gets trapped in a VR simulation that shocks him every time he dies in the game. While the simulation itself can't harm him, the continual shocks force his body to produce extra adrenaline, which eventually ''can'' kill him. He's trapped because in real situations Teal'c would never quit, and so the simulation disables the abort option.
** It's worse than that: the simulations aren't pre-programmed, but work off the sim runner's mind. Teal'c will never quit, never surrender... He also believes, at the time, that [[Failure Is the Only Option|no matter what, they can never fully defeat the Gou'auld]]. Meaning not only can he not just hit the off button, but whenever it seems like he's going to win [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|something new pops up]], kills him, then the sim restarts ''and gets harder still.''
* ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' episode "Doppelganger". {{spoiler|Dr. Heightmeyer dies in her sleep after dreaming that she fell off a balcony onto a pier below.}} There were other factors involved in that death
* ''[[Lois and Clark]]'' has an evil genius who traps the main characters in a VR system. In the end, the system is shut down while he is still hooked up (and "downloaded in"), resulting in his mind being separated from his body, and the last shot is him [[And I Must Scream|screaming]] [[Inside a Computer System|inside a computer screen]].
** Another episode had a [[Master of Illusion|master hypnotist]] (the second master hypnotist, not the first one) whose hypnotic illusions were so real that Jimmy bumped his head on an imaginary desk and got a real life bruise. The hypnotist used this power to cause people to die from illusions.
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* An episode of ''[[Charmed]]'' featured a man who could enter dreams, and when women rejected him he killed them there.
* In a recent episode of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Matt telepathically enters Angela's mind to free her from her comatose state. {{spoiler|Arthur}} uses HIS telepathy to put an image of Daphne in Matt and Angela's shared mind world thingy. This imaginary Daphne stabs Matt in the stomach. When this happens, the real world Daphne, who's right next to Matt, realizes that Matt has a stab wound right where mind-Daphne stabbed him. However, when Angela (trapped in her own mind) convinces {{spoiler|Arthur}} (who personally entered her mind near the end) to free her and Matt, Matt awakes and the stab wound is gone.
* In one episode of ''[[
** It is called the placebo effect.
* ''[[Fringe]]'' had an episode where a man was killed when a drug convinced him that an assassin was slicing his throat causing a slash through his neck to appear in real time.
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* It's not clear, but it ''might'' have been the case in the [[Tales from the Darkside]] episode "Seasons of Belief. {{spoiler|In the episode, two parents tell their children about a terrible monster who will come to kill you if you say his name--they don't mention that part until ''after'' the curious children say it. They continue with the story, frightening the children more and more before laughing and saying he doesn't exist--right before said monster bursts through the windows and kills the parents, [[Infant Immortality|sparing the children]].}}
* In ''[[1000 Ways to Die]]'', there is a story about a woman who had persistent nightmares of a small, demonic imp strangling her. While she thought she was being strangled in her dreams, her physical heart raced till the point of a heart attack, killing her in her sleep.
== Radio ==
* ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]'': This seems to apply to all of Whit's virtual reality inventions, the Imagination Station being the most frequently used. At least, if a hacker got a hold of the controls and changed the adventure to put you in the crossfire of cannonballs, the threat was very real, just like threats during the adventure from, say, a ruler who would have you executed for refusing to bow to false gods.
* The ''[[Big Finish Doctor Who]]'' audio adventure "The Mind's Eye" is a textbook example, with the local flora putting Erimem and Peri into a dream-like state (the Doctor isn't ultimately that affected), where they will die for real if they die in their "dream".
== Tabletop Games ==
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* [[World of Warcraft]] brings us Vanessa Vancleef, who poisons your party and sends you a few rooms back, the poison causes you to hallucinate various nightmares involving past bosses, despite nobody actually being there, dying to the fire/ice/lighting/bosses themselves makes you drop dead in reality.
* Possible example in ''[[Infamous (video game series)|In Famous]]'', when heading into a tunnel to destroy a tanker of tar, at one point you begin to hallucinate, seeing enemies fading in and out of reality and much larger than they should be. But they aren't just hallucinations, as their bullets still hurt you and can still kill you.
== Web Comics ==
* A subversion: In a ''[[Metroid]]''-based webcomic called ''Metroid: Third Derivative'', Samus is "uploaded" to the Space Pirates' main computer, and put into a training simulation by a mostly-friendly pirate. Samus asks the Pirate, "And I suppose if I die here I die in the real world too?" The Pirate answers, "What? No. That's stupid and completely defeats the point of virtual training." To which she replies, "Chalk up a rare victory for common sense then."
