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Great minds dream alike.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?"
What a strange dream. Within a dream. Or is this the dream?"
The main character dreams that a giant cantaloupe is out to get him, then wakes up with a start. After a moment of sitting up and panting, he realizes it was All Just A Dream, then gets up and goes to the bathroom for a glass of water — only to find the giant cantaloupe there waiting for him. He wakes up with a start again, because of course the first waking-up bit was part of the dream. Also available in 'Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream', 'Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream', and so on, although some discretion is preferred.
If taken out far enough, and if all the many-layered dreams are substantially the same, what you can get is a Groundhog Day Loop.
Sometimes will pull a twist by having a character wake up from a dream, then something else bizarre happens, and an altogether different character will wake up from that dream.
Compare Droste Image. See also Push Pop Plot and Schrodinger's Butterfly.
This trope is largely Truth In Television and is fairly common phenomenon.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- In one infamous episode of Oruchuban Ebichu, Ma-kun has a quadruple Dream Within A Dream involving his Squicky sexual fantasies about the title character.
- Ebichu is a female hamster by the way.
- Milfuelle appears to go through a series of Dream Within a Dream Alternate Universes in Galaxy Angel A, where her fellow Angels are everything from pirates to robots to giant lizard creatures. Only then is it revealed that a Lost Technology she was using as a pillow really was transporting her to the various universes - and the other versions of her are appearing back in the show's original one.
- The suspense film Perfect Blue use this device multiple times (as well as showing us conversations or scenes that seem like they're really happening, only for a director to yell "cut!" — the main character was just filming a scene in the television show she's in) to ramp up the suspense and paranoia that the main character feels.
- One chapter of the manga Pyuu to Fuku! Jaguar ends with Piyohiko waking from a dream and becoming inspired to take up playing the recorder. Then it turns out this was a dream Jaguar was having.
- Paprika: Dr. Chiba wakes up from a dream that was going wrong and goes with her colleague to confront the villain at his house, but realizes she's still dreaming when the bad guy shows up with tree roots for a lower body.
- In GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class, after falling asleep at a lecture on surrealism, Kisaragi ends up going into a bizarre dream. Then wakes up from that into another weird dream. This repeats a few more times until she finally wakes up.
Comic Books
- In The Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman, Dream (the titular character) punishes the son of his captor by condemning him to "eternal waking," basically a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream... ad infinitum, with each dream quickly turning into a nightmare.
- In a Calvin And Hobbes comic, Calvin puts on his clothes, walks out the front door, falls from an inexplicably great height, and wakes up in Catapult Nightmare fashion - then does it all over again.
- Watterson liked this one. It was also used at least once as simply Calvin waking up on a schoolday, putting on his clothes, walking out the front door, then being woken up again - every little school-hating kid's nightmare.
- One of the Super Mario Bros. comics used this as a Running Gag. Mario would wake up, find a note that the Princess had been captured by King Koopa, and run off to save her. He is immediately and humorously killed by the first Mooks he encounters, only to wake up in bed and find a note...
Film
- Perhaps the best examples come from Luis Bunuel's surreal masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
- Likewise, this is a common staple of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies, where the villain Freddy Krueger killed people in their dreams. He's chasing someone... and they wake up! They're safe! ...oops, no, they aren't, waking up was a dream too!
- Subverted in the beginning of The Matrix, where the main character later finds out that all the "nested dreams" were real after all. Well, real inside the virtual reality he inhabits, at least.
- In the horror movie An American Werewolf In London, the main protagonist dreams of a group of werewolves wearing Nazi uniforms and carrying machine guns breaking into his home and ruthlessly gunning down his family, before one of them slits his throat. When he wakes up in the hospital he's staying at, he's comforted by the nurse he's infatuated with, but she is shortly attacked by one of the aforementioned Nazi werewolves, brutally stabbing her to death. The guy wakes up for real afterwards.
