| 1 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1652991030056687900 |
| 2 | %% Previous thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1584587272011883300 |
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| 4 | %% |
| 5 | [[quoteright:300:[[Webcomic/ThePetriDish https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pd_potat.png]]]] |
| 6 | %% |
| 7 | ->''it was just a dream... *notices bed is covered in Pogs and Pog Memorabilia* ..or WAS it?'' |
| 8 | -->-- '''Blog/{{Dril}}''' [[https://twitter.com/dril/status/24284835126 in September 2010]] |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Sometimes, at the end of a DreamSequence, DreamEpisode, or an AllJustADream episode, after the character in question has woken up and demonstrated any [[AnAesop Aesop]] [[OpinionChangingDream that the dream might have been communicating]], there's some small hint that it wasn't a dream after all, even though it quite obviously was... right? |
| 11 | |
| 12 | That hint is often a FantasyKeepsake, some kind of small object from the "dream world" that was given to the character there, innocently sitting on the bedside table. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | This kind of ending is quite often used by young children to create a TwistEnding, and as such it's fairly hard to execute well as a more mature writer, since it's considered a bit of a [[{{cliche}} cliché]] by some, and some detractors even consider it a DeadHorseTrope. Still, Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad, and when done well such an ending can be used very effectively. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | May be an example of TheEndingChangesEverything, though those are usually even more of a MindScrew. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | SchrodingersButterfly may apply to what was, is, and will be the dream, and which one is real. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Related to MaybeMagicMaybeMundane, in that the mundane explanation has to be dreaming, yet it is not a subtrope, since not every Or Was it a Dream? scenario touches on the supernatural. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | Not to be confused with ThatWasNotADream, which is when a character talks about a dream they just had and is then told that they weren't dreaming. If the dream was a nightmare, and it's subverted by having it turn out to be a dream after all, see ShockAndSwitchEnding. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | Compare RealAfterAll, HereWeGoAgain, and TheEndOrIsIt |
| 25 | |
| 26 | '''As with all EndingTropes, beware of spoilers.''' |
| 27 | |
| 28 | ---- |
| 29 | !!Examples: |
| 30 | |
| 31 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 32 | |
| 33 | [[folder:Advertising]] |
| 34 | * A California Raisins ad features The California Raisins performing in the style of Michael Jackson, in an empty fruit bowl on Michael Jackson's table. Michael Jackson wakes up, sees the bowl on his table is full of fruit, and rests his head, realizing it was AllJustADream. Then, the fruit sparkles with fireworks as music comes from the bowl. |
| 35 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l13Kq1HiC6Y Coke version of the 2005 commercial]] for [[Ride/UniversalStudios Universal's]] ''Theatre/HalloweenHorrorNights'' has a man about to be killed by "The Storyteller", only for him to wake up in a CatapultNightmare and realize it was just a dream. Soon after, while he [[EnforcedPlug drinks Coca-Cola]] with his girlfriend, The Storyteller's reflection appears in a mirror... |
| 36 | * "Advertising/AmericanHondaPresentsDCComicsSupergirl": While [[Characters/SupergirlTheCharacter Linda Danvers]] is driving them down the road, Jack, Sally and their dog fall asleep, finding themselves suddenly in a weird, driving-obsessed mega-city called Motorville. After living an adventure along with ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}, both kids and Barko wake up simultaneously and comment they have had a weird dream. Strangely, they have had the same dream, even the dog. As they are comparing notes, Linda -who seems to hint she knows what their dream was about- drives by an advertising board displaying scenes of Motorville. |
| 37 | [[/folder]] |
| 38 | |
| 39 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 40 | * Possibly spoofed in one ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'' strip where after Greece takes it on himself to teach Japan how to enjoy sex more, Japan is seen bolting wide awake in bed, yelling "Is this an '[[AllJustADream it was all a dream]]' ending?! I'm SO GLAD it was that kind of ending!" While naked. And with an equally naked Greece sleeping next to him. [[ImplausibleDeniability Sure it was, Japan.]] |
| 41 | * Shows up in some entries of the of ''Anime/DoraemonFilmSeries''. |
| 42 | ** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitasGreatAdventureIntoTheUnderworld'' has Doraemon and Nobita finding statues of themselves which suddenly appeared in their house [[ItWasADarkAndStormyNight during a dark and stormy night]], and wondering if they both had the same bad dream. [[spoiler:It turns out later in the story that those statues are their ''future'' selves, trying to escape Demon Lord Demaon's minions via TimeMachine by escaping to the past, only to suffer a TakenForGranite fate.]] |
| 43 | ** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheAnimalPlanet'' has Nobita {{sleepwalking}} into the titular planet via a portal of gas which inexplicably opened up in his bedroom. Nobita saw the residents of the other world, all of them andromorphic animals, picks up a flower, and makes his way back through the portal into his house before falling asleep outside the toilet. He dismisses the whole thing as a dream, but later Nobita sees the same flower he collected in a bottle. |
| 44 | ** ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheTinLabyrinth'' has Nobita's father, Nobisuke, making reservations with the Hotel Burinkin while dozing off one night, and thinking he dreamt the whole thing up after looking through a number of travel guides and realizing there's no such hotel on earth. But later on, the mysterious briefcase from Hotel Burinkin arrives at Nobita's household, which Nobita found before his father did, at which point it turns out Hotel Burinkin is a facility on another planet. |
| 45 | ** ''Anime/DoraemonGreatAdventureInTheAntarcticKachiKochi'' has Nobita collecting Carla's enchanted bracelet after a short Antarctic adventure, before seeing Carla, then a stranger, beckoning him in his dreams, where Nobita's inexplicably in the Antarctic ''in his pajamas''. He manages to convince Doraemon and friends to travel to the South Pole to investigate, but then they find the ruins of an ancient city with Carla in it. |
| 46 | * In the ending of the ''Anime/EurekaSeven'' movie, its debatable on whether Renton and Eureka survived and their whereabouts. Is it really their homeland Warsaw? or in Renton's dream world? or even an afterlife world? You decide. |
| 47 | * ''Manga/GetBackers'' manga. It's left up to the reader to decide whether Ginji rejected reality & went back into a virtual reality coma powered by science & magic, or if he was knocked unconscious and dreamed of a parallel universe. |
| 48 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 49 | %% * ''{{Miyuki-chan in Wonderland}}'' |
| 50 | %% * ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'' uses this trope in the ''Saikoroshi-hen'' chapter. Or possibly not, since it was a real world, as well. But since Rika did not choose that one, it becomes a dream. But her matricide still exists. |
| 51 | %% * Shinji after defeating Sachiel in the manga adaptation of ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion''. |
| 52 | %% * Used as a repeated narrative device in the Creator/SatoshiKon film ''Anime/PerfectBlue''. |
| 53 | * The climactic scene in ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'' wasn't a dream, but the title character is convinced it was one. To the extent that she [[RealityWarper rewrote the universe into one where the scene was a dream]]. 'Snow Mountain Syndrome' ends with Haruhi convinced all the weirdness was essentially a waking dream. The possibility of this is explored (and dismissed) as a potential ending for the student movie. |
| 54 | * ''Manga/MakenKi'': The 89.5 omake chapter has Usui dream of getting Aki drunk enough to play Twister with [[ShamelessFanserviceGirl Love Espada.]] Then takes advantage of the situation by having them strip naked, though he covers Aki's nipples and nether region with [[ChekhovsGun heart shaped pasties.]] It lasts long enough for Usui to feel both of them up[[note]]Espada was sober and said [[AllWomenAreLustful she was perfectly willing]][[/note]] until he finally passes out from his nosebleed. When he awakes in the school infirmary and sees Aki is fully clothed, he laments that he had only dreamt it. But, after he leaves, one of the pasties is seen in the trashbin and Aki is visibly disturbed, suggesting the incident might've actually happened. |
| 55 | * The very end of ''Manga/{{Monster}}'' features a scene in which Johan, supposedly comatose, appears to sit up in his bed and reveal to Tenma the true source of his frustration and madness. Then Tenma appears to wake up as if from a dream. Then Johan [[spoiler:appears to be gone from the hospital bed]]. |
| 56 | * ''Anime/NappingPrincess'': It's left a bit ambiguous. Early on, having the motorcycle fly in Kokone's dreams appears to be how they reached Osaka, before Morio realizes that the vehicle has self-driving technology. At the same time, Morio and Kokone definitely shared the dream, which is unusual on its own (although only people aware of the stories are ever implied to have actually joined the dream, so it may just be a coincidence due to them knowing the details). |
| 57 | * The ''Manga/PokemonMysteryDungeonGinjisRescueTeam'' manga ended with Ginji, who had been turned into a Torchic, waking up as a human again. He thinks it was a dream but he soon finds the badge that he received in the Pokémon world. The one problem with this idea is that the beginning of the story shows Ginji searching for his hidden birthday present, which he never found... the present may be the badge, making the adventure AllJustADream after all. |
| 58 | * The first scene of ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' is dismissed by Madoka as just a "weird dream," until she meets the real version of the dream-Homura. This makes it appear to have been a [[DreamingOfThingsToCome prophetic dream]]. [[spoiler:It's actually an ''inversion'' of that trope--it happened in the past, a [[GroundhogDayLoop previous timeline]] that Madoka only remembers subconsciously.]] |
| 59 | * The ''[[Anime/TenchiMuyo Galaxy Police Mihoshi's Space Adventure]]'' special has Mihoshi tell Tenchi and the other girls about a particularly wild case with her partner Kiyone involving the robbery of a special type of energy for a mad scientist's super weapon (said mad scientist being portrayed by Washu), the odd LoveTriangle between a {{Space Pirate|s}}, a member of the Galaxy Police and his fiance from Jurai (represented by Ryoko, Tenchi and Ayeka respectively) and a mysterious magician who, unknown to them, was their newest recruit (represented by Sasami in her first appearance as Anime/PrettySammy). At the end, everyone is knocked out like a light and the only other one not passed out, Ryo-Ohki, even looks like she's dismissed it... until the end, where we find Kiyone, stranded on the remains of the mad scientist's base, screaming to the heavens that she's going to ''kill'' Mihoshi. |
| 60 | * ''Anime/TheBoyAndTheHeron'': In a dream, Mahito takes a bokken to confront the Heron, only for the bird to shatter half of the blade. On waking, Mahito finds the bokken intact in its holder, but after he picks it up the blade shatters like in the dream. |
| 61 | [[/folder]] |
| 62 | |
| 63 | [[folder:Asian Animation]] |
| 64 | * ''Animation/PleasantGoatAndBigBigWolf: Joys of Seasons'' episode 1 ends with Mr. Slowy realizing the characters undergoing RapidAging due to an alien's ship going out of control and causing planet Earth to spin much faster than usual was a dream. Then after the episode ends, we see Wolffy asking for help, implying he really did rapidly age. |
| 65 | [[/folder]] |
| 66 | |
| 67 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 68 | %% The following Administrivia/WeblinksAreNotExamples have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 69 | * ''ComicBook/{{Batman}} Legends of the Dark Knight'': |
| 70 | ** The story "Masks" features Batman apparently [[CuckooNest in an insane asylum]], having imagined all his adventures after years of homelessness when his parents' debts left him penniless. It turns out that it was all a {{gaslight|ing}} by a psychologist who blamed Bats for his criminal father killing his mom in a murder/suicide. The second to last page throws Franchise/TheDCU into doubt. |
| 71 | ** "Legends of the Dark Mite", has a drug-runner being interrogated by Batman trying to blame the death of his confederates on Bat-Mite, which Batman dismisses as the man's drug-addled mind hallucinating. A later story, ''Mite-Fall'', a parody of ''ComicBook/{{Knightfall}}'' has Bat-Mite show up again to recruit the drug-addled man in stopping Bane-Mite. The man stops the monster, but falls victim to the creature's drug "Toxik", sniffs it and his head explodes. While the ending suggests that it was probably a DyingDream due to the man getting high on drugs and throwing himself off the top of a church, killing him, the last page shows Bat-Mite and other Mite-type heroes mourning him with a statue, which casts into question if the previous events really were real. |
| 72 | * Inverted in the "Quantum Quest" story arc in ''Comicbook/CaptainAtom'': there is plenty of evidence in the text to support the supposition that Cap's experience of creating, misgoverning, and ultimately destroying his own universe were just a fever dream brought on by Shadowstorm's attack, but that idea is never considered in the story itself. |
| 73 | * ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'': In Creator/DonRosa's "The Duck Who Never Was", WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck has such bad luck on his birthday that he [[ItsAWonderfulPlot wishes he were never born]] after running into a GenieInABottle. After seeing that virtually everyone is worse off without him and that Duckburg has become a hellhole, he corrects his mistake by wishing everything back. He wakes up and assumes it was all a dream, but after he leaves the museum the genie shows up one last time. |
| 74 | * The last issue of [[Creator/DarkhorseComics Darkhorse's]] ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' Comic Book series involves Godzilla returning to the time of the Dinosaurs after being swallowed up by an Earthquake. Upon exploring his new location, he is attacked by a Giant Dragon Monster simply known as "''The Stranger''". Godzilla and the Stranger fight just as the meteor that killed the Dinosaurs impacts Earth, forcing the Stranger to flee, but not without Godzilla tearing off a piece of his tail as Godzilla plunges into another crevasse. At the comic's end, Godzilla wakes up to see that it was all a dream... Until he notices a piece of the Stranger's tail in his claw. |
| 75 | * In ''ComicBook/MarvelComicsPresents'', [[Characters/MarvelComicsPeterParker Spider-Man]] is woken up by another Spider-Man ("Spider-Mech") who recruits him into the Galactic Alliance of Spider-Men, a sort of neurotic parody of the Captain Britain Corps. When he is thrown back through the portal by a "Doctopoid" and lands back in bed, he naturally assumes it was all a dream, unaware that Spider-Mech's Subspace Spider Signal is still under the bed. |
