History Main / GirlOfMyDreams

* In the ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon'' fic ''Fanfic/TheGrimbornSister'', depicting a world where Astrid is the sister of Viggo and Ryker Grimborn, this idea is hinted at for Hiccup; while Snotlout and Tuffnut have visited a brothel in a nearby market island (Fishlegs being in a committed relationship to Heather), Hiccup never felt comfortable doing that himself as he felt as though he would be cheating on a woman he hadn't met yet, an image that resolves itself when he first meets Astrid.

* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E20WhatIsAndWhatShouldNeverBe "What Is And What Should Never Be" (S02, Ep20)]], Dean dreams about his perfect girlfriend, but the trope is subverted when Dean wakes up and realizes she was based on a model he had seen in a beer advertisement.

* A dark version occurs in the horror movie ''Film/{{Lifeforce}}''. An astronaut becomes obsessed with the beautiful woman he finds on an alien spacecraft (as she's played by a [[MsFanservice stark naked Mathilda May]] that's not surprising) who turns out to be a LifeEnergy-sucking space vampire. She later informs him that she probed his mind long before his ship approached hers, taking from it an image of his perfect woman.

* ''Anime/YourName'': Taki finds himself awake in Mtsuha's body and literally lived her life from time to time when the body swap happens. Eventually, at the underworld scene when Mitsuha's grandma asked Taki-in-Mitsuha "are you having a dream?", it hit Taki hard at the realization that Mitsuha & the events of his dream might not be real after all. Ultimately, Mitsuha ended up being "the one" for him as he realizes he no longer has affection for his first love Miki during their date. [[spoiler:When he met Mitsuha in the flesh & in real-time in the ending, Taki had finally found "the girl of his dreams".]]

* A few of the subplots in ''Series/{{Flash Forward|2009}}'' invoke this trope. Playing it straight, they have Bryce's flash that involves meeting up with a girl in a restaurant and spends some time trying to find her, but doesn't have all the information needed. In a subversion, Olivia's flashforward shows her romantically involved with Lloyd Simcoe. Too bad she's already married.

* Tanit the chief Ba'al Goddess in ''VideoGame/TearsToTiara2'' to [[TheHero Hamil]].

* ''Manga/PsychicAcademy'': Ai, the male lead, believed that he first met his girlfriend Orina at a beach at sunset. It wasn't until years later that he learned that that meeting was actually a psychic phenomena known as the Paradream, [[spoiler: or that the girl he actually met there was Mew, who had changed hairstyles in the seven years between the Paradream and their first actual meeting. The poor lighting caused by the Paradream happening at sunset caused him to not realize that Orina's hair color didn't even come close to matching that of the girl he had met.]]
* '''Very''' important in ''Manga/TenYoriMoHoshiYoriMo''. [[spoiler: The "dreams" that [[StarCrossedLovers Mio and Shou/Rei]] have about each other? They're actually ''PastLifeMemories''.]]
* ''Anime/WelcomeToTheNHK!'' opens with Sato having a dream that mostly symbolizes his delusions. At one point, however, Misaki appears in the background with her trademark white umbrella, watching Sato with an enigmatic smile. Not only does his dream {{foreshadow|ing}} his meeting with Misaki later in the episode, but how his dream ends foreshadows [[spoiler:his suicide attempt in the final episode during a last-ditch attempt to convince Misaki not to end ''her'' life]].
* ''Anime/YourName'': Taki finds himself awake in Mtsuha's body & literally lived her life from time to time when the body swap happens. Eventually, at the underworld scene when Mitsuha's grandma asked Taki-in-Mitsuha "are you having a dream?", it hit Taki hard at the realization that Mitsuha & the events of his dream might not be real after all. Ultimately, Mitsuha ended up being "the one" for him as he realizes he no longer has affection for his first love Miki during their date. [[spoiler:When he met Mitsuha in the flesh & in real-time in the ending, Taki had finally found "the girl of his dreams".]]

** GenderFlipped since [[spoiler: female lead Tatsumi saw Kyousuke, the lead male and her soon-to-be partner, in one of her dreams. That's how she recognized him in RealLife.]]

