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{{trope}}
{{cleanup|The trope description states that this is a virtual reality trope. The examples indicate that this is a real life trope (for versions of real life that exist within the works cited). Either the non-VR examples need to be moved to a more appropriate trope, or the description needs to be re-written.}}
{{quote|'''Neo:''' I thought it wasn't real.<br />▼
'''Neo:''' If you're killed in [[Cyberspace|the Matrix]], you die here?<br />▼
'''Morpheus:'''
'''Morpheus:''' The body cannot live without the mind.
|''[[The Matrix]]''}}
You'd think that it being [[All Just a Dream]] would let you do lots of cool and risky things, since it's not real anyway, and you therefore can't get hurt.
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Often [[Cyberspace]] ICE (intruder countermeasure electronics) is said to work by channeling lethal voltages into the brain of the invading hacker, but any techhead with an ounce of sense would put at least a fuse or circuit breaker, not to mention a voltage regulator, on any line connected directly to his brain. Authors who put a little more thought into the matter who don't come up with some variant of the [[Brown Note|motif of harmful sensation]] imply some kind of malicious out-of-band signal which triggers a nasty (usually fatal) seizure in its victims or [[Explosive Instrumentation|blows up their computer]]. Presumably most users do not know about such things, given their willingness to use an interface that could turn them into a vegetable or corpse at a moment's notice.
As an extension, perhaps to justify this trope, such systems often propose that the user's mind actually ''is'' inside the machine, having been [[Brain Uploading|literally downloaded]] out of his physical brain. Thus, destroying the machine would leave the user with a blank
An increasingly common justification of this trope is [[Synchronization]]; directly wiring your brain to the machine gives you [[Technopath
This tends to apply to video game levels that are [[All Just a Dream]] or a virtual reality simulation as a function of gameplay: If your character dies, it's still a [[Game Over]].
When you are [[Talking in Your Dreams]] with someone else and they go to kill
Frequently pops up in a [[Holodeck Malfunction]]. See also [[Self
{{examples|Examples}}▼
== Anime
* The final battle in ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' takes place in something called Super Spiral Space, the space outside the galaxies, where "recognition is given real form". In other words, whatever they imagine exists, exists. Ergo: Your mind makes it real.
* The series ''[
* [[Playing
* Averted and then played straight in ''[[Ghost in
* Anime subversion: In ''[[Scrapped Princess]]'', the titular character enters a VR program to save her brother from being brainwashed, only to be promptly impaled by him when he fails to recognize her. There is a moment of shock, and then she slaps him in the face and continues to shout at him with his sword still stuck through her.
* This is probably how the Tsukuyomi power of the Mangekyo Sharingan is supposed to work in ''[[Naruto]]''. Itachi Uchiha uses it to overwhelm the victim's mind.
** Taken to a much greater degree with {{spoiler|Izanagi}} which is a genjutsu you cast on yourself instead of your opponents which is so strong that [[Reality Warper|it makes things real
* ''[[
* In the ''[[.hack
** Some characters eventually realize that somehow their minds are taken ''inside'' the game world, experiencing it with their character's own senses instead of being at home with a headset and game pad. Naturally, they become deeply concerned about what's going on with their physical bodies, and what happens if their characters are "killed" in this state.
** There's a bit of question in regards to whether the player stuck in the game and the coma victim are related in that manner. [[Word of God]] has dropped that the original coma victims were placed in a coma due to noise affecting their mental state, placing their reliance of the physical body explainable only under the conceit that [[Everything Is Online]]. In the latter anime and game series, ''ROOTS'' and ''G.U.'', the danger is a {{spoiler|viral [[Wetware Body]] existence that uses Harald's [[Instant AI, Just Add Water|original human observation algorithms]] to affect the mind directly}}.
* ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'': Towards the end of the second [[Story Arc]], Local Boy Genius Izzy figures out the Digital World is a world made out of the data of the world's network infrastructure and hence all the human protagonists are more than likely made of data in that world. Although he tells everyone to be careful in spite of this new development it doesn't sink in with Tai, the goggle boy leader of the group, and he starts acting like a jackass under the flawed logic that he'll somehow survive regardless of what happens. It takes Izzy telling him that he would more than likely die in both worlds if he messed up to put a stop to his nonsense. Unfortunately, this happens just after a member of the team is kidnapped and they're about to cross an electrified gate to go after her. He loses his bravado right there and the kidnapper gets away more or less scott-free, leading to a short term [[Heroic BSOD]] for Tai.
* ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'': Henry and Takato manages to cross a massive expanse of water without drowning by convincing themselves that they would only drown if they thought they would.
* ''[[Digimon Frontier]]'': Played with when [[Sixth Ranger]] Kouichi's consciousness was pulled into the Digital World by the would-be [[Big Bad]] Cherubimon. Because of this, he's technically not there, he only ''believes'' he's there. It begins to dawn on him that this might be the case when survives several [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomp battles]] virtually unscathed while his friends get more and more roughed up. Although at the end, this turns out to be an even ''more'' convoluted usage when all of the hinting about the aforementioned results in Kouichi realizing that {{spoiler|he is actually ''dead'' in real life; he thus makes a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to combine his power with Kouji's to defeat Lucemon, under the justification that out of all of them, he's not really alive in the first place. The [[Power of Friendship]] saves him, in the end; this ''is'' ''[[Digimon]]'', after all.}}
* Subverted somewhat in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'''s Greed Island arc, in that the game's titular island IS in fact a real island that the players are teleported to when they start playing the "game", rather than a virtual world.
* [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in ''[[
** In a later example in the same series, the trope is used to make people believe {{spoiler|that they are snails due to subliminal messaging}}. Yeah, didn't make all that much sense in context either.
* Half of the [[Story Arc
** Attempts of the writers to give a scientific explanation for this ([[Virtual Ghost|Noah's brains were kept alive in a feeding, protective sphere, and directly connected to the VR world he existed in]]) were mercilessly shot down by the same writers when Noah happily walked off in Mokuba's body, without ever considering taking his brains with him.
* One of the many plot points in ''[[
* Happens in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]!'', during Negi's test to learn [[Black Magic]]. He has to fight a phantasmic version of Evangeline formed from his memories inside his head; meanwhile Chisame has to take care of him, as wounds start appearing on his body as a result of the test, and a lot of [[Blood From the Mouth]].
* Inverted in ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
* Justified in ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]''. During the Chapter Black arc, the team comes against a young boy named Amanuma who has the ability to create a psychic "Territory" where any video game he wants becomes real, and the heroes have to play in it to survive. In his territory, everyone (Including himself) are forced to rigidly follow the rules of the game, so much so that they are forced to have Seven "players" to even enter the room. (As the game has seven playable characters) Kurama deduces that the rules are so rigidly followed, that your fate in this territory will mirror the fate of the character you represent, however this particular game supplies the player with a "Continue?" screen just before depicting the player's death, meaning as long as they continue playing, they will never die. However, he realizes Amanuma must also follow his own rules, and if they beat him and go on, then the scene where the "Goblin Master" is depicted as Dying will actually happen to the boy, forcing the group to chose whether or not to kill this one boy to save the world. {{spoiler|Kurama comes to the conclusion that the life of One Boy does not outweigh the lives of everyone in the world, and tells Amanuma what he's discovered, and that if he loses then he himself will die. Due to his new found fear at finding that he too may die, Amanuma begins to make several mistakes until Kurama beats him. Immediately after losing, the boy slumps over dead. However, Koenma, leader of the Spirit world doesn't let it stand, and resurrects the boy later.}}
* In ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]'', Tomo of the Seiryuu Seishi is the second-strongest of the group because his illusions are so convincing and complete, they can cause physical damage, even to people who are ''already aware'' that his illusions are just that.
* ''[[Paprika]]'' has a moments where the dreams and real life can't be told apart because of this trope... Both for the characters ''and'' the viewers.
* In ''[[
* Averted in the sixth ''[[
* Hagall from ''[[Ah
* Zakuro from {Saiyuki} has the power to hypnotize people by looking into his eyes and doing just this.
== Comic Books ==
== Comics ==▼
* Subversion: In the ''Doc Samson'' miniseries, Tina Punnett is trapped in a VR game that's been modified to cause psychosomatic damage to the player. To get out, she runs herself through with a sword, causing lots of pain but also causing the game to end.
* An interesting variation occurs in the ''[[Sleepwalker]]'' comics from the early 1990s. When Sleepwalker, [[Fantastic Four|Mr. Fantastic]], or the villainous Thought Police are in Rick Sheridan's mind, they can be attacked by anything Rick can imagine, in a case of making things real with his mind.
