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| 3 | %% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks! |
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| 7 | [[quoteright:282:[[Webcomic/RoosterTeethComics https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/great_minds_sleep_alike.png]]]] |
| 8 | [[caption-width-right:282:[[https://roosterteethcomics.com/comic/great-minds-sleep-alike/ Great minds dream alike.]]]] |
| 9 | |
| 10 | ->''"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?"'' |
| 11 | -->-- '''Creator/EdgarAllanPoe''' |
| 12 | |
| 13 | %% One quote is sufficient. Please place additional entries on the quotes tab. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | The main character dreams that a giant cantaloupe is out to get them, then wakes up with a start. After a moment of [[CatapultNightmare sitting up and panting]], they realize it was AllJustADream, then gets up and goes to the bathroom for a glass of water — [[OrWasItADream only to find the giant cantaloupe there waiting for them]]. They wake up with a start ''again'', because of course the first waking-up bit was part of the dream. Also available in "Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream", "Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream", and so on, although some discretion is preferred. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | There are two different variations of this. One is where a dream plays out and a character falls asleep in the dream world and has another dream (usually something incredibly abstract and trippy, this may be from deep in the subconscious) before eventually "waking" back up into the "real" dream world where the original dream continues (other stuff may have happened in the original dream while they were "asleep"). The other, more common variant is what's known as a "false awakening" which really isn't so much a dream within a dream as it is dreaming about waking up while still asleep in reality. In RealLife, along with the "dream within a dream" and "false awakening" occurrences is a final variation where someone falls asleep in a dream and as a result wakes up in reality. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | If taken far enough, and if all the many-layered dreams are substantially the same, what you can get is a GroundhogDayLoop. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Sometimes will pull a twist by having a character wake up from a dream, then something else bizarre happens, and an altogether ''different'' character will wake up from that dream. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Compare DrosteImage. See also NestedStory, SchrodingersButterfly, and RecursiveReality. May require an OrpheanRescue to finally wake up. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | This trope is largely TruthInTelevision and is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening a fairly common phenomenon]]. A "dream within a dream" in this context may also be known as a '''double dream'''. |
| 26 | ---- |
| 27 | !!Examples: |
| 28 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder:Advertising]] |
| 31 | * A rather strange [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdsV1ROQTZg Froot Loops ad]] from the early 90s [[RetroactiveRecognition features a young]] Creator/SethGreen telling a friend about a dream Seth had where he woke up and went to the bathroom to find that he had transformed into Toucan Sam. Suddenly, the friend unmasks himself to show Seth that ''he'' is Toucan Sam. After the "part of this complete breakfast" spiel, Seth wakes up again. |
| 32 | ---> "Whoa, what a dream...!" |
| 33 | [[/folder]] |
| 34 | |
| 35 | [[folder:Anime and Manga]] |
| 36 | * In ''Manga/GAGeijutsukaArtDesignClass'', after falling asleep at a lecture on surrealism, Kisaragi ends up going into a bizarre dream. Then wakes up from that into another weird dream. This repeats a few more times until she finally wakes up. |
| 37 | * ''Anime/GalaxyAngel A'': Milfuelle appears to go through a series of dream-within-a-dream {{alternate universe}}s, where her fellow Angels are everything from pirates to robots to giant lizard creatures. Only then is it revealed that a LostTechnology she was using as a pillow really was transporting her to the various universes - and the other versions of her are appearing back in the show's original one. |
| 38 | * ''Anime/JewelpetMagicalChange'': The "Jewelpet: Currently on the Run" segment at the end of Episode 28 has Labra catching Ruby... only for it to be a dream. And then it turns out to be Ruby's dream, and then Labra's again, then Ruby's, then Labra's, and so on and so forth. At the end of the segment, Labra wonders whose dream it is. |
| 39 | * ''Mononoke Soushi'' had this for the main character's ally's StalkerWithACrush [[spoiler: combined with DyingDream]]. |
| 40 | * ''Anime/OruchubanEbichu'': In one infamous episode, Ma-kun has a quadruple DreamWithinADream involving his {{squick}}y sexual fantasies about the title character. Ebichu is a female ''hamster'' by the way. |
| 41 | * ''Literature/{{Paprika}}'': Dr. Chiba wakes up from a dream that was going wrong and goes with her colleague to confront the villain at his house, but realizes she's still dreaming when the bad guy shows up with [[CombatTentacles tree roots for a lower body]]. |
| 42 | * The suspense film ''Anime/PerfectBlue'' use this device multiple times (as well as showing us conversations or scenes that seem like they're really happening, only for a director to yell "cut!" -- the main character was just filming a scene in the television show she's in) to ramp up the suspense and paranoia that the main character feels. |
| 43 | * ''Pyuu to Fuku! Jaguar'': One chapter of the manga ends with Piyohiko waking from a dream and becoming inspired to take up playing the recorder. Then it turns out this was a dream Jaguar was having. |
| 44 | * ''Manga/SchoolRumble'': The final episode of the first season involves a manga within a dream, within a dream, within another dream. ... [[MindScrew Maybe]]. |
| 45 | * In episode 30a of ''Anime/{{Tamagotchi}}'', Mametchi and Chamametchi have a nightmare where [[spoiler:everyone except them and Hapihapitchi are turned into Mamametchi, and they have to find the real Mamametchi among them]]. When they wake up, they have another nightmare where [[ItMakesSenseInContext Mamametchi serves them corn]] before finally waking up for real. |
| 46 | * ''Anime/UruseiYatsura'': An episode centering around Mrs. Moroboshi involved her continually waking up, discovering that everything up until that moment had been a dream. There is even a suggestion that the events of the series are a dream, and the book The War of The Worlds is the actual reality. (Though she does wake up in another reality where both are true) The episode ends with the characters ringed around Mrs. Moroboshi and singing a children's song which is very chilling when you consider it's lyrics ("Oh little bird, when will you escape the bird-cage?") |
| 47 | [[/folder]] |
| 48 | |
| 49 | [[folder:Asian Animation]] |
| 50 | * ''Animation/HappyHeroes'': In Season 5 episode 21, Big M. is told by the commander to hand in his plan to invade Planet Xing by tomorrow and finds that he hasn't written anything down for the plan yet. He then wakes up to find that it was just a dream and that he managed to write one up... only to then wake up from ''that'' dream and find that he really hasn't written anything yet. |
| 51 | [[/folder]] |
| 52 | |
| 53 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 54 | * The comic ''Future Shock'' starts with a woman at her home being attacked, only to wake up in her bed. After a short while, we discover that this is also a dream; she is in her psychiatrist's office .... or is she?? At the end of the comic, we discover "said" psychiatrist is actually a patient himself having his own dream. Trippy, isn't it???? |
| 55 | * Happens in ''Little Ego'' at least once. Ego wakes from a dream where she was trapped in harem only to find one of the harem girls is in bed with her. She awakes a second time as the harem girl starts trying to have her way with her. |
| 56 | * ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'': Dream 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. |
| 57 | * One of the ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' comics used this as a RunningGag. Mario would wake up, find a note that the Princess had been captured by King Koopa, and run off to save her. He is immediately and humorously killed by the first {{mooks}} he encounters, only to wake up in bed and find a note... |
| 58 | * ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 Vol. 2]]: 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. |
| 59 | [[/folder]] |
| 60 | |
| 61 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 62 | * ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': |
| 63 | ** In [[https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/11/19 this comic]], Calvin puts on his clothes, walks out the front door, falls from an inexplicably great height, and wakes up in CatapultNightmare fashion - then does it all over again. Naturally, he's afraid to get up afterwards. |
