History Main / AllJustAdream

* All of ''Film/MichaelJacksonsThriller'' is this, or a subversion?

* All the video of the song "Thriller" of Music/MichaelJackson is this, or a subversion?

** The ''real'' question, is whose dream was it? The Wind Fish's, or Link's? Technically the island only ceases to exist after they both wake up, so we don't know who was really the dreamer.

** The episode "Absolute Power" uses a dream that last most of the episode to show Daniel Jackson why getting access to the sum total of Goa'uld memory and technology would be a bad idea.

* ThingsMrWelchIsNoLongerAllowedToDoInAnRPG

* Sent up by RobertRankin in ''[[FarFetchedFiction Armageddon, The Musical]]''. A planet of aliens have been controlling Earth so they can watch us as a soap opera. [[ExecutiveMeddling Meddling executives]] decide that allowing WorldWarIII was a mistake and try to {{reboot}} the series by having Music/{{Elvis|Presley}} wake up and discover it was all a dream of what ''would'' happen if he joined the army instead of lending his voice to the anti-war movement. In minutes, the whole story turns into an AnachronismStew.

!As an {{Ending Trope|s}}, [[Administrivia/HandlingSpoilers all spoilers on this page are unmarked]].

!!Examples

* Much of the ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' episode "My Occurence" is revealed to be one of JD's extended daydreams towards the end, with the shift occurring the moment he walked in to tell Dr. Cox and Ben the test results.

* RomyAndMichele'sHighSchoolReunion: A large chunk of the film takes place in Michele's dream which isn't revealed to be a dreamed until the very end. This portion is so significant that most of the jokes from the trailer were taken from the dream sequence.

[[SelfDemonstratingArticle I had the strangest dream!]] [[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife I was on this horrible website that listed different tropes of media and spent all day there.]]

* The last episode of ''Series/StElsewhere'' reveals that the entire series has taken place in the mind of an autistic child.
** If you accept that crossovers between shows imply that they occupy the same fictional universe, an argument can be made that no fewer than [[http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html 282 shows]] were figments of Tommy Westphall's imagination, including ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. The aforementioned site seems to have a very low threshold for calling a show a cross-over, however; it includes minor {{shout out}}s as linkage. [[http://www.poobala.com/crossoverlist.html Another crossover database site]] gives a more conservative estimate, setting nearly a hundred shows within young Tommy's mind.

** If that's true, explain the parody at the end of his 1995 episode of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive''. Was that a DreamWithinADream, too?
* Speaking of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', a Wayne's World sketch starts with Wayne talking about a dream he had, then dissolves to the dream in typical Wayne's World fashion (wiggling their fingers and going "Do-da-loo! Do-da-loo!" during an actual dissolve). The dream is basically a Madonna music video in which Wayne makes out with Madonna while Garth dances in a skin-tight, black leotard. The sketch ends with them freaking out over an OrWasItADream moment as Garth is still wearing the leotard after the dream/flashback ends.

* The most famous anecdote by Chinese Daoist philosopher Creator/{{Zhuangzi}} has him relating how he had a dream that he was a butterfly, and upon waking up was unsure whether or not he was a man who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreamed it was a man. Since he lived around the 3rd century BC, this trope is OlderThanFeudalism.

* Creator/AlexanderPushkin's short story ''The Undertaker'' is an OlderThanRadio example.

* ''IMarriedAnAngel''

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' is an unusual and interesting case, as the "Indoctrination Theory" - the idea that the last 15 minutes or so of gameplay are All Just A Dream - was proposed by fans, and widely regarded as being preferable to the almost universally hated original ending. Since the release of the Extended Cut, support for the Indoctrination Theory has dwindled somewhat, although there are still some fans saying that Indoctrination is a better ending.

* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/Epic''. MK just really, really wishes it was.

