-->''"There is no out of here. You've been killed, don't you remember?"'
-->--Jacob's Ladder

-->''"I find it kinda funny/I find it kinda sad/That the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had."''
-->-- Tears for Fears, ''Mad World''

-->''"The ill and dying are said to have the most beautiful dreams."''
-->--Chopin's doctor, ''EternalSonata''. If the game is to be trusted, this is the first medical acknowledgment of fever dreams.

The trope that launched a thousand [[WildMassGuessing Wild Mass Guesses]] (most recently those for ''{{Lost}}''), the Dying Dream is easily the most fashionable form of {{Shaggy Dog Story}}. The beginnings may be different - although these days they usually seem to start with a car crash - but each one ends in pretty much the same way, with the reveal that the protagonist has been dead or dying all along, and that everything that has happened has been some kind of dream, or else a purgatorial cleansing of sins. The absolute end of the story may involve the protagonist entering Heaven or Hell, TheNothingAfterDeath or just winking out of existence altogether, if the writer doesn't believe in an afterlife ([[OffscreenAfterlife or just wants to leave the question open]]).

Typically, the stories have protagonists going about what they believe to be their normal lives, but finding "reality" becoming increasingly unhinged, with demons, surreal elements and other oddities making them increasingly baffled and afraid.

Note that stories don't count if we know all along that the character is dead/dying, or if the dying dream bit only comes in at the end.

Compare DeadAllAlong and DeadToBeginWith. May overlap with [[SchrodingersButterfly Schrodinger's Butterfly]]. Contrast YourMindMakesItReal for the belief that dying in a dream [[KilledOffForReal kills you off for real]].