- In Star Trek First Contact, Picard wakes up after dreaming about his assimilation into the Borg Collective some years earlier, during which various robotic parts were grafted onto his body. As he freshens up, one of these (long-removed) components breaks through his cheek from the inside - and he then wakes up for real.
- In the 2006 version of The Wicker Man, Edward dreams of himself swimming towards the lifeless body of his daughter floating in the water. He then wakes up, only to find himself holding her soaked, lifeless body in his arms. He wakes up for real the third time around and curses.
- In the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters, Su-Mi is dreaming of a strange, confusing and creepy encounter in the forest with her dead mother, in which she reaches out and grabs her mother's arm, which suddenly starts to bleed profusely, staining her dress. She is startled awake. A few seconds later, however, she hears a faint scratching sound at the foot of her bed. As she slowly sits up and looks, she sees a ghostly woman with long black hair and deathly pale skin crawling along her floor (who also seems to bear a close resemblance to the girls' late mother), who suddenly rears up and begins to slowly make her way towards Su-Mi, who is paralysed with fear. When the ghost is standing directly above her, her leg starts to bleed as a hand suddenly emerges from between her legs. Su-Mi then wakes up for real.
- The Deaths Of Ian Stone begins with the hockey player Ian Stone having a bad night due to a biased referee. On the way home, he gets run over by a train, and wakes up and realizes he's the office worker Ian Stone. He lasts a day before getting stabbed by his girlfriend, and wakes up just in time to avoid crashing the taxi he's driving. And it only continues from there . . .
- Waking Life, naturally for a film about dreaming, has the main character repeatedly waking up from a dream, while still dreaming. Hence, the film begins with a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, or perhaps even further down the line.
- The protagonist of In The Mouth Of Madness dreams of witnessing a cop beating a graffiti artist in a dark alley, an event he witnessed earlier that night, but now the cop is a deformed monster. He wakes up...and sees the monster-cop sitting next to him, and wakes up again.
Literature
- Arthur used this on one occasion, with the titular character remarking "Man, I hate double-dreams."
- In The Tragedy Of Man Adam in his dream impersonates Kepler. Then falls asleep, dreams about being Danton in the French Revolution and when he was executed, he woke up and found himself back in Prague as Kepler.
Live Action TV
- An episode of Mad About You was based entirely around this phenomenon.
- Done several times on the opening for the 2007 Emmies, with Jon Stewart waking up next to several beautiful women in succession. Finally he wakes up, sees no one next to him, and rolls over to see George Clooney, who tells him that it's not a dream. Stewart doesn't seem too displeased with this.
- An episode of Married With Children had Marcy repeatedly dreaming that her husband Steve had been replaced with Al Bundy. After waking up and thinking everything was fine, Steve would turn into Al and the cycle would repeat.
- House's season 2 finale used this device when House gets shot; the episode is both predictable and compelling.
- Full House did this with Michelle being self-conscious about the size of her feet.
- In the Stargate Atlantis episode The Gift, Teyla has a nightmare of a wraith standing over her bed as she sleeps. She wakes with a start and rushes over to John's rooms, only to find that he's been life-sucked in his sleep. She wakes again, for real this time and lies stunned for a while.
- One of the more unintentionally funny moments was in the brainwashing episode of MacGyver. Jack Dalton was having nightmares surrounding his brainwashing on a nightly basis, usually waking up in a cold sweat. One of those times he woke up, he was just having a normal morning with MacGyver. He was waving his hand around to make a point when he then noticed he was holding a gun. "Hey, where did that come from?" He then notices the symbol on MacGyver's pitcher is the same as his trigger, shoots it (with the show suggesting that MacGyver also got shot even though he was holding it away from his body), and then wakes up.
- Happens repeatedly in a Kids In The Hall sketch. "I had the pear dream again..."
- An episode of Dallas saw Sue Ellen awake from a surreal nightmare in which she was chased by a shadowy JR in his car. Several episodes later Pam wakes up, revealing the entire season to have been a dream - including Sue Ellen's nightmare.