| 64 | ** Watterson liked this one. It was also used at least once as simply Calvin waking up on a schoolday, putting on his clothes, eating breakfast, and walking out the front door. But as he approaches the bus stop he hears his mother telling him to wake up, before he awakens in his bed again - every little school-hating kid's nightmare. |
| 65 | --->'''Calvin:''' My dreams are getting way too literal. |
| 66 | * ''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. |
| 67 | * Parodied in a ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot'' strip; Jason dreams he's one of ComicBook/TheAvengers, then he wakes up and dreams [[Film/ANewHope he's on Tatooine]], then he wakes up and dreams he's in [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings Middle-earth]]. Then he actually wakes up, and Andy says it was a mistake to let him see ''Film/{{Inception}}''. |
| 68 | [[/folder]] |
| 69 | |
| 70 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 71 | * ''Fanfic/ThomasAbridged'': In "In Which Bodies Hit The Floor", a serial killer stalks and kills the engines one by one. It's just in James' head, but when he wakes up next to Busta Rhymes he realises he's still dreaming and screams. |
| 72 | * In ''Fanfic/LifeOnThedas'', the narrator lands in one after getting pulled into the Fade. The recurring dream of his station of awakening is implied to be the third dream level, or limbo. |
| 73 | * ''Fanfic/KaraOfRokyn'': In "Kara and the Dreamsmith", [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]] falls asleep and then finds herself floating, and staring straight at her own self lying in her bed. She guess she's dreaming that she's dreaming for some strange reason. |
| 74 | -->Kara Zor-El was dreaming.\ |
| 75 | She was dreaming that she was dreaming.\ |
| 76 | Yes, that was the answer. For there she was, clad in her green nightdress, below the quilt her mother had made for her years ago, in the comfortable four-poster bed she'd had built on Rokyn to resemble the one in which she'd slept on Earth.\ |
| 77 | [...]\ |
| 78 | She was looking at herself lying in the bed.\ |
| 79 | Yes, it was a dream.\ |
| 80 | But why would she dream of herself dreaming? Most curious. |
| 81 | * In ''Fanfic/BattleFantasiaProject'', this is the method by which the Nightmare Factory trick Signum into revealing everything she knows about the Lyrical Nanoha crew. |
| 82 | * In ''Fanfic/WhatYouWishFor'', [[WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse Lori Loud]] has a nightmare while in a coma dream. |
| 83 | * In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14132466/4/The-Delicate-Art-of-Raising-Thestrals The Delicate Art of Raising Thestrals]]'' Harry wakes up after a nightmare and rushes to the bathroom. When he looks in the mirror, his scar has widened grotesquely and one of his eyes has turned red, after which his reflection turns into Tom Riddle's. Then he wakes up and rushes to the bathroom ''again''. |
| 84 | * In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14185059/1/Gaz-FORMER-Mistress-of-Nightmares Gaz: FORMER Mistress of Nightmares]]'', after Gaz unintentionally [[DoNotTauntCthulhu insults Hypno the god of dreams]], he punishes her by sentencing her to [[ComicBook/TheSandman1989 endless waking]]. She then proceeds to have an increasingly disturbing series of nightmares, during which she twice [[HopeSpot seems to wake up]], only for the nightmares to then continue on, before she eventually wakes up for real. |
| 85 | [[/folder]] |
| 86 | |
| 87 | [[folder:Films — Animation]] |
| 88 | * ''WesternAnimation/WakingLife'', naturally for a film about dreaming, has the main character repeatedly waking up from a dream, while still dreaming. Hence, the film begins with a [[RecursiveReality dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream]], or perhaps even further down the line. |
| 89 | * ''WesternAnimation/ShrekTheThird'': Shrek experiences a dream within a dream during the boat ride to Arthur's school. |
| 90 | * ''Theatre/TheNutcracker'' is largely devoted to an extended dream sequence for heroine Clara once the Christmas party is over, sometimes with an OrWasItADream epilogue. The 1979 Japanese stop-motion animated feature of the same title, known as ''Nutcracker Fantasy'' in the U.S., has a dream within a dream sequence during the third act (in which the restored Nutcracker takes Clara to the surreal Palace of Happiness) which like the rest of Clara's dream turns out to be RealAfterAll at the end. |
| 91 | [[/folder]] |
| 92 | |
| 93 | [[folder:Films — Live-Action]] |
| 94 | * ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' starts off with Ripley having a false awakening which ends in a ChestBurster attack. |
| 95 | * ''Film/AnAmericanWerewolfInLondon'': In this horror movie, the protagonist dreams of a group of werewolves wearing Nazi uniforms and carrying machine guns breaking into his home and ruthlessly gunning down his family, before one of them slits his throat. When he wakes up in the hospital he's staying at, he's comforted by the nurse he's infatuated with, but she is shortly attacked by one of the aforementioned Nazi werewolves, brutally stabbing her to death. The guy wakes up for real afterwards. |
| 96 | * ''Film/BodyDouble'': At least one entire theater full of moviegoers left in frustration when Creator/BrianDePalma's ended with multiple instances of this. |
| 97 | * ''Film/ChildrenOfTheCorn'' |
| 98 | ** Father Nolan in [[Film/ChildrenOfTheCornIIIUrbanHarvest the third film]] keeps seeing nightmares about the children, and at one point wakes up into another nightmare of being confronted by Eli before waking up for real. |
| 99 | ** Grace in [[Film/ChildrenOfTheCornIVTheGathering the fourth film]] has a nightmare where she sees Margaret suddenly having wounds on her face and begging for help. She then wakes up to another nightmare where she is stabbed by her. |
| 100 | * ''Film/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' |
| 101 | ** Subverted in ''Film/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe''. The Pevensies are chasing the White Stag at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When they see the Lamp Post, it seems vaguely familiar -- as if it were from "a dream within a dream". But it turns out that the Lamp Post was real, and so was the "Spare Oom", and now they were heading back to England -- to the exact same moment in time they departed it. |
| 102 | ** Played straight in ''Film/TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader''. Lucy is dreaming that she gets up from bed, looks at the mirror, and has transformed into Susan. She wakes up, looks at the mirror, and Aslan talks to her. Then she wakes up again- and is in the real world. |
| 103 | * ''Film/TheDeathsOfIanStone'' begins with the hockey player Ian Stone having a bad night due to a biased referee. On the way home, he gets run over by a train, and wakes up and realizes he's the office worker Ian Stone. He lasts a day before getting [[spoiler:stabbed by his girlfriend]], and wakes up just in time to avoid crashing the taxi he's driving. And it only continues from there... |
| 104 | * ''Film/TheDiscreetCharmOfTheBourgeoisie'': The bizarre scene where the group goes to dinner at the colonel's house, only to find that they are in a stage play, is eventually revealed to be a dream of Henri's. Then they go to the colonel's for real, except it's not for real, as that scene is revealed to be a dream of Francois's. |
| 105 | * In ''Film/{{Hugo}}'', the title character is having a nightmare in where the train derails. Then he has a false awakening in where he has turned into an automaton. And then he wakes up for real. |
| 106 | * ''Film/TheHungerGamesMockingjay'' Part 1 shows Katniss dreaming about a nightmare dream. |
| 107 | * 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.]]" [[note]]Mistakenly, since in the movie, the word "inception" only refers to using a dream to plant an idea in someone's mind.[[/note]] |
| 108 | * ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'': The protagonist dreams of witnessing a cop beating a graffiti artist in a dark alley, an event he witnessed earlier that night, but now the cop is a deformed monster. He wakes up... and sees the monster-cop sitting next to him, and wakes up again. |
| 109 | ** Another example has Trent falling asleep on a coach and dreaming Sutter Cane (the author of the book he is investigating) is sitting next to him. Cane says, "did you know my favourite colour is blue?" at which point Trent wakes up to find the whole world bathed in a blue tint. After an ALMIGHTY freakout, he wakes up again. |
| 110 | * In Korean horror film ''Film/KillerToon'', Ji-yun is relaxing in her indoor pool when she's assaulted by the ghost of her recently murdered publisher. The ghost is about to kill her when Ji-yun wakes up in her pool--whereupon the pool starts to fill with blood. Ji-yun then wakes up for real in her bed. |