| 76 | * ''ComicBook/{{Mazeworld}}'': Adam is hanged for the murder of his own brother, but suddenly finds himself waking up in a fantasy world made of mazes, where he has to fight an evil tyrant. After finding the courage to face his fears and emerging victorious, he wakes up back at the scaffold where his executioners cut him down when he's still struggling after hanging by the noose for 10 minutes, his experiences apparently nothing more than a DyingDream. It turns out that he's still clutching the amulet that someone in the Mazeworld gave him. |
| 77 | * Hector Vector in Oink! once had an adventure which resulted in him being made to walk the plank off the moon... whereupon he fell out of bed. But was that moon dust in his pocket? It was just a dream... wasn't it? [[spoiler:Of course it was a dream! How would Hector know what moon dust looks like? It's probably just a bit of pocket fluff. (As a caption below the last frame helpfully pointed out).]] |
| 78 | * While Dream from ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'' isn't exactly the warmest and kindliest guy out there, one of the most cruel punishments he ever doled out was to give somebody who had wronged him the gift of eternal waking. That is to say, the man will have a ghastly nightmare, then as the most horrible part plays out, will startle awake and sigh in relief... only to realize he's in a worse nightmare. And suddenly wake up, etc... ''forever''. As [[FateWorseThanDeath fates worse than death]] go, this is pretty bad. A few years later, however, when that iteration of Dream dies, the guy wakes up. For real. Presumably as a result of some belated mercy, he is not a completely psychotic broken shell of a man -- instead he eventually simply forgets his dream(s). |
| 79 | * [[Characters/MarvelComicsLogan Wolverine]] tracks down the studios set up by the Weapon X program to stage his FakeMemories, but one key period, when he shared a cabin with Silver Fox, does not have a corresponding set, giving him hope that his happy recollections of that time actually happened. When he encounters Silver Fox again, she shows no recollection of the cabin, but after her death, Logan is told the location of the real cabin and allowed to bury her there. |
| 80 | * ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: After Wondy, [[Characters/WonderWomanAllies Steve Trevor and Etta Candy]] fall down a hole in a large tree and end up having adventures in "Shamrock Land" while chasing the Nazi Rudolph Hessenpfeffer at the end of the issue, when they're back in the human world with a captured Hessenpfeffer they seem to think they dreamed it all when they hit their heads, especially since they don't remember it all clearly. As some of the leprechauns and the fairy queen show up again later in ''ComicBook/SensationComics'' it evidently really did happen. |
| 81 | * ''Más Allá del Horizonte'' (Beyond the Horizon), by Leo Duranona (writer/artist) and Cary Bates (writer), published in Spanish magazine ''1984'' in 1978, is the story of Jesse and Allison, two young handsome amnesiacs striving to survive in [[AftertheEnd a post-Apocalyptic world]] against monsters and the last savage humans. They eventually find that aliens had sent [[TheEndoftheWorldasWeKnowIt a gas-based weapon, the Great Cloud,]] to exterminate humankind, and are now surprised to see any survivor at all. When the heroes try to destroy the aliens' mothership, [[BreakingtheFourthWall cut to: Leo,]] a comic-book artist drawing the plot. He's visited by his wife's friends, who are the spitting image of Jesse and Allison -- and then, a weird giant cloud suddenly covers the skies. Leo is speechless. End. |
| 82 | * ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast1992'': In his dream, Link falls asleep on Zelda's lap, complaining about his misshapen arm. When Link wakes up, he finds that someone has bandaged his arm, and he is actually standing in front of the Tower of Hera. |
| 83 | [[/folder]] |
| 84 | |
| 85 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 86 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Candorville}}'' leans pretty hard towards the "wasn't" side. The night Susan [[ImTakingHerHomeWithMe takes home]] a stray dog, she has an apparent nightmare in which the dog speaks to her, hypnotizes her, and tries to get information out of her. In the morning, of course, it's perfectly normal--but the dog's addressing her as "whore" fits neatly with some of Lemont's crazy theories, and provides the first outside indication that his scenes are more objective than [[UnreliableNarrator they seem]]. |
| 87 | * In one ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot'' arc, Paige writes a story for a school assignment. The story is about Jason entering a haunted house and getting attacked by monsters. At the end, Story!Jason wakes up in bed...and his head removable. Not surprisingly, Paige got an appointment with the school counselor along with her grade. |
| 88 | * [[https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/2005/07/10 In this strip]], ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} was about to kick Odie off the table when Odie suddenly spoke and told him not to even think about that. That case of TheDogBitesBack turned out to be [[AllJustADream a dream]]. When Garfield tried to kick real Odie, he turned around like Dream!Odie. |
| 89 | [[/folder]] |
| 90 | |
| 91 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 92 | * [[http://www.billandted.org/stories/masakochan/matrixend.html ''An Alternate Ending to Matrix Revolutions'']] has the events of ''Franchise/TheMatrix'' turn out to be a dream... of [[Franchise/BillAndTed Ted Logan's]]. However, the two endings suggest something more [[spoiler:since the first one features an appearance of Smith, and the other has Trinity]]. |
| 93 | * The driving question of the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fanfic ''Fanfic/AsylumDaemonOfDecay'' is whether Twilight [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness hallucinated her past life]] or if she's currently stuck in a LotusEaterMachine. |
| 94 | * ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' fanfic ''[[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=41169.msg734754#msg734754 The Captain's Log]]'' actually ''starts'' with this trope; the protagonist receives a vision from a minor weather god, who presents him with an amulet as proof that he is TheChosenOne and must lead his people on a quest to build TheArk before a great flood causes the end of the world.[[note]]Unlike the Biblical original, this was less to do with sin and wickedness and more to do with massive incompetence on the part of said weather gods.[[/note]] Then he wakes up... |
| 95 | -->"Just a dream Kubluk, just a dream," he reassured himself. He rolled out of bed, and slipped on his sandals. Standing up, he heard a clink, and looked down. At his feet lay a small golden object. His hands shaking in trepidation, he scooped it up, and sighed as he recognised the golden ship, given to him by Moist.\ |
| 96 | [[ThisIsGonnaSuck "Bugger."]] |
| 97 | * ''Fanfic/CitadelOfTheHeart'' has Chapter 16B of ''Digimon Re: Tamers'' reveal that [[spoiler:most of the catastrophic events of Chapter 16 were all a simulation performed on Grandis by Jiang-yu, making everything from Chapter 16 at first appear to have just been an overglorified dream from Grandis while being mind probed. However, in the light of the results, the reasoning as for how Grandis wound up in Hypnos' building mirror the ending of Chapter 16, and even then, about the only difference between Chapter 16 and Chapter 16B onward is that Brondramon, and the subsequent collateral damage it caused, are mysteriously absent entirely. In addition, considering Enigma's YourMindMakesItReal powers being the cause of the warped reality observed in Chapter 16B, it also apparently caused Henry, Ruki, and Takato's Partner Digimon to suddenly go rogue, and even then, Hirokazu notes his own Partner Digimon is sleeping during the day despite being of a species that would've been wide awake now. Ryo had also vanished, but that was mercifully revealed to be under rather mundane circumstances fairly quickly. However, even then, [[OlympusMons Millenniumon]] is still unaccounted for, [[ExactWords as only Ryo was directly addressed.]] And if one recalls Grandis being TheOmnipresent, and that a RealityBreakingParadox would occur upon his death, one could merely assume the entire universe itself had experienced a glitch in which it outright went under a reboot to solve the problem, but was only able to correct certain "mistakes" and causes numerous other glitches to appear in their places, such as the aforementioned Partner Digimon behaving out of character all of a sudden]]. |
| 98 | * The Phineas and Ferb fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9002326/1/Lovey-Dovey Lovey-Dovey]]'' ends with the revelation that the whole thing was just Perry's dream. Then Monogram tells Perry that Doofenshmirtz has made a Lovey-Dovey-inator, and whether or not the dream comes true is up to interpretation. |
| 99 | * ''The Rainbow Blade'', a ''Nickelodeon'' fanon show was revealed to [[spoiler:be a dream by the main character.]] However, Web uses his Rainbow Blade in several other series he appears in. |
| 100 | * The ''Star Trek: New Voyages'' episode "To Serve All My Days", which involves Chekov undergoing RapidAging to the point where he may have died, [[spoiler:has a final scene at the end of the closing credits that may suggest that most of the episode was AllJustADream]]. |
| 101 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' fic ''Fanfic/AsylumOfDoom'', Gaz falls down some stairs and hits her head while helping Dib investigate a supposedly haunted abandoned asylum. Upon seemingly waking up back in time, being treated as a patient in the asylum, she quickly deduces that it's some kind of nightmare brought about by guilt regarding an argument she had with Dib (over his beliefs making people think he's crazy), which appears to be confirmed when she wakes up from the ordeal back in the present. However, just before she and Dib leave the asylum, she thinks she sees the ghost of another patient she befriended during the "nightmare"; combined with an earlier comment by Dib about the asylum's ghosts giving people hallucinations, it's unclear just how much paranormal activity was at play here. |
| 102 | -->'''Closing Author's Note''': [[LampshadeHanging Insert Rod Sterling-style narration, questioning if Gaz's nightmare was a vision given to her by ghosts to teach her a lesson or just a concussion-induced manifestation of subconscious guilt, here.]] |
| 103 | * A long-ago fan artist did a very well-drawn ''ComicStrip/{{Doonesbury}}'' saga in which Zonker falls asleep while watching ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' and dreams he's in one of their adventures. On a planet with beautiful hallucinogenic plants, he is entrusted with a flower from said world. When he wakes, he's disappointed -- until he realizes [[FantasyKeepsake he's holding the flower]]. Cue his happy AsideGlance to us. |
| 104 | * The ''Manga/SpyXFamily'' [[Rule34 NSFW doujin]] "Whether Asleep or Awake" tells how Loid has been having erotic dreams involving Yor for the past several days, and is starting to wonder if he's falling in love with her. After accomplishing a mission with Frankie and parting ways after sharing a celebratory drink at a bar, Loid walks home and thinks of hiring a prostitute to "blow off some steam," but decides against it and goes home where he's grateful to have a family welcoming him back. After they put Anya to bed, Loid and Yor go to their respective bedrooms to sleep, and sometime later, Loid wakes up to find Yor naked and asking him to have sex. Thinking he's having a lucid dream Loid gets overly frisky to the point Yor gets nervous and knocks him to the ground by kicking him in the face, and after she apologizes for hurting him, they climb back onto the bed and have sex, falling asleep when they finish. The following morning, Loid wakes up and concludes the dreams mean that he is in love with Yor and decides to confess his feelings for her, but before he can say anything, Yor serves him a cup of tea. When Loid notices the tea tastes different, he asks Yor about it and she responds that a coworker went abroad for vacation and gave her the tea as a souvenir. When Loid sees the packaging, it's advertised to boost sex drive and after they finish their drinks, Yor strips down and comes on to him again, making him wonder if he's still asleep. |
| 105 | [[/folder]] |
| 106 | |
| 107 | [[folder:Films — Animation]] |
| 108 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 109 | %% * ''Literature/ThePolarExpress''. |
| 110 | * At the end of ''WesternAnimation/ThePolarExpress'', the Hero Boy gets off the train, walks back into his house, and goes to bed. When he wakes up in the morning, he accidentally rips the pocket of his bedrobe the exact same way he did when he was woken up by the arrival of the train at the beginning of the film, implying that he dreamed the whole thing. Then his sister finds the sleigh bell he got from Santa at the North Pole under the Christmas tree... |
| 111 | * This is what happens at the end of ''WesternAnimation/BarbieAFairySecret''. Once the main plot is finished, Franchise/{{Barbie}}, Ken and Raquel are welcome to come back to Gloss Angeles whenever they want, but since Raquelle proves [[CannotKeepASecret not to be a good secret keeper]], Graciella tells them [[LaserGuidedAmnesia their memories of]] [[ResetButton the whole adventure]] [[StatusQuoIsGod will be erased]], and sends them home. They wake up, thinking it was all a dream, but Barbie and Raquel are now friends. In the last scene, Carrie and Taylor grow their fairy wings out of their sight before leaving. |
| 112 | * In ''Anime/LittleNemoAdventuresInSlumberland'', a couple times Nemo wakes up in his bed, thinking that the whole adventure was a dream; only to find the [[AmplifierArtifact Royal Scepter]] from his dream under the covers of his bed. |
| 113 | * ''WesternAnimation/ThePagemaster'': Richard wakes up from his adventure in Fictionland. However, at the end the shadows and voices of Adventure, Horror, and Fantasy can be seen and heard in the real world. |
| 114 | * ''WesternAnimation/PeterPan'' follows this trope when parents George and Mary return home from their party on the same night, to find Wendy asleep at the window. Nana licks her to wake her and she yawns before immediately telling her parents about what had happened (John and Michael, meanwhile, are still asleep and Nana and Mrs. Darling simply readjust their duvets). A pirate ship made of clouds sails across the moon shortly thereafter, only for the wind to break it into clouds itself. In the end it's left [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane ambiguous]] whether Wendy and her brothers really did fly to Neverland or whether Wendy just dreamed it -- although George, watching the ship, says he knows he's seen it before. |
| 115 | * In ''Anime/TheWizardOfOz'', Dorothy hits her head before transporting to Oz, making the viewer think that Oz is a dream. However, Oz is a real place. |
| 116 | [[/folder]] |
| 117 | |
| 118 | [[folder:Films — Live-Action]] |
| 119 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 120 | %% * ''Film/DeadOfNight''. |
| 121 | * ''Film/The5000FingersOfDrT'': After Bart wakes up, both he and Mr. Zabladowski still have their thumbs bandaged from the BloodOath they made in the dream-world. Mr. Zabladowski, not "remembering" the dream, doesn't know how it got there. |
| 122 | * Jan Svankjamer's ''Film/{{Alice|1988}}'' has Alice wake up from her nightmare and find that the White Rabbit is missing from his case, leaving it ambiguous as to whether the events were real or if she's still dreaming. |
| 123 | * Used in ''Film/AnAmericanCarol'', where the protagonist wakes up after being visited by the long-dead President JFK and thinks (desperately hopes) it was all a dream. |
