History Main / SchrodingersButterfly

* ''VideoGame/{{Catherine}}'': The day before Vincent's final climb, he wakes up to find Catherine in his bed and Katherine banging on his door. There's a tense scene between the three until the [[TheOtherDarrin K/]] [[OneSteveLimit Catherine]]s start to fight. Katherine backs up to a sink, looking for a knife that Catherine already has. The two women fight and Catherine ends up getting stabbed before Vincent and Katherine are pulled into the dream world and have to climb to escape a monster [[spoiler:demon form of Catherine]]. At the top, Katherine [[DriventoSuicide tries to throw herself off]] but Vincent saves her, and going through the top door....wakes him up. He realizes it was all a dream when Katherine shows up and he openly admits to her about Catherine in an attempt to explain the dream and she admits to having already known about Vincent's other woman.

* In ''Videogame/MassEffect3'', Joker discusses this trope after [[PlayerCharacter Shepard]] [[spoiler: takes a virtual trip through the geth consensus]], wondering if you really came back out or if you're still in there and everything you're seeing now is an illusion.

* Two examples from ''Videogame/{{Touhou}}'''s [[AllThereInTheManual print works]]. Gensokyo's historian Hieda no Akyuu mentions a theory that the outside world is nothing but a dream of Yukari Yakumo, the resident [[RealityWarper youkai of boundaries]]. Meanwhile in the near-future, a student named Maribel Hearn, who has the ability to see and sometimes cross supernatural boundaries, has inadvertently stumbled into Gensokyo in ''her'' dreams. As if that wasn't enough, Maribel looks very much like a younger version of Yukari...
** In Touhou lore there is also something that takes this to the logical conclusion called Dream Fantasy Disease. It causes the affected to enter Gensokyo in their dreams,[[note]]Presumably this is what's affecting Maribel[[/note]] but it also causes their real dreams to become displaced and become a {{Doppelganger}} should the dreams not find a new host. This of course causes someone to be both awake and sleeping, dreaming and real all at the same time. And it is perhaps needless to say what would happen should [[NeverTheSelvesShallMeet the two]] [[RealityBreakingParadox existences meet]].
** The series as a whole uses this as one of it's mayor backbones in it's narrative. The lyrics for Innocent Treasures put's further allusions to this by referencing the original story.

* Happens in-universe in the ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' fan story "A Private Anecdote". Cpt. Christopher Pike was captain of the ''Enterprise'' when it visited Talos VII, where he was subject to very realistic mental illusions by the Talosians. In this story, years later, he thinks back over his adventures he's had since then; each time, he would briefly wonder: "What if this isn't real?" In other words, was he actually still on Talos experiencing yet another illusion?

* The basic premise of ''Series/{{Awake}}'', in which Detective Michael Britten has one life in which his son died and his wife is still alive, another where it's vice versa. Both are equally real to him.

* In the ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' strip "[[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sleep Sleep]]", a woman praying at her bedside asks God why people have sleep and dreams. God replies that "real" life is [[RealDreamsAreWeirder too nonsensical and uncanny]], with people randomly [[EroticDream having sex with celebrities]], [[NotWearingPantsDream showing up naked in classrooms]], etc. As a respite from the chaos, God explains, people need to take sixteen hours or so a day to sleep and live in [[RealLife a world]] where things are straightforward and predictable. After a {{beat}}, she asks if the God is just [[TheGadfly fucking with her]].

* ComicBook/TheQuestion (whose Sensei nicknamed him "The Butterfly") is [[CatchPhrase fond of]] throwing around the Creator/{{Zhuangzi}} quote, [[NonSequitur whether the context calls for it or not]]. He's even used it as a pick-up line.

* The ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E17NormalAgain Normal Again]]" has her [[CuckooNest "wake up" in a mental institution]], having imagined the last few seasons in a fugue. In the end, Buffy decides that Sunnydale is real and saves her friends... and then we see her psychologist pronounce her too far gone to save. Presumably the rest of the series is her continued hallucinations; how ''Series/{{Angel}}'' fits in is anybody's guess.