'''WARNING: By definition there are story-ruining spoilers ahead.'''
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!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* At the end of the {{Hentai}} {{Manga}} ''Alice in Sexland'', it is revealed that Alice broke her neck while fleeing from her oppressors at the very start - the entire realm of Sexland is her afterlife. (And it's explicitly single-occupant - she's the only "real" person there besides the Queen of Hearts, and ''one'' of them needs to be [[{{Reincarnation}} reincarnated]].) Given that the whole story up until then has been a cheerful sexual adventure vaguely mimicing Carroll's classic book, it's a rather unsettling twist of genre.
**[[OrSoIHeard Or so you heard?]]
*** I think we're mature enough to acknowledge that we all enjoy porn. also, its not that the characters aside from Alice and the Queen aren't "real", they're more akin to nature spirits than souls. remember that ''Sexland'' is a Japanese story, and that the major religion of Japan is animistic.
* An alternate ending to the manga ''PrettyFace'' has the entire story be just a dream before Rando dies in a coma. This troper is glad it wasn't chosen as the true ending.
* A short one in the manga of BattleRoyale. One character is delerious from an infected bullet wound, and stops to drink at a well. She gets tipped in by a classmate, but rain begins to fall and raises the water allowing her to climb out and find her friends came back to her and there is a way to escape the island. Uh-uh, panel of the girl's smiling face is followed by [[NightmareFuel a picture of her deranged grin as she falls into the blackness of the well.]]
* A variation in the ''ZoneOfTheEnders'' anime: [[spoiler: In ''Idolo'', Radium starts to see the world around him as the chapel he planned to marry his just-killed fiancee Dolores (a.k.a. Dolly) in shortly ''before'' he dies. In ''Dolores, i'', a not-so dead Radium begins to hallucinate again, imagining the HumongousMecha battle between Hathor and Dolores (named after Dolly) as a fight between himself and James, who is piloting Dolores, in the same chapel. Dolores' AI appears in the chapel as a child-like version of Dolly, while his own frame's AI appears as an evil version of her. When he is mortally wounded, the ''real'' Dolores suddenly appears and embraces him, and when he finally passes on, he sees both Dolores and Viola (from the first game) waiting for him.]]
* In the third season of ''HellGirl'', [[spoiler: Yuzuki has actually been dead the whole time and the past few years have been an illusion, which she only discovers when evidence of her "life" starts disappearing. Oh, and Ai tells her.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* ''TheInvisibles'' has an issue called "Best Man Fall," which tells a man's life story in a fragmented, stream-of-consciousness structure. Only at the end of the story does the reader discover that the protagonist is an [[{{Mooks}} enemy soldier who is shot in the face by the hero]] in the first issue, and that everything we have seen is him having a flashback in the seconds before he dies.
* One issue of ''Spider-Girl'' features Dying Dreams of both Normie Osborne (Harry's son) and The Kingpin. One survives, but you don't find out which until the next issue. [[spoiler:It's Normie.]]
* The second-to-last arc of Adam Warren's run on ''{{Gen13}}'' appears to be a BreatherEpisode after the CliffHanger ending of their last storyline (which was [[EpicFail resolved off-screen]]). However, as more and more examples of "[[AllJustADream dream logic]]" appear, heroine Caitlin Fairchild eventually realizes that she's retreated to a fantasy version of her life in the last few microseconds before the EarthShatteringKaboom from the aforementioned cliffhanger vaporizes her and her friends, [[DyingToBeReplaced making way for]] ChrisClaremont's [[DorkAge short-lived]] {{Revamp}} of the series.
* This was the original ending for DC Comic's short-lived Kinetic series, where a hemophiliac gains superpowers after being hit by a truck. The original ending was, described by the writer in a Wizard Magazine article later as, a [[DownerEnding Downer Ending]] because the original idea was the boy was killed by being hit by the truck and the whole series was his Dying Dream.
* Neil Gaiman's "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" is partly this as it is Batman's last dream as he dies from Darkseid's Omega Sanction attack in FinalCrisis, and part sendoff to every version of the Bruce Wayne {{Batman}} in similar vein of WhateverHappenedToTheManOfTomorrow of Superman lore.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* ''Jacob's Ladder'' is probably the best known example of this trope, and stars Tim Robbins as a Vietnam vet who eventually discovers that [[spoiler: he never made it out of 'Nam and that the demons he keeps seeing are just stripping him of his worldly cares.]]
* ''CarnivalOfSouls'' predates ''Jacob's Ladder'', however, as does the Oscar-winning French short ''An Occurence at Owl Creek'', based on the short story by Ambrose Bierce.
* ''Dead End'' reveals that the family all died in a car accident and are in some kind of purgatory.
* DavidLynch's ''Mulholland Drive'' is open to numerous interpretations, including this one.
** And ''Lost Highway''.
* At the end of ''{{Waking Life}}'', the protagonist wonders whether the reason he can't wake up is because he's dead. The ending leaves this question unanswered.
* ''Crazy as Hell''
* ''Room 6''
* ''Stay''
* ''November'' has Courtney Cox's character reliving the same things over and over in order to get her to give up her worldly cares.
* ''The Life Before Her Eyes'' (well what did you expect with [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin that title]]?)
* One interpretation of the ending of ''[[TwentyEightDaysLater 28 Days Later]]'' is that the final scenes are one of these for the main character. [[EpilepticTrees Another interpretation]] is that the ''entire movie'' is one of these for the main character.
* The made-for-video ''{{Hellraiser}}'' sequels have started relying on this trope, turning entire movies into dying dream sequences hosted by Pinhead. That the original premise didn't really involve dying is [[PlotTumor another matter]], and if the critical response is [[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hellraiser_hellseeker/ any indication]], they don't [[SoBadItsHorrible use this trope well]].
* John Boorman has [[WordOfGod confirmed]] that this is the correct interpretation of ''PointBlank''.