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** Danielle Moonstar, Mirage, has the ability to create illusions based on one's fears. When her powers were temporarily boosted she could make the illusions physical, with the images being more powerful if they scared the person more.
** Trauma was a mutant introduced during Avengers: Initiative who could become one's greatest fear. It's presumed that Trauma only gains power if his opponent fears what he's turned into, since he's been capable of turning into Thor, Hulk, Juggernaut, and several other people/creatures whose power levels are insane. However in a battle against the Hulk during the World War Hulk arc, it was discovered that if his opponents can control themselves during the fight and rein in their fears, he loses power.
* In ''[[Scare Tactics (
* In one ''[[Astro City]]'' story, the [[Golden Age]] villain Professor Borzoi uses a [[Applied Phlebotinum|Belief Ray]] to make a [[King Kong|giant]] [[
* In ''[[
* The plague that killed the [[Martian Manhunter|Green Martians]] operated this way. Hronmeer's Curse was spread psychically and preyed on the Martians' fears of fire, making them spontaneously combust.
* One issue of ''[[Generation X]]'' had the old wives' tale quoted at the start before the team had a slasher movie marathon. The rest of the issue consists of Jubilee in a semi-lucid dream trying to wake up before combinations of movie killers and villains she'd faced in her adventures (ex. Sabretooth with [[A Nightmare
* In ''[[Star Wars Legacy]]'', {{spoiler|[[Master of Illusion|Darth Andeddu]] conjures illusions of flames and lava and sends them at Darth Wyyrlok. Wyyrlok takes control of them and sends them back. Andeddu is killed, and Wyyrlok muses that Andeddu's own fear made the flames real to him.}}
* [[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.
* 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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* Subverted (somewhat) in ''[[Inception]]'', where dying in a dream is the easiest way to wake up ({{spoiler|unless you're both heavily sedated and in someone else's dream, in which case you end up trapped in a potentially [[Fate Worse Than Death|endless]] [[And I Must Scream|dream]]}}).
** Furthermore, while the human brain does not make dream death a reality in ''[[Inception]]'', it does make ''pain'' real. Getting shot in the leg in a dream sends the same signal to the brain that getting shot in the leg in real life does, i.e. extreme pain.
* ''[[The Matrix]]'' is the [[Trope Namers]]. Judging from Morpheus's words, (which incidentally make up the trope name ''and'' quote,) this is presumably [[Handwaved|hand waved]] by the fact that the Matrix simulation overwrites reality for your brain, hence your brain ''shuts off'' because it's being force-fed the sensation of death. Whether or not it was purposely designed to do so is never stated, though either way, the [[
** However, in ''[[The Matrix Online]]'', safeguards have apparently been put into place that when a redpill is killed in the Matrix, an emergency switch jacks them out of the Matrix, forcing them to re-enter at a hardline after some recovery time.
** In the original [[The Matrix|movie]], Neo subverts the trope. {{spoiler|After he ascends to full-fledged [[The Chosen One|One]] status, his control over the Matrix becomes so great that he apparently ''wills himself to life''.}}
** Also averted in the training programs, which are designed to show you that you can die, but without actually killing you. For example, the "jump" scenario is impossible for a new red-pill to pass, as they cannot perform [[Roof Hopping]] yet. Fortunately, the ground below is made to absorb most of the impact, only causing the trainee a fair amount of pain and wounding them slightly in the real world.
* This happens in ''[[Gamer]]'' {{spoiler|at the end. "See this knife? Picture me driving it into your stomach. Imagine it and ''make it real''."}}
* ''[[A Nightmare
* In ''[[Surrogates]]'', originally people could operate remotely-controlled surrogate version of themselves without any risk - no damage done to the surrogate could have any lasting effect on the operator. Naturally, someone finds a way to subvert this rule, and this is when the problems (and the plot) start.
** This is different from the original graphic novel, where there is no way to kill a person via his or her surrogate.
* In ''[[Stay Alive]]'', a group of beta testers realize that they are slowly dying off one by one in the exact same fashion that their avatars in the game they are testing die. It is later revealed that playing this game summons the ghost of a sociopathic killer who delights in killing you in the most horrendous ways possible.
