I Was Having Such a Nice Dream

aka: Five More Minutes

So close, and yet so far.

"I was having the most wonderful dream... Except you were there! And you were there! And you were there!"

— Leela, Futurama, "Anthology of Interest II"

A character finds themselves in an important prophetic dream, receiving vital information from a dead relative in a near-death experience, or just having a terribly good time in their head, when they hear the phone ringing or someone shouting their name and they are defibrillated back to the land of the living, just before the really good bit.

Can result in Ring-Ring-CRUNCH! if the alarm clock is the offender. Contrast Irritation Nightmare for when it's the dream that annoys the dreamer.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The "incredible dreams" ads for Goblin Teasmade where the advertised teasmade always alarms whenever things get interesting.

Anime & Manga

• Azumanga Daioh: In the 8th episode, the "New Year's Dream Special", several of the main characters' dreams are shown. Kaorin naturally dreams about her crush, Sakaki, coming to her rescue, but the dream is interrupted by her mother trying to wake her up so they can take their traditional trip to the shrine on New Year's Day. Poor Kaorin just pulls the covers over her head and begs for it to keep going.
• Chrono Crusade:
  • Parodied in the first chapter. Rosette is called on the phone to rush to a mission while her assistant, Chrono, is sleeping in their car. After the call she climbs into the car and tries to wake Chrono up — who protests that he needs to sleep "just a little longer". When Rosette asks how long, Chrono responds "about ten hours". Naturally, he gets punted out of the car and forced to go to work.
  • Later, Rosette refuses to wake up when Chrono shakes her repeatedly. So he tosses her out of an upper-story window. Azmaria is horrified, but he tells her there's a pond right under that window. Sure enough, Rosette comes back through the window, soaking wet, furious... and with a fish flapping between her gritted teeth.
• Hanaukyō Maid Team: In episode 10, Taro's three maids try to wake him up at 5:00 in the morning. He asks for 1 more minute of sleep.
• Lucky Star: Discussed in episode 11. They rationalized why people who are unwilling to wake up specifically ask for five minutes, and not an hour.
• One-Punch Man: Saitama is overjoyed when he finds a real challenge against a race of subterranean giants. Just as he's about to face the strongest one, however, his alarm clock wakes him up.
• Sailor Moon Crystal: In the Act 1 Cold Open, both Usagi and the audience are cheated out her dream's romantic climax, as a prince and princess embrace, the music swells, they lean in for a kiss, and... Fade to White just as Usagi's alarm clock goes off.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Done heartbreakingly when Viral realizes that his wife and daughter aren't real, but a product of a Lotus-Eater Machine.
  "And I was having... such a sweet dream."
• The Familiar of Zero has a dangerous situation defused in this way. A girl who claims to have authority in the Church attempts to drive Tiffania out as a half-elf she accuses of not worshipping the Humans' god. Saito stands up for her, followed by Guiche, ultimately leading to a huge brawl. Louise then arrives in her nightgown, livid that the explosions woke her up right when she and Saito were "almost there" in her dream, and blasts the entire area in frustration.

Comic Books

• Gaston Lagaffe:
  • In a promotional comic for the drink "Orange Piedboeuf" has Gaston dreaming of an elf-like, color-changing version of Fantasio guiding him to a spring of Orange Piedboeuf. Gaston is woken up before he can drink from it and is not happy about it and order Fantasio to give him a drink for crashing his good dream.
  • Gaston once had a dream about him being in a tropical paradise with his Love Interest interrupted by the arrival of businessman De Mesmaeker. Still half asleep, he is so riled up that he runs up and kicks De Mesmaeker in the rear, once again ruining a chance to have an important contract signed.
• Zatanna: In the final issue of Zatanna (2010), Zatanna is awakened from a dream involving two hunky men and a tub of cocoa butter by an intruder in her library, much to her annoyance.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: At least two strips have Calvin bemoaning a wonderful dream where he was soaring through the sky like a bird being interrupted by the fact he had to wake up and go to school (on both occasions it was also pouring rain outside just to rub it in).
• FoxTrot:
  • Once, Peter was having a dream about making out with swimsuit models, only to be woken up by his alarm clock.
  • Jason once groused that being awakened for church interrupted a zombie dream.
• Garfield: One strip has Garfield's alarm clock speak of food until Garfield is dreaming of it, then sets itself off just before he can dream that he's eating it.
• Knights of the Dinner Table: The story "Heroes on the Town" has Bob, Dave, and Brian (and Sara, as usual) roleplaying their characters as actual lawful good heroes and treating NPCs with courtesy and respect. The story ends with B.A. waking up as his alarm goes off.
• Outland: A half-subversion can be found in one strip. Opus is woken from a dream involving Aphrodite — yes, the Greek goddess Aphrodite — about to lick his nose in order to be told of some Washington scandal. He snarls at the person who did it, goes back to sleep — and finds that the key figure of the political scandal is now licking his nose.
• Zits: In a Sunday strip, Jeremy is recalling a bizarre dream he had (complete with visuals), which ended with his hot 4th grade teacher calling him over for something. The next panel shows an irritated Jeremy telling Hector that he wanted five extra minutes.