* The ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E17NormalAgain Normal Again]]" has her [[CuckooNest "wake up" in an insane asylum]], having dreamt the last few seasons in a fugue. In the end, Buffy decides that Sunnydale is real and saves her friends... and then we see her psychologist pronounce her too far gone to save. Presumably the rest of the series is her continued hallucinations; how ''Series/{{Angel}}'' fits in is anybody's guess.

* This trope probably derives from a form of dream which is commonly experienced after any major change-of-life event in which the change has not occurred yet, which is [[HandWave]]d within the dream by the awareness that the life event & subsequent happenings were itself a dream, or that pre-change life has returned (for example, most people will continue to dream about school for a few months after graduation; after a few years, the dream may change as it becomes more unlikely for the dreamer to still be going to school, so the dream shifts to re-enrolling). This causes extreme confusion when the dreamer awakes and is reminded of their current state of affairs. It's common enough that journal articles and even a book have been written about it.

* This trope probably derives from a dream commonly experienced during the earliest stages of deep mourning. In the dream the dead person is still alive, and it's explicitly stated in the dream (either by the dreamer or the deceased) that the "mourning" the dreamer has just gone through was nothing but a bad nightmare. The dreamer then awakes and suffers extreme confusion. It's common enough that journal articles and even a book have been written about it.

* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'': Gold Experience Requiem's powers are like this, specifically the endless chain of "waking" only to be in another fabricated scenario. The victim catches on after about three times that he's no longer alive, but that doesn't change the fact that he'll [[FateWorseThanDeath never die, either]].

* Are we all (as in, all of objective reality, not just the reality within the series) but a dream of ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya''? At least Koizumi sets this as one of the possible theories.

* A CruelTwistEnding from the ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' episode "Tempests": did the hero escape early in the episode, or at the end? Neither--he's still hallucinating.

** "[[LotusEaterMachine Better Than Life]]" from Season 2, and at least one novel. By the end of the series, it's impossible to tell whether they've really escaped the game, or the game just lets them ''think'' they have. (It does explain a lot of the [[LampshadeHanging self-admitted]] implausible science.) The episode plays it almost entirely for laughs. The book version was much darker. The show version was basically the Holodeck driven by whatever your surface wish was; no mistaking it for reality. The book lets us go a good while thinking the cast has fully made it home. Over much of the rest of the book they manage to escape, and find that things were still a ''little'' too good to be true. When they escape for ''real,'' a message left by the creator of the game appears to congratulate them, and they finally return to the real world. Hopefully. Apparently, they ''wanted'' to do it this way all along in the show but budget or something didn't allow - in "Future Echoes," elderly Lister has "U=BTL" etched into his arm. No attention is called to it at the time (or ever, in the show. In the book, we see this happen in book 1 and Lister notices. Better than Life is book 2.)
** "Back to Reality", the season 5 finale. The crew dies, only to see the "Game Over" text appear and shortly afterwards wake up in VR-game chairs... The series continued after that episode, of course. It plays the concept very seriously. Not only did this sort of go hand in hand with the series "growing up" over time, it also helped create multiple levels of mindscrew.
** At the end of series VI in "Out of Time." Just before the cataclysmic ending, Starbug hits a "reality mine" -- a pocket of alternate history space. Followed immediately by Rimmer deliberately triggering a strange sort of GrandfatherParadox. Followed immediately by the [[spoiler: future Dwarfers]] triggering ''another'' GrandfatherParadox. How many layers of unreality can two minutes of airtime possibly layer ... ?
** Season 8, episode 3, when they [[spoiler:return to the reconstructed Red Dwarf, courtesy of the Nanites,]] and are placed in the brig after signing agreements to participate in a trial involving psychotropic drugs that will cause them to hallucinate. They engineer a daring escape before the trial and make it out into space, at which point they realize that the entire escape attempt has been a hallucination. They enlist the aid of the reconstructed Rimmer and break out again... and realize that, once again, they've all been duped. When they finally make it out of their hallucinated trial, Rimmer asks, "Is this reality? But how can we be sure?" Cat poignantly states, "Why do we care? Nothing makes any sense no matter where we are!"
* ''Series/{{Sherlock}}''. A special episode between the third and fourth seasons goes back and forth between the present-day setting and a 19th-century setting. Sherlock is dreaming one of them and keeps "waking up", but it's unclear which one is the dream. On one hand, the episode is framed as an alternative special set in the 19th century; on the other hand, the present-day setting continues where the third season finale leaves off. In the end, it's left ambiguous which setting is "real": present-day Sherlock claims he went deep inside his mind to run an elaborate thought experiment and 19th-century Sherlock claims [[AllJustADream he imagined what a future world might look like and how he would fit in it]]. Just to make it complicated, one segment of the present-day part turns out to be ''definitely'' a dream, and several characters in the 19th century sprinkle modern words in their dialog.