* The episode "Haruhi in Wonderland" of ''Manga/OuranHighSchoolHostClub'' is all Haruhi's dream, but though the ending of the episode treats it as "AllJustADream", it's obvious from the beginning that it is either a dream or at least a nonsense episode based on Literature/AliceInWonderland. What makes the episode really neat is its use of [[FridgeLogic dream logic]] and the way she wakes up by slowly realizing that people and places are not exactly as they are in real life. The final realization that causes her to awaken is trying to hug her mother who was already dead when the series began.

* In ''Manga/AxisPowersHetalia'', [[MoeAnthropomorphism Japan]] tries to convince himself that the [[HoYay "Private Lesson"]] with close friend [[ChivalrousPervert Greece]] was [[CrowningMomentofFunny All Just A Dream]]. Even when he woke up naked—[[DidTheyOrDidntThey or at least shirtless]]—next to him...

* Two episodes of ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}''. In the first, Noa gets knocked out and dreams that she moves to New York to become part of a team of {{Toku}} heroes. In the second, it ''looks'' like Noa dreams that she's the hero of an {{Ultraman}} parody... but it turns out it's her teammate Asuma who dreamed it when he fell asleep listening to Noa talk about her aforementioned dream sequence in the hospital.
* Parodied in the ''{{Sketchbook}}'' manga, when Tsukiyo hands in a manga she's written, only to be told by the editor that she has to rewrite the ending, since having it be AllJustADream is bad writing. Then she wakes up in her bed.

* The last issue of ''{{Gen 13}}'', vol. 1 combined this with a DownerEnding: The team -- along with various other gen-active teens they'd met along the course of the series -- has one last hedonistic, live-like-there's-no-tomorrow-cuz-there-ain't good time before "The End". Turns out this was all in Caitlin Fairchild's head, an extended hallucination brought on by the effects of another gen-active's powers in the split-second before a DeathTrap disintegrated them all (they got better).

* A story of ''TheFabulousFurryFreakBrothers'' from the early '70s has the trio staging a violent assault on a prison to free an incarcerated friend. Fat Freddy ends up cut off and bludgeoned to death by a horde of cops - but it's all just a dream, and Franklin is beating him with a rolled-up newspaper for eating a whole batch of hash cookies. Then, some seven years later, an extended story where they take a cross-country trip in a vintage RV ends in a full-scale riot at a Greenwich Village Halloween parade - but it's all just a dream, and Franklin is beating Freddy with a rolled-up newspaper...implying ''everything'' that happened between the two stories was Fat Freddy dreaming!

* Subverted in ''Film/FourteenOhEight'', where the protagonist "wakes up" from his harrowing ordeal in room 1408 to be told it was only a dream, only to find his surroundings demolished and stripped away to reveal that he is still in fact stuck in the hotel room.
** Bonus points for the film having run long enough to make you think it might be ending.

* Subverted in ''TheButterflyEffect''. At one point near the end of the film it looks like the story is gonna go out with a TwistEnding. As Evan's doctor explains that there are no journals, he asserts that everything that we've apparently seen so far is a delusion that Evan created to cope with the guilt of killing Kayleigh, describing alternate universes with colleges, prisons, and paraplegia. Then it turns out that the mental time travel ''was'' real when Evan goes back one last time.

* ''VanillaSky'' (2001), directed by Cameron Crowe and starring Creator/TomCruise. Remake of 1997 Spanish film ''Abre los Ojos'', a.k.a. ''Open Your Eyes''. After a car accident that kills his girlfriend and disfigures his face, the protagonist is haunted by increasingly bizarre occurrences. The ending explains that everything that has occurred after the car accident has been a dream. In real life, after the car accident, he signed a contract with a company that preserves its clients' bodies after death and keeps their brain waves active in lifelike virtual reality dreams, and then committed suicide. The bizarre occurrences are explained as glitches in the program. In the end, he decides to wake up from the dream program.

* One of the few relatively certain things about the [[MindScrew plot]] of ''MulhollandDrive'' is that it includes some element of this. One interpretation is the whole movie is a sinister creeping inversion: it is a dream where the ''dream gradually wakes up'' and walks away, rendering the original dreamer fictional.