Fan Works

• Anthropology: Lyra has a dream of Manehattan, except that everyone, including her, is human^note (presumably Manhattan). After realizing this, she thinks about how there's so much she wants to see, and then is woken up by Bon-Bon.
• The Cracks That Show: Harry's aunt is annoyed when Dudley wakes her from a dream about having tea with Pierce Brosnan.
• A Delicate Balance: The third chapter opens with Rarity being awoken from a dream in which her fashions are madly popular, she can eat as much chocolate as she wants, and her cat does all of her paperwork for her. She isn't happy to be interrupted.
• The Duology of Nicholas Andersen: Early in Episode 3, Adrien dreams that Ladybug is about to kiss him. The school bell rings before she can do so, waking him up.
• Erika the Radical: Alisa was having an idyllic dream about her love interest Takeshi..... which is abruptly ruined by Kay rudely kicking her room's door open.
• Green Tea Rescue: Izuku and Ochako get stuck at her place due to rain after the Sports Festival, and a discussion about how they'll have to share a bed leads to both of them confessing their love for the other. They start getting ready to have sex, but before they can do the deed Ochako's alarm clock wakes her up, revealing it was just an Erotic Dream. Ochako needs a new alarm clock after that.
• Harry Potter and the Pink-Haired Auror: Harry's alarm clock wakes him just as a bikini-clad Tonks is about to give him his "reward" for learning silent casting.
• I See No Difference: Hermione is dreaming about her and Harry dancing at the Yule Ball when he suddenly tells her to wake up.
  Harry: What's wrong, Hermione? Did I do something wrong? I swear I didn't-
  Hermione: Don't be silly... You just interrupted a perfectly fine dream...
• The Legend of Total Drama Island: Bridgette dreams that she has found a previously eulogized campmate alive. She is awakened just before learning how he supposedly survived.
• Looming Darkness: Sora mentions that he was having a nice dream before Ciara wakes him for his turn at watch duty.
• Magical Blocks and Bonds: Hermione bursts into the boys' dorm to yell at Harry. His dorm mates decide to give her the cold shoulder for doing it once too often.
  Seamus: Yeah I was having the best dream, and she woke me up right at the good part.
• The Medium Between Life and Death:
  Dobby: Dobby is not letting Master Harry out of his sight now...ever.
  Harry: What do you mean by 'ever,' Dobby? And you will definitely not be following me into the loo. If you must know, I was having a very good dream about my hot boyfriend before you woke me up...do I need to paint you more of a picture than that?
• Moody Mark Crusaders: Apple Bloom has one about meeting with Cadance when she's Taken for Granite.
• ''Princess Twilight Sparkle And The Sorcerous Symbiosis': Rainbow was dreaming about being a centrefold model when Twilight involves her in the story.
• Ranma Club: Stella has a dream of herself and Ranma. They embrace and, just when she's about to get a kiss from him, he is suddenly replaced by Bloom, who is trying to wake her up.
• RONMAN THE BARBARIAN!: Ruthless wals up Ronman just as he and Kimila are enjoying themselves in the Dreamworld. Kimila makes him pay for it the next day.
• Sharing the Night: Luna and Twilight rouse the ancient dragon Emberstoke from his slumber for a conversation when they need to learn about the ancient past. At the end, before going back to sleep, he sarcastically comments that he's going to try to return to a rather nice dream that he'd been having.
  "If that's all, I was having a nice dream, I think, and I should like to chase it down."
• Total Drama Legacy: At one point, Storm and Link's peaceful sleep is suddenly interrupted by Link's incredibly loud cell phone alarm, which is playing "Solar Sect of Mystic Wisdom~ Nuclear Fusion" from Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism. After being awoken, Storm says this in a confessional:
  UGH! There I was, on the American women’s volleyball team at the Olympics, ready to receive my gold medal, when all of the sudden, that loud music woke me up!
• Twins They Were: Bjorn the Fell-Handed is having a dream involving a Twin Threesome Fantasy (hence the title) when he's rudely awakened to tell some neophytes more bloody stories.