- A whole skit was made around it in this
 Saturday Night Live Digital Short.
- An episode of the '85-'97 Twilight Zone revival featured a prison where the inmates were stuck in a never-ending dream-within-a-dream sequence.
- The tag on an episode of Red Dwarf´ was finding out that they were still trapped in the Lotus Eater Machine. Because Good stuff never happens to Rimmer in real life.
- A variation on this trope occurs in the Red Dwarf episode "Back To Reality" in which the Boys from the Dwarf believe that, in reality, they have all been playing a total immersion virtual reality game for the previous four years. It turns out that they have only been under the influence of the Despair Squid's Ink; and they are nearly successful in killing themselves (the ultimate effect of the ink) when none wants to return to his "real" world existence.
- In one episode of The Big Bang Theory, the roommates get a replica time machine from an online auction. Sheldon dreams that it actually worked, taking him to the year 802701, where he is promptly attacked by Morlocks. Waking up, he finds himself back in the present...where he is again attacked by Morlocks, who have been hired to move the time machine out of the apartment. Then he wakes up again...
- An episode of Scrubs opens with JD going through a short chain of daydreams, each one being an almost-kiss that "ends right before the really sexy part." First it's Molly and Carla, then Molly and JD, then Turk and JD, and at that point he breaks the daydream chain, insisting he "doesn't have gay jungle fever." So Yeah.
- An episode of Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad puts Sam Collins through a series of nightmares, each beginning with him having just woken up from the previous nightmare. Eventually he wakes up for real and beats up the monster that was causing it.
- The Wings episode "The Big Sleep" features a dream within a dream within another dream.
Music
- In the music video for "DARE" by Gorillaz, Noodle is shown to be keeping the giant disembodied head of musician Shaun Ryder in her closet. The video ends with Shaun waking up from the nightmare to discover Murdoc in his bed ("Go back to sleep, honey," says Murdoc). Murdoc then wakes up in his winnebago, gasping in fear.
- The Dream Song by Joan Baez is about one of these, though the imagery in the song makes clear that the song's narrator is still asleep.
- Dream Within A Dream by Propaganda starts with the Edgar Allan Poe quotation.
Video Games
- The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening is All Just A Dream, and within that game there's an area called the Dream Shrine which you access by climbing into a bed and going to sleep.
- Super Mario Bros 2: First Mario dreams that he goes to Subcon, the land of dreams, then wakes up and, during a picnic on a mountain, finds a cave and the stairway to Subcon, but in the ending of the game, it is revealed that that was All Just A Dream too.
- After falling asleep in Yume Nikki, Madotsuki can fall asleep again in the dream world. Fan speculation states that even her normal dreams are this.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- The "dream within someone else's dream" version happened in the Ed Edd N Eddy episode "Rock-A-Bye Ed".
- Happened in the end of South Park's twisted Clip Show episode, "Schoolbus on the Edge of Forever".
- The first episode of The Simpsons after the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" Cliff Hanger made it look like the shooting incident was a dream (an obvious spoof of the infamous All Just A Dream moment that retconned away an entire season on Dallas, the same show whose "Who Shot J.R.?" storyline was what the Simpsons storyline was spoofing). Turns out that waking up was a dream (Smithers's dream, to be precise), and the shooting did happen.
- An earlier episode of The Simpsons played with the trope: The second "Treehouse of Horror" episode had a Framing Device in which each mini-story is a nightmare being had by one of the Simpsons. At the end, Homer wakes from a nightmare in which Mr Burns's head was grafted onto his shoulder — to find that Burns's head is still grafted onto his shoulder. He reassures himself that he must have only dreamt that he woke up... and the episode ends, with an On The Next suggesting that he's stuck with the head for real.
- An episode of The Adventures Of Jimmy Neutron ended with a chain of "dream within someone else's dream"s, ending with a monster pizza and his wife. No, really.