| 111 | * ''Film/LeprechaunInTheHood'': Postmaster P. awakes from a dream about the Leprechaun maiming his grandmother. He then gets up to answer the door and finds his dead friend covered in blood, waking him up the second time. |
| 112 | * ''Film/TheMatrix'': Subverted in the beginning, where the main character later finds out that all the "nested dreams" were real after all. Well, real inside the virtual reality he inhabits, at least. |
| 113 | -->'''Morpheus:''' You are a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically this is not far from the truth. |
| 114 | * In ''[[Film/MerlinsShopOfMysticalWonders The Devil's Gift]]'', David walks into his kitchen and notices a bloodied arm. He is then attacked by some kind of furry monster (which has nothing to do with the rest of the film). David wakes up from this nightmare in his bedroom, and is again attacked by the monster, waking him a second time, this time from his couch. When ''The Devil's Gift'' was edited into the family-friendly anthology ''Film/MerlinsShopOfMysticalWonders'', this graphic scene was omitted, for obvious reasons. |
| 115 | * The ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet'' series: This is a common staple of the movies, where the villain Freddy Krueger killed people in their dreams. He's chasing someone, and they wake up! They're safe! Oops, no, they aren't, waking up was a dream too! |
| 116 | * ''Film/{{Nightwish|1989}}'': 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.]] |
| 117 | * In ''Film/Revenge2017'', Jen has an absolutely vicious one with so many layers that [[Film/{{Inception}} Dom Cobb]] would turn green with envy, courtesy of a [[MushroomSamba really bad peyote trip]]. |
| 118 | * In ''Film/ASafePlace1971'', the magician tells Susan a story about dreaming that he woke up, then went back to sleep. |
| 119 | * In ''Film/SheCreature'', Lily falls asleep next to Angus and wakes up to find the mermaid ripping his throat out. Then she wakes up from the nightmare, and finds that the mermaid has eaten her hands. Then she wakes up for real. |
| 120 | * ''Film/SilentHillRevelation3D'' starts out with one of these. After a gruesome dream that ends with Heather being burned alive, she wakes screaming to be comforted by her father. Just when she's starting to relax, he's stabbed through the chest and she wakes again rattled. |
| 121 | * In ''Film/SleepyHollowHigh'', Shannon has a dream where she goes on the work detail to Sleepy Hollow Park and is attacked by the Horseman. Just as she grabbed, she wakes up screaming in Mr. Breezo's class. After school, she goes to the park where the rest of the detail are murdered by the Horseman. Just as she is about to be killed, she wakes up screaming in Mr. Breezo's class. |
| 122 | * In ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', Picard wakes up after dreaming about his assimilation into the Borg Collective some years earlier, during which various robotic parts were grafted onto his body. As he freshens up, one of these (long-removed) components breaks through his cheek from the inside -- and he then wakes up for real. |
| 123 | * ''Film/SuckerPunch'' has women in an insane asylum imagining that they are in a mob brothel. From there, they then imagine they are ass-whomping ninjas or commandos in fantasyscapes. |
| 124 | * In the Korean film ''Film/ATaleOfTwoSisters'', Su-Mi is dreaming of a strange, confusing and creepy encounter in the forest with her dead mother, in which she reaches out and grabs her mother's arm, which suddenly starts to bleed profusely, staining her dress. She is startled awake. A few seconds later, however, she hears a faint scratching sound at the foot of her bed. As she slowly sits up and looks, she sees a ghostly woman with long black hair and deathly pale skin crawling along her floor [[spoiler:(who also seems to bear a close resemblance to the girls' late mother)]], who suddenly rears up and begins to slowly make her way towards Su-Mi, who is paralyzed with fear. When the ghost is standing directly above her, her leg starts to bleed as a hand suddenly emerges from between her legs. Su-Mi then wakes up for real. |
| 125 | * ''Film/TheTheatreBizarre'': everal times in "Wet Dreams", Donnie seemingly wakes up from one of his castration nightmares, only to discover that he is still dreaming. |
| 126 | * In ''Film/WhenEvilCalls'', Samantha has a dream in which she is confronted by the MonsterClown who fixed her phone and granted her wish. She awakens from this only for her to encounter the clown, making her realise that she is still asleep and that everything that has happened since she made her wish is indirectly her fault. When she awakens for real, she does so by [[CatapultNightmare sitting bolt upright in bed]]. |
| 127 | * In ''Film/TheWickerMan2006'', Edward Malus dreams of himself swimming towards the lifeless body of his daughter floating in the water. He then wakes up, only to find himself holding her soaked, lifeless body in his arms. He wakes up for real the third time around and curses. |
| 128 | * In ''Film/TheWolfman2010'', during one of Lawrence's hallucinations while in the Asylum and while healing. |
| 129 | [[/folder]] |
| 130 | |
| 131 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 132 | %%* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' |
| 133 | %%** Happens in #41: ''The Familiar'' as part of the setup and backstory early in the novel. |
| 134 | %%** Even more prominently in #48: ''The Return''. |
| 135 | %%* ''Literature/{{Arthur}}'' used this on one occasion, with the eponymous character remarking "Man, I hate double-dreams." |
| 136 | * ''Literature/AstralDawn''. The dream realms attached to the spirits of the astral plane could be considered dreams within dreams. This is especially true when considering the astral plane is thought of as one gigantic super dream. |
| 137 | * Happens several times, to various characters, in Creator/KimNewman's horror novel ''Literature/BadDreams''. At one point, the heroine spends several (short) chapters cycling through the same two dreams, waking from each into the other, until she finds a way to break the cycle. |
| 138 | * In the ''Literature/ShiversMDSpenser'' novella, "The Curse of the New Kid". Lucas discovers he had powers to secretly cause all kinds of chaos and disasters among the bullies and teachers who picked on him, deliberately allowing an accident for his gym partner to fall on his sadistic gym coach. The next chapter has Lucas attending their ''funeral'' before his school goes TorchesAndPitchforks to kill him over the accident... and is followed by Lucas waking from his CatapultNightmare. And then the story goes on before the final chapter reveals ''everything'' from the second chapter onwards is another long, long dream. |
| 139 | * ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': In ''Literature/SkinGame'' Harry gets knocked out and get berated by his subconsciousness and then seems to wake to find Murphy flirting with him and then joining him in bed, just as it seems they finally [[WillTheyOrWontThey Will]] she pulls out a gun and shoots him in the face which jolts him properly awake. |
| 140 | * Happens frequently in ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}''. |
| 141 | * Plays a large part in Creator/GeorgeMacDonald's ''Lilith'' where the main character falls into a magical sleep, and seems to wake up alone. He meets Mr. Raven who tells him that he is still sleeping. This is followed by him ''waking up'' again in his own home, staying there a few days, and then waking up back in the fantasy world. The book ends with him waking up at home once more, though it is implied that this too, and by extension our entire world, is just another dream within a dream that he will someday wake up from. |
| 142 | * In John Crowley's ''Literature/LittleBigOrTheFairiesParliament'', Sophie makes a deliberate practice of spinning baroquely nested dreams, until at times she (and on at least one occasion Daily Alice) is not certain whether she is asleep or awake. |
| 143 | %%* Happens to the main character in [[Creator/NikolaiGogol Nikolai Gogol's]] ''The Portrait''. |
| 144 | %%* Nypre gets trapped in one during the first book of the ''Literature/StoriesOfNypre'' series. |
| 145 | * In ''Literature/{{Tempted}}'', Zoey is shown a vision of Kalona's past in a dream. |
| 146 | * In ''The Tragedy Of Man'' Adam in his dream impersonates Kepler. Then falls asleep, dreams about being Danton in the French Revolution and when he was executed, he woke up and found himself back in Prague as Kepler. |
| 147 | [[/folder]] |
| 148 | |
| 149 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 150 | !!!'''Award Shows:''' |
| 151 | * Done several times on the opening for the [[strike:2007 Emmys]] [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAwardsCeremonies 78th Academy Awards]] (aka The Oscars), with Jon Stewart waking up next to several beautiful women in succession. Finally he wakes up, sees no one next to him, and rolls over to see George Clooney, who tells him that it's not a dream. Stewart doesn't seem too displeased with this. Hey it's ''[[EvenTheGuysWantHim George Clooney]]''! |
| 152 | !!!'''Series:''' |