*** In "Ship in a Bottle", [[spoiler:Picard and Data were in a holographic simulation of the Enterprise, thinking they had exited the program, trying to fulfill Moriarty's request to be let out. They were still in the Holodeck, and Moriarty was actually holding them hostage. They eventually catch on. At the end a holographic Moriarty thinks he escaped from the computer-- but he is actually "exploring" a 24th-century screen saver.]] At the end, Picard speculates about his crew being someone else's entertainment in a little box... ''oooh, meta.''
*** "Inner Light" Sees Picard live out an entire simulated life in a real-life moment. During which he came to accept that his actual life must have been merely a dream or delirium.
*** "Frame of Mind" both explores and inverts this trope, nearly driving Commander Riker insane.
*** The trope is invoked in the first season episode that introduced the holodeck into the ''Star Trek'' universe, "The Big Goodbye."
*** The combination of time-jumping and hallucinations experienced by Picard in "All Good Things..." leads to heavy invocation of this trope.

*** An undeveloped script idea for ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' had Chief O'Brien and Julian Bashir trapped in a virtual reality prison. They escape and make it back to [=DS9=], only to find that they're still in prison, so they escape again and make it back to [=DS9=]. The episode was to end with O'Brien telling his wife that he didn't know for sure if he'd actually escaped, and he never will. It's likely this script was repurposed for the season 4 episode "Hard Time".
*** The season 7 episode "Extreme Measures" does this exact thing with O'Brien and Bashir, when Sloan's mind tricks them into believing they've returned to reality (when in actuality they are still inside his mind, slowly dying with him).
*** A similar concept would also be used in the 6th season episode "Far Beyond the Stars" in which Sisko hallucinates that he is Benny Russell, a pulp fiction writer, whose latest story stars none other than Sisko. It gets even more extreme in that Benny Russell has hallucinations about being Sisko. At the end of the episode Sisko is telling his father that for all he knows he is a figment of his own (alter-ego Benny Russell's) imagination.
*** ThePowersThatBe apparently toyed with the idea of having the entire series (and therefore the entire Franchise/TrekVerse?) being ''all'' Benny Russell's book.

*** This appears to describe an episode of ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' involving a species which spend their entire life dreaming. Only [[MagicalNativeAmerican Native American spirit magic]] can free the crew... or something.
*** In another episode, the crew falls prey to a gigantic space pitcher plant. It makes the crew [[LotusEaterMachine see what they want to see]] (a worm hole to Earth), but they would actually be flying into its stomach. Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman are the only ones immune because Seven was a Borg since childhood and Naomi was born on the ship; [[YouCantGoHomeAgain the whole "getting home" thing]] is not either's ultimate ambition. However, at one point Seven believes the ship has escaped. It turns out that it is just the creature showing her what she wants to see (that is, ''Voyager'' outside the creature), because not getting eaten is ''very much'' something Seven and Naomi both desire.

** The show's [[OurGeniesAreDifferent version of the genie]] seen in "What Is And What Should Never Be" works that way: he grants you your wish by making you hallucinate he did, while feeding on you till you die. Because ''Supernatural'' is [[SarcasmMode optimistic.]]
** The Season 3 episode "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" follows a similar plot to the movie ''{{Film/Inception}}'' (although the episode predates the film by a couple of years), with people hopping in and out of one another's dreams and controlling them; the similarity extends to the episode being a total MindScrew in places.
** [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] in season 7. Sam's hallucination of Lucifer taunts him with the idea that he never escaped from Hell and the events of seasons 6 and 7 was just Lucifer using his RealityWarper abilities to mess with him. After a confrontation with Dean, Sam (and the show) decide that this isn't the case, but that hasn't stopped the EpilepticTrees.

* ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland2LeChucksRevenge'' has an infamous GainaxEnding that makes it [[TheEndingChangesEverything extremely unclear what exactly happened]]. Once [[TheHero Guybrush]] finds [[MacGuffin Big Whoop]], things become [[MakesAsMuchSenseInContext progressively weirder]] until he finds himself in what is either a LotusEaterMachine or [[AllJustADream reality]]... until things are made even more confusing as during TheStinger another character is shown [[OrWasItADream impatiently waiting for him in the "other" reality]]. The next game cleared all this up, though (by applying heavy {{retcon}}ning).

* Happens in ''Power Corrupts'' series by ''WebAnimation/DarkMatter2525''. [[spoiler:After trying and failing to overthrow Yahweh for years Jeffrey realises that he actually never left the original simulation and all the events in the 'real' world were just distractions manufactured by Yahweh. He resolves to reach an actual reality in order to stop whatever plot is unraveling there.]]

-->'''Bender:''' Uff. If that stuff wasn't real, how can I be sure anything is real? Is it not possible, nay, probable that my whole life is just a product of my or someone else's imagination?
-->'''Clerk:''' No, get out. Next!
-->(''Bender then walks out into a world of magical beer fairies and cigar trees while whistling'')

* Played with in the ''[[WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead Beavis and Butt-Head]]'' episode "Cow Tipping" when the duo are watching the Music/ViolentFemmes' video for "Nightmares". Beavis mentions that he had a "real scary" nightmare the night before where "everything sucked". Butt-Head replies "But Beavis, everything ''does'' suck!", causing Beavis to scream in terror under the "revelation" that he is still in said dream where "everything sucks". The rest of the scene involves Beavis doing this every time Butt-Head ''or'' Beavis himself mentions that something "sucks".

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1375357693038892900
%% Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread.

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', brothers Sasuke and Itachi Uchiha practice ''genjutsu,'' techniques centering around illusions. Thus, during the Sasuke vs Itachi fight, the first major stage of the battle consists of Sasuke and Itachi standing perfectly still while both add layer upon layer of illusions. The readers, of course, are ignorant of what is an illusion and what isn't until after the illusion breaks. As a result, there are several points in which the fight seems over, only for the illusion to break and reveal that the brothers ''hadn't actually started fighting yet.''
** Practically lampshaded when Sasuke breaks Tsukuyomi (Itachi's strongest genjutsu), and [[CombatCommentator Zetsu]] pretty much lets the reader know the rest of this ''isn't'' genjutsu.
* ''Manga/XxxHolic'' actually even refers to the above quote and it is an allegory of a central theme in the series--tellingly, Yuuko's symbol is the butterfly, apt for someone [[spoiler: who's in a state of artificially extended existence when she was supposed to have died a long time ago, and who basically disappears in a PuffOfLogic after the truth catches up to her]].
* In ''Manga/GetBackers'', in one of the episodes, an elderly homeless man asks the Get Backers to save his daughter from the mafia. [[spoiler:When they arrive the girl doesn't want to go with them, and they leave her there. Upon seeing the old man being loaded onto an ambulance, Ban catches both the old man's and Ginji's eyes before the daughter runs up to tell her father that she loves and forgives him. It is never revealed whether the daughter truly showed up, or if Ban was showing both men a pleasant illusion.]] The viewer is often confused as to what is the illusion and what is reality, only being sure when Ban reveals his trick.
** In the original manga, Ginji asks him if he used the Evil Eye, and Ban replies with a dejected 'yeah'.
* ''Anime/DotHackSign'' ends with [[spoiler: Helba forcibly deleting Net Slum in a desperate effort to stop Skeith, causing everyone to be ejected from the game as the server crashes. This results in Tsukasa finally logging out of the game for the first time in the entire series and having a heartwarming meeting with Subaru in the real world...but when their hands touch, a distinctly cyberspace-y hexagon grid appears, and it then cuts to a scene of what appears to be the ruins of Net Slum (which is very similar to the very start of the first episode), with a mysterious monologue from Morganna. It doesn't help either that the "real world" segment of Tsukasa leaving the hospital and meeting Subaru has a somewhat surreal tone to it, what with the whole silent movie style and all. Ultimately, it's not really clear until later installments in the .hack series whether or not Tsukasa actually ever managed to log out.]]

* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'': Gold Experience Requiem's powers are like this, specifically the endless chain of "waking" only to be in another fabricated scenario. The victim catches on after about three times that he's no longer alive, but that doesn't change the fact that he'll [[FateWorseThanDeath never die, either.]]

* ''Anime/TheVisionOfEscaflowne'': Every episode for the first half or so of the episodes starts with "Was it all just a dream? Or maybe a vision... no, it was real!" In addition on several occasions she does go to the other reality in a dream
** First episode has her see a vision of Van appearing through a beam of light before she passes out, [[spoiler:later on in the episode this actually happens]].
** While in Gaea she has several dreams where she is back with her friends in Japan.

* In ''Manga/NijigaharaHolograph'', the story of Zhuangzi and his dream of the butterfly is taught by Sakaki in ch. 9. Beyond this, several characters at one point or another question how much of what has happened to them is something they've dreamed, and the story is set up in a way that makes it possible that parts of it are actually Arié's dreams while she lies comatose.

* ''ComicBook/TheCallOfCRusso'' revolves around the world being the dream of an ancient cephalophoid monster slumbering in a city at the bottom of the sea. Yes, there exists ''a [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Donald Duck]] CosmicHorrorStory''.

* ComicBook/TheQuestion (whose Sensei nicknamed him "The Butterfly") is [[CatchPhrase fond of]] throwing around the Creator/{{Zhuangzi}} quote, [[NonSequitur whether the context calls for it or not.]] He's even used it as a pick-up line.
* Creator/SteveDitko and Creator/StanLee did a story in the old EC style (wordless panels with heavy narration) in ''[[Creator/MarvelComics Amazing Fantasy]]'', in which a sleeping man wakes up to find himself floating in the air above his bed, then wakes up to find himself safely in bed, only to have the bed begin to float upward, at which point he wakes up and the cycle repeats again, for three pages on a nine-panel grid.
* ''ComicBook/AndersonPsiDivision'': In "Half Life", Judge Anderson, stuck in a coma after Judge Death tried to kill her in ''My Name is Death'', finds herself living out the life of a girl named Sandra on what later became Deadworld before Death destroyed it. At one point she starts to wonder whether she's really Cassandra Anderson imagining that she's a teenage girl in another life, or Sandra imagining that she's a Psi-Judge from another dimension.
* In one ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'' story, Batman has been subjected to a nightmarish fantasy CuckoosNest PsychologicalTormentZone by the Mad Hatter in an attempt to break him. After making his way through it and returning to reality, the Mad Hatter tries to taunt Batman with this trope and the fact that he can never be certain what is or isn't reality after what he's experienced. However, unfortunately for the Mad Hatter, it's {{subverted|Trope}}; Batman, who by this point [[RageBreakingPoint is in no mood for any of this nonsense]], simply notes that if this is true, and he is still trapped in his own fantasy, then this means that he no longer has to worry about holding back when beating the ever-loving shit out of someone in case he goes too far and kills him. Someone such as the Mad Hatter, for instance. After [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown a few seconds preview]] of what this means for him, the Mad Hatter is quick to respond along the lines of "Hahaha, actually, forget that funny joke I made about you maybe still being trapped in a dream, this actually ''is'' reality (''oh god I'm sorry please don't hurt me'')."
* One of the overarching questions of ''ComicBook/MisterMiracle2017'' is whether or not the reality the series takes place in is "real", both in the sense of whether it fits in [[Franchise/TheDCU the canon DC universe]], and in the life of Scott Free, aka Mister Miracle. There is something definitely wrong with his life -- [[ShellShockedVeteran he's become so overwhelmed by years of previously-repressed trauma]] over his DarkAndTroubledPast that the series begins with ''[[StartsWithASuicide his suicide attempt]]'', and the fabric of his reality has bizarre [[RevealingContinuityLapse continuity]] and [[InterfaceScrew visual]] lapses that are played as either [[SanitySlippage something breaking in Scott's mind]], in reality itself, or both. Pretty early on, he openly questions that perhaps he was previously hit by [[EmotionBomb the Anti-Life Equation]], and this reality is its way of tormenting Scott until he crosses the DespairEventHorizon. [[spoiler:The ending suggests that he is in [[LotusEaterMachine a fake reality]], but it's left ambiguous exactly what's causing it -- not that it really matters to him, because by the end of the story, he's managed to overcome his demons by [[ThePowerOfLove the very real love he feels for his wife and children]], [[EarnYourHappyEnding earning a happy ending]] that's "real" enough to him.]]