** Double Subverted when {{spoiler|Mother Brain hijacks the simulation. While she can't physically hurt Samus, she can subject her to horrible [[Mind Rape]]. When that didn't work, she tried to shut down the simulation with Samus still in it, which would have left her brain dead.}}
* ''[[The Perry Bible Fellowship]]'' [http://www.pbfcomics.com/134/ here]
* Parodied on ''[[
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' does it too. {{spoiler|It's the cause of death for one of the characters in the sci-fi theme}}.
* ''[[Housepets]]'' has an appropriately titled strip named strip called [http://www.housepetscomic.com/2010/03/15/your-mind-makes-it-real/ Your Mind Makes It Real].
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* The entire point of [[The Slender Man Mythos]].
** ...Or is it?
== Western Animation ==
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* ''[[WITCH (animation)|W.i.t.c.h.]]'', "E is for Enemy", has this trope in action.
* In ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]'', this is what happens in the episode {{spoiler|"Failsafe"}} when it was suppose to be {{spoiler|[[Unwinnable Training Simulation|a mental simulation]]}} that had [[Gone Horribly Wrong]] and [[It Got Worse]] when M'Gann {{spoiler|was so overcome by Artemis' "death"}} that she unintentionally rewrote hers and everyone else's memories so that the team {{spoiler|forgot it was a training exercise and slipped into a real coma when they "died".}}
== Real Life ==
* Certain Indigenous Australian tribes have a death curse for criminals that involves wrapping a piece of the cursed person's hair around a kangaroo bone and performing rituals over it. A special shaman hunter then finds the person and points the bone at them.
** Similar claims have been made of some believers of Vodoun in Haiti and Africa. It is believed by some that Christianity has affected some people strongly enough to cause psychosomatic stigmata to form on their palms, as well (the real wounds of
* Hypnotic suggestions work this way. It is possible for somebody in a deep hypnotic trance to feel things that are not present, which leads to some real-life [[Power Perversion Potential]].
* There's an [[Urban Legend]] about a man who was accidentally locked in a freezer of a merchandise boat for the whole length of the trip. He died of cold, but took the time to [[Apocalyptic Log|describe what was happening to him the whole time in the hope that it would help science or something]]. He accurately described the whole freezing-to-death process he was going through. The worst part? {{spoiler|The freezer was actually off and the temperature in there never even reached the freezing point. His mind did it all.}}
** According to [[Snopes]], [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/freezer.asp there's no evidence that this has ever happened].
* There's an old Urban Legend that if you have a dream in which you are falling, you must wake up before you hit the ground or else you die. This isn't true, as anyone who
** Based on some current theories about how dreams work, having a dream about a violent injury and waking up with pain may not actually be a case of your mind making it real, as much as reality telling your mind what to make. In such a case, you may have rolled over on your arm and hurt it, or simply twisted it wrong, and the pain generated by that action is translated by your brain into the dream image of the injury. People who have dreams of fire alarms going off only to wake up and realize their clock is ringing are experiencing the same phenomenon. On the other hand, falling in a dream and hitting the ground before waking up will feel like you just hit the ground without suffering physical damage (shock, but no pain). You may also physically fall out of bed.
** There is a potentially fatal sleep disease known as "bangungot", "lai tai", or "pokkuri" that affects many Asian men. Survivors of this often describe it as the sensation of falling into a bottomless pit.
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* [[wikipedia:False pregnancy|Hysterical Pregnancies]] tend to make humans/animals experience all of the symptoms of being pregnant including an expanded stomach area as well as a baby kicking (called "quickening"). These women believe they are pregnant.
** In the same vein is [[wikipedia:Couvade syndrome|Couvade Syndrome]] or a Sympathetic Pregnancy where the husband will experience labor pains, cramps, morning sickness, and other symptoms of pregnancy, although a man doesn't normally believe he is pregnant.
* It's been suggested that [[Grigori Rasputin]], the Russian monk who gained access to the court of the Russian Empire by supposedly being able to treat the Tsar's hemophiliac son, hypnotized the boy to "cure" him whenever he was injured. Rasputin's hypnotic powers were in fact recounted by others, even hardened men like some of the Tsar's ministers. Either Peter Stolypin or Sergius Witte (this troper can't remember which){{verify}} who later recounted Rasputin's attempt to hypnotize him, which was very nearly successful.
** Rasputin's treatment to hemophilia is now believed to be far simpler than hypnotism: he told the Tsar to give up the modern medicine with his son's case, which at the time included dangerous amounts of aspirin, which today is known to actually make the effects of hemophilia worse. No wonder the boy got better.
* [[wikipedia:Somatoform disorder|Somatoform Disorders]] can cause this to happen. One of the earliest diagnosed Somatoform Disorders is "Conversion Disorder", which causes a person's psychological stresses to be converted into physical pain.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Dream Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]
[[Category:Magic and Powers]]
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