| 124 | * In ''Film/BlackKnight2001'', [[Creator/MartinLawrence Jamal]] falls into a moat at a Medieval theme park and finds himself in the Middle Ages. He ends up saving the land from an usurper, finds a {{Love Interest|s}}, and is knighted by the Queen. Just then, the Queen shouts "clear!", and Jamal is shocked with defibrillator paddles by a paramedic who looks like the Queen. He assumes it was all a dream, but the experience turns his life around (he goes from a slacker out for easy money to a hard-working man with dreams who is taking night classes as the local community college). Six months later, he forgets the "dream" and meets a woman who looks remarkably like Victoria, his Love Interest from the "dream", whom he called Vicky. Unlike Vicky, Nicky speaks with an (over-the-top) American accent. He appears to recognize her from somewhere but can't remember where (he assumes he must've seen her at the community college where she works). He then notes a scar on her neck in the same place where Sir Percival drew Victoria's blood in the "dream". Nicky can't remember where she got the scar, only that it was a long time ago. He ends up chasing after her, falling into the same moat... and getting up in AncientGrome [[HereWeGoAgain being chased by lions in the Colosseum]]. |
| 125 | * In ''{{Film/Click}}'', Adam Sandler falls onto a bed in Bed, Bath & Beyond, falling asleep for a couple of seconds, before going back to the loading dock and meeting Mort, who gives him the "Universal Remote." After fast-forwarding through (and missing) most of the important parts of his adult life, and finding his wife married to another man whom his daughter calls her 'second father', he dies of a heart attack, twenty-something years in the future. Later, he wakes up, back on the same bed in BB&B and makes his way home thinking it was all a dream. When he arrives home, he finds the same remote, with a note from Mort saying everyone deserves a second chance and that Mort knows he'll do the right thing, this time. Sandler's character promptly throws it into the trash, where it finally stays. |
| 126 | * In ''Film/{{Contact}}'' Eleanor Arroway is led to believe that the climax of the film was all just a dream brought on an anomalous effect of the Machine, and not an actual 18-hour trip to the Vega Star system, but a fall of several seconds. However, an investigator notes that, while the electro-magnetic interference could have caused her video camera to record static during the fall, it recorded ''18 hours of it'', meaning that something outside the normal laws of physics occurred when Elly dropped through the machine, it just wasn't recorded. |
| 127 | * ''Film/DeadEnd2003'', the ending of which is peppered with a mixture of references to things encountered in the 'dream' (A sign reading 'Marcott' in the dream, a doctor of the same name in the real world), characters dying in ways relevant to a pretty bad car accident and various other things, which seem to suggest pretty clearly that the film has been entirely dreamed up by the survivor from crash to hospital... until someone cleaning up from the accident locates something her father wrote during the 'dream'. |
| 128 | * ''Film/Dementia1955'' is a MindScrew movie in which a woman kills a man, cuts his hand off (the man was clutching her necklace and she couldn't pry his fingers open), then eventually wakes up in a CatapultNightmare. The narrator, who had actually said "All just a dream", then says "Or was it?", as the camera zooms in to a necklace hanging out of the woman's drawer. The woman then walks over and opens it and there's the severed hand--which closes around the necklace. |
| 129 | * ''Film/{{Dreamscape}}'' had a sequence like this. Where the hero and the girl, on getting on a train in real life, encounter a train conductor they had encountered in a dream sequence earlier in the movie. |
| 130 | * ''Film/EdwardScissorhands'' also does something similar. The FramingDevice is a girl being told a story by her grandmother. The grandmother is in fact [[spoiler:[[CharacterTitle Edward]]'s {{Love Interest|s}}, who states that before Edward's adventures, it never snowed. And it now does with regularity. It is in fact Edward carving snow sculptures in her memory, the ice flakes blowing over the town]]. What makes it ambiguous is that it could be a coincidence or she could be making that detail up. |
| 131 | * ''Film/TheGoldenChild''. Sardo Numspa appears in Chandler Jarrell's dream, leaving a long burn on Jarrell's arm. When Chandler wakes up, the burn is real. |
| 132 | * In ''Film/{{Gozu}}'', the protagonist has a strange dream where he is being licked by a man in underwear wearing a cow head. Then he wakes up via CatapultNightmare and finds the leather pouch in his lap that he was given by the man in his dream. |
| 133 | * ''Film/AHauntingAtSilverFalls'': Jordan's ghost dreams begin to bleed into the real world. She wakes up from one with her finger covered in ghost saliva and her feet dirty from walking in the forest, and in another instance, the ghost begins to drown her in the bathtub; Anne and Kevin come in after hearing her scream to find her on the floor of the dry bathroom, soaking wet and unconscious. |
| 134 | * ''Film/{{Inception}}'' is built around this trope. Specifically, the characters go through various layers of dream-state as the film progresses, and the ending has them "waking up" from the dream state. But it's more ambiguous than that, because the main character, Dom, has a talisman that continues spinning indefinitely if he's in a dream, but eventually stops spinning if he's in real life. So, naturally, the last scene of the film shows the talisman spinning. [[TheUnreveal And ends before we find out whether it stops]]. |
| 135 | * ''Film/{{Interstate 60}}'' has an early scene with Neal getting hit on the head. After his brain injury, he has all sorts of crazy experiences on the mythical Interstate 60, including meeting (and consummating a relationship with!) his dream girl, Lynn. At the end of the movie, he meets Lynn in real life, but she has no memory of him. However, the painting he made during their romance is on display at the art competition that Lynn is running! |
| 136 | * The ending of ''Film/{{Krampus}}'', after a night of horrible Christmas-themed monsters try to kidnap and send to hell an entire family, [[spoiler:everything resets and the kid protagonist awakes in the normal Christmas morning and non of his relatives seem to remember anything unusual]]. Until he opens one of his presents (the one used to summon Krampus) and all the family gets quiet as the memory of what had happened suddenly comes back. |
| 137 | * In ''Film/TheMask'', Stanley wakes up with the titular artifact in his pillow, and thinks the bizarre incidents caused by masking himself were just a dream. Then a policeman comes to his door, telling him a masked individual attacked the landlady and jumped out the window. |
| 138 | * At the end of ''Film/MastersOfTheUniverse'', everything seems to be returned to normal, until the female protagonist [[spoiler:sees that her dead parents are ''still alive''. She prevents the path that lead to their deaths in the old timeline, then she and her boyfriend joyfully look at the artifact the Sorceress gave them to remember Eternia]]. |
| 139 | * Straight example in ''Film/MirrorMask'', when Valentine's real-world equivalent is introduced after the whole adventure, subverting AndYouWereThere. |
| 140 | * ''Film/TheNightFlier'': At one point, Richard Dees has a nightmare about the vampire hovering over him as Richard is sleeping in his motel room. He wakes up and it turns out to be a dream... except immediately afterwards he finds out that the vamp left a warning written in blood on his window. |
| 141 | * Invoked early on to establish the conflict in every single ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet'' movie. |
| 142 | * In the horror movie ''Film/{{Nightwish|1989}}'', a scientist and his graduate students investigate lucid nightmares through sensory deprivation. The movie opens with someone being pursued in a dark alley by cannibals before waking up in a water tank. Most of the film then takes place in an OldDarkHouse where they investigate paranormal occurrences, start hallucinating, and discover alien parasites that burrow in people's chests. [[spoiler:At the end the female lead wakes up back in the laboratory after experiencing her own death. All seems normal until she tries to leave and finds herself back in the alien cave again. Like SchrodingersButterfly, she doesn't know if she's still dreaming or lost her sanity completely.]] |
| 143 | * The 'fantasy' world in ''Film/PansLabyrinth'' may or may not have been real. The ending presented a hint that it was not real, but WordOfGod said that it was. |
| 144 | ** The movie also presented a hint that it WAS real: [[spoiler:namely Ophelia getting out of a locked second floor room. The camera shows the chalk 'door' she drew and used to get out according to WordOfGod]]. |
| 145 | ** The ending would be ''impossible'' if it wasn't for the magic. The Labyrinth ''must'' open to Ophelia for her to get away from Captain Vidal that quickly, leaving him confused at the dead end. |
| 146 | * In ''Film/ThePresidentsAnalyst'', the pressures of the job turn the title character paranoid to where he sees spies tailing him everywhere -- he wakes up from a nightmare that his girlfriend is a spy. Shaken, he calls her on the phone, and as she soothingly talks to him she opens a drawer in her nightstand and switches on a tape recorder... |
| 147 | * ''Film/PrinceOfDarkness'' and its mirror ending, even though it does not technically show you the other side of the mirror, nor the anti-god, still leaves the possibility of the entire movie being (or not being) a dream open for debate. |
| 148 | * The coda for ''Film/ReturnToOz'' has the scene where Dorothy touches her new bedroom's mirror, only to have a vision of Ozma and Billina manifest itself. |
| 149 | * ''Film/TheScienceOfSleep'' doesn't use this an ending trope. Stéphane has lots of dreams and it becomes difficult to know what is and isn't real... also due to the fact he isn't sure either. |
| 150 | * In ''Film/TheSantaClause1'' Scott Calvin wakes up in the morning after his visit to the North Pole in his own bed and assumes it was all a dream but becomes very freaked out when he is wearing the pyjamas that Judy the elf gave him in the supposed "dream". |
| 151 | * Also in ''Film/{{Scrooge|1970}}'', near the beginning. When ghost Marley takes Scrooge flying and a terrifying ghost flies toward them, Scrooge covers his face. He then looks around, sees that he's in his bedroom, and says aloud, "It was a dream." Then Marley announces his presence nearby. |
| 152 | * This trope is a key part of Creator/TerryGilliam's "Dreamer Trilogy", for self-evident reasons, as they are built specifically around Gilliam's belief in the power of imagination. |
| 153 | ** ''Film/TimeBandits'' is the story of a young dreamer. At the end, Kevin is rescued from his burning room by firefighters, and is thus convinced that the entire weirdness was just a dream -- and indeed the entire movie was filled with clues that everything was a dream inspired by the toys and decorations of his bedroom. Then he finds in his pocket ''the Polaroids he took of the events in the dream''. Just before his parents are destroyed by a fragment of [[SealedEvilInACan Evil in a broiler oven]]. The [[ParentalSubstitute Father Figure]] he met in his dream gives him a wink as the camera pulls away. |
| 154 | ** ''Film/TheAdventuresOfBaronMunchausen'' is the story of an old dreamer, and it takes the trope to new levels. Throughout the movie, the city has been besieged, with cannon-fire falling like rain and a sense of doom in the air. Its titular Baron finishes his [[RefugeInAudacity ridiculous]] yet hilarious and moving yarn by stating that though he died, DeathIsCheap to him and "everyone who had a talent for it lived HappilyEverAfter." He then [[spoiler:mounts his horse and rides out of the city, which ''is as it had never been attacked''. The townspeople are in awe, but his most devoted listener, Sally, states in wonder that, "It wasn't just a story, was it?". The Baron waves to them as he [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence vanishes as if he was never there]]]]. |
| 155 | * In ''Film/{{Toothless}}'', the ending shows Rogers in the mortal world as a crossing guard, and Bobby and Thomas both remember Katherine from her time as a tooth fairy. |
| 156 | * The original ''Film/TotalRecall1990'' plays with this extensively. The protagonist Quaid goes to a place called Rekall, which can implant fake memories for people looking for an adventure but unable to actually have one. He wants a spy story, and he gets one -- he wakes up in the same place, but now he's apparently accessed suppressed memories of ''actually'' being a spy and is being chased by other spies. He later encounters someone who claims to be from Rekall telling him that he's still in a virtual reality experience, but it's gone wrong and if he doesn't snap out of it he'll have to be lobotomized. And the films ends with [[spoiler:a fade to white, in which he wakes up in his chair and asked if he enjoyed his vacation]]. So was it all a fake memory, or wasn't it? There's a lot of evidence in the film either way: |
| 157 | ** A lot of questions are raised by Quaid waking up screaming that the Rekall people blew his cover, the only time we see Quaid's "Hauser" persona outside of Quaid looking at a screen. Is this real or not? But if it's not real, where does it fit into the whole Rekall experience? |
| 158 | ** The escapade to Mars is part of Quaid's scenario if you look closely, and the specific title, [[spoiler:"Blue Skies on Mars"]], foreshadows how Quaid [[spoiler:restores the Martian atmosphere and turns the sky blue]]. |
| 159 | ** Most of the characters whom Quaid meets on Mars appear in the movie sequences before the Rekall experience -- even Quaid's {{Love Interest|s}}, who greatly resembles a news reporter Quaid spots on Earth. But not ''all'' of the characters do. The main doctor may or may not also be foreshadowing when he mentions "crooked taxi drivers". |
| 160 | ** Quaid is asked to describe a Love Interest for his fake memories when he first goes to Rekall. The woman he creates, "model 41", bears a near-perfect resemblance to the one we see on Mars. As for his actual wife, she seems oddly preoccupied with flushing the idea of a trip to Mars out of Quaid's head, as if she knows about Quaid's psychological issues -- which makes a lot more sense if she's actually [[spoiler:in league with the spies chasing Quaid]] in the "dream". |
| 161 | ** The lobotomy threat adds an extra layer on it -- was he lobotomized or not? Even if it was a dream, did it really go wrong and end with his lobotomy, or was that all part of the dream, too? |
| 162 | * In ''Film/WaynesWorld 2,'' the story gets kicked off by Wayne having a dream where a "weird, naked Indian" walks him through the desert to a meeting with [[Music/TheDoors Jim Morrison]]. Jim tells Wayne that he should put on an outdoor concert in Aurora, IL, and that he should go to London to seek out Del Preston, King of the Roadies, to ask him for his help. Also that Garth's ''Sports Illustrated'' Swimsuit Issue and Football Phone got lost in the mail and that Garth will be be receiving both shortly. When Wayne wakes up in the morning, Garth shows up with the phone and swimsuit issue. Later, when they find Del, he tells them he had the same dream Wayne did.[[note]]This bit was adapted from ''Saturday Night Live,'' where more than once Wayne and Garth would emerge from a Flex-O-Tron vision to discover that one aspect of it had crept into real life.[[/note]] |
| 163 | * ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'': |
| 164 | ** Early storyboards have the Ruby Slippers appear under the bed at the end. And even without this, there's the similarity of all the characters to people she really knows. |
| 165 | ** The 2011 Creator/AndrewLloydWebber-produced ScreenToStageAdaptation references this by having a gust of wind blow open a cabinet in the bedroom, revealing -- if only to the audience -- the Ruby Slippers. |
| 166 | * In ''Film/TheWolfman2010'', did Gwen really visit Lawrence in the Asylum or was she just a hallucination? |