** And [[http://i.imgur.com/kuiCm.jpg later played for laughs and drama]] when he puts on a coat, walks outside, trips over a rock, and falls off a cliff miles into the air. Then he wakes up, gets dressed, leaves the house, and falls out the door through the sky. Then he wakes up, and is clearly ''terrified to get out of bed.''

* ''Film/TaxiDriver'' shows our sociopathic "hero" getting great praise for his shoot out, right after being probably gunned down. Even if he really did live, you can bet he's still crazy.
* A large chunk of another [[Creator/MartinScorsese Scorsese]]-[[Creator/RobertDeNiro De Niro]] film, ''Film/TheKingOfComedy'', can be interpreted as a product of its [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness protagonist's imagination]].
* ''Film/TotalRecall1990'': Is it a memory implant gone awry, or all real, or the way story implanted in the memory playing out correctly? In the short story ''We Can Remember It for You Wholesale'' that inspired this (can't say based on, can't even say very, very loosely based on), it ''did'' really happen.
* ''Film/TheThirteenthFloor'' (which [[AdaptationDisplacement is based]] on the novel Simulacron-3) has someone invent an artificial virtual reality world at the beginning, then [[spoiler:reveal that their world is also a virtual reality world.]]

* ''Film/FourteenOhEight'': The whole movie plays with this concept a lot but especially when [[spoiler: the main character (as well as the viewing audience) is tricked into thinking that he escapes the hotel room and has returned to a normal life before he realizes that it was all a vicious illusion. This arguably comes to an end when he burns the place down and escapes, but there's still the feeling that too could possibly be an illusion.]] Only in the theatrical ending, though. In the director's cut [[spoiler: it's clear he burned the entire room down, though at the cost of his life.]]
* The final MindScrew of ''Film/AmericanPsycho'' is that [[spoiler: [[UnreliableNarrator Bateman himself is unsure how many of his experiences are real or imagined.]] ]]
* The big [[MindScrew brain hump]] of ''Film/MulhollandDrive'' is you don't know which is real; the last half hour, or everything preceding it? Considering that the former is surreal and bizarre, while the latter is mundane and somewhat explains why [[spoiler: a disturbed person might dream up the former to escape her reality]], OccamsRazor says the last half-hour.
* ''Film/MysticRiver'' itself isn't an example, but at the end one of the characters proposes this as a possibility: The recent events are too bizarre for it to be reality, so what if it's all a dream that he is/they are having to shut out a darker reality: [[spoiler: that all three of them were kidnapped and still being molested]].
* This is the entire premise of ''Film/JacobsLadder'', too. The main character keeps bouncing back and forth between two realities, each of which shares some people and places in common, but both of which seem to have demons in them as well. [[spoiler: It's finally shown that he had died in Vietnam, and this was all just an in-your-head Purgatory.]]

* In ''Film/RepoMen'', we are told throughout the Company has produced a device that can create a idyllic fantasy dream for someone on a life support machine. When the palm tree that is featured in its advert [[spoiler: appears for 'real']], we discover [[spoiler: the entire second half of the film had been a fabrication to placate the conscience of the lead's best friend]].
* ''Film/TheLovelyBones'', to a very small and brief degree, when Susie Salmon [[spoiler: is attacked by George Harvey in the underground trap, she is seen running from the scene as though she has escaped and is running for her life.]] It is not until a little later we realise [[spoiler: that she is actually dead and this is her ghost's immediate projection of what she wanted to happen. She had actually been killed in the underground lair, but she has no recollection of the event happening.]] This is absent in the original [[Literature/TheLovelyBones book version]], where Susie remembers everything exactly how it happened, and describes it in painful detail.