* ''[[The Thirteenth Floor]]'' was sneakier: you enter a virtual world by possessing one of its inhabitants, and if killed in this state,
** It was more a case that simply entering the virtual world caused the swap, with the virtual person's mind entering your real world body even as your mind entered their virtual body. No one realized this, however, because the real body usually remained completely unconscious during the process. Virtual death merely broke the connection and jarred the real world body with the virtual mind inside it awake.
* Averted in ''[[Avatar (
** Both the avatar's death and simply being unplugged forcefully probably could cause death via heart attack, but the characters in question are healthy/lucky enough to avoid it.
* In ''[[
* ''[[
== Literature ==
* Ursula K. Le Guin's ''[[The Lathe of Heaven]]'' both brilliantly deconstructs this trope while making it Exactly What It Says On The Tin. When the main character, George Orr dreams his dreams become reality. And it's not a 'Clap Your Hands if You Believe' manner of thing; it has nothing to do with what George believes, it has only to do with what he dreams and that can be different, bad, good and, like dreams, terribly unpredictable. For example, George dreams of a world without prejudice; and when he wakes up, there is no more prejudice in the world. Because everyone has gray, colorless skin. Everyone. It means the woman he was falling in love with no longer exists, since her color was an integral part of her being. Thus we have a man, a good man, whose dreams create reality. He just wants them to stop because his timelines are getting too confusing and sad as each morning he recreates the world. Add to that an ambitious psychiatrist who at first doesn't believe and then wants to use Orr to create a better world, aliens that were created as a result of a dreaming experiment, and you have all the parts of the waking nightmare that would occur if someone's dreams could really change the world.
* Used several times in [[
* The ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' books include a special dream world that can be accessed through special artifacts, training, or blind luck. Injuries and death carry over. It even explains people dying in their sleep for no apparent cause as them accidentally dreaming themselves temporarily into the dream world long enough for something fatal to happen to them.
* In ''[[The
* In ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'', the territory of Veelox has a virtual reality system called Lifelight that initially averts this trope. It is stated that if you die during a Lifelight "jump", you simply wake up from it. However, once the Reality Bug is introduced into Lifelight in an attempt to make it less perfect and addicting, this trope gets taken to absurd levels. Not only do you die in real life if you die during a jump, but any injuries you get appear on your real body, even ''damaging your clothing''. And after the Reality Bug manifests in a jump as a giant shape shifting monster, it is somehow able to enter physical reality by burrowing down through the ground. Bobby even [[Lampshade Hanging|admits]] that all this violates the laws of physics as he understands them.
* In G. A. Effinger's ''When Gravity Fails'', eight people lie down at a Virtual Reality couch, and only seven get up. One of them figured a way to make one of the others fail to go back to their body, causing their "soul" to be purged when the machine shuts down.
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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.
* In the third ''Hellgate: London'' novel, a demon used a device which made the target relive his/her past in the dream, which will go horribly wrong and kill them, or make them go crazy.
* In the ''[[Memory,
* One of the [[Driving Question|central mysteries]] in the ''[[Otherland]]'' series, by [[Tad Williams]], is why this trope seems to be occurring. [[Brown Note]] effects are known to exist, but they require especially high-quality virtual reality interfaces, and yet the Otherland network somehow manages to deliver sensations that the users' equipment is incapable of generating, and keeping them trapped online even when they ought to be able to simply remove their VR gear. The answer is that the {{spoiler|operating system has [[Psychic Powers]]}}.
* 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, ''[[
* 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
* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[IT]]'' the "it" is an [[Eldritch Abomination]] [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|whose true form cannot be comprehended]] and uses the worst fears of its victims to kill them. "It" preys on children because [[Invisible to Adults|adults]] are too close minded to believe what they see.
* In the ''[[Kingdom Keepers]]'', any injuries [[Five
* [[Sphere]], the Michael Chriton novel (and film) has a device bestow this power on unwitting researchers sent to inspect a seemingly alien find on the ocean floor. Half are killed by nightmares emanating from themselves or someone else.
* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "Shadows in Zamboula", Zabibi is trapped in a circle of cobras, that prove illusionary in the end, but the [[Evil Sorcerer]] assures her that forcing women to dance to escape until they collapse was a common form of [[Human Sacrifice]].
* ''Magicnet'' falls somewhere between this and [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]], depending on whether you view magic as a shared hallucination, or the product of an alternate reality that coexists with this one. Characters who truly believe that magic exists can and do get hurt by it, but a large amount of what occurs is shown to be just smoke and mirrors once characters deny it (e.g. a supposedly exploding plane engine turns out to be undamaged.)