Films — Animation

• Ice Age: The Meltdown: At the end, Scrat is in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, surrounded by all the acorns he could ever want, including one gigantic one. Before he can get at it, however, he is brought back to the living world when Sid gives him mouth to mouth. Needless to say, Scrat is not at all pleased.
• Jetsons: The Movie: A grumpy George gets out of bed saying, "Why'd you have to wake me? I was dreaming about sleeping!"

Films — Live-Action

• Ali G Indahouse: Ali G has a dream that ends with a beautiful woman performing oral sex on him. He wakes up to discover his dog licking him in an intimate place.
• Jungle: Yossi is having a dream where he is a high roller in a casino. After a huge win, Aime drags him off and throws him down on the bed. She straddles him and pours two glasses of champagne over his face. This wakes him up and he discovers the torrential rain has penetrated his shelter and is trickling down into his face. The river is also rising and is about to flood him out.

Jokes

• Concert organist E. Power Biggs told (in the course of his one-and-only appearance at Radio City Music Hall) a joke about a musician who dreamed he was playing in Carnegie Hall. Then he woke up and realized he was.

Literature

• Randolph's Carter's motivation for undertaking The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is to find again a glorious city he once saw in a dream but was snatched away from by the gods of Dream Land. It turns out to be Boston.
• Harry Potter:
  • In The Order of the Phoenix, Harry's prophetic dream is cut short by Ron's snoring, just as he was finally about to find out what was behind the mysterious door.
  • In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry has a dream where he's following something in the forest that just manages to stay out of his sight. Just as he's reaching a clearing where he can see it properly, he's awoken by Ron's screams from seeing Sirius Black standing over his bed. Unlike the previous example, this dream was not prophetic, but simply a reflection of Harry's confusion over the various mysteries hanging over him.
  • In the first book, Harry is annoyed when Aunt Petunia wakes him up from a dream he was having about a flying motorcycle.
• In Bryan Miranda's The Journey to Atlantis, Max and Stacie are both dreaming about being in each other's arms on a beautiful beach, just about to kiss. Max is woken up by a crash of thunder just before the fact.
• Rai Kirah: Seyonne is Conditioned to Accept Horror from sixteen years of slavery, but even he is annoyed to be woken up right before the climax of an Erotic Dream — his only outlet since he was a free man.
• Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Happens when Bella is having an Erotic Dream about her and Edward, who is refusing to have sex with her because last time she ended up covered in bruises. She is so upset at being woken up she starts to cry.
• Warrior Cats: Happens a couple times.
  • Cats occasionally dream they were just about to catch a mouse when awakened.
  • During a drought, Lionblaze is dreaming about the lake being filled with water.
    Lionblaze: Did you have to do that? I was having a really great dream!
    Cloudtail: And now you can go on a really great patrol.
  • In a dream, Squirrelpaw is talking to a spirit-cat, and is about to be told how she can save her sister, when Shrewpaw wakes her up.
  • Ivypool is spying on the Dark Forest. She's just about to hear the plans for the final battle when Dovewing awakens her.