* ''Film/EyesWideShut''. ''Very'' subtle hints in the movie provide clues that Dr. Harford dreamed up the events of the movie.
* In ''Film/{{Gozu}}'', when the hero wakes from a nightmare he finds the letter that was handed to him in the dream. Is this just another illusion? Or wasn't it a dream in the first place?

* Creator/TerryPratchett loves to reference this one. Once he combined this trope with the ButterflyOfDoom in some kind of mega-metaphor involving butterflies.
* ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' has tons of this. There are multiple layers of narration; Johnny is editing a text written by Zampano about ''The Navidson Record'', which is a movie made by Navidson about the [[color:blue:house]]. Throughout the book, there are hints that Zampano or Johnny are altering or completely fabricating things, or that Zampano made up the film, or that Johnny made up both Zampano and the film, or that ''Johnny himself'' is also made up.

** In ''Literature/SylvieAndBruno'', the narrator explicitly thinks it:
-->''"So, either I've been dreaming about Sylvie," I said to myself, "and this is the reality. Or else I've really been with Sylvie, and this is a dream! Is Life itself a dream, I wonder?"''
* This is basically the plot of ''The Red King'', the second novel in the ''Literature/StarTrekTitan'' series. The novel features an eponymous intelligence, which resides within a protouniverse overlapping with our own. As a result of this overlap, its expansion threatens several worlds with destruction. The legends of many local races' speak of the protouniverse, or at least the associated intelligence. They describe it as a sleeping dreamer, the surrounding region of space being the content of the dream. The expansion and its resultant destruction is therefore supposedly the [[DreamApocalypse dream coming to an end as the being begins to wake]]. Frane, a native of the Neyel (whose world is part of the threatened region), describes the myth to the ''Titan's'' crew:
-->"And when it wakes, it ceases to dream. But all the worlds that surround it are part of that dream. Like Newaerth, the first world to vanish as the Sleeper begins stirring from its long ages of slumber".

* This is basically the entire premise of a Jostein Gaarder novel ''Literature/SophiesWorld''.
* Pedro Calderón de la Barca's ''Life is a Dream,'' a 17th-century Spanish play, deals with [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the conception of life as a dream]] particularly in the first act.
* ''Literature/{{Liar|2009}}'' by Creator/JustineLarbalestier is told from the point of view of a [[UnreliableNarrator compulsive liar]], who lies to the reader. To make things worse, she even lies about her lies, most notably on the issue of [[spoiler: whether Jordan is alive or not, or even if he's ''real'']].
* In Creator/RobertEHoward's "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune", the mirrors nearly trap Literature/{{Kull}} in another world.
-->''For there are worlds beyond worlds, as Kull knows, and whether the wizard bewitched him by words or by mesmerism, vistas did open to the kings gaze beyond that strange door, and Kull is less sure of reality since he gazed into the mirrors of Tuzun Thune.''
* Polaris by HPL is based on this entirely.

* Stanislaw Lem did this in his novel ''The Futurological Congress''. With hallucinogens being used as a war weapon, neither the protagonist nor the reader is really sure when or if things get back to reality.
* Some Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure books had the results of really bad screw-ups followed by "it was all a dream". An [[DrinkingGame/TVTropes egregious]] example is ''Space and Beyond''; one ending has it be AllJustADream; the rest of the endings say that it is not.
* Several times during the course of ''Literature/TheCircleSeries'', Thomas Hunter actually asks himself whether he's dreaming or not. [[spoiler: He never does figure out which he's actually living in.]]

* The second series of [[Literature/TheHistoryOfTheRunestaff Hawkmoon novels]] by Creator/MichaelMoorcock start with the hero trying to be happy with his wife and young family but being haunted by the ghosts of his friends who died at the climax of the first series. It then switches around to him being comforted by those friends having recovered from a delusion caused by the death of his new wife instead.
* In Creator/MichaelFlynn's ''[[Literature/SpiralArm The January Dancer]]'', the CompellingVoice can make you forgot things. As a consequence, you can't be sure that anything you know really is true. Perhaps the person with the Dancer has taken over the galazy and you just don't realize because you've been ordered not to. Perhaps the Dancer made you think that you had destroyed it. Perhaps. . . .
* Not a dream, but ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear: The Nightmare Machine'' has the titular Nightmare Machine, a real-seeming simulation. A large chunk of the book, by the end, is revealed to have been simulated through it; the protagonists thought they had gone in for a minute, experienced a brief simulation, and left, but of course they had not.