| 167 | * In ''Film/YoungHarryHoudini'', Eric/Harry dreams that he escaped during a stunt. At the end of the film, he wakes up and is told that he had failed to escape and was knocked unconscious. He then reveals that he still has a crystal given to him during the dream. |
| 168 | [[/folder]] |
| 169 | |
| 170 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 171 | * The ''Literature/AstralDawn'' series by Adam R. Brown. Caspian wakes up from his first surreal dream wondering if it truly was all a dream or if there was more to it than that. At some points during his first adventure, he's told "This is more than just your dream". Caspian later gets confirmation when he discovers his grandfather really had passed away. |
| 172 | * ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Nightmares'': The end of ''Halloween Party'', as Michael awakens to find the broken stem of a punch glass from the titular party in his pocket. |
| 173 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 174 | %% * ''Literature/TheFrostGiantsDaughter'' by Robert E. Howard. |
| 175 | * There's a weird scene at the end of the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/SoulMusic'' which has the ''feel'' of this ending (with Death of Rats and Albert popping up in the background), even though there's been no suggestion it ''might'' have been a dream. At the end of the novel, [[spoiler:Death states that the events of the novel had happened, but also not happened. The guy who was the center of it all had been a rock star, and at the same time worked at a fish-and-chip takeaway]]. A small line in ''Literature/TheTruth'' confirms that the Music With Rocks In incidents had happened, but the ultimate fate of the guy who initiated it was never known. |
| 176 | * ''Literature/TheDreamEatersAndOtherStories'' features ''The Dragon's Claw'', a short story in which four teenagers visit a land of myth. It seems at the end that they were dreaming or hallucinating, but then ... |
| 177 | * ''Literature/TheFamousFive'': Dick certainly wonders this in ''Five on a Hike Together'', when he is sleeping in a barn, and a mysterious person outside calls him by his name, and gives him a message that he does not understand. When telling the others about it, they are convinced that it was a dream, until Dick remembers that he was given a piece of paper as well, which he then finds. |
| 178 | * Near the end of ''[[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=u2A4BNkN--oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Farther+up+and+farther+in&source=bl&ots=vquxYMuHp0&sig=EJZlJ0aR8ORmi5v6Eu7znJsCHOc&hl=en&ei=IC2rTLqtMYKUjAf33_jsBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false Farther Up and Farther In]]'', the hero wakes up in hospital thinking that all the weird stuff that happened before was a near-death hallucination. Until he opens his computer and finds it holds the story he wrote in Asgard at the start of Part 3... |
| 179 | * In Ellen Raskin's ''Figgs and Phantoms'' Mona Lisa Figg realizes that she was briefly in her late uncle's version of heaven and not a dream or hallucination because said uncle's business partner didn't have a bald spot on the very top of his head. Mona herself had seen it many times while [[TotemPoleTrench standing on her uncle's shoulders]], but her uncle, being a midget, never even knew it was there. |
| 180 | * Subverted in the ''Literature/FlyGuy'' book "Fly Guy and the Frankenfly", where it seems like a normal evening until Fly Guy claims he's too busy to go to bed and appears to create a giant zombie fly, but then Buzz wakes up and it's a dream. He then sees Fly Guy on his desk, but it turns out he was just drawing, so yes, it ''was'' a dream. |
| 181 | * ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'': |
| 182 | ** Larkin's encounter with the angel in ''Ghostmaker''. He explicitly describes his mental problems to her, and that he's not taking the drugs for them, but at the end, he sees the piece of white cloth she had given him to wrap about his gun, still there. |
| 183 | ** Inverted in ''Straight Silver''. Gaunt and Beltayn meet a woman in the woods and borrow a car. When they go to return it, they find that not only the car but its keys have vanished. [[spoiler:Gaunt later learns that her name was that of a woman who had served Saint Sabbat and had died centuries ago.]] |
| 184 | * ''Ghosts I Have Been'', a young adult novel, has the protagonist comfort a little boy who died on the Titanic. When she comes back from her "vision" in the school's office, she is clutching a Titanic blanket and is soaked in seawater. |
| 185 | * In ''Literature/InTheNightKitchen'', it seems as though Mickey dreamt the whole thing, but the last line says, "And now, thanks to Mickey, we have cake every morning." |
| 186 | * Pretty much the point of Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/JohnnyMaxwellTrilogy'', especially the last book (''Johnny and the Bomb''). To [[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/johnny-and-the-bomb.html quote]] from the WordOfGod: |
| 187 | -->There are natural explanations for a lot of the things that happen in the books, if you are desperate to find them (and people will sometimes go through some serious mental gymnastics to avoid changing their preconceived ideas about the universe). But I like to be equivocal about what is "real" and what isn't -- to Johnny it's all real, and that's what counts.\ |
| 188 | So: is what happens in the books real? Yes. Does it all happen in Johnny's head? Yes. Are the Dead a metaphor? Yes. Are they real? Yes. Not just waving, but particalling. |
| 189 | * In Creator/RobertEHoward's "The Shadow Kingdom", ''Literature/{{Kull}}'' teeters on the verge of believing this in the final scene, except when he sees Brule, which prevents him. |
| 190 | * ''Literature/MaryPoppins'': The title character constantly denies taking the Banks children on mystical adventures, but they often find signs that the adventures really happened. (One such sign also appears in Disney's second film adaptation of these books, ''Film/MaryPoppinsReturns''.) |
| 191 | * Played with all through ''Literature/TheMidnightFolk''. All the supernatural events end with Kay waking up, but the "mundane" adventure story (where he's definitely awake) only makes sense if the things he learns on these expeditions are true. |
| 192 | * ''Literature/NightmareHour'': "Nightmare Inn" features the protagonist Jillain having a run-in with Priscilla and James who are revealed to be two werewolves and fight over the right to eat her. After escaping with her life, she wakes up to find it was another nightmare. [[spoiler:Then she sees a werewolf claw mark on Priscilla's cheek.]] |
| 193 | * "Literature/{{Okuyyuki}}": The ending. Did Reilly [[spoiler:die, become a ''kami'' and meet Audrey's spirit, or did he just die, period, hallucinating that in his last moments]]? |
| 194 | * ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' opens with a soldier engaged in trench warfare during World War I. Knocked unconscious, he experiences ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'', and wakes up in the trench, with a glowing feather as a reminder it [[ThatWasNotADream was not a dream]]. |
| 195 | * ''Literature/OutOfTheSilentPlanet'' plays with this. Ransom falls ill after his return to Earth from Mars, and afterwards considers the possibility that his entire adventure on Mars was actually a fever dream. The argument isn't enough to convince him, but it's enough to make him realize that no one will believe his story, so he decides to keep it all to himself. Then a colleague finds a reference to Oyarsa (who Ransom spoke with on Mars) [[AncientAstronauts in a 12th century manuscript]], and this convinces Ransom to tell his story. |
| 196 | * ''Literature/{{Paprika}}'' is about a machine that lets you invade people's dreams, which glitches [[spoiler:(later revealed to have been sabotaged)]] and brings reality and dreams together. Whether or not something is UpTheRealRabbitHole is a more pressing question than SchrodingersButterfly. |
| 197 | * In ''Literature/PetSematary'', Louis dreams that the ghost of one of his dead patients shows up in his bedroom and takes him to the eponymous cemetery in order to give him a warning. When he wakes up, his feet are covered in mud. |
| 198 | * ''[[http://www.davidbrin.com/realitycheck.html Reality Check]]'' by Creator/DavidBrin manages an "or was it a story?" variation. Apparently [[WhoWantsToLiveForever eternal life is so boring]] that the immortal protagonist has voluntarily entered a LotusEaterMachine, and someone's trying to bring them out of it. The thing is, it's written in the second person -- the protagonist is quite literally you, and the story is your wakeup call, the tone growing increasingly urgent as you fail to respond. [[ParanoiaFuel Yes, it is as damaging to your sanity as it sounds]]. |
| 199 | * ''Literature/TheSaint'' story ''The Darker Drink'' plays with this on multiple levels. A man named Big Bill Holbrook claims to serve as the dream avatar of Andrew Faulk of Glendale, California. He encounters the Saint in the High Sierras. Holbrook claims that the personages from a recurring dream Faulk had have started to manifest in the waking world. Templar takes a jewel off of Holbrook. When thugs searching for Holbrook open fire on Templar, he loses consciousness. When he awakens later, he has no injuries, but still feels the jewel he took from Holbrook in his pocket. When he searches for Andrew Faulk in Glendale, he discovers that Faulk died after slipping into a coma. Templar intends to show Faulk's widow the jewel from Holbrook, but it has disappeared from his pocket. |
| 200 | * Creator/GregoryBenford's short story "Sleepstory" features a space pilot fighting a war on Ganymede who gets a little compressed downtime with a dream-guiding narrative system, telling a story about an engineer in Los Angeles trying to fix breaches in the dams that keep the GlobalWarming-afflicted seas from flooding the city ...or possibly the other way round. |
| 201 | * In the ''Literature/SweetValleyHigh'' version of ''[[YetAnotherChristmasCarol A Christmas Carol]]'', Jessica wakes up on Christmas morning after dreaming that the ghosts visited her in the night, only she can't find her left slipper (which fell off while she was with the Ghost of Christmas Present) and her ankles are covered in scratches (she walked barefoot through a forest while with the Ghost of Christmas Future). |
| 202 | * In ''Literature/{{Tempted}}'', Zoey comes to this conclusion when it turns out the locations Kalona has been choosing as the back-drop of their dreams together reveal his actual location. |
| 203 | * The ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'' book, "Thomas and the Beanstalk" parodies the story of ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk'' by having Thomas climb up a beanstalk that grew from the beans in his trucks after Diesel 10 knocked them off the rails. In the Giant's castle, Thomas meets a golden engine who is being held prisoner by the Giant and a giant Diesel 10 (big enough for the Giant to ride inside) and tries to rescue her. At the end of the book, the events appear to have all been a dream from Thomas, but then Thomas' driver finds a piece of golden coal from the golden engine in his bunker. |
| 204 | * In ''Literature/TimeCat'', after traveling all throughout time and history via the powers of his talking, magical cat, the protagonist wakes up at home from a nap to find that his cat doesn't talk at all. [[spoiler:But he still has an ankh that he kept from when the two were in ancient Egypt.]] |
| 205 | * Creator/PhilipKDick's ''Literature/{{Ubik}}'' has a variation that may well have inspired several other examples on this page. Characters after death can go into a state called "half-life", which is in many ways comparable to a dream state; in particular, half-life is subject to a number of [[RealityWarper Reality Warping]] possibilities that don't seem to be possible in the setting's real world. The story kicks off with the characters' BenevolentBoss, Glen Runciter, apparently being killed in an "accident" (though it's implied that it was likely engineered by one of his rivals). However, as the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the main characters are actually the ones in half-life, as aspects of their reality keep shifting (one ChekhovsGun is that they start seeing Runciter's face on their currency). Furthermore, Runciter eventually contacts them from the real world. So naturally, the safe assumption is that the characters were actually the ones killed and that Runciter is all right, no? Well, not so fast. The last chapter, from Runciter's perspective, have him noticing that the face on his currency has changed: the book's protagonist, Joe Chip, is now on his currency. So who's actually in half-life? Runciter? The rest of the cast? Everyone? No one? Good luck figuring it out. |
| 206 | * The book ''What's a Gonzo?'' based on ''WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies1984'' focuses on Gonzo apparently going into an alternate universe behind the mirror where everybody looks like him and their names rhyme with his name but not even they know their own species and even a supposedly all-knowing robot gives names when asked "what am I?" rather than species. Gonzo, however, is satisfied with not knowing his species and they drink milkshakes. It ends with Fozzie shaking Gonzo awake, indicating it was a dream, but then Gonzo states that he is not hungry because he's just had the milkshake. |
| 207 | [[/folder]] |
| 208 | |
| 209 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 210 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 211 | * ''Series/WalkerTexasRanger'': The [[AllJustADream dream episode]] near the end of Season 9's "Blood Diamonds" ends with this possibility with Alex waking up from a nightmare she has about Trivette, later [[spoiler:Walker]] being killed by the villains, but the moment Alex sits down to breakfast, [[spoiler:she finds that Walker is actually on the case from her dream. One can pretty much call this a GroundhogDay moment for Alex]]. |
| 212 | %% * This occurs at the end of the ''Series/RadioActive'' episode "Daydreams". |
| 213 | %% * ''Series/UltraSeven'''s superior officer from M-78 in his first appearance. |
| 214 | * ''Series/SevenDays1998'': The end of the ''Film/RunLolaRun''-inspired episode "Deja Vu All Over Again" has a CuckooNest variant. Did the events of the series take place, or is Frank Parker still locked up in the ward? |
| 215 | * "The Red Hat of Patferrick", one of the "Gelliant Gutfright Presents..." ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' spoofs in ''Series/ABitOfFryAndLaurie'', is about a publisher who receives a mysterious phone call about the Red Hat of Patferrick, which inspires his secretary to commit suicide, and then another call that his wife has been killed by the hat itself. Then he wakes up and it was all a dream. And then he ''does'' receive a call about the Red Hat of Patferrick, so ''he'' throws himself out the window. And ''then'' his caller turns out to be Gelliant Gutfright himself, trying to sell ''The Red Hat of Patferrick'', [[MindScrew a story about a publisher who has a strange dream...]] |
| 216 | * An episode of ''Series/{{Bonanza}}'' had Little Joe come across a small prairie town where the townsfolk make him their sheriff and put him in charge of driving out a mob of bandits that have been terrorizing the town. Little Joe has quite the time convincing the townfolk they have to help him. In the battle to come, Little Joe is knocked off his horse. When he comes to, he's laying in the desert with his family nearby saying they'd been looking for him for days. When Little Joe tells them what happened, his father tells him the town is a ghost town that no one has lived for years. He takes his family back to the town to prove it's real, only to find abandoned buildings. Joe's brothers are convinced he had heat stroke and hallucinated it all. Ben says it doesn't matter; they're all back together and going home. Joe saddles up, ready to go, and realizes he still has his sheriff's badge. |