Live-Action TV

• Father Ted: One episode featured Ted in an Affectionate Parody of Ballykissangel, only without the Will They or Won't They? between Father Peter and Assumpta; Ted and Assumpta definitely were, when he was woken by Father Dougal to offer him a peanut. Ted shouted at Dougal, went back to sleep, and had a nightmare where he was being chased by a giant peanut.
• Herman's Head: Herman is woken up by an Abhorrent Admirer just as he does a swan dive onto a bed containing two beautiful women.
• Married... with Children: Al had several of these dreams, and usually mentions that they were great dreams because his wife Peg is not in them.
• M*A*S*H:
  • In "Dreams", Col. Potter dreams of being back home in the mid-west riding his horse. In the distance he hears his mother calling him as she did when he was young. He is awoken by Klinger, and longingly tells him that he wishes Klinger could have woken him just a few minutes later, as it's been a long time since he tasted one of his mother's home-made muffins.
  • In "Hawkeye Get Your Gun", when Potter awakens Hawkeye while they're helping out at a Korean clinic, Hawkeye laments he was in the middle of what was about to become an Erotic Dream. He tells Potter, who is about to catch a nap himself, that if he should dream of the same woman, to take his place. Potter scoffs that he's a married man, so instead Hawkeye asks Potter to keep the lady company until he returns.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: In episode 13, Alan dreams of getting to kiss Pipin's hands after she accepted his love, only to smell something bad that is definitely not Pipin's hands. It's Prima's smelly feet, which wakes Alan up.
• Murdoch Mysteries: In the opening of the episode "Murdoch Air", the title character is dreaming of finally marrying his beloved Dr. Julia Ogden when Constable Crabtree pounds on his door to summon him to see a flying machine in the sky over Toronto. Murdoch's imagination turns the constable's pounding into part of the dream: Julia reacts to the sound saying it's her first husband Darcy.
• The Nanny: Fran is having the beginnings of an erotic dream about Maxwell, and she is woken by her mother. She goes back to sleep immediately afterwards. She later had to check if she was asleep, when Maxwell quoted the dream verbatim.
• Northern Exposure: Subverted beautifully in "Spring Break". Joel remarks during his erotic dream of performing Robert Palmer's "Simply Irresistible" surrounded by the trademarked Palmer powerclones that he always wakes up before the good bit. One of the women leans over and tells him not this time. The screen cuts to black and we hear a zipper being opened. Cue Titles.
• Our Miss Brooks:
  • The earliest radio episodes, including the premier "First Day", would often begin with Miss Brooks dreaming of some romantic/comedic adventure with Mr. Boynton. The format was very quickly dropped, in favor of a brief introductory narration with Miss Brooks before the main action, and/or a typically offbeat breakfast conversation with landlady Mrs. Davis and student Walter Denton.
    Narrator: Yes, Connie Brooks can dream . . . .
  • Occasionally, later television and radio episodes would feature dreams and abrupt ending thereof.
    • "The Magic Tree" sees Miss Brooks wake up after kissing a magic-Christmas-tree-influenced Mr. Boynton.
    • "King and Brooks" sees Miss Brooks abruptly waken from a dream where she marries a maharajah.
    • "The Dream" sees Miss Brooks waken from a dream where she finally marries Mr. Boynton. Miss Brooks marries Mr. Boynton for real in The Movie Grand Finale.
• Scandal: In one episode, Olivia has an Erotic Dream about making love to both Fitz and Jake, her dream is interrupted by her father Rowan.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean is having a really good dream involving two strippers in angel and devil costumes, when a female Dream Walker angel interrupts, much to his embarrassment.
  • Likewise in another episode Dean is enjoying himself fishing by a lake when another angel, Castiel appears. Dean gets pissed when he realises he's dreaming again.
  • Sam is having an Erotic Dream about being seduced by Bella when Dean wakes him up, because they're expecting Bella. Who then enters and acts out the first part of the dream (but not the rest of it, unfortunately for Sam).
• That '70s Show: In The Stinger for one episode, Fez is making out with two girls, only to get upset when he wakes up from the dream.
• Young Sheldon:
  • In "Demons, Sunday School, and Prime Numbers", Sheldon Cooper is captivated by a dream in which the One and the Zero, the Gods of the Binary, are about to impart to him the ultimate secret underpinning all science. Then his brother Georgie shakes him awake to tell him he's drooling down his shirt.
  • In another episode, Sheldon is put under anesthesia and dreams that Thoth the Egyptian god of knowledge gives him the Unified Field Theory, but he forgets it afterwards and tries to get the same dream again.