* ''Film/TheMatrix''. The entire world the film starts in is AllJustADream, albeit an artificially constructed one induced by an empire of evil computers.
** Some have suggested that even Zion is just another level of the Matrix, satisfying many beyond the official interpretation as it explains the liberties taken in the third movie.

* Each sequence of ''Film/LivingInOblivion'' is revealed to be AllJustADream, a dream which is referenced in the following sequence. In the final sequence is about trying to film a dream sequence important to the production, and lampshades tropes typical of filmed dream sequences.

* The first twenty minutes of the ''Film/HalloweenII2009'' (2009) ends up being nothing more than a nightmare that the main character was having.

* {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''MaximumRide''. A group of scientists unsuccessfully attempt to convince the protagonist that the events of the entire past three books were all a dream.

** In "Triangle" Mulder wakes up in a hospital after apparently going back in time and [[AndYouWereThere meeting his friends and enemies]] as heroes or villains on a WorldWarII liner. Naturally no one believes him, but Mulder can't help smiling when he feels the bruise on his cheek where past-Scully gave him a MegatonPunch after he [[NowOrNeverKiss stole a kiss from her]].

* Sent up by Robert Rankin in ''[[FarFetchedFiction Armageddon, The Musical]]''. A planet of aliens have been controlling Earth so they can watch us as a soap opera. [[ExecutiveMeddling Meddling executives]] decide that allowing WorldWarIII was a mistake and try to {{reboot}} the series by having Music/{{Elvis|Presley}} wake up and discover it was all a dream of what ''would'' happen if he joined the army instead of lending his voice to the anti-war movement. In minutes, the whole story turns into an AnachronismStew.

** The gag was recycled for a sketch where Wayne dreams that he's on MelrosePlace and then wakes up wearing Heather Locklear's outfit.

** In TOS episode "Death Ship", an astronaut stranded on another planet dreams that he has returned to Earth and everything's all right. His commanding officer bodily enters his dream and drags him back to wakefulness. The KarmicTwistEnding? He and his commander are actually dead, and his dream was actually the afterlife he should have gone to.

** The episode "perchance to dream" cranks this one {{up to eleven}},it's about a man visiting a psychiatrist about nightmares, afraid the next one will kill him because of his weak heart, ultimately jumping out the window, then the reveal at the end... the whole thing from the point where he lied down in the shrink's couch was actually a dream, the conversation never actually happened, his fear came true, the dream had killed him.
** Played with in "The King Nine Will Never Return", about a pilot who visits his the wreck plane, one he was supposed to be in command of but for some last minute reason wasn't, revealed to be just a dream and he was at a nursing home the whole time OrWasItADream? his boots were found to have sand in them.

* Not even Hispanic SoapOpera escapes from this trope. There has been at least two soapies who ended with the implication that all the chapters we've seen has been just a Dream: ''Los Amores de Anita Pe?'' and ''Pecados Ajenos''. However, the results were very different:

* ''Series/TheWildWildWest'' episode "The Night of the Man-Eating House". Near the beginning, the characters discover and approach the title house. After a series of terrifying events, at the end the characters wake up and discover that the horrific events in the house were All Just a Nightmare. In the last scene, they find themselves [[OrWasItADream approaching the house again]].

* ''{{Everwood}}'''s first season ends with a cliffhanger: Andy operates on Colin, and the very last scene is him entering the waiting room and everybody standing up to learn if the surgery was successful or not. Season two begins with everybody having fun at the pool (including Colin), giving the impression things had been fine. Suddenly, we realise it was only Amy's day-dreaming during Colin's funeral.