* The mythical Tlön culture in "[[
* In a case of "Someone Else's Mind Makes It Real", in [[Anne Mc Caffery]]'s ''[[Tower and The Hive
== 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:
** 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.
* Subverted in ''[[Eureka]]''. During an episode of shared dreams, one [[Red Shirt]] died in reality and in the shared dream at the same time... but it turned out to be coincidental.
* In ''[[VR
* ''[[Lexx]]'': "Patches in the Sky". We're told, offhand, that "If you die in a dream, you die for real," as if it's obvious.
* ''[[War of the Worlds (TV series)|War of the Worlds]]'': "Totally Real", the loser of the VR game lost his
* ''[[
* ''[[
** In "The Deadly Assassin", the Gallifreyan Matrix works like this, as death in the virtual reality overloads the person's mind. (In "The Trial of a Time Lord", on the other hand, the Doctor and his opponents ''physically'' enter the Matrix. Don't ask.)
** In "The Three Doctors" Time Lord Omega is essentially the god of an antimatter world he's imprisoned in within a black hole. Despite having been destroyed by the singularity's energy, he still exists because of his belief and desire for himself to still be alive.
** In "The Mind Robber", it is established that the inhabitants of the Land of Fiction are, well, fictional... unless you believe in them, in which case your mind makes them real and they are able to harm you. Strangely, though, in order to get rid of a menacing fictional character, all present must vocally disbelieve. The Doctor and Zoe are able to make a Minotaur vanish this way, but Zoe's inability to disbelieve in Medusa forces the Doctor to use a mirror to defeat her, even though he knows she's fictional. Later, Zoe is forced to fight Karkus, whom she knows is fictional, because the Doctor has never heard of him and thus cannot disbelieve.
** However, in the New Series episode "Amy's Choice", this is explicitly subverted by the Dream Lord, who explains that if you die in the dream, you wake up perfectly healthy in real life. The only risk was trying to figure out ''which'' was the dream and which was reality, because if you die in reality ... well, [[Captain Obvious|you just die]].
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' did this twice. The first was a demon born out of a [[Deadly Prank]] and who kept existing because of people believing in him and the second was this dream-trope in a nutshell.
* Searies 2 of ''[[
* An episode of ''[[
* 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.
* In the season three episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' called "Airborne", {{spoiler|Cuddy becomes sick during a flight from Indonesia to the US, having rashes, nausea and a fever, all because she believes she's been infected with meningitis from another passenger. Who turned out not to have meningitis at all.}}
* An episode of ''[[The 4400]]'' features all of the main characters being trapped in a shared dream where they had to escape from a building that was trying to kill them. This trope is brought up in that the characters don't know whether it's going to be subverted or played straight. It's {{spoiler|subverted; after Shawn is killed by an exploding window and Meghan is electrocuted, both wake up fine at the same time that the others are released.}}
* An episode of ''[[Medium]]'' has Alison suffer the same injuries in real life as she had in her dreams, making her afraid that she would die in reality if she were to die in her dreams. It didn't help that she was dreaming of a {{spoiler|[[Zombie Apocalypse]]}}.
* In ''[[Dollhouse]]'', if, while in the Attic, you are killed in your mindscape, your body dies. {{spoiler|Used as a means to escape the Attic by Echo, by dying and using the time being unplugged to get out.}}
* Despite having VR as one of the central premises of the show, ''[[Caprica]]'' is a rare aversion. The worst repercussion for dying in VR is...permadeath for characters in what's a GTA MMO. People who only exist in the VR world can't even die, as they just constantly revive.
* It's not clear, but it ''might'' have been the case in the [[Tales
* In ''[[
== Radio ==
* ''[[
* 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 ==
* The RPG ''[[Shadowrun]]'' uses the "lethal biofeedback" version in its cyberspace; however, a hacker can avoid the feedback by using what's referred to as a Cold ASIST interface (as opposed to the Hot ASIST interface that most deckers use). However, not only does Cold ASIST [[Nerf|forgo all the massive bonuses to your die rolls]] that Hot ASIST grants, (which is why hackers use Hot ASIST, despite Cold ASIST being the default user mode for all legitimate users of neural interface technology), but all the other deckers will [[Easy Mode Mockery|mock you viciously]] before they [[Curb Stomp Battle|Curb Stomp]] your [[Nerf
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''
* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons]]'' has several illusion spells (most notably of the Shadow sub-school) that function this way, e.g. ''[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowConjuration.htm Shadow Conjuration]'' and ''[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shades.htm Shades]''. These spells create illusory constructs or facsimiles of spells from other schools, and have reduced effects on characters that successfully "disbelieve" them. Naturally, they always have this reduced effect on objects and creatures with low intelligence, such as constructs.▼