* One of the interpretations of ''VanillaSky'' is that David really inflicted fatal injuries upon himself and was placed in cryogenic lucid dream for the past 150 years, dreaming of Sofia.
** ''One'' of the interpretations? This troper thought that ''was'' the ending...
* ''AllThatJazz'' is all about the idea that death and show business go together like peanut butter and jelly, so it's no surprise when it whips one of these out for the final number. Alternatively, [[MindScrew like many movies on this list]], the entire thing might count.
* The original ending of ''The Descent''.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* AmbroseBierce's short story ''An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'' has a man who has been sentenced to death by hanging escaping his execution and running back to his family - only for his neck to break at the very end, revealing that it was in his head all along. It was first published in 1890, making it OlderThanRadio.
** The story was later made into a short film, which won the 1962 Palme d'Or for Best Short Subject and became a [[TheTwilightZone Twilight Zone]] episode.
* ''The Third Policeman'' is another oldish example - it was written in 1940 (but not published until 1967), and its protagonist is forced to walk through the same nightmarish dreamscape over and over as punishment for killing a man for his money.
* over again, the novel ''FinnegansWake'' by JamesJoyce is a stream-of-consciousness ramble that could be about anything, even a dying man's thoughts circling around the same ideas over and over and over and oh bugger it's all starting
* At the end of [=~C. S. Lewis~=]'s ''The Last Battle'', the final {{Narnia}} installment, it is revealed that the kids died in a train accident at the start of the book, and the whole thing has been marking time before Aslan let them into Heaven. This troper found it pretty creepy.
** This Troper enjoyed it, as it is one of the times that TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt is not a DownerEnding.
** I have always understood that the particular kids who are in Narnia throughout the book were transported ''before'' the train accident, meaning they end up entering the afterlife without dying at all, a la Elijah in the Bible.
* Lucille Fletcher's short story, "The Hitch-Hiker". Adapted into three different radio plays for three different shows, each written and starring Orson Welles. ''TheTwilightZone'' adaptation changed the protagonist's gender to a woman.
** The fact the character was originally a man goes a long way in explaining why no one in ''TheTwilightZone'' episode would help a DamselInDistress.
* This trope's lightly touched on in the last chapter of ''TheWarOfTheWorlds'', as the narrator finds himself haunted by the idea that the Martian defeat and humanity's recovery is his own hallucination, and that the city around him is really still in ruins. That most of the happy ending only started after the narrator had gone [[HeroicBSOD temporarily insane]] makes this DownerEnding interpretation eerily plausible.
* In Connie Willis's ''Passage'' large portions consist of a DyingDream.
* Some interpreted ''The Little Match Girl'''s vision of her Grandmother as this instead of a Ghostly Visitor.
* An unusual version of this is found in Greg Egan's [[spoiler:''Transition Dreams''. A man's brain is scanned and transferred to a computer. The end result is an exact copy, as though the man's mind had been instantaneously transferred from brain to computer. But the mind is conscious of the transfer, and realizes that all its dreamlike experiences of the process must be annihilated before it can be identical to the original brain scan.]] The real twist, though, is that [[spoiler: the end of the story calls into question whether he even really ''is'' being transferred to a computer, or if he's just plain dying and the whole brain-scan thing is a hallucination born of denial.]]
* Pretty much all of the ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant may or may not be this- the First Chronicle involves three separate serious accidents for Covenant, [[spoiler:each of which he survives;]] the second, [[spoiler: he dies,]] and in the Last Chronicle, it appears that Linden [[spoiler: has been shot and killed on Earth.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''Promoted to Glory'' was a British TV movie about a recovering alcoholic who goes to work at a Salvation Army and falls in love with a woman he meets there. At the end, he is revealed to be a homeless man who has been knocked down by a bus.
* ''{{Life On Mars}}'' was revealed in the end to be the dream of Sam Tyler as he lies in a coma. In the final episode he finally wakes up, but realises that he preferred his imaginary world to the real one and jumps off a building. In the final seconds before he hits the ground, he re-enters the dream world, where he apparently remains indefinitely (NB, this is a bit of a borderline case, since he apparently wakes up from the dream world for a bit. Still, eh?)
** In ''AshesToAshes'', Alex finds out that Sam died in a car crash shortly before she arrived. She hypothesizes that the time he spent in the "dream world" was actually the amount to time it took for him to die after he hit the ground in the real world, and that [[spoiler:her time in the same world could be a few seconds in the real world between her getting shot and actually dying. It's a [[{{Understatement}} little]] {{Mind Screw}}-y.]]
* The ''Comic Strip Presents'' episode "Les Dogs" has a man crashing his car at the very start of the episode; he then goes to a surreal wedding where he seduces the bride. Just as they are about to have sex, her eyes turn into headlights - there is a screeching sound and the film cuts to black.
* The episode "The Hitchhiker" of ''TheTwilightZone''.
** I myself think that the idea is more that she was a ghost walking or a dead woman walking or in some netherworld and the hitcher was an inversion of the Ferryman who takes you into the afterlife: *she's* the one feyying *him* in literal fact but it's the same principle. He's a psychopomp.
* Not exactly dying, but fitting the trope: An episode of ''{{Scrubs}}'' introduces Dr Cox's friend Ben (an avid photographer who likes to take spontaneous pictures, claiming that 'posed pictures aren't real'), who gets diagnosed with cancer. JD takes a liking to Ben, and gets convinced that the diagnosis is wrong - all his friends have complained how important files have been mixed up and the wrong patients sent to surgery and so on, and JD believes that the same thing happens here. After convincing the lab doctor to redo the test, Ben is proven to be healthy, and everything is rosy... and the edges of the frame starts getting kinda blurry... when Ben wants everyone to gather together for a group pic, JD thinks it's odd because doesn't Ben think pics like that aren't real? And Ben replies, "Don't you see? None of this is real." And that's when JD's wishful daydream, which has been going on since just before the second blood test, ends.
