History Main / DreamWithinADReam

* The ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'' episode "Sleepless in Retroville" ends with a chain of "dream within someone else's dream"s, ending with a monster pizza and his wife. [[ItMakesSenseInContext No,]] [[GainaxEnding really.]]
* [[WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball The Amazing World of Gumball]]: In the episode "The Night", [[NewJobAsThePlotDemands Larry]] is incredibly tired after being burnt out from constantly working, so when he’s trying to work, he doesn’t even realize that he fell asleep and is “working” in his dream. He snaps out of it, but still sees things and wakes up again. The cycle continues until Larry ends up in the apocalypse, where his future self tells him that he’s wasted his life. When the cycle finally breaks, he ends up in a jail cell. Still thinking that he’s dreaming, Larry tries to wake himself up, but to no avail.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'' ends with a chain of "dream within someone else's dream"s, ending with a monster pizza and his wife. [[ItMakesSenseInContext No,]] [[GainaxEnding really.]]
* [[WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball The Amazing World of Gumball]]: In the episode “The Night,” [[NewJobAsThePlotDemands Larry]] is incredibly tired after being burnt out from constantly working, so when he’s trying to work, he doesn’t even realize that he fell asleep and is “working” in his dream. He snaps out of it, but still sees things and wakes up again. The cycle continues until Larry ends up in the apocalypse, where his future self tells him that he’s wasted his life. When the cycle finally breaks, he ends up in a jail cell. Still thinking that he’s dreaming, Larry tries to wake himself up, but to no avail.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' episode, "[[Recap/RugratsS3E18InTheDreamtimeTheUnfairPair In the Dreamtime]]", Chuckie has a dream that takes place in a dream of his, and in the end, it all turns out to be Chas' dream.

* In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "Darkness Ascending", Garibaldi is having more and more trouble with his alcoholism. He has a nightmare where everyone on the station is dead and he killed them. He wakes up to find the telepath Lyta toying with him menacingly, with GlowingEyesOfDoom. He wakes again to find his future wife Lise walking into the room, and isn't sure if he's still dreaming or not.

* ''Series/{{MacGyver|1985}}'': One of the more unintentionally funny moments was in the brainwashing episode. Jack Dalton was having nightmares surrounding his brainwashing on a nightly basis, usually waking up in a cold sweat. One of those times he woke up, he was just having a normal morning with [=MacGyver=]. He was waving his hand around to make a point when he then noticed he was holding a gun. "Hey, where did that come from?" He then notices the symbol on [=MacGyver's=] pitcher is the same as his trigger, shoots it (with the show suggesting that [=MacGyver=] also got shot even though he was holding it away from his body), and then wakes up.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'' :

** A variation on this trope occurs in "Back To Reality" in which the Boys from the Dwarf believe that, in reality, they have all been playing a total immersion virtual reality game for the previous four years. It turns out that [[spoiler: they have only been under the influence of the Despair Squid's Ink; and they are nearly successful in killing themselves (the ultimate effect of the ink) when none wants to return to his "real" world existence.]]

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Frame of Mind", it was taken to an extreme. Riker shifts from the Enterprise before both his mission and role in a play to an insane asylum. This happens several times so no one, from Riker to the audience, knows what is real. At the end, it is shown that [[spoiler: he is in a hospital room as doctors are trying to get inforamtion from his brain. The shifts were due to his a defense mechanism of his mind.]]
* In the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Waking Moments", [[spoiler:Chakotay wakes up, but later sees the full moon reflected in a control panel, a signal to him that he is still dreaming. He is able to wake himself, and the rest of the crew in the collective dream sees him disappear.]]

* Happened to Mrs. Puff in the ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' episode "Doing Time". Most of the episode had her in prison after [=SpongeBob=] drove a car off an "unfinished bridge" and down into a juice truck. Near the end of the episode she woke up and was back in the car, falling and crashing again. This time [=SpongeBob=] was arrested. She looked down to see she was in a prison outfit and woke up again, with one of the prisoners in the car instead. She woke up once again, giving up, "Oh, forget it."

* [[WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball The Amazing World of Gumball]]: In the episode “The Night,” [[NewJobAsThePlotDemands Larry]] is incredibly tired after being burnt out from constantly working, so when he’s trying to work, he doesn’t even realize that he fell asleep and is “working” in his dream. He snaps out of it, but still sees things and wakes up again. The cycle continues until Larry ends up in the apocalypse, where his future self tells him that he’s wasted his life. When the cycle finally breaks, he ends up in a jail cell. Still thinking that he’s dreaming, Larry tried to wake himself up, but to no avail.

* [[WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball The Amazing World of Gumball]]: In the episode “The Night,” [[NewJobAsThePlotDemands Larry]] is incredibly tired after being burnt out from constantly working, so when he’s trying to work, he doesn’t even realize that he fell asleep and is “working” in his dream. He snaps out of it, but still sees things and wakes up again. He ends up in the apocalypse, where his future self tells him that he’s wasted his life. When the cycle finally breaks, he ends up in a jail cell. Still thinking that he’s dreaming, Larry tried to wake himself up, but to no avail.

* ''WesternAnimation/ShrekTheThird'': Shrek experiences a dream within a dream within a dream during the boat ride to Arthur's school.

