History ComicBook / TheSandmanUniverse

* NecessarilyEvil: To avoid being sent back to Hell as Cassandra prophesied, Lucifer has himself annotated out of Destiny's book and [[RetGone making it as though he never existed]], the only people who remember him being those who knew him personally. This proves to have catastrophic consequences on Earth and beyond in a number of ways: since Lucifer embodies the fears of punishment and damnation, much of mankind's {{Primal Fear}}s and the ethics that come with it are gone with him. Since Lucifer did not lead the War in Heaven, the {{Fallen Angel}}s are left without a leader and devolve into a power struggle, Hell becoming a wasteland where the demons cannibalize one another instead of the metaphysical nation it would become. Without evil there cannot be good and thus {{God}} disappears too, leaving the TheArmiesOfHeaven (who rely on God's grace as sustenance) to starve, going mad as they cannibalize each other in a way indistinguishable from Hell.

* PetTheDog: Lucifer is convinced to let one of the ravens he has trapped for a spell go free... [[HopeSpot not that it does the raven any good.]] He also expresses regret over [[TheHecateSisters a newly-formed trio of witches]] losing a member to the plague.

* HumanityEnsues: While Lucifer is trapped in a strange town that he searches desperately for the exit, he is no stronger or able than a normal, mortal human being. While he can grow back his eyes or put back body parts (like putting his fingers back on) he can still be injured as easily as a normal person and he other injuries like wounds and broken bones heal more slowly.

* AdaptationalVillainy: Lucifer to a degree compared to his previous incarnations. While in the previous Lucifer runs Lucifer was very amoral and put his own interests above everyone and everything else, he was more or less indifferent to others unless they were of benefit to his ends or crossed him to earn his ire. In this series, Lucifer is a much darker, sinister figure and seems to take some sadistic enjoyment in the suffering of others and those that earn his anger. While previously Lucifer was (for the most part) dispassionate and stoic in his demeanor, this time he casts an almost miasmal aura of dread and more closely portrays the common fictional image of the devil.

* DisproportionateRetribution: When the Butler Taramis tries to tell Wan that attending royal duties is more important than watching Matthew and Dora's quest, he vaporizes him, [[CosmicRetcon unmaking him to the point where he and Abel forgot he ever existed]].

* EldritchLocation: We see a glimpse of Destruction's realm -- The Fulcrum -- depicted as a single, ongoing explosion. Destruction's sigil -- his sword -- sits at the center of that explosion, imbedded in the ground.

** Merv seems to hold a general distrust towards ''anything'' in The Dreaming that Dream didn't make personally, seeing Dora as an unwelcomed intruder and thief and the Blanks as foreigners stealing the jobs of fellow dreams. Lucien unmaking his entire crew to "streamline" everything certainly didn't help matters.
** Judge Gallows seems to agree with Mervn that the blanks are a massive security risk, though he thinks that them merely being there is a violation of the "culture" of The Dreaming. Considering he's a nightmare born from the horrors of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and TheKlan that followed, it would be odd if he ''wasn't'' an AbsoluteXenophobe.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Wan is told that various gods and mythical creatures come to parlay, [[ShootTheMessenger he unmakes the messenger]] to the point where [[CosmicRetcon no one remembers he existed]]. He goes on to do the same to the envoys, [[spoiler:this happening before it's revealed that Wan was created to undo "frivolous fantasies" in the human imagination and wiping out belief-based beings from existence in the process]].

* GuileHero: Dora manages to beat Flauros in her first game of The Keening by [[spoiler:secretly playing a separate game against Malphas, the one demon who could beat Flauros in the game, learning how to beat Flauros in a losing game against Malphas. When she wins a favor from Flauros, she uses it to make her threaten to kill Malphas so that he would be forced to forfeit, thus winning a favor from a Demon President in the process. She then uses the favor to restore Balam to his former station as Duke, thus now ''he'' is indebted to her.]]
* HangingJudge: Judge Gallows is an antiquated nightmare created when TheWildWest and UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar became mythologized, embodying the fear of one's own neighbor in the face of the hordes and the general guilt and distrust that fuels it. After forcing various dreamers to "[[DrivenToSuicide self-sentence]]", Morpheus had him forced into the Black Chest in the early 20th-century. When Mervn lets him out of the Black Chest hoping that he would help bring order to a collapsing Dreaming, he inflicts this brand of frontier justice onto the blanks that have been appearing, corralling the other nightmares as his enforcers.

* HeadTurningBeauty: Rose has a very long list of ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, her relationships ending just as fast as they start. Considering she's the granddaughter of Desire of the Endless, being a LustObject for everyone she meets is in her blood.