Music

• The song "Sleeping in" by The Postal Service is about a man who likes to ponder about his strange dreams that he feels good about.
• The Bangles song "Manic Monday" (written by Prince) started with the alarm clock ringing. "Six o'clock already, I was just in the middle of a dream/ I was kissing Valentino by a crystal-blue Italian stream"

Theatre

• In La Cenerentola, Rossini's operatic version of Cinderella, the stepfather Don Magnifico makes his entrance with the aria "Miei rampolli feminini," berating his two daughters for waking him from a beautiful dream with their noisy bickering. He then proceeds to tell them the dream: he saw a winged donkey fly to the top of a church steeple, and he interprets this dream as prophetic, with the donkey representing himself, the wings representing his daughters, and the flight implying that their marriages will raise him to power and glory.

Video Games

• One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows: In the unlikely event that Saitama loses a fight^note Saitama in this game is a Lethal Joke Character that has you begin the fight with two characters instead of the usual three while a timer up in the corner of the screen shows how much longer until Saitama arrives. Saitama takes zero damage from anyone other than himself and KO's everyone other than himself in one hit, but if you lose your two characters before his timer runs out, you just lose the match the match will be revealed to have all been a dream Saitama was having, with the usual victory/defeat screen replaced with Saitama waking up and realizing that fact. If you know anything about the character, you know he would probably consider this a good dream since it would mean he finally found someone who can give him a challenging fight.

Web Comics

• El Goonish Shive: A variation in this comic; Grace gets mad at The Emissary of Magic for interrupting a cool historical fiction dream. She's still dreaming, but she's mad that the fun dream is being replaced with a serious prophetic one.
• I'm the Grim Reaper has an exceptionally serious example: Scarlet having a very realistic dream of her and Chase in bed together, having presumably had sex last night, only for the dream to end and her to be returned to reality, where Chase is Deader than Dead. As you can imagine, her reaction to being woken up is Tranquil Fury.

Western Animation

• Futurama:
  • Subverted in an early episode. Bender is mumbling in his sleep about killing all humans so a disturbed Fry wakes him up. Bender tells him "I was having the most wonderful dream... I think you were in it."
  • Leela spoofs this in "Anthology Of Interest II" when she's woken up from a Wizard of Oz parody. She says "I was having the most wonderful dream...except you were in it, and you were in it, and you were in it!"
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: "Sisterhooves Social" opens with Rarity in bed, apparently dreaming of a large, luxurious breakfast. She is awoken by her little sister, Sweetie Belle, nearly burning down the kitchen trying to make Rarity breakfast in bed.
• South Park: The episode "Best Friends Forever" concerned a recently-deceased Kenny being enlisted by the forces of Heaven to defeat the forces of Hell, but he keeps being resuscitated at crucial moments.
• Winx Club has a VERY special case: Tecna plays a partially-CG, partially-traditional animation sequence on her virtual goggles for her pixie Digit. It ends with her and boyfriend Timmy kissing. In the 4K dub, she's playing back a dream on her goggles, and it cuts right before the kiss, with a voice-over by Tec explaining that she woke up just before then. Screencap of the cut kiss, presented upside-down.◊ And a video.

Real Life

• Real-life example: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan was inspired by an opium-induced dream he had. He was about halfway through writing the whole thing down when he was interrupted by a visitor — and upon returning to his desk, could no longer remember the rest of his dream, forcing him to publish the (fairly sizeable) fragment he already had.
• Similarly, the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came to author Robert Louis Stevenson in a dream. His wife, hearing his screams and assuming he was having a nightmare, awakened him, much to his incense. Apparently, she had awakened him at the first transformation scene.
• Norm Macdonald worked this into an old stand-up bit about his dream of standing by a pool with model Christie Brinkley, and waking up just before it gets to the good part. When he tries to re-dream the scenario, he winds up shooting pool with David Brinkley.
• Composer Giuseppe Tartini had a dream where he sold his soul to the Devil; the Devil took up a violin and began to play a sonata Tartini described as "so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy." When he woke up, he jotted down as much as he could remember, calling it the Devil's Trill Sonata, but he still wrote that the difference between what he heard and what he wrote was so great that he would give up music forever just to recreate that one sonata.

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