| 153 | * BBC sketch show ''Armstrong and Miller'' had one of these in which a man wakes up from a nightmare where his wife's face was melting and goes to get water, only to see her appear behind him with a hideous melted face. Each time the dream lasts longer before the vision of his wife appears. On the fifth or sixth repetition, he quits his job and insults his boss, only this time to be told it isn't a dream. Cue his relief when his wife's face starts to melt again. |
| 154 | * ''Series/AshesToAshes2008'' has a 'coma within a coma' version; Alex gets shot in present day and goes into a coma. In the coma she lives in the 1980s for a couple of years before [[BornUnlucky being shot there too]]. The shock of being shot apparently wakes her up and she goes back to her life in the "real world" for a few months. Then she discovers that she ''never actually woke up'' and in the real real world is still lying in an intensive care unit in hospital. [[MindScrew Being shot in 1982 had put her into a coma in that world for three months in which she dreamt that she had woken up]]. Once she realises this she wakes up from her coma-within-a-coma and returns to her 1980s dream. [[spoiler: She never does wake up from the original coma, learning later that waking up from her inner coma [[DeadAllAlong had coincided with her death in the real real world]].]] |
| 155 | * In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS05E15DarknessAscending 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. |
| 156 | * ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'': In "The Nerdvana Annihilation", the guys get a replica time machine from an online auction. Sheldon dreams that it actually worked, taking him to the year [[Literature/TheTimeMachine 802701]], where he is promptly attacked by Morlocks. Waking up, he finds himself back in the present...where he is again attacked by Morlocks, who Leonard hired to move the time machine out of the apartment. Then he wakes up ''again''... |
| 157 | * The series finale of ''Series/TheBrittasEmpire'' has at one point Gordon being knocked unconscious by an angry goose. He initially wakes up in Noah's Ark, with several of the female cast of the show stating that they've got to repopulate the world. After this, he then wakes up on his way to the interview for the centre, revealing that the entirety of the series was AllJustADream. As a result of this revelation, this retroactively makes any reference to Gordon and the rest of the cast having dreams earlier on in the series, (such as Gordon’s AnxietyDreams in “Stuff Of Dreams”) an example of this as well. |
| 158 | * At the conclusion of the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E22Restless Restless]]" — which is almost entirely dream sequences — [[spoiler:Buffy defeats the spirit of the First Slayer in her dream of the desert, and wakes up in her living room, only to be immediately attacked by the First Slayer again. Surviving, and thus proving that the First Slayer has no power over her, she abruptly awakens again (in mid-quip), in the same chair, this time for real.]] |
| 159 | * An episode of ''Series/{{Dallas}}'' saw Sue Ellen awake from a surreal nightmare in which she was chased by a shadowy JR in his car. Several episodes later Pam wakes up, revealing the entire season to have been a dream -- including Sue Ellen's nightmare. A whole skit was made around it in [[http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/play.shtml?mea=224715 this]] Saturday Night Live Digital Short. |
| 160 | * The ChristmasEpisode of ''Dani's House'' had Max wake up from a Christmas Carol-esque dream and tells Dani to buy the largest turkey with his pocket money and he's going to hold dinner for everyone, and then wakes up for real, freaked that he became completely sentimental. He does become less of a jerk though. |
| 161 | * A ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'' episode had Rob obsessing over some hair loss to the point that he went to bed with a towel wrapped around his head. He dreams that his hair is all gone the next morning and wakes up freaking out. Laura comforts him, and then faints in horror when she sees he ''has'' lost all his hair - then ''she'' wakes up from ''her'' nightmare. |
| 162 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 163 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E7AmysChoice "Amy's Choice"]]: The Doctor, Amy and Rory are trapped in two separate and equally dangerous scenarios (one on board a powerless and freezing TARDIS and one in a small English village overrun by alien-possessed people) by the Dream Lord, who declares that one is real and the other a dream, and if they die in the dream they'll awaken in reality, but if they die in reality... well, as he says, "That's why it's called reality!" [[spoiler:After they "die" in the village scenario and awaken in the TARDIS, the Doctor sets the TARDIS to self-destruct, having realized that the Dream Lord is his EnemyWithin and can only affect dreams, so ''both'' scenarios are dreams. He's right, of course.]] |
| 164 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWho2014CSLastChristmas "Last Christmas"]]: The dream crabs are able to layer dream upon dream to keep their victims from waking up before their brains can be digested. They are able to escape by looking for discrepancies that prove the situation is a dream and [[spoiler:avatars of their subconscious, such as Santa, resisting the crab]]. The result is the Doctor and the other victims fighting their way through multiple layers of dreams including [[spoiler:the fact that none of them are actually in the same place or even time]]. |
| 165 | * Done on ''Series/TheFactsOfLife'' when there's a murderer on the loose. The whole thing turns out to be Beverly Ann's dream...except that it was actually Tootie dreaming that Beverly Ann was dreaming. |
| 166 | * A Halloween episode of ''Series/FamilyMatters'' had Carl suffer a dream-within-a-dream about the evil ventriloquist dummy. He spends most of the episode fighting it, only to discover it was all a dream... only to discover the dummy right next to him. Then he wakes up for real. |
| 167 | * An episode of ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'' has Will being hexed by a psychic. The end of the episode has him waking up from the events as if they were a dream to [[GroundHogDayLoop the morning before]] in which the dialogue from the beginning of the episode is heard. |
| 168 | %%* ''Series/FullHouse'' did this with Michelle being self-conscious about the size of her feet. |
| 169 | * ''Series/{{House}}'''s season 2 finale used this device when House gets shot; the episode is both predictable and compelling. |
| 170 | * Happens repeatedly in a ''Series/TheKidsInTheHall'' sketch. "I had the pear dream again..." |
| 171 | * 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. |
| 172 | -->'''Doug:''' I just had this really weird dream about my job. Honey? |
| 173 | -->'''Dream!Deacon:''' You mean my job? |
| 174 | -->'''Doug:''' AAAAAAAAHHHHHH! |
| 175 | * ''Series/MacGyver1985'': 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. |
| 176 | %%* An episode of ''Series/MadAboutYou'' was based entirely around this phenomenon. |
| 177 | * An episode of ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'' had Marcy repeatedly dreaming that her husband Steve had been replaced with Al Bundy. After waking up and thinking everything was fine, Steve would turn into Al and the cycle would repeat. |
| 178 | * In the ''Series/Merlin1998'' series, the eponymous character describes his journey to Joyous Gard as, "A dream, of a dream." |
| 179 | * In the ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' episode "The Cycling Tour", Mister Pither is tossed into a Soviet prison cell to await execution. He ponders his fate as he drifts off to sleep, and wakes up at home in the backyard. He cheerfully cries "Mother! So it was all a dream!" She replies "No, dear, ''this'' is the dream; you're still in prison!" and he wakes up. |
| 180 | * The ''Series/{{Newhart}}'' episode "A Midseason Night's Dream" consists of dream sequences from Dick, George, Michael, Stephanie, and Larry. Then in the last episode, [[spoiler: it turns out the whole series was a dream.]] |
| 181 | * ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S2E22TheSentence The Sentence]]", Dr. Jack Henson believed that he exited the VirtualReality prison that he created, was convicted of reckless endangerment in causing the death of Cory Izacks and served a 20 year prison sentence. However, he later learns that he had been in the virtual world for the entire time (which amounted to only a few hours in the real world). His guilt at risking Cory Izacks' life created the scenario. |
| 182 | * ''Series/RedDwarf'': |
| 183 | ** The tag on an episode was finding out that they were still trapped in the LotusEaterMachine. Because [[spoiler:Good stuff ''never'' happens to Rimmer in real life.]] |
| 184 | ** A variation on this trope occurs in "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVBackToReality 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.]] |