| 217 | * The ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'' episode "And Then There Was Shawn" turned out to be an extended dream Shawn was having of some maniac in a skull mask killing everyone in detention to make sure Corey and Topanga stayed together. The killer was revealed to be Shawn... by Shawn. After he wakes up and everyone leaves Mr. Feeny's classroom... the killer emerges from behind the computer stand and departs the room. |
| 218 | * Since the last thing we see in the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E17NormalAgain Normal Again]]" is [[spoiler:the mental institution where Buffy had spent much of the episode "hallucinating" that she was a patient, accompanied by a doctor pronouncing that she's lapsed back into catatonia]], it's left to the viewer whether the previous six seasons were real, or a psychotic hallucination. ''WordOfGod'' (Joss Whedon) is that he personally believes that the Slayer!Buffy events are real. |
| 219 | * ''Very'' creepily done in an episode of ''Series/{{Carnivale}}'' that involved the protagonist getting drugged by a creepy mask maker who wants to make a mask out of his face, then waking up with the guy claiming he had fallen asleep and must have had a bad dream. Ben is suspicious, but he never finds out the truth. The guy's occupation was making ''death masks'', which are done by pouring plaster on the corpse's face, and it's implied that after retiring he became a serial killer who killed dozens of children by drowning them in plaster, as he made the masks out of them. |
| 220 | * ''Series/{{Cheers}}'': At the end of one episode, Sam reveals to Diane that his blue-collar party-guy image is just to fool his friends. In private, he's cultured, refined, wears a smoking jacket, smokes a pipe, and composes classical music. Diane loves it -- until she wakes up in Sam's office. Then, on his desk she sees a pipe... but it's a subversion: it's a bubble pipe. |
| 221 | * One episode of ''Series/TheColbertReport'' opened with Creator/SteveCarell (Stephen's SitcomArchNemesis on ''Series/TheDailyShow'') having his own show- "The Carell Corral". Stephen bursts in, demanding an explanation. Steve tells him that Stephen had left to make movies and other shows (essentially switching out their respective careers) and pointing out that Stephen has a hoof for a hand. After a BigNo, Stephen wakes up, relieved to find himself on his own set with everything back to normal... except that [[BodyHorror he still has a hoof for a hand.]] |
| 222 | * At the end of the ''Series/{{Community}}'' episode "[[Recap/CommunityS2E06Epidemiology Epidemiology]]", Troy receives a hint that more happened than just being roofied for no reason in the form of a voice mail sent during the night by Chang, [[spoiler:claiming he and Shirley did it in the bathroom]]. Troy [[ComicallyMissingThePoint doesn't understand the relevance]] only wondering why Chang would tell ''him'' about it despite [[spoiler:the sounds of the zombies attacking at the end]]. |
| 223 | * One particularly odd episode of ''Series/CSIMiami'' has Calleigh critically injured during a case. She finds herself a walking spirit interacting with the ghost of the victim while her physical body fights for its life in a hospital. In this state, she finds a critical clue just as she is brought back to consciousness. She wakes up thinking of a hint that leads to the clue, but no memory of how she got it. Horatio Caine figures that she saw it before she was injured, and her subconscious brought it to the forefront while she was in a coma. And that would be the accepted explanation... If the victim's ghost hadn't appeared one more time (unseen by anyone) at the end of the episode... |
| 224 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': The 2014 Christmas special [[Recap/DoctorWho2014CSLastChristmas "Last Christmas"]] is full of [[Film/{{Inception}} shared dreams and dreams within dreams]]. Throughout, the big clue that the protagonists are dreaming is the presence of Santa Claus. The closing shot of the episode is a tangerine[[note]]The tradition of leaving tangerines in the bottom of Christmas stockings had already been brought up multiple times[[/note]] on Clara's windowsill. Are they still dreaming? Or is Santa real? |
| 225 | * ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'': |
| 226 | ** In a Halloween themed episode Will Smith wakes up from his nightmare (where he was "hexed" into causing horrible luck to everyone around him causing him to thrown out of the house) and goes to breakfast. At the breakfast table, every character repeats the exact same lines they said in the first scene of that episode with Will realizing this and trying to convince them to say other things and finally culminating in a BigNo. It's a very Film/GroundhogDay moment for Will. |
| 227 | ** In another episode Will breaks Jazz's concentration during a poker game by telling him a story about having witnessed a murder forcing him to go into Witness Protection in Alabama. He admits the lie to Jazz and makes off with his money...only for the killer to later suddenly show up in front of Will. Will runs...[[SubvertedTrope and it turns out to be Jazz in disguise]] ([[RuleOfFunny somehow looking EXACTLY like the killer Will imagined]]). |
| 228 | * Two episodes of ''Series/GrowingPains'' have done this. |
| 229 | ** In "This Was Your Life", Ben dreads the idea of having his tonsils removed -- leading Ben to [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor state that he doesn't "want to be a Seaver"]]. After a cab driver brings him home, he discovers that his life was replaced with that of another boy. After waking up from his surgery, he sees the boy who replaced him on a gurney. |
| 230 | ** In "Meet The Seavers", Ben is upset that his parents don't remove his punishment -- even after hugging them, and saying that he loves them. As a result, he [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor wishes that he could be in a TV show]]. He then finds himself on the set of ''Meet the Seavers'' -- which is very similar to, well, ''Growing Pains''. After he wakes up, he's relieved to be home. However, after turning on the television set, Mike/Kirk begs Ben to let him out. |
| 231 | * Though not quite a dream, one episode of ''Series/{{Hustle}}'' hinted that the fake story they sold to a newspaper wasn't so fake after all. |
| 232 | * ''Series/TheLateLateShow'' ended its final episode with Ferguson waking up in bed next to Drew Carey, apparently dreaming that he had been a late-night show host with a robot and a fake horse for the past few years. After discussing the dream for a bit, the two go back to sleep, only for the camera to zoom in on the snow-globe on Ferguson's nightstand. It features himself, Geoff, and Secretariat inside. |
| 233 | * The BBC show ''Series/LifeOnMars2006'', and its sequel ''Series/AshesToAshes2008'' have this trope as one of their central themes. Whether Sam Tyler (and later Alex Drake) has truly gone to the past, or is simply having a coma hallucination is played with throughout the series. ([[spoiler:It's neither, but closer to the second one.]]) |
| 234 | * ''Series/{{Lost}}'': |
| 235 | ** Subverted with Claire's dream in the episode "Raised By Another". Claire dreams about a crib full of blood, which she gets all over her hands. Then when she wakes up screaming, ''her hands are covered in blood!'' But after the commercial we find out she just dug her fingernails into her palms because of the terror of the dream. |
| 236 | ** Not to mention her claims that she was approached by a man in the night, which everyone shrugs off as a dream until she gets kidnapped... |
| 237 | ** Also the flashback of Hurley at the mental institution involving Libby in season 2. Whether this was real or imaginary has yet to be resolved. |
| 238 | * ''Series/{{MacGyver|1985}}'': |
| 239 | ** The title character once got knocked in the head pushing a guy out of the way of a falling flower pot which led to a [[OffToSeeTheWizard Wizard of Oz-style]] dream adventure where he went to [[Myth/ArthurianLegend Arthurian]] England, encountered Merlin, gave him his pocket knife and at one point possibly inspired the invention of scissors. At the end he is revived, and all is back to normal... except a paramedic [[AndYouWereThere who looks just like Merlin is there, the bride of the guy he saved also looks like a woman from the dream]] and the paramedic has scissors and a pocket knife just like Mac's. He then reaches for his pocket (presumably for the knife) and an object from the dream is inexplicably there. Hmmm... This was a bit of a self-parody, since the show was already notorious for [[YouLookFamiliar reusing actors of minor characters]] in very obvious ways, for no other reason than cheapness. |
| 240 | ** A similar plot happens earlier, when he dreams of being in the Old West, and then wakes up and finds the bullet-holed Swiss army knife that [[PocketProtector saved his life]] in the dream. This may have been a reference to the WesternAnimation/BugsBunny ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' ep. listed below in the WesternAnimation section, which involved Merlin the wizard being changed into a horse. |
| 241 | * One of the last episodes of ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'' had Al Bundy selling his soul to Lucifer. After Al and his whole family end up in Hell, they spend three centuries being tortured with [[IronicHell ironic punishments]] before they finally ask if there's a way to escape. The Devil gives Al, among other things, a box of Red Hot candies, and challenges him to a [[ChessWithDeath football game for the family's freedom.]] Al then wakes up and realizes it was all a dream...but then he reaches into his pocket and discovers a box of Red Hots... |
| 242 | * In the first three seasons of ''Series/PrettyLittleLiars'', PosthumousCharacter Alison would occasionally appear to her friends under circumstances where the friend would think they were dreaming or hallucinating, but always either left something behind that indicated she was really there or did something that, regardless of the ambiguous circumstances, ''someone'' obviously did (e.g., rescuing Emily from suffocation). In the fourth season, the girls are sufficiently unsure if Alison's actually dead or alive that they're determined to figure out which it is. [[spoiler:She's alive, and all her appearances (except one that was an obvious figment of Hanna's imagination) were real.]] |
| 243 | * ''Series/RoundTheTwist'' tends to do this as the ending for any episode that turned out to be AllJustADream. What usually happens, is the dreamer discovers that he or she [[FantasyKeepsake still has an item]] that they gained during the dream, and the episode ends there and then. |
| 244 | * ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'': |
| 245 | ** One "Wayne's World" sketch has Wayne dreaming a "Summer of '42" fantasy with Garth's [[StacysMom hot mom]] (Creator/CandiceBergen). Garth angrily enters the fantasy and "shoots" Wayne (leveling a shotgun and shouting 'Ka-BOOOM!'). Wayne wakes up and declares "It was just a dream...[sees the grocery bags from the fantasy on the floor]...OR WAS IT? WOOOOAAAHHHH!" |
| 246 | ** Another one has a dream sequence parodying Madonna's "Justify My Love" video, with Garth in tight black clothing doing a pelvic-thrusting dance to show off his bulge, just like the dancer in the original. After the dream ends, Garth's still dressed the same, and they repeat their "OR WAS IT?" ending as above, this time with Garth jumping up and resuming dancing. |
| 247 | * ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': The episode "[[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS02E02CarbonCreek Carbon Creek]]" is framed as a story T'Pol tells Archer and Trip about her ancestor T'Mir. It's a bit of a tall tale involving Vulcans meeting humans well before historical First Contact; Archer likens it to hearing that Neil Armstrong wasn't really the first man on the moon. They end up suspecting T'Pol made the whole thing up, and her vague answers seem to confirm this. But then we see her in her quarters contemplating T'Mir's handbag. T'Pol also claims in the episode that her ancestor "invented" Velcro by selling a Vulcan pouch with the fastener to a businessman. |
| 248 | * ''Series/{{Treadstone}}'': Doug [=McKenna=], who unknown to himself is a Treadstone ManchurianAgent, has a nightmare of being chained up underwater, and [[DeadlyGraduation fighting another man in similar straits]] for the key to release his chains before he drowns. He wakes up and examines a faint circular cuff scar around his ankle. |
| 249 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': |
| 250 | ** In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E1WhereIsEverybody Where Is Everybody?]]", a man finds himself trapped in a deserted town. The TwistEnding is that the man is an Air Force pilot training for astronaut duty in an isolation booth, and he hallucinated the entire experience. When Creator/RodSerling adapted "Where Is Everybody?" for a book of short stories based on his ''Twilight Zone'' scripts, he changed the ending slightly: after the pilot leaves the isolation booth, he inexplicably finds a ticket from a movie theater in the empty town in his pocket. |
| 251 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E1KingNineWillNotReturn King Nine Will Not Return]]", a former pilot hallucinates that he's in the North African desert at the site where his [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII WW2]] bomber crashed (he didn't go on the bombing mission because he was ill). When he's brought to a hospital, the doctors find desert sand in his shoes. |
| 252 | * The "horror special" episode of ''Series/TwoPintsOfLagerAndAPacketOfCrisps'' involves the main characters sneaking into their soon-to-be-closed local pub and invoking a curse which will cause them to be killed by the things they love most. At the end of the episode, one of the characters, Janet, wakes to find that it was AllJustADream. However, this is followed by a shot of her biscuit-loving husband, Jonny (subsequently KilledOffForReal), whose head has been replaced by a giant Jammy Dodger. |
| 253 | * ''Creator/VictoriaWood's Midlife Christmas'' is dedicated to the real "Barrys and Fredas", and occasionally cuts to a typical Barry and Freda watching the show. For the final skit, Victoria explains that she wanted a huge extravaganza, but they didn't have the budget, so she's just going to play her SignatureSong, "The Ballad of Barry and Freda" at the piano, and invite the audience to ''imagine'' that there's a set and dancers and so on. Then an elaborate set appears around her and Barry and Freda [[TrappedInTVLand step into the show]], reveal they're wearing sparkling leotards under their dressing gowns, and lead a dance line of Barrys and Fredas. Once the song is over, Victoria is back on a bare stage, and Barry and Freda are back on their couch ... and then Freda's dressing gown falls open to show she's still wearing the leotard. |
| 254 | * ''Series/TheWheelOfTime2021'': Rand, Mat, Egwene, and Perrin have dreams in which a cloud of bats are killed, only to wake up and find it true. Moiraine warns that dreams can be more dangerous than they know. |
| 255 | * ''Series/TheWildWildWest'' episode "The Night of the Man-Eating House". Near the beginning, the characters discover and approach the title house. After a series of terrifying events, at the end the characters wake up and discover that the horrific events in the house were [[AllJustADream all just a nightmare]]. In the last scene, they find themselves approaching the house again. |
| 256 | * In the ''Series/WonderShowzen'' skit "Aunt Flo", it seems as though a girl of about twelve has gotten her first period and [[FirstPeriodPanic thinks she's dying]] but then an anthropomorphic Aunt Flo takes her to another dimension to inform her about periods and it's full of people like the "Crampies" (who make cramps) and the "Hormone Brothers" (who cause PMS). Then, she nearly drowns and a Crampy saves her, kisses her, and "Aunt Flo" melts and she wakes up having actually gotten her first period. This seems like the kind of dream a girl might have after she had a sex ed class, but then a mysterious voice (that sounds nothing like Aunt Flo's) says, "You're a woman now." |