- In the Futurama episode "The Sting", Leela goes into a coma after being stung by a space bee, although at this point both she and the audience are unaware of this. She keeps having many Dreams Within A Dream, which convince her she's going insane, before awakening at the end of the episode.
- Bender has a similar experience in "Obsoletely Fabulous".
- Happened to Mrs. Puff in Spongebob Squarepants. Most of the episode had her in prison after Spongebob drove a car off an "unfinished bridge" and down into a juice truck. Near the end of the episode she woke up and was back in the car, falling and crashing again. This time Spongebob was arrested. She looked down to see she was in a prison outfit and woke up again, with one of the prisoners in the car instead. She woke up again, giving up, "Oh, forget it."
- In the Justice Friends segment of Dexters Laboratory, an episode had Krunk watching a Puppet Pal marathon, and entering the land of the Puppet Pals after being guided by a zebra. After a mess occurs, he wakes up discovering it was All Just A Dream... and the zebra appears. It cuts to one of the Puppet Pals waking up from the Dream Within a Dream, complaining "Remind me to never watch the Justice Friends marathon again!".
- In Shrek the Third, Shrek wakes up from his baby nightmare only to see Donkey and Puss with baby ogre heads. Then he wakes up for real.
- At the end of one Taz-Mania episode, Francis wakes up from a nightmare and a tonne weight lands on his head. Then he wakes up and the weight lands on his head again...and again...and again...
- Happened in the Disney's run of Doug, when Doug thought Skeeter was vampire, dreaming of himself visiting his friend and finding the proof of Skeeter's vampire nature along with a notepad of people to bite with Patty being next. Doug rushes to her house only to find out Skeeter beat him to it what more it was Doug's turn to be bitten as vampire Patty points out. Soon his other now undead friends appear and advance on him. Doug then wakes up and relived it was a dream till Sketter and Patty bats suddenly appear. This makes Doug wake up for real moaning "I hate double dreams!"
- In Rocko's Modern Life, the episode "To Heck and Back" begins with Karen (a chicken) interviewing for a job. She gets the job, but it turns out that the job is being processed and packed to be sold at a grocery. The episode continues with Heffer and Rocko at the Chokey Chicken, where Heffer dies after choking on a chicken bone. When he arrives in hell, he is "oriented" by Peaches, a devil, and shows him clips of his sins. Eventually, Rocko manages to save Heffer, and he comes back to life. After a few minutes, Rocko reveals himself to be Peaches, and Heffer wakes up in his room. After calming down, Heffer's house turns into the giant head of Peaches, and Heffer finally wakes up at Rocko's front lawn. He goes to Rocko and meets Karen, the chicken at the beginning of the episode, who is headed to the Chokey Chicken corporation for an interview.
- "Tickled Pinky" did this too, where Rocko dreams that he's in a room full of organs in jars begging not to be cut out, then wakes into another dream where he and Pinky (his appendix) go to a carnival and other things, before waking up from the surgery for real.
- The Venture Bros Christmas special begins with Dr. Venture as Scrooge being shown his own grave. Like Scrooge, he wakes from the dream a changed man, his heart grown three sizes, nose glowing red and flying - he wakes up again, his face on the tv remote as the set clicks from one Christmas special to another. At the end of the show, his Christmas party ends abruptly as the compound erupts in an explosion set up by the Monarch. He wakes up yet again in the family jet, which has crash-landed in Bethlehem.
Web Original
- In the Nostalgia Critic's review of Full House, he reaches the end and awakes from a dream about the Olsen twins attacking him like the horrible spectres they are. He realizes he must have dozed off and tries to deliver his catchphrase ("I'm the Nostalgia Critic, I remember it so you don't have to") when he is suddenly ATTACKED! By the Olsen twins! He wakes up with a start, and tries again...only to be ATTACKED! After several more attempts he looks around nervously, says, "You know what I do and you know why I do it," and rushes off before he can wake up again.
- Used to an absolutely ludicrous degree in Death Hat.
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