* In ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'', sleeping people are often conscripted into being temporary servants in Morpheus' kingdom. In the issue "Season Of Mists", one man begs a woman to tell him her name and address before they wake up. It's not shown if they manage to find each other in the real world.
* ''ComicBook/{{Druuna}}'': Commander Will starts to have prophetic dreams about Druuna wherein he has passionate sex with her before he actually meets her in real life. It turns out that these visions were sent by the VirtualGhost protecting Druuna specifically so that the Commander and his crew would rescue her from her centuries-long statis on an artificial asteroid.
* In ''ComicBook/ArchieComics'', Archie has a very vivid dream about a beautiful goddess-like woman with platinum blonde hair who is even [[NonStandardCharacterDesign drawn in a slightly more realistic style to make her seem otherworldly.]] Recounting the dream to Jughead the next morning, Archie sees a woman who greatly resembles her, and in his rush to meet her falls into an open manhole. After this, he begins searching frantically for her. Veronica comes along and when she hears that Archie is searching for the girl of his dreams, says "Well, what's wrong with his eyes? Here I am!" She is needless to say not pleased to hear he's looking for another girl. One MegatonPunch later, Veronica storms off, leaving Archie on the sidewalk enjoying another dream.
* ''ComicBook/AstroCity'': A variation happens in one of the stories. A man is troubled by increasingly vivid dreams about a woman he has never met, but he knows he loves deeply. This nearly drives him to insanity until he receives a visit from the [[EldritchAbomination Hanged Man]]. The Hanged Man explains that she is his wife from another timeline, one that was torn apart by a small-time supervillain who gained access to ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow, and while the good guys managed to get spacetime mostly stuck back together, they didn't get all the details quite right. One of those was that they changed the date of an event that would have caused his wife's grandparents to meet. This knowledge enables the man to heal and find joy, rather than fear, in the girl in his dreams.

* In ''Fanfic/{{Dangerverse}}'', Danger dreams of marrying Remus before meeting him.

* ''Film/TwelveMonkeys''. The recurring dream was caused by [[spoiler:a childhood memory of seeing something horrible happen to his time-traveling future self and his lover.]]
* ''Film/TotalRecall1990''. A psychiatrist is trying to convince Quaid that what he's experiencing isn't real, but an implanted memory.
-->'''Psychiatrist:''' And what about the girl? Brunette, athletic, sleazy and demure? Just as you specified. Is that coincidence?\\
'''Quaid:''' She's real. I dreamt about her before I even went to Rekall.\\
'''Psychiatrist:''' Mr. Quaid. Can you hear yourself? She's real because you dreamed her?\\
'''Quaid:''' That's right.
* Valentine is a male version in ''Film/MirrorMask''.

* ''Film/{{Dagon}}'': Paul has recurring dreams of a beautiful mermaid who beckons him to join her. After he and his friends get stuck in a coastal town inhabited by a FishPeople cult, he finds out that the girl in his dreams, Uxia the high priestess, is real. [[spoiler:At the end he's told that they're both the demi-human offspring of a sea god and that he is destined to become his sister's lover.]]

* ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet4TheDreamMaster'': Variation. Joey has the hots for a pin-up model on his wall, then she appears to him inside his waterbed, fully nude. Of course, it's just Freddy messing with him ([[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet3DreamWarriors again?]]) before going in for the kill.

* M'k'n'zy dreams about Elizabeth Shelby before meeting her in ''Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier'', and they end up married. Though that same dream also involved [[UnfortunateImplications Picard]] ...

* ''[[Literature/{{Belgariad}} Belgarath the Sorcerer]]'': Riva Iron-Grip dreamt of his future betrothed continuously for ''years'' courtesy of his God, Belar... and since Belar knows his people, the dream girl didn't wear much. On the other hand, she was roughly newborn when the dreams started, and had to wait a while to grow up. Riva was ''very'' happy to meet her for real finally.
* Inigo and Giulietta in the sequel fragment at the end of ''Literature/ThePrincessBride''.
* The book ''Tree of Dreams'' contains the story "Dream Girl", in which a prince meets a girl in a dream and falls in love. The prince's friend convinces the king that the best solution is to let the prince go out and travel so he can meet a real girl. Then they come to a country where the king's daughter has been locked up because she wants to marry a man she met in a dream...
* In ''{{Literature/Banco}}'', Papillon spends two hellish years in the PenalColony's solitary confinement. During that time he dreamed of life as a free man with a beautiful and kind woman he called his ''belle princesse''. In Maracaibo he enters the Hotel Vera Cruz to get out of the heat and sees her in a rocking chair; with the hazel eyes and beauty mark he always envisioned, and he's shocked that she even speaks French. He rents a room and takes a cold shower, trying not to panic because she's real, and vows to never tell her that he dreamed of her years before. He eventually marries Rita and they run the hotel together.
* In his ''Mémoires'', Lucien Bonaparte claims that one night where he stayed at a friend's house, he saw a beautiful woman in a dream, in which she was pulling him towards life while the ghost of his dead wife tried to draw him towards death. On the next day, he went for a walk in the garden and saw that same mysterious woman, whom he later married.

* Gender-flipped in ''Literature/EarthsChildren''. It's all but stated that Ayla dreamt of Jondalar before meeting him; during her time in the Valley of Horses in the second book she dreams of a man of the Others (what Neanderthals call Cro-Magnon), whose features she can't distinguish save for the fact he has "yellow" hair (Jondalar is Cro-Magnon like her and has blond hair).
* ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'': Eragon first sees Arya in a dream while she's imprisoned and soon becomes infatuated with her.