** Several illusion spells function this way.
▲**
** Some Phantasm spells, such as ''Phantasmal Killer'' and ''Weird'', make you save or die upon failing the roll to disbelieve, doing nasty damage even on success. Annoyingly, ''Death Ward'', which protects against other spells that make you save or die, won't protect you against this because it's an illusion based on fear.
** The whole ''[[Planescape
** The Nightmare Lands domain and boxed set for ''[[Ravenloft]]'' has creepy fun with this, too.
** One of the first ''[[Dragonlance]]'' game modules had the player characters travel into a living nightmare to end its hold over an elven kingdom. Many of the monsters the players encounter are in fact creations of the dream, and can be made harmless if players state they don't believe in them. Unfortunately, quite a few of those monsters are very real, and will attack the players anyway, and it's very difficult to tell the difference.
* Mostly averted in ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' with the [[Dream World|Astral Realms]]. Attacks in the Astral Realms don't harm health, but instead reduce Willpower (a person's reserve of mental and emotional strength). If a person loses all of their Willpower (not necessarily from being attacked) they return to the waking world, unable to maintain their Astral self and completely emotionally drained, but otherwise unharmed. There are however ways in which the person can be damaged or destroyed ''mentally''. For example, being attacked by an ideology until the person's identity is completely buried beneath fanaticism, being drawn into the hold of an insanity realm until one's personality is utterly destroyed from that insanity, or going to the Dreamtime unprotected, where one's mind will be completely washed away by a consciousness which is incompressible to and uninterested in human perspective or individuality (essentially, your sense of identity is lost among the thoughts of something which has existed before there was life). In these cases, the body becomes a completely healthy vegetable. It's not entirely averted, since there are beings capable of inflicting actual damage from the Astral Realms (though this could be more to do with magically being able to target their body directly, rather than because
* For its predecessor, ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'', this was the very basis of the game. Reality was defined by a popular consensus. Mages were just people who realized this and as a result could do crazy 'magic'... [[Mundane Made Awesome|like build spaceships and have kung fu that breaks your mind]].
** The Digital Web, ''Ascension's'' mystical internet is very much born of the cyberspace stylings one normally finds in [[Cyberpunk]] fiction, but you can enter it. Assuming you're one of the titular mages.
* Subverted by two small-press RPGs, ''Shattered Dreams'' and ''Dreamwalker'': while dreaming in either game can kill
* The "stigmata" enhacement to the Illusion advantage from ''[[GURPS]]: Powers'' can cause small amounts of damage to the target, but only to the point that he falls unconcious from the wounds.
* ''[[Warhammer 40
** The deceiver can do this in a weird way. He can make the fearless run. Being fearless in 40k means
== Video Games ==
* A side quest in ''[[Oblivion]]'' deals with this concept.
* The game ''[
* [[Inverted Trope]] in ''[[
** Unless the real world ISN'T REAL. *spooky music*
* The titular virtual reality program in ''[[Sam and Max Freelance Police|Sam and Max]]: Reality 2.0'', works like this, and our heroes take advantage of this to solve at least one puzzle.
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*** "Monsters?" ''cue [[Slasher Smile]]'' "[[Mind Screw|They looked like monsters to you?]]" Heather gasps, horrified. "Relax! [[Blatant Lies|It's just a joke!]]" Unless it isn't...
* In ''Fatal Frame/Project ZERO 3'', "The Tormented": Rei, Miku and Kei travel into the House of Sleep when they dream. If they lose all their spiritual health in the dream-world, they are confined there forever; leaving nothing in the physical world but a bunch of scorch-marks.