* ''Series/FreddysNightmares'' overused this to the point of inverting it. All Just a Dream was so ridiculously commonplace that [[TwistEnding the real twist]] was when an episode ''didn't'' turn out to be just some random character's dream/hallucination/daydream/DyingDream.
* Several ''RoundTheTwist'' episodes ended this way, as a result of being adapted into a continuing series from standalone stories. A particularly odd example is "Santa Claws," which not only has Pete falling asleep in the first scene, thus establishing AllJustADream right away, but features a FramingDevice within the dream - Pete telling the story of how his mouth was shrunk.
* Spoofed in the final episode of ''Series/AceOfCakes'' after building a giant cake replica of the BTTF Delorean the final scene has Duff noticing the lights in the flux capacitor are on the fritz so he opens it up and messes with the wires, next scene he wakes up at his job at a factory, turns to Geoff and tells him about the weird dream he had 'where you and I worked at a cake shop making all sorts of weird cakes"
* In ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'', the events in the Attic are AllJustADream. That does ''not'' make it any better. You'll forever be trapped in an endless loop of your worst fear, unlikely to ever wake up. All the while the Rossum Corporation is using your mind as a giant computer for their own ends. Even worse; one of the co-founders of Rossum dreams of an oncoming apocalypse, and he knows it almost 100% certain to become reality.

* In ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'', Season 2, Episode 15, "The Suite Smell of Excess", Zack and Cody travel to an alternate universe. When they get back, they are told it was just a dream, and couldn't have been real. When they protest that they could not have shared the dream, their mother, Carey, says that it is possible, and such experiences are called folie à deux. Subverted when the twins go to bed, and she finds a quarter with the image of GeorgeClooney on it, instead of GeorgeWashington.

* The last episode, "Home", of ''Series/TheLegendOfDickAndDom'' starts with AllJustADream- the heroes return home in triumph from their quest, to acclaim and cheering crowds... and then it all turns a bit odd... and then they wake up, to find the BigBad has stolen the MacGuffin and put them to sleep (and apparently given them a communal dream) to delay their pursuit.

* The ''Series/TheGoldenGirls'' episode "Mrs. George Devereaux", wherein Blanche's husband George comes BackFromTheDead, confesses that he faked his death to escape being framed for embezzling from his company and begs Blanche for another chance, and Dorothy is wooed by [[TheCarolBurnettShow Lyle Waggoner]] and SonnyBono. Blanche [[RecurringDreams apparently has this same dream, or variations on it, periodically]], mentioning that every time it's happened, she always woke up before she could hug him.

** Gerry Anderson is all over this one (he was once quoted as saying "I wish somebody would make a film of my dreams"). There's one episode of ''Four Feather Falls'', one of ''{{Supercar}}'', ''three'' of ''Series/{{Stingray 1964}}'', two of ''{{Joe 90}}'', one of ''Terrahawks'', two of ''{{UFO}}'' as noted under Live-Action TV, and one of ''{{Space 1999}}'' where the events of the episode turn out to be dreams, hallucinations or implanted visions. The ''Thunderbirds'' episode "Security Hazard" manages to invert this by having International Rescue convince a boy that his real-life trip to Tracy Island has only been a dream.

* This is the entire premises for the VideoGame/{{NiGHTS into Dreams}} series.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' is an unusual and interesting case, as the "Indoctrination Theory" - the idea that the last 15 minutes or so of gameplay are AllJustADream - was proposed by fans, and widely regarded as being preferable to the almost universally hated original ending. Since the release of the Extended Cut, support for the Indoctrination Theory has dwindled somewhat, although there are still some fans saying that Indoctrination is a better ending.

* ''TwistedMetal: Black'' seems like an AlternateContinuity to the main ''Twisted Metal'' series. In fact, various in-game hints reveal that the whole game occurs inside [[MonsterClown Sweet Tooth]]'s head.

** In ''TwistedMetal 2'', Marcus Kane (driver of Roadkill) can see through the FourthWall and is convinced the world is fake. His wish is to get out, and when Calypso grants it, he wakes up in a hospital bed, [[AndYouWereThere surrounded by the other characters]] - the game was a dream he had in a coma. But then Calypso's eyes appear, hinting that the Twisted Metal world ''is'' real and he's sent Kane ''into'' a dream.

** There's also the first {{eroge}} scene in the original game, which turns out to be All Just A Wet Dream.

* Conversed in ''VideoGame/EscapeFromStMarys''. Two teachers disagree on whether it's an acceptable ending for a story, and the wo turn to blows.