| 185 | * An episode of ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' opens with JD going through a short chain of daydreams, each one being an almost-kiss that "ends right before the really sexy part." First it's Molly and Carla, then Molly and JD, then Turk and JD, and at that point he breaks the daydream chain, insisting he "doesn't have gay jungle fever." |
| 186 | * ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' |
| 187 | ** In "The Gift", Teyla has a nightmare of a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Wraith]] standing over her bed as she sleeps. She wakes with a start and [[CatapultNightmare rushes]] over to John's rooms, only to find that he's been [[LifeEnergy life-sucked]] in his sleep. She wakes again, for real this time and lies stunned for a while. |
| 188 | ** In Season Four episode "Doppelganger", [[spoiler:Sheppard willingly shares [=McKay's=] nightmare induced by an alien entity that's trying to kill him. The nightmare ends badly and Sheppard wakes up to learn [=McKay's=] dead. It turns out later on in the scene that the alien entity went into Sheppard's brain and the sequence about [=McKay's=] death was his nightmare.]] |
| 189 | * The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E19FrameOfMind Frame of Mind]]" takes this 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 information from his brain. The shifts were due to a defense mechanism of his mind]]. |
| 190 | * In the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E12WakingMoments 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]]. |
| 191 | * ''Series/SuperhumanSamuraiSyberSquad'': An episode puts Sam Collins through a series of nightmares, each beginning with him having just woken up from the previous nightmare. Eventually he wakes up for real and beats up the monster that was causing it. |
| 192 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone2002'': |
| 193 | ** "The Pool Boy": Throughout the episode, the main character keeps waking up screaming each time that a mysterious man kills him. He gradually goes insane when he can't figure out if he's really awake or not every time the loop resets. [[spoiler:In fact, everything he experiences is a dream; he was sentenced for murder and placed in a virtual prison. The man who kills him over and over again is the man he had originally murdered.]] |
| 194 | ** "Another Life": Marvin Gardens, a successful rapper, keeps having horrible nightmares where police interrogators are beating him and calling him 'Dwayne Grant', accusing him of being a murderer. He eventually manages to put the nightmares behind him - along with the guilt over his shady past - and they stop. [[spoiler: In the interrogation room, Dwayne Grant is finally beaten into a coma which he'll never wake from... right before they find out that the ''real'' killer has been caught.]] |
| 195 | * In one episode of ''Series/VeronicaMars'', Veronica keeps having dreams in which her unconsciousness is processing clues about students killed in a bus crash, by talking to those students - often, in the middle of class. During one class, she drifts off, processes a clue about the meaning of the phrase "I AM GOD", wakes up and discovers that she's written "I AM GOD" all over a blackboard she was supposed to be solving a math problem on, and everyone is laughing at her. (Then she wakes up for real.) |
| 196 | * The ''Series/{{Wings}}'' episode "The Big Sleep" features a dream within a dream within ''another'' dream. |
| 197 | * ''Series/TheXFiles'': |
| 198 | ** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS06E21FieldTrip Field Trip]]" has Mulder and Scully [[spoiler:trapped and devoured alive by a man-eating fungal colony whose digestive fluids induce realistic hallucinations]]. Every time they realize this and wake up, they just end up in a dream even more realistic than the previous one. |
| 199 | ** In "[[Recap/TheXFilesS07E02TheSixthExtinctionIIAmorFati The Sixth Extinction II: 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. |
| 200 | !!!'''TV Movies:''' |
| 201 | * ''Film/AliceInWonderland1985'' uses this device to combine ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'' with ''Through the Looking-Glass''. Alice wakes up on the riverbank at the end of the ''Wonderland'' portion and runs back into her house, only to find that she's in Looking-Glass House instead, with the real world and her family on the other side of the mirror. After her ''Looking-Glass'' adventures, she wakes up again, this time in the real world. |
| 202 | [[/folder]] |
| 203 | |
| 204 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 205 | * Italian comedic band Music/ElioELeStorieTese are masters of this trope in their videos: just see the ending of the clip for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AVykXVL_xw "Ignudi tra i nudisti"]] (multiple dreams within other people's dreams, ending with two airline pilots having fallen asleep!). |
| 206 | ** Also, one of their song, "Abate cruento esaminatore" (litterally, "Bloody abbot examiner" - the guys declared they picked up three random words out from a dictionary and ''wrote a song about them'') is a perfect example of this trope. The protagonist dreams of being examinated by an abbot (for some unknown reasons), just to wake up and crash into another dream, and so on. Eventually, he even dreams of being a woman and ''sodomize his husband''. |
| 207 | * In the music video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCy928QJCDE "DARE"]] by ''Music/{{Gorillaz}}'', Noodle is shown to be keeping the giant disembodied head of musician Shaun Ryder in her closet. The video ends with Shaun waking up from the nightmare to discover Murdoc in his bed ("Go back to sleep, honey," says Murdoc). Murdoc then wakes up in his winnebago, gasping in fear. |
| 208 | * ''The Dream Song'' by Joan Baez is about one of these, though the imagery in the song makes clear that the song's narrator is still asleep. |
| 209 | * A variation in the music video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSmOvYzSeaQ "Amazing"]] by Music/{{Aerosmith}}. A guy lives VR fantasies with Creator/AliciaSilverstone. That is itself revealed to be a VR fantasy of Alicia Silverstone. |
| 210 | * ''Dream Within A Dream'' by Propaganda starts with the Edgar Allan Poe quotation. |
| 211 | * Taken to nightmarish extremes in Music/{{Cage}}'s "Among the Sleep". |
| 212 | * [[Music/PinkFloyd Roger Waters]]' album ''The Pros And Cons Of Hitch-Hiking'' consists of interlocking dream sequences. |
| 213 | -->''I awoke in a fever\ |
| 214 | The bedclothes were all soaked with sweat\ |
| 215 | She said "You've been having a nightmare\ |
| 216 | ...And it's not over yet!" |
| 217 | * Music/{{Tool}} references this in "Sweat", the opener to their 1992 debut EP ''Opitate''. |
| 218 | -->''Seems like I've been here before\ |
| 219 | Seems so familiar\ |
| 220 | Feels like I'm slipping\ |
| 221 | Into a dream within a dream'' |
| 222 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdWX0IDhbCU music video]] for {{Music/Sakanaction}}'s "Rookie". [[MindScrew Maybe]]. |
| 223 | * Music/BritneySpears fourth tour is based around this. The title quote is littered through the work. The tour starts with a world within a world and a half awake girl setting up the monsters from the dreamworld showing up on the stage, and it gets madder from there. |
| 224 | * The instrumental track "Dreamer Of Dreams" from Music/JohnZorn's ''Music/MusicForChildren'', as the title implies. |
| 225 | * {{Music/BIGMAMA}}'s "Insomniark" deals with a dream that's apparently four layers deep. |
| 226 | -->''Dreaming within a dream within a dream within a dream\ |
| 227 | Someone please, come wake me up soon'' |
| 228 | * In Music/{{Eminem}}'s "Love Game", Slim's girlfriend attempts to murder him by [[VehicularSabotage cutting his car's brake lines]] before trying to run him down, after which he throws her in a sinkhole and has the street repaved... realises this makes no sense, then wakes up in bed by her side, only to find her pointing a Gat at his head!!... then wakes up for real, declares he's had enough and is [[LoveIsADrug checking into rehab]]. |
| 229 | * Music/{{ABBA}}'s "Don't Shut Me Down" calls their digital avatars this. |
| 230 | -->I'm like a dream within a dream that' been reloaded. |
| 231 | [[/folder]] |
| 232 | |
| 233 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 234 | * In the pre-setting ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' adventure "I10: House On Gryphon Hill", it's suggested that game masters run its story concurrently with "I6: Ravenloft", by having the player characters alternate between waking up in I6's Barovia and I10's Mordentshire. |
| 235 | [[/folder]] |
| 236 | |
| 237 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 238 | * The 2011 ballet adaptation of ''Theatre/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'' opens with a scene in 1860s Oxford depicting Alice Liddell with her family and Lewis Carroll, then follows her into Wonderland for the familiar story... but in the end, instead of waking up where she started, Alice wakes up on a bench in ''21st century'' Oxford wearing modern clothes. Evidently she's a modern ''[[Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland Alice]]''-lover who fell asleep and dreamed she was Alice Liddell dreaming she was the fictional Alice. |