** In ''Secret Vampire'', Poppy dreams of Ash Redfern before she meets him; she's so stunned that she blurts this out the first time she sees him. However, while Ash is superficially attracted to her, she has no romantic interest in him and has already met her soulmate. The dream does foreshadow [[spoiler: that Poppy is a lost witch]], though.
** Played with in the case of Thierry in ''Soulmate''. His soulmate Hannah dreams of him before actually meeting him in her current life, but had met him in her previous incarnations (indicating she's recalling him from her PastLifeMemories).
** In ''Black Dawn'', Maggie first sees Delos in a dream before they meet in person, telling he loves her and showing her a way to escape the Dark Kingdom. It later turns out [[spoiler: he'd intentionally projected his consciousness back in time to try and warn Maggie to escape, to prevent her later capture]]. It fails, but the dream does let Maggie know that there's [[HiddenHeartOfGold more to Delos]] than being a {{Jerkass}}.

* Averted in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]] -- [[spoiler:Donna's fake husband turns out to be a real person uploaded into the computer, but his stutter makes him unable to get her attention before she leaves, so she never knows he's real.]]

* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "[[Recap/SmallvilleS03E04Slumber Slumber]]", Clark Kent dreams of a girl named Sara Conroy before he ever met her. He saves her life in both the dream and real world, but they do not become attracted to each other at all, and she becomes a Clark/Lana ShipperOnDeck.
* Tenar is this to Ged in the [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] version of ''Series/{{Earthsea}}''.

* Gender flipped example in ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean'' [[spoiler: Xelha first sees Kalas in her dreams where he is holding someone and crying in a dark forest. She felt a great deal of sympathy for Kalas and wanted to help him, even if she never met him before.]]

* In ''Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time'', one of the possible love interests, Frayne, first appears to Crevanille, while he is unconscious from injuries he got in a fight.

* The player character in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' has dreams [[spoiler:(in truth, resurfacing memories)]] of Bastila before their first meeting.

* In ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest 4'', it isn't quite a dream, but all of the events of that game feel like a really weird dream to Roger Senior. More importantly (as far as this trope is concerned), it is in this game, during a particularly weird segment at the end, that Roger Senior first sees Beatrice, the woman who will bear his son, Roger Junior.

* This is the main conceit of ''Webcomic/{{Dreamless}}'': the main characters (who live on opposite sides of the world, so one is asleep while the other one is awake) share each other's waking lives in their dreams. Too bad [[StarCrossedLovers their countries are about to go to war with each other]]...
* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' comes with a realistic twist on this. Elliot dreams of his best friend Tedd, who is half-Asian, turning into a girl and then the two kiss. However, he doesn't remember the full dream, in particular who he had kissed. [[spoiler:So when he first encounters Ashley, who is Asian, he mentally fills in the blank and thinks that she was the one he kissed in his dream.]]
* ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'': A platonic version. Reynir's first appearance in the story proper was Lalli noticing him running around in the mage-exclusive dream space, but getting overpowered by rogue spirits while trying to get his attention. When Reynir eventually joins the cast, he turns out to not remember the encounter due to forgetting his dreams at the time. Lalli dreamed of Reynir while in a place in which the only living people are the BoldExplorer main cast. Reynir showed up in a crate of emergency supplies delivered by boat that wouldn't have been needed if it weren't for an earlier UnfortunateItemSwap, which makes his joining of the crew a highly improbable event.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', Aranea visits Jake in a dream, and he is instantly smitten, even calling her the "girl of my dreams." Ultimately subverted, as when they finally meet in person, he isn't in a psychological state for a relationship. Also the whole scenario was likely invoked by Aranea in the first place in order to be able to activate Jake's Hope powers.
* ''Webcomic/DreamingFreedom'': Or boy of my dreams, in this case. Siyun is technically this for Jeongmin, even though it turns out he's a DreamWalker. However, he is also the male lead and likely love interest.

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' episode "A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill". Dewey's dream where he's the BigManOnCampus is supposed to have a love interest, but since he's too young to be emotionally ready for that, it only manifests as an amorphous blob.

%%* Liz in ''Film/{{Next}}''.

-> ''I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream (...)\\

The way you did once upon a dream''

%% Image removed per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1401920676017234300
%% Please start a new thread if you'd like to suggest an image.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', Aranea visits Jake in a dream, and he is instantly smitten, even calling her the "girl of my dreams." Ultimately subverted, as when they finally meet in person, he isn't in a psychological state for a relationship and . The whole scenario was likely invoked by Aranea in the first place in order to be able to activate Jake's Hope powers.