* The ''Series/ForeverKnight'' tie-in novel, "Imitations of Mortality", has Nick having a series of dreams where he and other vampire characters are human, while the human characters are vampires. Each time he goes to sleep in one world, he wakes up in the other.
* In Creator/LJagiLamplighter's Literature/RachelGriffin series, Sigfried's discovery of TheMasquerade leads to the obvious question of how the Wise know that their history and thoughts aren't as tampered with by a third party as the Unwarys' thoughts and history. At one point he ridicules the notion of listening in history class; it could all be as fake as anything he learned.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''

* Zhuangzi's poem is the source of all the butterfly symbolism in the ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'' games, as referenced by ''Megami Ibunroku VideoGame/{{Persona|1}}'''s intro. The remake even references this in the opening lyrics.
-->'''Intro:''' Dream of butterfly / Or is life a dream? / Don't wanna wake up / [[{{Foreshadowing}} Cause I'm happy here]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Silent Hill|1}}'s'' Bad Ending shows us the protagonist dying in his broken car; apparently all the game was just [[DyingDream a dream he had between the car crash and his death]]. Other endings are less unhappy, though... except for the one where he kills his daughter and he and an InnocentBystander get roasted alive in a collapsing [[DarkWorld hell-dimension]]. Oh, and there are four sequels; he's revealed to have survived in the third [[spoiler: [[SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome only to be killed off-screen]]]].

* The whole point of ''VideoGame/EternalSonata'' is the question of whether Frédéric Chopin is [[DyingDream just having an extremely lucid fever dream]], or if he really is in another world. [[spoiler:He eventually decides that it ''is'' a dream designed to have him accept death, but having deduced that Polka is trapped in a GroundhogDayLoop, attempts a SuicideByCop to end the dream and spare her from her fate. When he is defeated but does not wake up, he realises that the world ''is'' reality to its inhabitants, and uses his powers over the dreamworld to save Polka]].
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening''. [[spoiler:The island is nothing but one big dream, and the point of gathering the 8 dungeon items this time around is to wake both you and the Wind Fish up. Link is oblivious to this since you aren't directly told that it's a dream until late in the game, but the owl and boss monsters don't really try to hide this fact from you]].

* Occurs in a particularly soul-crushing way at the end of ''VideoGame/RealmsOfTheHaunting''.
* Parodied in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' while in the Kingdom of Zeal.
-->'''Doreen:''' Am I a man dreaming I'm a butterfly, or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi?
* In ''Videogame/MassEffect3'', Joker discusses this trope after [[PlayerCharacter Shepard]] [[spoiler: takes a virtual trip through the geth consensus]], wondering if you really came back out or if you're still in there and everything you're seeing now is an illusion.
* ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland2LeChucksRevenge'' has an infamous GainaxEnding that makes it [[TheEndingChangesEverything extremely unclear what exactly happened]]. Once [[TheHero Guybrush]] finds [[MacGuffin Big Whoop]], things become [[MakesAsMuchSenseInContext progressively weirder]] until he finds himself in what is either a LotusEaterMachine or [[AllJustADream reality]]... until things are made even more confusing as during TheStinger another character is shown [[OrWasItADream impatiently waiting for him in the "other" reality]]. The next game cleared all this up, though (by applying heavy {{retcon}}ning).
* In ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', one cannot tell if the Hunter's Dream was a mere dream. [[spoiler: In "Yharnam Sunrise" ending, you are [[SelfSacrificeScheme freed]] by [[DeathSeeker Gehrman]] via a MercyKill that wakes you up. The problem is, ''[[FridgeHorror which one is the dream, and which one is the reality?]]'']]
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'': From the SNES version onwards, if you accept the Dragonlord's [[WeCanRuleTogether offer]], you wake up in an inn, and the innkeeper tells you woke up from a bad dream. If you accept again, you begin wondering whether you are still dreaming or not.