| 239 | [[/folder]] |
| 240 | |
| 241 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 242 | * ''VideoGame/DotFlow'' is heavily implied to be this upon beginning the end-game. To initiate the end-game section and have Sabitsuki [[spoiler:turn into [[SplitPersonality Rust]] ]] [[DreamWithinADream you must be in flow while already being in flow]], the lines are further blurred by the bizarre video that plays when you go in flow for the first time after getting all 25 effects, you then are forcefully [[OrWasItADream woken up to reality]]. Not to mention the waking up animation when [[spoiler:your playing as Rust]] is changed into a red static that closes up on your sprite compared to the normal pinched cheeks animation. |
| 243 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance'': [[spoiler:Sora is forced into this situation when put into slumber in The World That Never Was, being forced to confront all of the existences linked to his own. It also turns out that Riku, instead of merely entering the dream worlds, entered Sora's dreams of the dream worlds as a Spirit Dream Eater.]] |
| 244 | * ''Knock Harder'' is an action/horror game where you're trapped in a series of recursive dreams by a brain-eating alien parasite. In each stage you have to figure out whether you're dreaming or not, then commit suicide or otherwise get yourself killed so you can wake up before the alien consumes your brain. Obviously, you have to make sure you're still dreaming so you don't accidentally die for real. |
| 245 | * ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening'' [[spoiler:is AllJustADream by The Wind Fish, and within that game there's an area called the Dream Shrine which Link accesses by climbing into a bed and going to sleep.]] |
| 246 | * Happens in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' if you get hit by one of [[BigBad Antasma's]] attacks [[spoiler: when fighting him in the Dream World. Mario ends up falling into a nightmare with Antasma chasing him through a death course. He has to find the right portal to escape and resume the battle]]. This Trope is also mentioned by a certain NPC as something that's very dangerous in general. |
| 247 | * This is the conceit of the indie horror game ''VideoGame/NeverendingNightmares'', as the title would suggest. You play Thomas, a young man trapped in an abandoned house full of monsters and ghosts; if Thomas get caught by one, he wakes up back in the nearest bedroom and you have to start again from there. |
| 248 | * If the player fails to meet a loan deadline in ''VideoGame/{{Recettear}}'' and loses Recette's shop/home, Recette, after a brief [[NonStandardGameOver bad]] [[DownerEnding ending]], wakes up on the day that the shop opens to find that it was all just a bad dream. Losing more than once would turn into this trope. |
| 249 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Superliminal}}'', you sign up for an experimental dream therapy session, only to find yourself trapped in a seemingly endless series of dreams where you have to solve puzzles based on PerspectiveMagic to proceed. [[spoiler: The "orientation accident" turns out to have been staged, as part of a ploy by your therapist to test your determination and ability to overcome obstacles.]] |
| 250 | * ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'': First Mario dreams that he goes to Subcon, the land of dreams, then wakes up and, during a picnic on a mountain, finds a cave and the stairway to Subcon, but in the ending of the game, it is revealed that that was AllJustADream too. |
| 251 | * After falling asleep in ''VideoGame/YumeNikki'', Madotsuki can fall asleep again in the dream world. Some fans speculate that even her [[AllJustADream normal dreams]] are this. |
| 252 | [[/folder]] |
| 253 | |
| 254 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 255 | * ''Webcomic/{{Alice|1999}}'' 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. |
| 256 | * In ''Webcomic/BittersweetCandyBowl'', Lucy wakes from [[http://www.bittersweetcandybowl.com/c49/p1.html In The End]] into [[http://www.bittersweetcandybowl.com/c50/p1.html Wonderland]]. Rather unsurprisingly given its title, the events of "Wonderland" are just another dream. |
| 257 | * The dreams in ''Webcomic/{{Builder}}'' are composed of 3 layers, each one wider than the other. |
| 258 | * In ''Webcomic/CollegeRoomiesFromHell'', [[http://www.crfh.net/d/20091104.html this page]] and the following one. |
| 259 | * Happens in [[http://the-qlc.com/loserz/go/175 this strip]] of ''Webcomic/{{Loserz}}''. |
| 260 | * ''Webcomic/MenageA3'' combines this trope with CatapultNightmare after Peggy messes with Zii's head a little too deftly. (February 06, 2014, strip #847, NSFW.) |
| 261 | * This ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'' [[http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1169 comic]] provides a particularly disturbing example. |
| 262 | * [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1849#comic This]] strip of ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal''. |
| 263 | * Happens on [[http://thinkbeforeyouthink.net/?comic=20100813 this page]] of ''Webcomic/ThinkBeforeYouThink''. |
| 264 | * Used in ''Webcomic/UnwindersTallComics'', "[[http://tallcomics.com/?id=118 One of These Characters Is a Brony]]". |
| 265 | * Used in [[http://www.savagechickens.com/2010/07/inception.html this]] Savage Chickens comic on ''Inception''. |
| 266 | * Exaggerated in ''Webcomic/SquareRootOfMinusGarfield'' in [[http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=493 Recursive Nightmare]] and [[http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=1188 Y Combinator Garfield]], which enter an infinite dream loop. |
| 267 | [[/folder]] |
| 268 | |
| 269 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 270 | * In WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic's review of ''Series/FullHouse'', he reaches the end and awakes from a dream about the Olsen twins attacking him like the horrible spectres they are. He realizes he must have dozed off and tries to deliver his catchphrase ("I'm the Nostalgia Critic, I remember it so you don't have to") when he is suddenly ''attacked!'' By the Olsen twins! He wakes up with a start, and tries again...only to be ''attacked!'' After several more attempts he looks around nervously, says, "You know what I do and you know why I do it," and rushes off before he can wake up again. |
| 271 | * Used to an absolutely ludicrous degree in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z4pv7Lm28E Death Hat]]''. |
| 272 | * Used in ''WebAnimation/LuckyDayForever'' to reveal that [[spoiler: the scene where 514 escaped from the LotusEaterMachine and jumped into a screen to make love with a White with Sasiadka's face is all in Sasiadka and 514's minds.]] |
| 273 | * Is the primary trope used in the "Dream" episode of the Series/BroadCity web series on Youtube, functioning as an extra-long loop of dreams within dreams to comedic effect. |
| 274 | * ''WebAnimation/SonicShorts'': Franchise/{{Sonic|TheHedgehog}}'s Nightmare. It starts with a ''Anime/SonicX''-esque sequence of him and Chris, then he keeps waking up, finds characters sleeping next to him and screams at them. |
| 275 | * 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. |
| 276 | * In ''WebAnimation/SonicZombie'', after Franchise/{{Sonic|TheHedgehog}} had a nightmare related to ''VideoGame/SonicForces'', he continually wakes up to more nightmares related to his zombie dreams. |
| 277 | * In ''WebAnimation/{{Underpants}}'', [[spoiler:Sans goes through these in the Spare option of the Genocide ending, first being blamed on for killing Frisk, the second parodying ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'', the third with Papyrus and Sans being literal fonts, and finally, he gets confronted by SANESSS.]] |
| 278 | [[/folder]] |
| 279 | |
| 280 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 281 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'': The 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.]] |
| 282 | * ''[[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. |
| 283 | * One episode of ''WesternAnimation/BackAtTheBarnyard'' ends with the "dream within someone else's dream" aspect, ending with the animals sleeping together. [[ItMakesSenseInContext With Abraham Lincoln.]] [[OrWasItADream Cue screaming from the animals.]] |
| 284 | * [[PlayingWithTropes Played with]] in the ''[[WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead Beavis and Butt-Head]]'' episode "Cow Tipping" when the duo are watching Music/ViolentFemmes' video for "Nightmares". Beavis mentions that he had a "real scary" nightmare the night before where "everything sucked". Butt-Head replies "But Beavis, everything ''does'' suck!", causing Beavis, after a brief pause cueing a ScareChord, to scream in terror under the "revelation" that he is still in such a dream. The rest of the scene involves Beavis doing this every time Butt-Head ''or'' Beavis himself mentions that something "sucks". |