* Used and then subverted in [[http://darklegacycomics.com/200.html this strip]] of ''DarkLegacyComics''.

-->"You mean the whole last season was a ''dream''?! Gimme a break! They [[JumpTheShark shoulda just had babies]], and then the babies shoulda gotten married."

* In SonicForHire, Sonic goes on an extreme acid trip and actually believes that he has a successful job with ToeJamAndEarl, but then Tails "wakes" him up, making him realize he was just on an acid trip.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' has Bruce Wayne waking up in a world where he isn't Batman. He eventually realizes that it is a dream (because some people's dreams work in such a way that they can't read anything in a dream) and ends it by jumping off the clock tower. Apart from the reading issue, wish fulfillment dreams don't work on Batman; a world where Bruce Wayne is happy? His subconscious knows that's impossible.
** Another episode has Batgirl getting hit by Scarecrow's fear gas and hallucinating a scenario where [[BadFuture she dies, and Gordon goes to war against Batman]]. The dream ends when Bane, who had just been electrocuted to near-death, uses his last breath to toss the Bat-signal at Batman and Gordon, knocking them both off the top of Police Headquarters.

* ''AngelsFriends'' has Raf and Sulfus both have a dream where they get married.

** Interestingly, it's possible to have an inversion of that--someone dreams of losing a loved one (or ones), only to wake up and realize it was AllJustADream. [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming Heartwarming]] moments may follow along with a LOT of relief.

[[SelfDemonstratingArticle I had the strangest dream!]] [[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife I was on this horrible website that listed different tropes of media.]]

* In an episode of ''{{The 4400}}'', main character Tom dreams of a world where the 4400 abductions never happened. As it turns out at the end, the "dream" was actually a power of one of the 4400, whose alternate reality powers allowed him to have an eight year relationship with her in an extremely short time, allowing them to know everything about each other despite only meeting once.

** "The Sting": Fry dives in front of a space bee about to sting Leela, gets impaled and injected with venom, and dies. Leela who comes out of the incident with only a "boo-boo", tops, begins feeling horribly guilty for the loss of Fry, and slowly descends into insanity, going through one DreamWithinADream after another. At the climax, the walls are talking to her, bees are materializing out of nowhere, and Leela tries to steal Fry's corpse to remind herself that he's really dead. There's also a musical number in which the other characters serenade her with the song "Don't Worry, Be(e) Happy." It turns out it was all a coma-induced dream; Fry had come out of the incident relatively unscathed, save for the gaping hole in his chest, which was easily repaired by future-medicine, while Leela got all the venom from the bee and nearly died.

** In the first "Anthology of Interest" episode it is revealed at the end that the entire episode, consisting of three scenarios generated by the professor's What-If machine, was, in fact, a scenario generated by the professor's What-If machine. Strangely enough, the What-If machine seems to know things that no one else does, like the fact Fry not coming to the future would cause a universe-destroying paradox, because he is [[MyOwnGrampa his own grandpa]]. And the second Anthology of Interest featured a segment that really ''was'' a dream, instead of a What-If, as the writers didn't wish to reveal Leela's true heritage at that point of the series. Also, the Professor eventually invents the "Finglonger" in real life. This all seems to imply that the What-Ifs are 'canonical hypotheticals' that would have actually happened that way if the setup was true, making them more ForWantOfANail than All Just a Dream.

** The absurd (even for them) [=Y2K=] episode, "Da Boom", ends in live-action with Pam Ewing of ''Series/{{Dallas}}'' waking to Bobby in the shower and relating the episode. Bobby has no idea what ''Family Guy'' is. (This sequence features the real life Victoria Principal and Patrick Duffy.)

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' has an episode where Mrs. Puff goes to jail. At the end, it's revealed that it was all a dream, and Spongebob is going to jail. Except that was all a dream, and she's in the boat with a random person from prison. After that, she just gives up, and the episode ends.