| 257 | * ''Series/TheYoungOnes'': |
| 258 | ** One episode ended with Neil about to get beaten up, then waking up and saying to camera "Oh. It was all just a dream." The credits roll over shots of him getting out of bed, but when they end he wakes up again, about to get his face smashed in. He only dreamed about it being only a dream. |
| 259 | ** In 'Summer Holiday', he daydreams about undergoing a Hulk transformation and getting revenge on his flatmates -- he is awoken from it by Vyvyan asking what's happened to his clothes... |
| 260 | [[/folder]] |
| 261 | |
| 262 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 263 | * Aaron Carter's kiddie-pop hit "How I Beat Shaq", about his dream where he played the basketball player and won: |
| 264 | -->''But if it was a dream, and it wasn't real,\ |
| 265 | How'd I get a jersey with the name O'Neal?'' |
| 266 | * "#9 Dream" by Music/JohnLennon contains the line: |
| 267 | -->''Was it just a dream?'' |
| 268 | * The end of Music/{{Supertramp}}'s "Even in the quietest moments" also contains the line |
| 269 | -->''Was it just a dream?'' |
| 270 | * D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's "Nightmare On My Street," a musical tribute to the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series, ends this way. |
| 271 | -->''He jumped on my bed, went through the covers with his claws\ |
| 272 | Tried to get me, but my alarm went off\ |
| 273 | And then silence... It was a whole new day\ |
| 274 | I thought, "Huh, I wasn't scared of him anyway!"\ |
| 275 | Until I noticed those rips in my sheets\ |
| 276 | And that was proof that there had been a nightmare on my street'' |
| 277 | :: :While it's a suitable ending on its own, the extended version actually continues to [[spoiler:a spoken-word scene of the rapper trying to call Jeff and warn him, only for Jeff to shrug him off and go back to sleep until Freddy audibly appears and violently kills him before declaring that ''he's'' the DJ now]]. |
| 278 | * "We Damn The Night" by ''Music/{{Helloween}}'' -- |
| 279 | -->''Blood on my pillow.\ |
| 280 | Blood on my skin.\ |
| 281 | Am I going mad\ |
| 282 | Or was this a dream?'' |
| 283 | * Music/{{Electric Light Orchestra}}'s [[ConceptAlbum concept album]] "Time"- it tells the story of a man being transported from 1981 to [[TheFuture 2095]] it is never specified whether he traveled into the future or if it was a dream. |
| 284 | * The video for the Music/{{Nelson}} song "After the Rain" has a young man being screamed at by his abusive FantasyForbiddingFather -- he's a worthless dreamer who will never amount to anything, blah blah. Putting on his headphones, he has an intense dream-vision of the Nelsons pulling him into an alternative dimension. He's counseled by a Native American holy man, who gives him a feather and sends him to a brightly lit cavern where the Nelsons play to an enthusiastic crowd. (We've seen he has a guitar, so he may have had some kind of setback in his career and the lyrics are encouraging him to continue.) At song's end he wakes up and [[FantasyKeepsake finds the feather]]. |
| 285 | [[/folder]] |
| 286 | |
| 287 | [[folder:Music Videos]] |
| 288 | * Music/MichaelJackson's "[[Music/MichaelJacksonsThriller Thriller]]" music video. A young woman, after walking out of a horror movie only to be pursued by dancing zombies, wakes up screaming. Michael comforts her and offers to take her home. As they leave, he turns around to reveal his evil eyes accompanied by Creator/VincentPrice's signature EvilLaugh as the video ends. |
| 289 | * Russian band Music/OtavaYo's video for the song Что за песни (What Songs) has an eerie, haunting, other-world association about it, beginning in relative normality and introducing more and more surreal elements. The young man on a long bus ride is seen to drop off to sleep and wake up several times, suggesting he is only dreaming of the beautiful girl who keeps appearing and disappearing., as well as the repeated nightmarish elements that keep preventing him from getting closer to the girl. The suggestion is that he is trapped in dreams-within-dreams, nested [[MatryoshkaObject Matryoshka Objects]]. However, he is certainly wide-awake for the denouement, at the side of a lake in the cold drab light of dawn. |
| 290 | * Music/LindseyStirling's video, "Hold My Heart", features [[AliceAllusion a genderbent Alice falling down a rabbit hole]], chasing a rabbit, picking up a stopwatch, and watching a tea party. In the end of the video, Alex wakes up from that dream, but realizes that the stopwatch is still in his jacket. |
| 291 | * The music video for Bonnie Tyler's "Music/TotalEclipseOfTheHeart" depicts its heroine going through what seems to be a very strange dream that has ''something'' to do with a boarding school... and then its final scene has her greeting what appears to be a graduating class, normal as anything -- until one of their number's eyes suddenly starts glowing like the ones in her dream, to her and another witness' visible surprise. [[LiteralMusicVideo "Mullet with headlights? Over-surprised guy!..."]] |
| 292 | [[/folder]] |
| 293 | |
| 294 | [[folder:Podcasts]] |
| 295 | * In ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives'' the narrator of "Alone" isn't sure her experience wasn't merely in her imagination... except for a carved fragment of stone that she retrieved. |
| 296 | [[/folder]] |
| 297 | |
| 298 | [[folder:Theater]] |
| 299 | * The Calderon play ''La vida es sueño'' ("Life is a Dream") has protagonist [[GenreSavvy Segismundo]] spending most of the play wondering what parts of his life have been reality and which dreams (of course, this is primarily to do with his father [[MindScrew messing with him]]). He comes to the conclusion: |
| 300 | --> '''Segismundo:''' Que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son. ("For all of life is a dream, and dreams themselves are merely the dreams of dreams.") |
| 301 | * Many versions of ''Theatre/TheNutcracker'' end with Clara waking up in her living room or bedroom, indicating that her adventures were AllJustADream, but some editions have her discovering a trinket that was given to her at some point--a ring, a crown, etc., resulting in this trope. Some other stagings of the final scene also have her meet Drosselmeyer's nephew, who looks just like the Nutcracker Prince from her dream. |
| 302 | * Used at the end of TheMusical ''Theatre/{{Starmites}}'', where a mother reassures her daughter that she just had a crazy dream, not a musical adventure set in a sci-fi comic, prompting the daughter to sing a song titled "It Wasn't a Dream." And to drive the point home, as mother and daughter share a hug, the BigBad [[NotQuiteDead pops up from behind the girl's bed]] just as the show ends. |
| 303 | [[/folder]] |
| 304 | |
| 305 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 306 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 307 | %% * One of the bad endings in ''[[VideoGame/BubbleBobble Bubble Symphony]]''. |
| 308 | %% * The intro to ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI''. |
| 309 | %% * The end of ''VideoGame/MonsterMadness''. |
| 310 | * At the end of the game of ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'', Tom awakens in the schoolhouse to find three feathers from Injun Joe. |
| 311 | * ''VideoGame/BugsBunnyInDoubleTrouble'' begins with Bugs sleeping and having a dream where Yosemite Sam, as a mad scientist, has invented a serum that makes carrots gigantic as part of his plan to capture him. At the end of the game, Bugs awakens from his dream and finds the giant carrot in his bed. |
| 312 | * This is the [[MultipleEndings ending]] of ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' if you end the final boss battle [[PuzzleBoss correctly]]. A very confused [[TheProtagonist Serge]] will wake up next to his girlfriend on the same beach where the plot kicked off, with her telling him that he fell asleep for a few minutes and never left her side. |
| 313 | %% (Chapter 2 added more context)* ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'': At the end of the first chapter, Kris and Susie manage to get to the Eastern Fountain that will send them back home from the Dark World into their world. After closing off the fountain, Kris and Susie end up in an unused class room with a chess board, playing cards, and some toys that look like the characters they encountered. Both clearly experienced the same thing, met the same people, and fought against countless enemies, yet it is still ambiguous whether it was a dream or not both to the player and the characters. |
| 314 | * In ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'', this is used for the fight with the ultimate opponent. If one returns to an early-game dungeon's basement filled with toxic gas at the end of a second playthrough, a certain room will cause the protagonists to pass out. Immediately after, the game cuts to a battle with [[spoiler:the Demi-fiend from ''Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne'']]. If you manage to win, the game cuts to the party waking up, thinking they hallucinated. It's at that point where they see a dying message on the floor that wouldn't look out of place in [[spoiler:''Nocturne'']]. |
| 315 | * The Flash room escape game ''[[http://www.no1game.net/games/jp/game0006.html Game in Game in Game]]'' is about a room escape fan who wakes to find he's really locked in his bedroom. At the end of the game, this turns out to be AllJustADream, but when he runs through one of the puzzles he solved, he gets the same clue. |
| 316 | * ''VideoGame/GianaSistersDS'': After beating the FinalBoss, Giana wakes up in her bed. It looks like Giana dreamed the whole adventure up, but the big red diamond -which she did not own previously- found in her treasure box suggests otherwise. |
| 317 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2''. [[spoiler:Roxas is with Organization XIII for 358 days. However, he wakes up (in the simulated Twilight town) and considers the events a dream. The evening he goes to sleep and the morning he wakes up is over 2 days.)]] Note that he doesn't consider the events a dream. He can't even remember what happened when he was in the Organization. |
| 318 | * ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': |
| 319 | ** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening'': The game's setting is a dream of the Wind Fish, and Link has to wake it up from inside in order to leave. If you beat the game without dying, at the end of the credits you see the character Marin flying around. The implication in this case is not that it wasn't a dream, but that one person from the dream became real (having wished during the game to become a seagull and travel the world). The DX version changes this to a picture of Marin that fades into a seagull, which flies off. |
| 320 | ** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'' ends with [[spoiler:Link waking up aboard the pirate ship he began the game in, the shipmates oblivious to the events of the entire game and insisting that only a few moments have passed, but when Link peers to the horizon, he sees the ship of his ally in the game sailing away. Oh, and he still has the titular (now empty) hourglass]]. |
| 321 | * A couple of ''WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse'' games pull off this trope in the endings of certain games: |
| 322 | ** In ''VideoGame/LandOfIllusion'', Mickey falls asleep while reading a book of fairy tales, and has a dream where he winds up in the world from its stories, which is being ruled by an evil sorcerer called the Phantom. At the end of the game, after defeating the Phantom and recovering the magical crystal he stole, Mickey is rewarded with [[SmoochOfVictory a kiss from the Good Princess Minnie]]. After the game's closing credits sequence, Mickey wakes up with lipstick marks on his cheek. |
| 323 | ** In ''Mickey's Ultimate Challenge'', a similar thing happens as in the above example, except he fell asleep while in bed, and is magically transported to the Kingdom of Beanwick to help solve the earthquake crisis. After finding out that the earthquakes are caused by a snoring giant, he awakens the giant with an alarm clock and befriends him. When Mickey wakes up back in bed, he took a gander at his book to see how it ended, and to his surprise it ended exactly how it did prior, leaving Mickey confused. |
| 324 | ** In ''VideoGame/DisneysMagicalMirrorStarringMickeyMouse'', a ghost from a parallel universe lures an astral projection of Mickey while he's asleep in bed to his own world, trapping Mickey within the mirror world while the ghost shatters the mirror and sends its pieces flying across the mansion. After collecting all of the shards, the ghost apologizes for his actions and Mickey invites him to come along back to his room. When Mickey returns to his sleeping body and wakes up the next morning, he dismisses the events as only a dream and left the room, but did not notice the ghost hanging around the ceiling fan. |
| 325 | * ''VideoGame/MonsterParty'': After beating the final boss, Mark wakes up from the disturbingly horrible nightmare that was his "reward", implying it was all a dream... at least until he's leaving home for school and finds [[spoiler:Bert, who is waiting outside holding Mark's baseball bat and tells him "Let's go again!"]] |
| 326 | * ''VideoGame/MrSaitou'': The majority of the game is presented as a dream Mr. Saitou has while recovering in the hospital. At the end of the game when he's ready to leave, [[spoiler:the doctor hands him a get well soon card made by Brandon featuring a llamaworm with a cake tie, a sky bud, and a bunch of characters they met on their journey]]. |
| 327 | * In ''WesternAnimation/NightmareNed'', everything supernatural is obviously a DreamSequence, and the same seems to go for [[VideoGame/NightmareNed the game]] at first. [[spoiler:After a fashion, it was a dream of some sort, but the "[[EldritchAbomination shadow creatures]]" in it were very much real. In the good ending when Ned conquers his fears they're stranded outside his head, still alive but uncertain what to do next.]] |
| 328 | * Whether you complete ''Night of the Blood Moon'' or get a game over, it is revealed that the Tormented Girl is real. [[spoiler:Dying in the dream has her ghost kill you in real life.]] |
| 329 | * In the intro to ''VideoGame/{{Phantasmagoria}}'', the protagonist Adrienne wakes up from a nightmare to find that it was AllJustADream. After a few seconds of relief, a [[Literature/TheSilenceOfTheLambs Hannibal mask]] is wrapped around her face. It wasn't a dream! Oh wait, yes it was. Seconds later, she wakes up again. |
| 330 | * In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum]]'', if you get a special item, you are granted access to an abandoned inn, where your trainer falls asleep. In your dream, you go to New Moon Island and fight/capture Darkrai. When you wake up, he's still in your PC box/party... |
| 331 | * ''VideoGame/{{Scratches}}'' has two dream sequences, the first one shows the location of a secret door along with the tool that must be used to open it. |
| 332 | * In the fifth episode of ''VideoGame/StrongBadsCoolGameForAttractivePeople'', Strong Bad awakens at the end, apparently having dreamed almost the entire episode... [[spoiler:until he sees that Trogdor is still rampaging around.]] |
| 333 | * ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'', considering many of the enemies (and characters) reappeared in actual Mario games in the non-dream Mushroom World, and considering the intro has Mario and co. enter a cave which matches the land from Mario's dream during a picnic. The psuedo-sequel ''VideoGame/BSSuperMarioUSA'' torpedoes the whole question by confirming that the entire game was real. |