| 285 | * In the British cartoon series ''WesternAnimation/CaptainZedAndTheZeeZone'', one episode has the eponymous character assigned to help a particular kid who was getting nightmares. The thing is, he has to leave a kid's dream before the kid he's helping wakes up, or he will be teleported to the real world with said kid and no way to get back to the dream dimension (the eponymous Zee Zone, where the minds of humans get teleported to magically every night when they sleep). Said kid does apparently wake up and it appears that Captain Zed and his partner were also sent to the real world with no way of getting back, but it turns out to be a dream within a dream. It took a while before Captain Zed realizes it and uses it to his advantage and save both the kid's dream and himself. |
| 286 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Chaotic}}'': In "Chaotic Crisis", Kaz has a dream that all the creatures of Perim have invaded Chaotic and are ready to invade the real world, and wakes up when he averts the crisis, only to see his teacher about to start the invasion all over again, waking up once more. Thinking he's awake for real this time, he gets a call on his scanner from a girl he was crushing on, and begins to realize he's ''still'' dreaming. |
| 287 | * In the ''Justice Friends'' segment of ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'', an episode had Krunk watching a Puppet Pal marathon, and entering the land of the Puppet Pals after being guided by a zebra. After a mess occurs, he wakes up discovering it was AllJustADream... and [[OrWasItADream the zebra appears]]. It cuts to one of the Puppet Pals waking up from the Dream Within a Dream, complaining "Remind me to never watch the Justice Friends marathon again!". |
| 288 | * Lampshaded in the Disney's run of ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}'', when Doug thought Skeeter was vampire, dreaming of himself visiting his friend and finding the proof of Skeeter's vampire nature along with a notepad of people to bite with Patty being next. Doug rushes to her house only to find out Skeeter beat him to it what more it was ''Doug's'' turn to be bitten as vampire Patty points out. Soon his other now undead friends appear and advance on him. Doug then wakes up and relived it was a dream till Sketter and Patty bats suddenly appear. This makes Doug wake up for real moaning "I hate double dreams!" |
| 289 | * ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': In "Nightmare on Killmotor Hill", Lena's magic allows the kids to [[DreamWalker 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. |
| 290 | --> '''Huey''': How are you sleep-sleeping?! |
| 291 | --> '''Louie''': ''(within the dream bubble)'' I just am. |
| 292 | * The "dream within someone else's dream" version happened in the ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' episode "Rock-A-Bye Ed", where Ed has a nightmare about his mom punishing (who looked like Jonny), causing Ed to get an extreme phobia for the said boy... then it turns out it was Jonny's nightmare. |
| 293 | * ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' once did an intro in the episode "Brian in Love", which involves a parody of ''Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood''. Mr. Rogers greets the audience and hears Trolley coming by, but it turns out that Stewie is riding Trolley holding his ray gun and he reveals to Mr. Rogers that he wreaked havoc on the Neighborhood of Make Believe. After that, Stewie makes Mr. Rogers kneel and threatens to kill him, but Mr. Rogers is pleading for Stewie not to shoot him. Stewie eventually shoots him -- but then he wakes up from this looking up to Lois, who tells him that he's just talking asleep. But it turns out that Lois is actually Mr. Rogers in disguise, as he pulls his Lois mask off in a menacing manner. Stewie wakes up again, this time with [[CatapultNightmare a catapult scream]]. |
| 294 | ** Happened to Mayor West in "Grumpy Old Man". Upon regaining consciousness from a multi-car accident, his egg shattered on his windshield which was his high school project before realizing he's not in high school and he's dreaming. Cuts to West waking up in a desert until that's a dream and wakes up from a car accident with his egg intact and buckled. |
| 295 | ** The episode "Big Fat" begins with the Griffins visiting their new neighbours, [[WesternAnimation/AmericanDad The Smith family.]] All goes well until Peter reveals to Quagmire over the phone that the Smiths have been hiding an alien and Stan shoots him dead. Peter then wakes up, relieved that it was all a dream. Then [[WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill Hank Hill]] enters the room, asking Lois "Hey, Lois, what's that fat man doing in our bed?" Then ''he'' wakes up. |
| 296 | -->'''Hank Hill:''' Ugh, damn it! I always wake up before I find out if they can understand the baby. |
| 297 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': |
| 298 | ** In the episode "The Sting", Leela goes into a coma after being stung by a space bee, although at this point both she and the audience are unaware of this. She keeps having many Dreams Within A Dream, which convince her she's going insane, before awakening at the end of the episode. |
| 299 | ** Bender has a similar experience in "Obsoletely Fabulous". |
| 300 | * In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheGarfieldShow'', Odie has a dream, of where he has flying abilities much like Superman. He is waken twice by Garfield. After Garfield and Odie talk the second time around, we see Garfield walk downtown, walking unintentionally into cement, a girl poodle tries to help him, but they both get stuck. Odie comes to the rescue with his flying abilities. After a while, we see Garfield wake up frantically. He talks to Odie who is trying to sleep, and as he goes back to sleep, Odie does too once again dreaming of being a super dog. |
| 301 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'''s movie Big Boogie Adventure, Mandy gets trapped in the Boogey Man's dream world where she keeps "waking up" from progressively stranger dreams as a way of breaking her will. Irwin saves her with a kiss, which she dismisses as the next dream and asks to move along. When she finds out this is reality, she runs to vomit. |
| 302 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/LoonaticsUnleashed'' episode "Time After Time", Ace Bunny suffers from this due to a GroundhogDayLoop. |
| 303 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoon "A Waggily Tale", after a boy torments his dog, he ends up having a dream that he was a dog himself and saw what it was like to be on the other side. After waking up he tells his dog that from now on he'll treat him good, only for the dog to [[AsideComment tell the audience,]] "That's okay with me cause I'm not a dog neither. I'm really another little boy having a dream." |
| 304 | * In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' where Lincoln wonders what it would be like if he had [[Rule63 ten brothers instead of ten sisters,]] [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor but later gets sick of it after seeing what it would apparently be like.]] However, when trying to get back to his original world, he ends up in a dimension where, while more or less exactly the same as his original world, the sexes of Lincoln and his sisters are the exact opposites--meaning that '''[[GenderBender Linka]]''' [[GenderBender Loud]] [[AlternateSelf (Lincoln's female counterpart)]] is the middle child and only ''daughter'' of the eleven Loud children. [[AllJustADream Oh, and then it turns out that the events of the episode were just some really weird nightmare that Lincoln was having.]] |
| 305 | * ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS5E4BloomAndGloom Bloom and Gloom]]" has Apple Bloom experience the GroundhogDayLoop version of this trope. Due to her stresses about [[DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife getting her cutie mark]], she dreams about waking up in the morning with different cutie marks, each time with disastrous results. In the end, [[DreamWalker Princess]] [[DreamWeaver Luna]] helps Applebloom get her thoughts in order. |
| 306 | * ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': In "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", Candace finally busts her brothers, that ends in disastrous results. In said dream, she sees Perry as an agent, causing her to wonder that whats Perry's been doing at breakfast. Suddenly, agents carried off the family, saying Perry has to relocate, ''then'' it turns it out it was just the platypus's dream. As explained in the finale recap song: |
| 307 | -->'''Candace:''' When my brothers got busted, it was only a dream!\ |
| 308 | '''Phineas:''' But who had that dream, was it Perry or you?\ |
| 309 | '''Candace:''' ''[speaking]'' Actually, I think my dream was ''inside'' of Perry's dream!\ |