* Central to the gameplay in ''[[Dystopia (
* Mostly averted in ''[[Fallout 3]]''. The "Tranquility Lane" quest takes place in a virtual simulation where a [[Mad Scientist]] [[Cold
** Played straight as an arrow in the DLC, Operation: Anchorage. If the [[Player Character|Lone Wanderer]] dies in the Anchorage simulation, his/her body goes into fatal cardiac arrest in the real world. Justified by the Brotherhood of Steel being unable to re-enable the safety features in the simulation. As for why a ''stated'' training sim would have lethal settings, it's repeatedly hammered in that the head of the dev team was a nutcase.
* In the PC adventure game ''[[Ripper]]'', the killer known as the "Ripper" has the ability to kill anybody who once played the online game ''Ripper'' (the "Ripper" is one of the original players, the protagonist has to figure out which one of the surviving players it is). The Ripper's ability takes the form of a "software rewrite" of the victim's "brain software": the hormonal and electrical layers of the human brain. When triggered (through use of a [[Brown Note]] telephone call), the fluid and air pressure within the victim increases rapidly causing them to violently explode. The protagonist has to have his own "software" modified with an immunisation so that the Ripper can't use the "long range doohicky" any longer (he is still vulnerable if the Ripper chooses to attack him "face to face" in the virtual world).
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* In ''Iji'', you can "crack" computers and enemies with your nanofield, but if you fail the crack you are booted out by your target's security system with negative effects depending on the difficulty of the crack. Especially odd since it's not virtual reality. I assume the computer interface is just that realistic. On the other hand, you ''are'' standing right next to whatever thing you're trying to hack and, in fact, probably touching it, so it could just be zapping you. Also, doors mostly just increase their security, and supply crates will break or explode as retaliation, and enemies mostly just realize you're standing there and stop standing around in a peaceful manner. And maximizing your crack level removes all harmful effects of failure.
* Weirdly played with in ''[[System Shock]]'': being kicked out of cyberspace doesn't cause much injury, but does max out fatigue (physical exertion).
* ''[[Max Payne (
* ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'' has two levels that take place in Shadow's memories, trying to help people aboard the space colony ARK, which went out of commission fifty years ago.
* In the [[Nintendo]] game ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'', you have a Sanity Gauge that, when low, will cause hallucinations that are [[Mind Screw|often freaky]], but ultimately harmless. However, when your Sanity Gauge has run out entirely, anything that would normally only reduce your Sanity will start taking chunks out of your health instead, most likely due to this trope.
* In ''[[Tsukihime|Kagetsu Tohya]]'', Shiki faces two opponents. The first is his personal nightmare of his Nanaya side, a psychotic killer who is also much stronger than him. So he can't beat it because he believes Nanaya is simply better at fighting than he is. {{spoiler|Then his image of death drops a bridge on Nanaya and is even stronger... until it fails at killing Shiki too long and he therefore decides subconsciously that his image of death would never be so weak as to fail like this and stops being invincible, so he kills it.}} Quite justified in that the entire story is a [[All Just a Dream|dream of sorts]] that doesn't necessarily follow the [[Nasuverse]] laws of physics.
* The plotline of ''[[Professor Layton and
* [[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 ''[[
== 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/
* Parodied on ''[[
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' does it too. {{spoiler|It's the cause of death for one of the characters in the sci-fi theme}}.
* ''[[
* This appears to be how the afterlife works in [[
* Subverted in ''[[Ninth Elsewhere]]'': The character who is actually asleep, Carmen, is perfectly safe inside her own mind. The muses who journey with her, on the other hand, can fully manifest themselves in her mind, and therefore can have harm done to them, and they need to eat, breathe, and sleep, unlike Carmen.
* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' had Zimmy, among other things, [[Power Incontinence|suffer fits]] of dragging nearby people into her nightmare. She told Antimony (naturally bewildered by her first trip to [[Fan Nickname|Zimmingham]]) "It's only as real as you let it be". Of course, this applies to what happens inside, rather than any weird stuff hitching a ride from the place in someone's head, let alone [[Reality Warper|leaking out into reality]].
== Web Original ==
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* The entire point of [[The Slender Man Mythos]].
** ...Or is it?
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[The Fairly
* The Simpsons episode "How I Wet Your Mother" has a device that lets homers family go in his dreams. They die in the dream, they die for real.
* ''[[Kim Possible]]'' has an ep involving a VR system, where its malfunction resulted in extreme aggression if the players were removed without winning the game.