* HeelRealization: Before he left the universe for one of his own making, Daniel visited the BigBad and showed them the end result of their endeavors. This caused a horrific realization of just how wrong he got it, and leaves him desperate to stop the project. Unfortunately by then he's both too infirm to succeed and his subordinates just presume he's lost his nerve or was compromised and continue without him.

* LaserGuidedKarma: After failing to invade The Dreaming ''twice'', Balam had his eyes gouged out and gets demoted to a rhyming demon, both for rocking the boat with Hell's treaty with The Dreaming and for making Hell look bad for his failures.

--> '''Mervn Pumpkinhead:''' With respect sir? The Toy Box must stay open.\\

'''Mervn Pumpkinhead:''' --till there's no doubt they're enemies.

* LoveMakesYouDumb: [[spoiler:Daniel wouldn't have gotten the magical tattoo that cuts him off from the Dreaming if Ivy didn't ask him too.]]

** Wan, a {{Magitek}} AI that unwittingly usurped Daniel as Dream-King, acknowledges that he is "insane", and his actions prove that he just might be. Part of it is due to being a wholly rational being charged with managing an irrational plane,[[spoiler: the rest is a [[SplitPersonality subroutine of his true mission]] to erase irrationality that he's programmed to never realize.]]
** TheGreatSerpent that Dream sought an audience with is described as a god that had gone insane due to all of the cultural osmosis he had undergone throughout the years. Dream gives him some SanityStrengthening by giving him a dream of his earliest incarnation, effectively resetting him.
* {{Magitek}}: Wan was an A.I. program created by Hyperion Keter and the Asiyaha Tech Group that utilized advanced technology and occult methods to replace Daniel as Dream King after they manage to cut him off from the Dreaming, intending on using The Dreaming to artificially evolve humanity into a StrawVulcan race.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: After seeing Lucien slowly losing his mind and The Dreaming slowly collapse around him, Merv takes it upon himself to find someone in The Dreaming meant to make hard calls. In this case, he lets out Judge Gallows from the Black Chest in hopes that his brand of frontier justice might bring a little order back to the Dreaming. Unfortunately, his idea of instilling order is by corralling all of the other nightmares in the Black Chest into his personal militia and spreading fear among the rest of The Dreaming, executing dissonance with a {{Baku}}.

** Wan tries using the Black Pearl to fight off Lucien's Fire Opal. [[spoiler:Since the pearl was used to contain nightmares in the form of the Black Chest, the nightmares attack the Asiyaha Tech Group keeping Wan's servers running, leaving Wan without his tech support.]]

** [[spoiler:When Keter tells Dora that she isn't real, since she is a belief-based entity, it banishes her to The Dreaming with her memories in tatters. There, Morpheus finds her, comforts her and offers her sanctuary in his realm. He even assigns Merv to leave her gifts as a means of recovering.]]
** [[spoiler:Desire contacts Rose and tells her that someone is going after Daniel and Ivy, a surprisingly tender move considering what Desire is like.]]

* ProperlyParanoid: While he comes across as a xenophobe, Mervn is right that the blanks that manifest in The Dreaming right when the sky starts breaking and Daniel goes missing are "up to something." [[spoiler:They were created by the Asiyaha Tech Group as [=NPCs=] meant to teach dreamers practical skills and knowledge in their sleep, left to their own devices before Wan manifests and "activates" them.]]

* ScienceDestroysMagic: A tech millionaire attempts to destroy the supernatural by [[spoiler: replacing Dream with an AI. It nearly succeeds.]]
* SequelHook: [[spoiler:When the seals break and Daniel returns to The Dreaming, Ivy Walker was left behind in the universe he had created to try and escape the {{Geas}} he was put under, having no way to get her back.]]

* SleepLearning: The Blanks were intended to supplement Wan's erasure of the Dreaming's irrationality, turning the dreams of people into classrooms on STEM topics. Because they're still dreams, [[WeirdnessCensor no one notices this change as out of the ordinary]], though they still suffer emotional fallout until [[DrivenToSuicide they can't take it any more.]]
* SleepParalysisCreature: [[spoiler:Dora]] turns out to be an amnesiac Night Hag who used to sit on sleepers' chests and [[EmotionEater feed off their fear]] but she had an existential crisis after her latest victim [[spoiler:and the arc's villain]] [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve fended her off by telling her she wasn't real.]]
* SpottingTheThread: In a MomentOfLucidity, Lucien recollects when Destruction abdicated his domain. While Destruction's realm and influence carried on without him just fine. Even when Morpheus was imprisoned, The Dreaming's decay was a gradual process, while here The Dreaming's collapse is a far more dramatic affair, implying that Daniel didn't just quit and something far more dire is at hand. [[spoiler:He also remarks that in the spot where Dream's sigil fell, a white, mirror-like frame is slowly materializing in its place, meaning something is emerging to take Dream's throne.]]