| 310 | '''Buford:''' My mind is blown! |
| 311 | * In ''WesternAnimation/PoetAndersonTheDreamWalker'', Poet's teleportation power is a "dream within a dream transport", albeit one he can't control until later. For example, Jonas' attempt to escape the Center for Sleep Science leads to him being confronted on a subway car by his Night Terror, which leads to him using his glowy eye power to teleport into a dirty, disheveled bathroom as Poet. The film cuts to Sam looking over him, showing that within that entire chain of events, he was sleeping the entire time. |
| 312 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode "Fear No Mort," Rick and Morty jump down a hole and enter a dream state that brings to life their worst fears. After conquering that fear, they wake up, but then realize they have another fear, and after dealing with that, wake up again. This is repeated half a dozen times. [[spoiler:Eventually Morty realizes RIck isn't even in the hole with him.]] |
| 313 | * In ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'', the episode "To Heck and Back" begins with Karen (a chicken) interviewing for a job. She gets the job, but it turns out that the job is being processed and packed to be sold at a grocery. The episode continues with Heffer and Rocko at the Chokey Chicken, where Heffer dies after choking on a chicken bone. When he arrives in hell, he is "oriented" by Peaches, a devil, and shows him clips of his sins. Eventually, Rocko manages to save Heffer, and he comes back to life. After a few minutes, Rocko reveals himself to be Peaches, and Heffer wakes up in his room. After calming down, Heffer's house turns into the giant head of Peaches, and Heffer finally wakes up at Rocko's front lawn. He goes to Rocko and meets Karen, the chicken at the beginning of the episode, who is headed to the Chokey Chicken corporation for an interview. |
| 314 | ** "Tickled Pinky" did this too, where Rocko dreams that he's in a room full of organs in jars begging not to be cut out, then wakes into another dream where he and Pinky (his appendix) go to a carnival and other things, before waking up from the surgery for real. |
| 315 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991'' 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. |
| 316 | * ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooMysteryIncorporated'': Scooby experiences one at the start of "Stand and Deliver". He dreams he is sharing a romantic dinner with Nova when it is attacked by killer robots. He then wakes up in Nova's hospital room, which is then attacked by the same killer robots. He then wakes up for real and blames the dream on eating too many doughnuts before going to sleep. |
| 317 | * The ''WesternAnimation/SheepInTheBigCity'' episode "To Sheep, Perchance to Dream", much to the narrator's annoyance, revolved around bizarre events being explained away as [[AllJustADream actually being dreams the characters were having]]. At one point, Lady Richington wakes up from a nightmare about her poodle Swanky marrying Sheep and finds to her horror that Swanky has a wedding ring on her paw. After that, she wakes up again to see that discovering the wedding ring was also a dream. |
| 318 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': |
| 319 | ** The first episode after the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" CliffHanger made it look like the shooting incident was a dream (an obvious spoof of the infamous AllJustADream moment that {{retcon}}ned away an entire season on ''Series/{{Dallas}}'', the same show whose "Who Shot J.R.?" storyline was what the ''Simpsons'' storyline was spoofing). Turns out that waking up was a dream (Smithers's dream, to be precise), and the shooting did happen. |
| 320 | ** An earlier episode of ''The Simpsons'' [[PlayingWithATrope played with]] the trope: The second "Treehouse of Horror" episode had a FramingDevice in which each mini-story is a nightmare being had by one of the Simpsons. At the end, Homer wakes from a nightmare in which Mr Burns's head was grafted onto his shoulder -- to find that Burns's head is still grafted onto his shoulder. He reassures himself that he must have only dreamed that he woke up... and the episode ends, with an OnTheNext suggesting that he's stuck with the head for real. |
| 321 | ** Another "Treehouse of Horror" episode shows Lisa and Bart parodying Franchise/SherlockHolmes and Doctor Watson to be part of a Dream within a Dream of Ralphie Wiggum. |
| 322 | ** One of the Christmas episodes shows Groundskeeper Willie enjoying a Christmas dinner surrounded by loved ones, which turns out to be a dream he is having while passed out drunk in his shack, which turns out to be a dream he is having while passed out drunk outside in the snow. |
| 323 | ** Not strictly a dream within a dream, this trope is parodied when Lisa loses a tryout for the school band's first chair saxophone to the new kid Alison. She loses consciousness twice in succession, the second time out of exasperation at losing, and experiences a déjà-vu moment after the second time regaining consciousness. |
| 324 | --->''[Lisa wakes up after having passed out from over exerting herself]''\ |
| 325 | '''Mr. Largo:''' That was a close one Lisa, but you made it!\ |
| 326 | '''Lisa:''' I got first chair?\ |
| 327 | '''Mr. Largo:''' No, you regained consciousness. Alison got first chair.\ |
| 328 | '''Lisa:''' ''[screams, screen fades to black, then wakes up]'' Oh, it was all just a dream!\ |
| 329 | '''Mr. Largo:''' That was a close one Lisa, but you made it!\ |
| 330 | '''Lisa:''' I got first chair?\ |
| 331 | '''Mr. Largo:''' No, you regained consciousness. Alison got first chair. And believe me, THIS IS NOT A DREAM!\ |
| 332 | ''[Lisa screams, fade to commercial break]'' |
| 333 | ** In the episode "How I Wet Your Mother", the Simpsons, with the help of Professor Fink's device, invoke a dream to enter Homer's subconscious in order to find out why he keeps wetting the bed. When the family are falling to their doom, they think they will just wake up and be perfectly fine. Fink informs them if they die in the dream, they die for real. This causes them to pull out the device within the dream and fall asleep to have a dream within a dream. This repeats 4 more times, making it a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. |
| 334 | ** Also played with in "Homie the Clown", where Homer ''daydreams'' about sleeping, where he subsequently dreams; first about eating a sandwich, then about the advertisement for Krusty's clown college, moments after claiming it had no effect on him. |
| 335 | --->'''Homer:''' ''[to his family]'' That's it! You people stood in my way long enough! I'm going to clown college!\ |
| 336 | '''Bart:''' I don't think any of us expects him to say that. |
| 337 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/StickinAround'' episode 'Photo Oops" Stacey has several of these the night before Picture Day. When she wakes up she thinks she's still in a dream, and Main.HilarityEnsues. |
| 338 | * After the bizarre events of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'''s Season 2 episode "City on the Edge of Forever", Cartman [[AllJustADream wakes up from the dream]] only to have his mother feed him insects for breakfast. This is instantaneously followed by Stan waking up and telling Kyle about both this and everything that happened prior. |
| 339 | * 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 to find herself back in the car, falling and crashing again. This time [=SpongeBob=] was arrested, only for her to look down to see herself in a prison outfit. She wakes up again to see one of the prisoners in the car instead of [=SpongeBob=], and then wakes up once more, giving up. |
| 340 | --> "Oh, forget it." |
| 341 | * At the end of one ''WesternAnimation/TazMania'' episode, Francis wakes up from a nightmare and a ton weight (from a trap he set for Taz) lands on his head. Then he wakes up and the weight lands on his head again...and again...and again... |
| 342 | ** [[OrWasItADream He wakes up more bruised each time.]] |
| 343 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' Christmas special begins with Dr. Venture as Scrooge being shown his own grave. Like Scrooge, he wakes from the dream a changed man, his heart grown three sizes, nose glowing red and flying -- he wakes up again, his face on the tv remote as the set clicks from one Christmas special to another. At the end of the show, his Christmas party ends abruptly as the compound erupts in an explosion set up by the Monarch. He wakes up yet again in the family jet, which has crash-landed in Bethlehem. |
| 344 | [[/folder]] |
| 345 | |
| 346 | [[folder:Real Life]] |
| 347 | * Of course as noted above, this trope is TruthInTelevision. However the ''other'' version of this is also technically possible if you choose to sleep inside of the dream you're having, then have a dream inside of the dream. |
| 348 | [[/folder]] |
| 349 | ---- |
| 350 | ->'''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDX_xlZoFwY BWAAAAAAH]]''' |
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