* Subverted in ''[[Batman:
** In fairness, Batman had an unfair advantage; the Mad Hatter's dream world was so perfect Bruce knew it for a dream, and one too painful to continue living in. The Riddler was [[Hoist
** Also, the Riddler's device was ''designed'' as an assassination tool. Mad Hatter, at least the animated version, is much less quick to kill.
* ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' is an exception, sometimes; when Ulrich, Yumi, or Odd lose all their [[Hit Points|Life Points]], they are merely rematerialized into the real world. If this happens, they simply return to the material world too weak to stand up. Also, thre's a twelve-hour cooldown between respawns. However, this return only works when the scanners that allow access to Lyoko are functional. Also, Aelita, who was tied to the computer for the first two seasons, would have been lost forever if she ran out of Life Points. Unsurprisingly, she was never actually devirtualized until the tie was broken, but plenty of times after that. Also, it appears that no matter who you are, falling into any of the [[Bottomless Pits]] surrounding the areas appears to prevent you from ever coming back. On several occasions, someone attacks their own ally to prevent this from happening.
* Used in the climax of a ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003
* Parodied and possibly subverted in the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode "Parasites Lost". When most of the Planet Express crew take a [[Fantastic Voyage]] through Fry's body, it isn't the actual chacters who go on the trip. The ship really did get hit with the shrink ray, but the people inside it are actually [[Nanomachines|nanobots]] remotely controlled by the crew interacting with a VR simulation of Fry's innards. Toward the end of the episode, Leela chops the other characters to bits with an axe while they're all still in tiny robot mode. Immediately afterwards, we see the actual characters taking off their virtual reality equipment back at the office. When someone asks if everyone is okay, they cheerfully agree that they are.
** Foreshadowed in a previous episode; the internet is fully VR and dying in the 'video game' section just causes extreme annoyance.
* ''[[
** Someone created an operating system using ''Doom'' as a template. Processes were turned into monsters and killing them using a kill command was turned in shooting them with your shotgun. Perhaps being killed in a [[
** Or they were trying to merge MS-DOS and Linux. Your call.
* In ''[[Teen Titans (
** Also, in an earlier episode, Raven causes monsters to spawn in Titans Tower because she's trying to bottle up the fear brought by a recently watched horror movie
*** This may be more of a case of Raven subconsciously summoning the creatures from whatever dimension Trigon is from, in the animated show her emotions affected her powers much more severely than in the comics.
*** [[Let Me Get This Straight...|So, what you're saying is,]] when [[Half
* ''[[Transformers Animated]]'', "Human Error Part 2": The Autobots {{spoiler|realizing that they're in a computer simulation set up by Soundwave, manage to change their human bodies back to their Cybertronian ones by thinking about it. Amusingly, Bulkhead can't until he makes the transforming noise with his mouth.}}
* ''[[WITCH (
* In ''[[Young Justice (
== 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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** It bears mentioning that Placebos have something like a 60% effectiveness rate. Even on ''cancer''.
** One anecdote is that a nurse in World War II had run out of morphine and had to stabilize a wounded soldier to keep him from going into shock. She filled a syringe with saline (salt water) and injected it in, telling the soldier it was morphine. ''It worked.''
** The really crazy thing is, [http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all the placebo effect is getting stronger]. No, this is not about diseases that are neurological and therefore, sort of, "all in your head". ([[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|Which is not to say that they don't matter, but anyways]]...) Or at least, it's not ''entirely'' about diseases like that. Quite simply,
** The Placebo Effect is a major reason why medical pseudoscience like homeopathy and reiki continue to flourish despite the complete lack of supporting evidence.
* Applied in the theological theory of [[
* In general, its been proven that we're pretty easy to fool in this regard. A newer type of prosthetic limb channels physical feedback from the prosthetic to the stump. It doesn't take long for your mind to associate that stimulation with your prosthetic to the point that it feels like your actual limb. Also, VR can make you think a virtual image or a displaced image of something else is your real body. Our brains are built ready for cybernetic upgrades.
** And for the matter, unrelated studies and effects can offer interesting insight in to how much our brain fools us. During one brain surgery, one patient felt the presence of a non-existent person 'nearby'. Follow up tests/cases shows that a part of the brain responsible for the sense of personal location within 3d space was being triggered and manipulated resulting in people sensing and seeing what amounts to classical depictions of dopplegangers.
* [
** In the same vein is [
* 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.
* [
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Dream Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]
[[Category:Magic and Powers]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
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