** In "The Sixth Extinction: Amor Fati", Mulder dreams of a little boy on a deserted beach building a UFO out of sand while dreaming/hallucinating a world in which he is married to Diana Fowley, his sister is alive with children, the Smoking Man is good, and there is no Truth, no X-Files, and no Scully. It has been speculated that the little boy in the dream is either Mulder's inner child or that it was a prophetic dream foretelling the birth of Baby William, his and Scully's son. William is not yet conceived in this episode, but is by the end of the season.
** An even earlier episode, "Field Trip" had Mulder and Scully [[spoiler:trapped and devoured alive by a man-eating fungal colony whose digestive fluids induced realistic hallucinations]]. And every time they realized that and woke up, they just ended up in a dream even more realistic than the previous one.

* ''Webcomic/{{Alice|Webcomic}}'' has an adventure as a [[TheChosenOne dragonslayer]] (starting [[http://alice.alicecomics.com/alicecomics/dragonslayer-1/ here]]), which turns out to be a dream within a DreamWithinADream.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Crabgrass}}'': Kevin has one in [[https://www.gocomics.com/crabgrass/2019/08/12 this comic]]. First he wakes up and misses the bus to school, which turns out to be a dream. Not wanting it to become reality, he rushes downstairs, only to be told that it's saturday. That too is a dream. He then wakes up for real.

* ''Heat Haze Daze'': a boy named Hibiya and a girl named Hiyori go for a walk in a park, as Hiyori cradles a cat it leaps out of her hands and into a nearby road. Hiyori runs into the road after it, the traffic lights suddenly turn red and a truck appears almost out of nowhere and runs her over in front of Hibiya. He then blacks out and later awakes in his bed. he looks at the time which is sometime past 12 in the morning,on the 14th of august.(this was the day before Hiyori was killed),Later him and Hiyori go for a walk in the very same park. As he realizes that the same events that lead to Hiyori's death begin to happen, he says to her "why don't we go home now". And as she steps off of the pathway everyone surrounding them looks up; a large iron pole falls from a building and pierces through hiyori's body...killing her. Hiyiba blacks out again and wakes up on his bed, this cycle continues for decades until Hiyabi pushes Hiyori out of the way, saving her but killing himself.

* The main focus of ''Film/{{Inception}}''. The protagonists are professional dream-thieves, hired to steal information from inside people's heads. For the plot of the film, they've instead been hired to alter a man's behaviour by altering his dreams; the more subtle manipulation requires multiple recursive levels of dreaming. For this job, they attempt to create a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. [[spoiler: Later, a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream, hitting a dangerously deep and [[BeyondTheImpossible theoretically impossible]] fourth layer.]] It's become so well known for this that a "[blank] within a [blank]" is often dubbed "[[MemeticMutation [blank]-ception.]]" [[labelnote:*]]Mistakenly, since in the movie, the word "inception" only refers to using a dream to plant an idea in someone's mind.[[/labelnote]]

* In an episode of [[Series/TheKingOfQueens The King of Queens]] Doug has a nightmare about losing his delivery driver job and being placed at a boring desk job. He wakes up scared and tells his wife that he just had a dream about his job, to find his coworker and best friend Deacon in bed with him instead. However this turned out to also be a dream.
Doug: I just had this really weird dream about my job. Honey?
Dream!Deacon: You mean my job?
Doug: AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

* The main focus of ''Film/{{Inception}}''. The protagonists are professional dream-thieves, hired to steal information from inside people's heads. For the plot of the film, they've instead been hired to alter a man's behaviour by altering his dreams; the more subtle manipulation requires multiple recursive levels of dreaming. For this job, they attempt to create a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. [[spoiler: Later, a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream, hitting a dangerously deep and [[BeyondTheImpossible theoretically impossible]] fourth layer.]] It's become so well known for this that a "[blank] within a [blank]" is often dubbed "[[MemeticMutation [blank]-ception.]]" [[labelnote:*]][[YouKeepUsingThatWord Mistakenly]], since in the movie, the word "inception" only refers to using a dream to plant an idea in someone's mind.[[/labelnote]]

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': In "Nightmare on Killmotor Hill", Lena's magic allows the kids to enter each others' dream worlds. In Louie's, he becomes a [[CatsAreLazy lazy cat]] (basically an {{Expy}} of ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}''), and falls asleep, at which point a dream bubble pops over his head.

* This gets turned UpToEleven in the ''WebAnimation/DickFigures'' episode, "OMG". Blue keeps going through layers upon layers of dreams. Then it turns out that the whole episode was just a dream of [[spoiler:the Racoon]]. He really needs to quit drinking.

'''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDX_xlZoFwY BAAAAAA]]'''

Compare DrosteImage. See also NestedStory, SchrodingersButterfly, and RecursiveReality. Not to be confused with [[Film/ThePrincessBride marriage]]. May require an OrpheanRescue to finally wake up.

* %%* Happens in #41: ''The Familiar'' as part of the setup and backstory early in the novel.

* ''Film/{{Nightwish}}'': Most of the film is revealed to be [[spoiler:one long nightmare experienced by Kim as she's undergoing sensory deprivation in a laboratory.]] During the dream, while trapped in an alien cave, she falls asleep at least once. And at the end it turns out that [[spoiler:she's still not awake even after she wakes up in the lab room.]]

* In ''ComicBook/TheSandman'', written by Creator/NeilGaiman, Dream (the eponymous character) punishes the son of his captor by condemning him to "eternal waking," basically a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream... ad infinitum, with each dream quickly turning into a nightmare.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': While in prison Dr Psycho traps Vanessa Kapatelis in nightmares and each time she comes screaming awake--usually when she's killed by twisted versions of her mother or Diana--it devolves into another nightmare. Her managing to snap out of the mental trap and the backlash which ruins Psycho's escape attempt lay the foundation for the more brutal attack on her mind which Psycho and Circe used to turn her into the next Silver Swan.