| 334 | * ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' fangame ''Concealed the Conclusion'' plays with this: [[spoiler:while [[{{Canon}} the series' events]] are played as a DreamSequence and the game ends with a DreamApocalypse, in the Extra and Phantasm stages Gensokyo is restored (at least partially), and the heroines return there]]. |
| 335 | * In ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'' along several paths Shiki wonders if he's a killer as he sees himself murdering people in dreams who turn up dead the next day. [[spoiler:Except in Kohaku's route, he was just watching someone else do it. But at least this time he gets to have a nice friendly chat with SHIKI about society, his eyes and coffee after they try killing each other.]] |
| 336 | * Marcus Kane (Roadkill)'s ending in ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal 2'' shows him waking up in a hospital being greeted by his family, the titular competition having all just been AdventuresInComaland. The other competitors are in the same hospital room, shown to be in comas of their own, except they haven't woken up. Everything points to this being reality, except for the laughter of Calypso, host of the tournament, at the end. |
| 337 | * ''VideoGame/TwistedWonderland'': Event [[BeachEpisode "Lost in the Book with]] [[WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch Stitch"]] starts with a group of characters' falling asleep in the library after picking up a magical book and finding themselves stuck in that book, and ends with their waking up in the library and talking about their experience as if it was a dream. It's ultimately left ambiguous as to whether the event's story actually happened. |
| 338 | * In ''VideoGame/AWitchsTale'', the second playthrough ends with Liddell waking up from a dream, but she still has Anne's necklace. |
| 339 | * One of the [[MultipleEndings endings]] to ''VisualNovel/YoJinBo'' has Sayori waking up in bed, assuming the entire adventure to have been a dream... and then discovering the princess's diary in the ruins the next day ([[FridgeLogic don't ask how the ink survived 150 years under a lake...]]), making her realize it wasn't just a dream after all. |
| 340 | [[/folder]] |
| 341 | |
| 342 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 343 | * ''WebAnimation/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers'': |
| 344 | ** In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHw-QT6zNTY A Lost Luigi]]", after being terrorized [[spoiler:by the Luigi lookalikes]], Luigi wakes up back at Mario's house to realize the events of the blooper were all his dream. He looks for Mario, and finds him in another room, still looking at the poop in shock. Luigi is excited to see the latter, until the doorbell rings. Luigi opens the door, and is shocked to find [[spoiler:some characters from his dream (whom Mario thinks are his friends)]]: [[spoiler:a few of the Luigi lookalikes, the old man who found his hat, the Dorito Guy and the cop]]. [[spoiler:They]] then beat up Luigi and shove him into a stove. A picture of [[spoiler:Dorito Guy's]] Dorito bag underwater is then shown, accompanied with sad music and a message that says "in memorial of the lost dorito bag, 2013-2013", ending the video. |
| 345 | ** In "Dreams", [[spoiler:after the Toads steal Mario's clothes (making him naked)]], he wakes up back at the roof of the castle where the blooper started, revealing the whole blooper to be AllJustADream ([[DreamWithinADream including Mario's own dreams]]). However, at the very end of the blooper, he drives on a boost pad which catapults him away, similar to his fates earlier on the blooper. |
| 346 | ---> '''Mario:''' [[spoiler:AAHHHHH!! Thanks for watching! AAHHHHHHHHHHH!!]] |
| 347 | ** [[spoiler:In "A Trip to Teletubby Land", a few moments after [=SMG4=] wakes him up, Mario hears a shady noise inside the castle, which turns to be a fact that the pipes weren't fixed yet.]] |
| 348 | ** In "Ssenmodnar 5", after Mario thanks [=SMG4=] for saving him from his AcidRefluxNightmare, [[spoiler:the latter's head is replaced with that of Toad]]. |
| 349 | ---> [[spoiler:'''Mario:''' F*ck you Toad! You suck my d*ck!]] |
| 350 | * The short film [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkm2SLGn2go "Abyssal"]] by ''Website/{{Bogleech}}'' pulls a particularly cruel example of this trope, when the protagonist, trapped in a deep sea nightmare of fish monsters swims desperately to a portal to his bedroom while a monster slowly closes in on him. He arrives in his bed, then relaxes and lies down to fall back asleep... blissfully unaware that it's all an illusion and he's [[BodyHorror being digested alive]] in the monster's stomach. |
| 351 | * Episode 7 of the webtoon ''[[http://www.8legged.com Deep Fried Live]]'' has Chef Tako being kidnapped by aliens and forced to cook steak. At the end of the episode, he wakes up back in his kitchen on Earth, seemingly discovering it was AllJustADream; however, it turns out shortly after that that was just a hallucination (possibly brought on by head trauma), and he really is still on the alien ship. |
| 352 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1WgSrjpEAw This]] ''[[WebAnimation/DorklyOriginals Dorkly]]'' animation has [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]] wake up and feel glad that his franchise isn't owned by {{Creator/Sega}}... only for Luigi to inform him that they're owned by {{Creator/Ubisoft}} instead. Cue BigNo. |
| 353 | * Used in the finale of ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' YouTubePoop ''Rock Falls, Everyone Dies'' (no relation to [[RocksFallEveryoneDies the trope]]); [[spoiler:at the fifth alternative ending Pterano, after touching the cold fire stone, becomes an [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Evangelion style]] angel]]. Littlefoot wakes up; take three guesses of what happens next. |
| 354 | [[/folder]] |
| 355 | |
| 356 | [[folder:Web Comics]] |
| 357 | %% The following Administrivia/WeblinksAreNotExamples have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 358 | %% ** Also done [[http://www.housepetscomic.com/2010/07/14/never-believe-its-not-so/ a second time]]. |
| 359 | %% * Used in [[http://www.yellow5.com/pokey/archive/index22.html this]] classic ''Webcomic/PokeyThePenguin'' strip. |
| 360 | * In ''Webcomic/BlackAdventures'', everything that happened in the first two chapters ''was'' just a dream...but a wandering Mushama turned it into reality. Now we have Hitler running around in the present. |
| 361 | * ''Webcomic/GeneralProtectionFault'' had several arcs that were obviously dreams, and one that had a scene like this. At the end of the Secret Agent Geek arc, Nick and Ki are running to escape the bomb, when suddenly Nick wakes up. Strangely, Ki had a similar dream. When they mention it to Fooker, he scoffs at the story as being inherently ridiculous. After they leave, he speaks into his communicator/underwear: "Good news, Amadeus. They don't remember a thing." |
| 362 | * In ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'', Antimony's confrontation with the Ghost with the Sword looks for all the world like a dream, but Annie speaks about it afterwards as if it really happened. And the cut on her cheek that Annie received from the Ghost briefly reappeared, visible to a girl who sees things that shouldn't be there. It eventually turned out that [[spoiler:the spirits who escort the dead arranged for Annie to receive the blinker stone so that she could help free the ghost to pass on]]. |
| 363 | * ''Webcomic/{{Housepets}}'' hung a lampshade on this, yet the character was still surprised to find a huge gigantic griffon feather in the couch. |
| 364 | * ''Webcomic/JustAnotherEscape'', Solina's encounter with the dragon Abraxas ends with her waking up and looking out her window, and the metal flower from the dream is clearly seen. |
| 365 | * ''Webcomic/ThePetriDish'' has a series of strips concerning some [[AnthropomorphicFood sentient potatoes]] called the Tubernati. It appears to be Thaddeus Euphemism's dream, but then a living potato is actually seen. However, sentient food is common in ''The Petri Dish'' because of Thaddeus's crazy experiments, so it would make sense even if it was only a dream. |
| 366 | * In ''Webcomic/{{Rhapsodies}}'', while Kevin seems to know he’s dreaming during the annual [[ChristmasEpisode Christmas Story]] there is just enough circumstantial evidence to make him wonder… things like waking up in a different country. |
| 367 | * In ''Webcomic/TalesOfTheQuestor'', Quentyn assumes that his dream about a glowing white stag licking his forehead and telling him "Be what God made you to be" was just his subconscious psyching him up. But as his forelock starts to turn white, it becomes increasingly clear that it was real. |
| 368 | [[/folder]] |
| 369 | |
| 370 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 371 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 372 | %% * Alex's dreams in ''[[http://thesickland.blogspot.co.uk The Sick Land]]'', especially those concerning [[spoiler:Bob]]. |
| 373 | * In ''Website/SCPFoundation'', [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1587 SCP-1587 ("Dreamland")]] has a professor who uses a lucid dreaming device making his dreams feel just like reality. When he wakes up from them he has a FantasyKeepsake that shows that the dream was real, such as a pieces of a candy table he broke off in a Candyland setting or a jeweled necklace. It comes back to bite him when he dreams of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust: he's [[KillingYourAlternateSelf killed by a Nazi version of himself]] he brought back with him. |
| 374 | * One particular creepypasta has the protagonist going through this trope mixed with GroundhogDayLoop. He wakes up from a nightmare in which he dies by hanging, walks for ages, walks past a bunch of creepy statues, sees a bunch of wierd cultist people who kill him by hanging him on the tree from his dream... then he wakes up again. |
| 375 | * ''Literature/CandleCove'': The story is told via forum posts of users recalling an old, low-budget puppet show that aired in some stations. As they recall how many creepy and off-putting things there were in it, one of the users mentions that he had a nightmare about an episode where all that happened was that the puppets would twitch around and sceam while the one human kid in the cast was just curled up and crying in terror. The next post responds with a rather spine-chilling revelation. |
| 376 | -->kevin_hart: i don't think that was a dream. i remember that. i remember that was an episode. |
| 377 | [[/folder]] |
| 378 | |
| 379 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 380 | * ''WebVideo/DontHugMeImScared'': |
| 381 | ** In the final shot of "Time", the entire sequence is revealed to be the TV show that Red Guy was waiting to watch... although you can still see the Duck Guy's rotting eyeball in the corner of the room. |
| 382 | ** Happens again in "Love", after Yellow Guy wakes up from his terrible nightmare about a cult trying to persuade him to join and find his "special one", his friends offer him an egg which hatches into a bloody worm-like creature that yells "Father!", before being smashed by Duck Guy. |
| 383 | * Parodied in ''WebVideo/TheMisadventuresOfSkooks''. After Fred wakes up from a dream involving [[BestialityIsDepraved Skooks giving Shaggy a handjob]], Shaggy requests Skooks for one in real life, much to Fred's shock. |
| 384 | * The online ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' SpinOff ''The Murdoch Effect'' features Murdoch jumping from 1899 to 2012 whenever he suffers a blow to the head, solving the same crime in both time periods. At the end, he's back in the 19th century and is almost convinced it was a dream, when a strange buzzing comes from his pocket. He pulls out a cellphone, with a picture of himself and the 21st century versions of George and Julia. |
| 385 | * In the [[https://youtu.be/PqEYwJF9tb0 online video]] ''Series/SesameStreet presents the 80s'', the pastiche of "[[Music/AHa Take On Me]]" ("Bake Cookies"), complete with rotoscoped trapped-in-a-comic-book gimmick, is presented as a dream Cookie Monster has ... except that as he's explaining this, the Muppet version of Bunty Bailey is [[FunnyBackgroundEvent shown in the background]] trying to work out why she's suddenly holding a cookie. |
| 386 | * ''WebVideo/UnwantedHouseguest'': The Nightmare Journal album, which was based around the Houseguest recording his bad dreams, introduced the Shadow Demon in the music video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lo4Huf5vpk&list=PLHI2B7t2SHH-AUqq-hfbrm7wf86aKrXyn&index=3&pp=iAQB8AUB Long Hallways]]. Needless to say, the Shadow Demon proved to be very real. |
| 387 | [[/folder]] |
| 388 | |
| 389 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 390 | %% The following Administrivia/{{Zero Context Example}}s have been commented out and copied to Discussion. Please don't add them back unless you also add context to show how they fit this trope. |
| 391 | %% * ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' does this in the episode "You'll Never Eat Food Pellets in This Town Again." |
| 392 | %% * ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' |
| 393 | %% ** Played with in an episode where Mrs. Puff ends in jail after [=SpongeBob=] causes havoc in a boat. |
| 394 | %% ** Same thing happens in the medieval-themed episode "Dunces and Dragons." |
| 395 | * ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'': In the episode "Puhoy", Finn apparently discovers a portal to a pillow dimension in Jake's pillow fort. He tries to find a way back to his dimension, but eventually settles down with a pillow woman, has half-pillow kids, grows old, and dies. After he dies, he ends up a black void where a big red monster is floating, before being transported back to his world, having only been gone about an hour, and immediately forgets about his life in the pillow dimension, suggesting the whole thing was just a dream. However, this monster is [[EarlyBirdCameo the first appearance]] of GOLB, the GodOfChaos, who Finn had no prior knowledge of and becomes much more important to the story later on, implying the experience wasn't as much a dream as it seemed... |
| 396 | * ''WesternAnimation/AlfredJKwak'': |
| 397 | ** Alfred's adventure with the Chess pieces were all just dreams... or so it seems, until the White Queen talks to him after she's put back on the board at the end. |
| 398 | ** After Alfred's experience with a witch trying to marry him turns out to be a nightmare, he takes Winnie out for an evening walk. He almost gets a HeroicBSOD (he snaps out of it pretty quickly) when he briefly spots the witch flying on her broom. |
| 399 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'': |
| 400 | ** In the episode "D.W.'s Name Game", D.W. has a nightmare in which she mets a dinosaur called the Thesaurus. (It's ''one word''!) She then wakes up and tells her family that she had this dream and about all the people were in it. She then says "and you were in it too" and Thesaurus appears at the window and says "Aw, sheesh!" |
| 401 | ** In "Buster's Breathless", Buster has the class imagine a FantasticVoyagePlot to explain his asthma to them. During the ImagineSpot, George accidentally falls into Buster's stomach and gets stuck in some custard pie. When the sequence later ends, Arthur remarks what a good storyteller Buster must be to make it feel so real... then we see George, who is still CoveredInGunge. |
| 402 | * The ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' episode "Shadow of the Bat!". After being bitten by the vampire Dala, vampire!Batman turns almost all the members of the Justice League into vampires. The Martian Manhunter moves their base close enough to the Sun to incinerate them. However the scene cuts to black and then to Batman waking up, back to normal. He looks at Jason Bard and Martian Manhunter, saying that it was nothing but a hallucination caused by Dala’s bite. It's unknown if Batman’s experience as a vampire was just a dream or real. |