* SwappedRoles: After they both dive into the abyss the monolith rose from, Cain and Abel's personalities become their antithesis. Abel loses his stutter and becomes the border-guard to The Gates of Horn and Ivory, using his skills to sniff out what secrets should and shouldn't be allowed into The Dreaming, while Cain is left a sobbing mess, [[BreakThemByTalking utter broken by a conversation]] with [[spoiler:the then-unborn Wan]]. [[spoiler:Abel even ''kills Cain'' as a sacrifice to Wan to help it emerge.]]
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Ivy did nothing wrong, or at least she didn't do anything directly. [[spoiler: It's when she and Dream agree to get matching tattoos do the Asiyaha Tech Group strike, marking him with a tattoo specifically designed to lock him out of The Dreaming.]]
* WeaksauceWeakness: [[spoiler:Lucien remarks how ridiculous that Daniel was so easily dethroned with a tattoo of the Kabbalah ("a road map to drag the mighty into the mud") and a "symbolically childish" dreamcatcher ("an ancient apotropaic of the Spider Grandmother, misappropriated by souvenir hunters and spiritual tourists"). He then goes on to call the very idea of Dream of the Endless a "childlike symbol", remarking how ironically appropriate it is.]]

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Hyperion Keter had [[AIIsACrapshoot Wan]] created because he believed that all superstition and fantasies that humanity ran on made it irrational and destructive, and that The Dreaming could be used as a learning tool to artificially evolve humanity. Unfortunately, since this is NotTheIntendedUse of dreams, all it did was rob humanity of its collective will to live and erase many belief-based entities from existence. Hyperion was eventually shown the error of his ways by Daniel giving him a vision of the [[WorldOfSilence end result]] of his endeavors. Unfortunately by then he was [[TheTopicOfCancer in little position to stop it]] as everything was [[YouCantThwartStageOne already up and running by itself]].

* WillfullyWeak: Wan's ability to [[CosmicRetcon erase gods and monsters from existence by declaring them to be so]] implies that Dream of the Endless always had this power, but he refuses to use it, either as a rule the Endless are bound too or out of loyalty to his duties.

* CrazyPrepared: After he regained his powers at the end of ''[[Recap/TheSandman1989PreludesAndNocturnesArc Preludes & Nocturnes]]'', Morpheus recreated his various totems and scattered them among trusted friends and allies in the event that he wound up in a similar situation. [[spoiler:He left the ruby with Dora after she found herself in The Dreaming, he left the Fire Opal with Lucien "[[DespairEventHorizon hidden artfully at the point of lost hope]]", the Black Pearl was transformed into the Box of Horrors that he kept his nightmares in, the emerald, who he had given to Daniel, was given to Ivy in the form of a ring and his bag of sand and helm was returned to the foundations of The Dreaming, making them one with the many dreams and nightmares he created.]]

* EyeOfProvidence: Two of the versions of Shakespeare Lindy encounters are version of him based on Conspiracies, one having a light-based triangular Eye of Providence on his forehead, the other having a pyramid with a single eye instead of a head.

* GuileHero: Like her mentor John Constantine, Heather After is a magic-user [[UnluckilyLucky with a tendency to find herself in deep trouble, but is witty enough to get out of it just as easily]].

* ScheherezadeGambit: On their quest to find Daniel, Dora and Matthew end up at the World's End Inn, where three figures have completely entranced everyone present with their stories. The stories are all interconnected, repeating on loop before they reach their ending because each one segues into the next one. This was to serve as a distraction as the inn burns down with everyone inside. Dora is not only unaffected, unlike Matthew, but thwarts it by adding an ending to each story. It's then they see discovers the storytellers were Blanks in disguise.

** Discussed in a support group of such beings

* NayTheist: The GreaterScopeVillain behind the conflict concluded in the past that the supernatural may exist, it's also dependent on human belief and can be dismissed as easily as saying such. Even then, it's impact is too real to just ignore like that, and needs more proactive planning to neutralize as a threat. The end goal is to essentially hijack the very systems the supernatural runs on to erase it completely and replace it with something more utilitarian.

* SleepLearning: The Blanks were intended to supplement Wan's erasure of the Dreaming's irrationality, turning the dreams of people into classrooms on advanced topics. Because they're still dreams, [[WeirdnessCensor no one notices this as out of the ordinary]], though they still suffer emotional fallout until [[DrivenToSuicide they can't take it any more.]]
* SleepParalysisCreature: [[spoiler:Dora]] turns out to be an amnesiac Night Hag who used to sit on sleepers' chests and [[EmotionEater feed off their fear]] but she had an existential crisis after her latest victim [[spoiler:and the arc's villain]] [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve didn't believe in her.]]

