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Your Mind Makes It Real: Difference between revisions
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'''Morpheus:''' [[Trope Namer|Your mind makes it real]].
'''Neo:''' If you're killed in [[Cyberspace|the Matrix]], you die here?
'''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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{{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 ''[[wikipedia:Baldr Force Exe|BALDR Force .exe]]'' is based around this concept.
* [[Playing with a Trope|Played with]] in ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'', as part of the whole {{spoiler|Haruhi is an unknowing
* Averted and then played straight in ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]''. There is no cyberspace, and one can consequently not die in it. However, since brains are computerized, minds can be deleted, partly or in whole. As a countermeasure, brains can be disconnected, and firewalls and counter-viruses ("Attack Barriers") are used and released to prevent deletion. However, deep synchronization with the brain of a dying person runs the risk of dying with it.
* 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
* ''[[GetBackers]]'' is fond of this trope, and used it in the IL and Divine Design arcs.
* 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.
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* Zakuro from {Saiyuki} has the power to hypnotize people by looking into his eyes and doing just this.
== Comic Books ==
* 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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* [[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.
▲== Films -- Live-Action ==
* 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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** 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 (film)|Avatar]]''. A side character's avatar is shown dying, and he wakes up fine, albeit coughing and very discomforted. They also apparently feel pain and other feelings through the avatar. They do have good reason to take care of their false bodies though, as they're very expensive, and take about five years to grow, so if yours dies, you won't just be getting a new one.
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* In ''[[Dreamscape]]'' if you die in a dream - even if you're in someone else's dream - you die for real.
* ''[[Virtuosity]]'' is not a straight example - the system is designed to train cops in combat situations, similar to the US Army's Real Life Force XXI program. The problem is that different people worked on different parts of the system, so the guys programming the virtual universe weren't informed that humans would be pitted against a Sadistic, Intelligent, and Dangerous ''[[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|Cheating Bastard]].'' [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|The Dev Team Thought of ALMOST Everything]] - they programmed in non-lethal simulations of being shot, stabbed, bludgeoned and ''bitten'' - but when Sid 6.7 decided to try electrocuting someone, the poor chump's brain overloaded.
== 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 [[C. S.
* 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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series' fifth book, ''Mostly Harmless'', Ford enters a virtual world in which some inhabitants carry laser guns. If they shoot you, you're dead, as you're "as dead as you think you are."
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