** And in a later episode, Ben visits for Cox's son's birthday party, Dr. Cox blames JD for the death of a patient, and Ben manages to convince Dr. Cox to apologize. Later, Dr. Cox and Ben are on the way to the party, and [[spoiler: JD arrives, prompting Dr. Cox to realize that Ben is not there, that Ben was in fact the patient who died and that they are attending his funeral rather than Jack's birthday party]].
* Used for this delightful exchange in ''IClaudius'':
-->'''The Sybil''': Why are you laughing? \\
'''Claudius''': I've cheated them again. They think I'm dead.\\
'''The Sybil''': But you ''are'' dead, you fool. You're as dead as anyone can be.
* The season 7 finale of MagnumPI, ''Limbo'', was supposed to be a dying dream of Magnum's, but then they were renewed for another season, so he got better.
*In the final season of Six Feet Under [[spoiler:Nathaniel Fisher jr. ]] dreamt he was driving to the beach with his brother and father, before finally submerging in the ocean, never resurfacing.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* The entire game of VelvetAssassin is the DyingDream of Violette Summers, a young British secret agent during WWII who is dying in a hospital. The surreal, disjointed game missions are actually her memories, and there's even a disturbing "morphine mode" where, if Violette becomes too agitated remembering her missions, a nurse will inject her with morphine and time will slow down in the game world, allowing Violette to escape or come to terms with whatever is frightening her.
* One ending of ''{{Silent Hill}}'' - a game that is truly as open to multiple interpretations as any novel or film - has a clip after the credits showing the protagonist in his crashed car, apparently dead - suggesting that the whole thing is a dying dream.
** However, since this is the ''worst'' [[MultipleEndings ending]] you can receive, it's more of a NonstandardGameOver and was probably intended to be a ShoutOut to ''Jacob's Ladder'' rather than a ''true'' ending.
* ''EternalSonata'' is set in a fantasy world created in the mind of the composer Chopin, who is dying...OrIsIt?
* A particularly dirty example in the game ''TechRomancer'': in the "Wise Duck" storyline (about TheSquad in a {{Humongous Mecha}},) the NewMeat Arvin discovers that his unit has been given orders to destroy a nearby village, and is not happy about it. The player is given the choice to have Arvin follow his commander's orders, or continue to to protest. If he protests, the entire unit finds itself in a bizarre Planet Of The Apes-type world where they have to save the remnants of Humanity from rampaging {{Super Robot}}s. In the end, however, you find out that it's all Arvin's Dying Dream: He was shot by his commanding officer for disobeying orders. Ironically, had you had gone along, the unit would have deserted, eventually turning on their commanders, and taking on the monster responsible for the whole war. Apparently, the choice is a SecretTestOfCharacter, to see if Arvin can be trusted.
* Reversed in the visual novel LittleBusters by KEY (of Clannad fame)-- but no less bitter, at that.
* The scenario of the PC game ''WeirdDreams''. Work your way through various fantastic scenarios trying to prevent them from just being part of a DyingDream.
* ''{{Primal}}'': The heroine is the spirit of a girl lying critically injured in a hospital ICU. Averted in that [[spoiler:her injuries were caused by an obviously demonic form in the real world. While it still all may be a dying dream, there's some evidence for a supernatural explanation]].
* Serves as the final twist in the text-based adventure game ''[[spoiler:Shade]]''. [[spoiler:No, you're not about to leave your apartment for a trip to a rave in the desert; you've already wandered away from the rave in a drug-induced haze, and are dying of heatstroke and dehydration.]]
* Saber's [[spoiler:a.k.a. KingArthur's]] story in ''FateStayNight'' (her only ending): while dying after the Battle of [[spoiler:Camlann]], she makes a pact with the world to allow her to atone for her perceived failure as a king. As a Heroic Spirit, she gets to participate in at least two Holy Grail Wars, finally returning to her time after their conclusion. Of course, her "afterlife" really did take place in a distant future but for her time, it was but a beautiful DyingDream.
* Shiki in ''{{Tsukihime}}'' experiences a long DyingDream in Ciel True Ending, which serves as a foreshadowing of the Far Side of the Moon routes. Fortunately, [[IGotBetter he gets better]], in no small degree thanks to his actions within said dream.
* Max's happy ending in the first season finale of DarkAngel turned out to be a DyingDream as a result of a being [[spoiler: shot by her clone.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

*[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_death_experience Near Death Experiences]] have been reported by tens of thousands of people. [=NDEs=] usually have a journey through a tunnel into light, a life review, a meeting with dead family and friends, a glimpse of Heaven, and then a painful return to the physical body. The exact details of the experience and how it effects the rest of their lives varies from person to person and by the amount of oxygen deprivation, however.
** And by what you expect the afterlife to be like.
***So if you expect the afterlife to be [[DiscWorld Death's house in a far dark country surrounded by fields of grain and his home is completely overrun by kittens]], what happens then?
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell George Orwell]], in a notebook kept during his final illness, wrote about "Death Dreams": ''"Sometimes of the sea or the sea shore but more often of enormous, splendid buildings or streets or ships, in which I often lose my way, but always with a peculiar feeling of happiness and of walking in sunlight. Unquestionably all these buildings etc mean death - I am almost aware of this even in the dream..."'' He did not believe in an afterlife, and wondered why death, which he wasn't afraid to think about while awake, had to be represented as something else in a dream.
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