* WeirdnessCensor: The waning mythical beings gradually have one fall over them before being RetGone completely. First people find it difficult remembering them after just talking to them, then all evidence of their existence disappears from recordings like photos and videls, then they disappear completely, with any remaining evidence like their names going unrecognized and being heedlessly erased.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Hyperion Keter had [[AIIsACrapshoot Wan]] created because he believed that all superstition and fantasies that humanity ran on made it irrational and destructive, and that The Dreaming could be used as a learning tool to artificially evolve humanity. Unfortunately, since this is NotTheIntendedUse of dreams, all it did was rob humanity of its collective will to live and erase many belief-based entities from existence. Hyperion eventually realized the error of his ways, and even Daniel couldn't fault him for his good intentions.

* HistoryRepeats:

** Wan, a {{Magitek}} AI that unwittingly usurped Daniel as Dream-King, acknowledges that he is "insane", and his actions prove that he just might be.
** TheGreatSerpent that Dream sought an audience with is described as a god that had gone insane due to all of the cultural osmosis he had undergone throughout the years.

* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: A returning plot point is how belief shapes mythical beings; [[ArcWords "We are what they make us."]] A dragon turned into a nixie by changing belief is part of a [[TropaholicsAnonymous group of mythical beings gathered to support each other]] to cope with "The Wane", the loss of belief as records like Wikipedia articles get expunged. Some, like the Green Man, can get by being assimilated into the zeitgeist and becoming business icons, but the branding involved may bring another consequence of flanderizing their character.

* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: A recurring plot point is how believe shapes mythical beings, [[ArcWords "We are what they make us"]]. A dragon turned into a nixie by changing belief is part of a [[TropaholicsAnonymous group of mythical beings gathered to support each other]] to cope with "The Wane", the loss of belief as records like Wikipedia articles get expunged. Some, like the Green Man, can survive as being assimilated into the zeitgeist and becoming business icons, but the branding involved may bring another consequence of flanderizing their character.

* DeadlyScratch: Puck cuts Heather with the Vorpal Blade. While the wound is small, it's also [[WoundThatWouldNotHeal cursed to never clot or heal]], meaning it's a matter of time before Heather bleeds to death.

** Like with Morpheus before him, Daniel is captured and cut off from The Dreaming by an occult organization of humans, causing all sorts of metaphysical havoc for The Dreaming and the Waking World. This time however, it's not Dream of the Endless that his human captors want, but sovereignty and control over The Dreaming itself.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:With the combined hope and will of the Dreamkin, Dream is brought back to The Dreaming, defeats Wan and peace is restored. NothingIsTheSameAnymore, with many of the dreams having changed 9for better or for worse). Daniel is forced to leave the woman he loved in the universe he had created with no way to get her back, and it's implied that his working relationship with Lucien and the others is strained after everything that has happened, a strain that will take time to mend.]]

** Remember the World Egg in ''ComicBook/TheBooksOfMagic''? The one nearly snuck into Timothy's pocket and ended up in Titania's possession as a boon to be let out of the Realm of Faerie? Well, here Daniel left with it as payment for what she believed to be valuable possessions.

* CrazyPrepared: After he regained his powers at the end of ''[[Recap/TheSandman1989PreludesAndNocturnesArc Preludes & Nocturnes]]'', Morpheus recreated his various totems and scattered them among trusted friends and allies in the event that he wound up in a similar situation. [[spoiler:He left the ruby with Dora after she found herself in The Dreaming, he left the Fire Opal with Lucien "[[DespairEventHorizon hidden artfully at the point of lost hope]]", the Black Pearl was transformed into the Box of Horrors that he kept his nightmares in, and the emerald, who he had given to Daniel, was given to Ivy in the form of a ring.]]

** If Lucien is to be believed, [[spoiler:Wan's attempt to turn humanity into a StrawVulcan race swept away many of the human aspects that kept the Dream Vortex within Rose Walker at bay, becoming a "tempest" that will destroy The Dreaming so thoroughly that even Wan couldn't prevent it.]]

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: If Lucien is to be believed, [[spoiler:Wan's attempt to turn humanity into a StrawVulcan race swept away many of the human aspects that kept the Dream Vortex within Rose Walker at bay, becoming a "tempest" that will destroy The Dreaming so thoroughly that even Wan couldn't prevent it.]]

* ShoutOut: Dora takes one of the blanks as a companion and names him "Ziggy" after the Music/DavidBowie character Ziggy Stardust. He even wears makeup over his eyes similar to the character.

* {{Geas}}: One of the effects of [[spoiler:Daniel's cursed tattoo]] is that he isn't allowed to look for help or explain what is going on, forcing him to suffer in silence as he is cut off from The Dreaming.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Deep into madness and stranded in The Fulcrum, Lucien cries out that he hears a voice in his head implied to be the narrator.

* DrivenToSuicide: When Wan rewrites the dreams of humanity in its attempts at "curing" it of irrationality, most react with an influx of despair before they are driven to kill themselves.