| 403 | * Played with while ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'' are watching the video for "Nightmares" by Music/ViolentFemmes near the end of the episode "Cow Tipping". During the video, Beavis mentions having had a nightmare where "everything sucked" and that it was "real scary". Butt-Head responds, "But Beavis, everything ''does'' suck!" causing Beavis to scream in horror, complete with ScareChord, and ever since then does this every time something is mentioned as sucking, either by Butt-Head or Beavis himself. |
| 404 | * In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks'', Huey is followed by someone who claims to be a secret agent hired by the government to tail him (later named "The White Shadow" by Huey). Since no one else can see him and he seems to disappear inexplicably, it suggests that Huey is fantasizing about it all, although the show intentionally leaves it ambiguous. |
| 405 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Classic Disney Short|s}}'' "WesternAnimation/DuckPimples", WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck has a crazy fantasy sequence where he's threatened by characters from a mystery novel who accuse him of stealing a pearl necklace. The short ends with Donald trying to brush off the whole thing as his imagination, while a string of pearls appears around his neck. |
| 406 | * ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', "Operation: NUGGET": The whole ep is a parody of the 1849 Gold Rush, except with chicken nuggets instead of gold. Numbuh 4 wakes up in the stream he fell into at the start of the ep (where he had discovered a chicken nugget) and continues on his way. Pan to a rock with a chicken nugget on it. |
| 407 | * ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'': In "[[Recap/DarkwingDuckS1E45DeadDuck Dead Duck]]", after dying and spending the rest of the episode as a ghost, Darkwing wakes up in his bed at the end. Then Lucifer shows up in the real world in a pre-credits gag, and later on even has an entire episode dedicated to him. |
| 408 | * ''WesternAnimation/DennisTheMenace'': |
| 409 | ** In "The Wizzer of Odd", after Alice reads Dennis the story of ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'', Dennis has a dream [[OffToSeeTheWizard that parodies the story]], with his friends in the roles of the story's characters. When Dennis first arrives in the land of Odd, he meets the Munchies (the equivalent of the Munchkins). The episode ends with Dennis awakening from his dream and telling his parents about it, and after they leave, the Munchies can be seen eating cookies in Dennis' toy box. |
| 410 | ** In "3D and Me", Dennis, Joey, and Tommy go to the movie theater to see ''Submarine of the Future'', [[SawStarWarsTwentySevenTimes a movie they've seen 15 times before]]. On their way to see the beginning of the film, they cut in line in front of a man several times. During the movie, Dennis falls asleep and has a dream where he becomes the captain of the naval submarine, which a spy tries to destroy with explosives. Dennis recognizes the spy as the man he cut in front of in line, and is awarded a medal for saving the sub. When Dennis awakens from his dream, he discovers that his feet are wet, which he assumes is from having spilled his soda, but then he discovers that he still has his medal with him. The man Dennis cut in front of in line then discovers that his feet are wet as well. |
| 411 | * Played with on ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', "The Sting": After Fry's death, Leela wakes up from a dream about him with the jacket he was buried in, but when she tries to use it to convince the Planet Express crew that Fry is alive, she sees that it's her own jacket. As it turns out, [[spoiler:for most of the episode it was AllJustADream; Fry isn't really dead and Leela is in a fevered coma]]. |
| 412 | * In a ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' episode parodying ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'', Garfield gets TrappedInTVLand. Some time later, he wakes up along with Odie, considering it to be a dream. Then he notices he's wearing a scarf he got on a shopping channel... and on the floor is a broken remote which Odie destroyed trying to free the cat... |
| 413 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': In Episode 98, the scene where Stumpy fought a bunch of alien sheep to prevent himself and his friends from being hypnotized was shown to be a dream, but a few minutes after that, Kaeloo finds Stumpy having been hypnotized by them for real. |
| 414 | * ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoons |
| 415 | ** "Water, Water Every Hare". At the end of the cartoon, Bugs Bunny wakes up in his bed and thinks the events of the cartoon were all just a dream. Then Gossamer, who Bugs had made small earlier, comes in on a boat his size and says, "Oh yeah? That's what you think!" |
| 416 | ** "Knight-Mare Hare", in which during the dream portion Bugs had turned the wizard Merlin into a horse. When Bugs comes out of it, he sees a farmer calling his very similar-looking horse "Merlin". |
| 417 | ** "WesternAnimation/ScrapHappyDaffy": Daffy thinks his encounter with a submarine full of Nazi saboteurs was just a dream. Then he hears the Nazis call out from atop a pile of junk "Next time you dream, include us out!" |
| 418 | ** "The Aristo-Cat": the cat wakes up in his bed and says "What a terrible dream." Then the mice and dog appear in bed with him. |
| 419 | ** "WesternAnimation/RocketByeBaby": A PanickyExpectantFather has a crazy dream about accidentally bringing home a Martian baby, where he and his wife eventually receive an ultimatum from the Martians that they will return his human son (which they've taken to calling "Yob") in exchange for the Martian tyke. Unfortunately, the Martian baby has built his own little flying saucer, and returns to the Martian mothership on his own. Dad, trying to catch him, falls from a high window, yelling for them to return his human baby. He then awakens from the nightmare to find himself back in the waiting room and seeing the nurses wheel his perfectly normal son in. The cartoon ends with a close-up of the baby wearing a bracelet that says "YOB". |
| 420 | ** "The Wearing O' The Grin": Porky has a nightmare in which two leprechauns accuse him of planning to steal their pot of gold and sentence him to "[[InvoluntaryDance the wearing o' the green shoes]]". This inspires Porky to hastily leave the castle where he'd been planning to stay the night... upon which the caretaker reveals he really is [[TotemPoleTrench the two leprechauns in a long coat]], who congratulate each other on scaring off a trespasser. |
| 421 | ** "The Mouse That Jack Built" is a parody depicting [[Radio/TheJackBennyProgram Jack Benny]] and the cast of his show as mice. (Voiced by themselves -- including Creator/MelBlanc). At the end, a live-action Jack Benny wakes up from dreaming the entire short. He [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall directly addresses the audience]] how silly the dream was -- only for his animated mouse counterpart to suddenly pop up. |
| 422 | * One ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' short involves Lincoln and Clyde falling asleep while watching their favorite show ''[[ShowWithinAShow Muscular Fish]]'' and having a SharedDream wherein they bump into Muscular Fish himself at Flip's and try get him un-banned from the store, eventually leading to a fight with Muscular Fish's arch-enemy. Lincoln and Clyde wake up afterward and realize it was AllJustADream...only for Muscular Fish on the TV to turn toward the screen and seemingly say to the boys: "Thanks again for your help, boys!", much to their confusion. |
| 423 | * This is the ending of "Madeline in the Magic Carpet" from ''WesternAnimation/{{Madeline}}'', in which Madeline is told that the adventure she had of riding on a magic carpet and rescuing a genie with Pepito and Pancho was just a dream. That evening, she finds under her bed the magic lamp that had been thrown in Pepito's garbage. |
| 424 | * ''WesternAnimation/NedsNewt'': The episode "Jurassic Joyride" turns out to be AllJustADream, but right then Newton realizes W-ZIP TV is informing about it. The host even calls him a "big blue doofus", much to his anger before he turns back into a newt. He then watches dream!Ned and dream!Newton end up at Series/GilligansIsland. |
| 425 | * In ''WesternAnimation/OverTheGardenWall'', [[spoiler:near the end it is suggested that the journey into The Unknown was a dream Wirt had after falling into a river, but some signs suggest he and Greg did go there -- including a blink-and-you'll-miss-it image of the frog's stomach glowing, a CallBack to the eighth episode. Many theorists have come to the conclusion that The Unknown is in between life and death, a limbo]]. |
| 426 | * The ''Cars Toons'' series of WesternAnimation/PixarShorts actually all end this way. Here are all the examples: |
| 427 | ** "Rescue Squad Mater": [[spoiler:[[HospitalHottie Nurse GTO]] visits Radiator Springs]]. |
| 428 | ** "Mater the Greater": [[spoiler:Lug and Nutty (Mater's assistant pitties) can be seen cleaning up the mess Mater made at the very beginning of the short]]. |
| 429 | ** "El Materdor": [[spoiler:The bulldozers notice Lightning [=McQueen=] and start chasing him. The two ladies appear behind Mater as well]]. |
| 430 | ** "Tokyo Mater": [[spoiler:DJ can be seen attending the dance party at the end of the short (there was a car shaped like him that appeared in the background several times)]]. Also, [[spoiler:several cars from this short, such as Kabuto, the short's villain,]] actually make cameo appearances in ''WesternAnimation/Cars2''. However for some reason, [[spoiler:Kabuto]] somehow got all of his modifications back [[DefeatByModesty even though he lost them]] (as a result of him losing to Mater) at the end of this short. |
| 431 | ** "UFM: Unidentified Flying Mater": [[spoiler:Mater flies away as if he was a UFO]]. |
| 432 | ** "Heavy Metal Mater": [[spoiler:The inflatable Mater from the concert at the end of the short flies past Radiator Springs]]. |
| 433 | ** "Monster Truck Mater": [[spoiler:Tormentor's biggest fan visits Radiator Springs]]. |
| 434 | ** "Moon Mater": [[spoiler:Captain Roger the Space Shuttle flies away with Mater]]. |
| 435 | ** "Mater: Private Eye": [[spoiler:A ''colorized'' Carmen (the waitress at the nightclub Mater visited in the short) visits Radiator Springs]]. |
| 436 | ** "Air Mater": [[spoiler:The Falcon Hawks fly Mater away]]. |
| 437 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'' HalloweenSpecial, the final segment involved the kids climbing down one of the Diggers' holes in the middle of the night and encountering the zombies of Mrs. Finster's ancestors. The next morning, they find no evidence of the experience, with the Diggers stating they didn't see any zombies. Gretchen surmises that the group imagined the whole thing due to the scary situation. However, it then pans to the cafeteria, where the audience [[WhamShot is shown one of the zombies' glasses which had been knocked off in the ordeal]]. |
| 438 | * ''WesternAnimation/PunkyBrewster'' does this in "Return to Chaundoon." The gateway to Glomer's home reopens, so he brings Punky and her pals to visit. While there, Brandon (Punky's dog) gets a bone to chew on. After the adventure climaxes, it appears Punky and Glomer dreamt it...until they see Brandon with the bone. |
| 439 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'': |
| 440 | ** At the end of an episode where Tommy and his friends experience an AlienAbduction, Tommy wakes up to find himself in his crib, indicating that it was just a dream...until it cuts to Angelica still on the desert planet she was teleported to. |
| 441 | ** In "Chuckie's Wonderful Life", Chuckie's guardian angel appears to show him what life would be like without him but Chuckie wakes up... only to see a similar-looking boy on a motorcycle. |
| 442 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': |
| 443 | ** In the episode "Thank God It's Doomsday", Homer wonders if visiting the afterlife was all a dream. When Homer sees that God had granted him his wish to see Moe's Tavern restored (whereas earlier in the episode it had been converted into a sushi bar), he takes what happened as fact. |
| 444 | ** In ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E7TreehouseOfHorrorII Treehouse of Horror II]]", Homer wakes up from a horrible dream where Mr. Burns's head was grafted to his body only to find Mr. Burns's head is still there. |
| 445 | ** Parodied in "Tennis the Menace." Homer has a nightmare that [[ChildSupplantsParent Bart has murdered him and married Marge]]. After waking up, Homer sees a picture of Bart and fearfully says, "That's the guy from my dream." |
| 446 | * The season one finale of ''WesternAnimation/SheepInTheBigCity'', "To Sheep, Perchance to Dream", dealt with many bizarre events (such as General Specific suddenly turning into a sheep as well as Sheep and Swanky getting married) as [[AllJustADream actually being dreams the characters were having]]. The narrator Ben Plotz isn't happy about this and eventually finds out that [[EvilAllAlong Sheep is the real villain]], [[SuddenlySpeaking was actually able to talk]], and intended to use Ben in a narrator-powered ray gun. In the end, Ben wakes up and concludes that it was just a dream, but looks down to see that he really is in a narrator-powered ray gun. This twist wasn't acknowledged at all in the second season. |
| 447 | * Dreamy Smurf in ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'' dreams that he has been taken to the land of the Pookies, who have been waiting for [[SecondComing his return]] to deliver them from the tyrannical Norf Nags. The end of the episode, however, may suggest otherwise, as Dreamy trips over a crystal similar to the ones seen in his dream. |
| 448 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "World War Zimmerman," Cartman wakes up in class to discover he was dreaming about the movie version of ''Film/WorldWarZ''. After a series of events inspired by the movie, involving several deaths, Cartman wakes up in class again. Instead of the events being dismissed as all just a dream, his fellow students remind him that the events did happen, and that he is a murderer. |
| 449 | * The ''WesternAnimation/TaleSpin'' episode "The Old Man and the Seaduck" features this ending. Baloo has returned to the old flying school that helped him recover from amnesia to get help for the instructor, one Joe [=McGee=]. When he gets back, the school is in ruins, and Joe is nowhere to be found. The doctor explains that the flying school had been closed for years since the head instructor--Joe [=McGee=]--died. Baloo then looks around the old awards, pictures, and medals...and spots a photograph, which he takes. The photo shows him and Joe standing together to pose for the camera. |
| 450 | * ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012'': "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S2E18PizzaFace Pizza Face]]" seems to end with the tired old AllJustADream ending, with Mikey waking up in bed and everyone unharmed. However, as he goes back to sleep, Pizza Face (or what's left of him) pops out of a pizza box near the bed, confirming it was not. |
| 451 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheTwistedTalesOfFelixTheCat'' had an episode called "The Milky Way" where Felix encountered a dairy godmother and wished to be sent to a land where he could get all the dairy products he wants. Felix eventually gets tired of gaining weight from subsisting only on dairy products and begs the dairy godmother to send him home. She does so in a curt manner and causes Felix to plummet to his doom. Felix then wakes up only to be scared off by a milkman offering him bottles of milk, who turns out to be the dairy godmother in disguise. |
| 452 | * ''WesternAnimation/ZigAndSharko'': The episode "Coral Reef Cowboys". At the end, Bernie soaks Zig with a bucket of water to snap him out. However, the latter notices Sharko, Marina and a couple of fish play blindfolds, and then takes out a starfish from the dream. |
| 453 | [[/folder]] |
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