"They're Not Real" Reveal

"Oo wa wa? Hey, where'd he go!? Did he disappear? Or was he never there to begin with?"

— Nappa, Dragon Ball Z Abridged

In most stories, there is a main character. You follow them through the plot. Through the course of the story the protagonist meets side characters. They can be friends, family, or even enemies. Either way, they are living, breathing characters in the medium. The Not-Real Reveal is a narrative trope that plays with the audience's understanding of reality within a story. It typically unfolds in several stages:

1. Introduction of the Character: At the beginning of the narrative, a character is introduced who seems entirely real, with a distinct personality, backstory, and interactions with other characters.
2. Integration into the Story: This character becomes an integral part of the plot, often influencing the actions and decisions of other characters. They may even have their own story arc or subplots.
3. Subtle Clues and Hints: As the story progresses, subtle hints and inconsistencies may emerge. These can include discrepancies in the character's backstory, unusual reactions from other characters, or surreal occurrences related to this character.
4. Building Suspense: The narrative builds suspense as these hints grow stronger, causing the audience to question the character's authenticity. Viewers or readers might engage in discussions and theories about the character's true nature.
5. The Revelatory Moment: The climax of the trope occurs when it's revealed that the character was never real. This revelation can take various forms, such as the character fading away, being exposed as a hallucination, or simply being acknowledged as a creation of another character's mind.
6. Impact and Reflection: The Not-Real Reveal often has a profound impact on the story's themes and characters. It may be used to explore psychological or emotional aspects of the character who imagined the non-existent character, shedding light on their inner struggles or desires. Additionally, it challenges the audience's perception of reality within the narrative.

This trope can be employed in different genres, including psychological thrillers, mysteries, and even fantasy, to create an engaging and thought-provoking narrative twist. It invites the audience to question the boundaries of reality and imagination, making it a compelling storytelling device.

Compare Noticing the Fourth Wall, where characters realize they aren't real in a different sense. Also "Scooby-Doo" Hoax and Scary Shadow Fakeout.

Contrast Real After All (which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin). Related to Dead All Along (which is because the not-real character in question used to be real and is dead at the time of the reveal). Not-So-Imaginary Friend is a character you thought wasn't real but was real all along. If a character finds this out about themselves, it may very well be a Tomato in the Mirror. May be part of a larger reveal that It Was All In Le Head.

This goes under Spoilered Rotten so most Spoilers Off. BEWARE OF HEAVY SPOILERS!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ninja Ninja is revealed to be Afro Samurai's Imaginary Friend. Whenever he's around to provide comic relief and acts as Afro's right hand man and advisor, it turns out he was never there in the first place. That would explain enemies never even acknowledged him, acting like they only see Afro and him alone.
• Inside Mari reveals that our protagonist isn't even real but just part of the real Mari's imagination.
• The Osomatsu-san Season 3 episode "Imaginary Friend" focuses on the Matsuno brothers recalling when they all had imaginary friends in high school. Meanwhile, Choromatsu Matsuno reunites with his high school friend and both go on a subplot together. At the end of the episode, the audience learns that even the school buddy was an imaginary friend, as no one but Choromatsu could see and interact with him.

Comedy

• In John Mulaney's standup special New in Town, he talks about the time he was in a restaurant bathroom and has a strange conversation with an old gay man who spoke in rhymes. He ends by saying his girlfriend told him, "John, that bathroom's been closed for forty years! Wooooaaaahhh! Wooooaaaahhh!"

Fan Works

• The Loud House fanfic Hide and Seek ends on the reveal that none of the Loud girls are actually real and Lincoln is just hallucinating them.

Films — Live-Action

• A Beautiful Mind: There are several major characters who are later revealed to be products of John Nash's schizophrenia:
  • John's college roommate Charles, who's there despite John having been assigned to a one-man dorm room. He's the first character to be revealed to the audience as nonexistent, when John talks to Charles and a psychiatrist notices that there's nobody else in the room. It takes far longer for John to recognize the delusion, though, resulting in his infant son almost drowning in the bath because he thinks that Charles is watching the baby.
  • Charles has a niece named Marcie, whom John realizes isn't real when he recognizes that she hasn't actually grown up all the times he's seen her. There are additional hints through the film as well, such as when she runs through a flock of pigeons that don't react to her.
  • William Parcher, an agent from the Department of Defense who recruits John as a Pentagon codebreaker to uncover a Soviet spy ring. It's revealed that John hallucinated Parcher and his assignments when his wife discovers that his codebreaking "assignments" are disjointed ramblings and newspaper clippings.
• Inverted in Cloak & Dagger (1984). Jack Flack, a role-playing character and imaginary friend of the Kid Hero, is presented as such from the very beginning. Then later in the film, Jack Flack attempts to create a distraction and draw a bad guy's fire away from our hero. Curiously, it somehow works: the bad guy's attention and gunfire are diverted, and Jack Flack later "dies" from gunshot wounds. It is never fully explained how or why Jack Flack was able to manifest himself into the real world, if only briefly (he disappears again after "dying" but then has some final words for our hero afterward).
• Fight Club reveals that the main protagonist's friend was never real and just his wild side talking.
• Joker (2019): Arthur Fleck's life is a tragic mess, but the one spot of hope is his blossoming romantic relationship with his neighbor Sophie. After a particularly rough day, he heads to her apartment seeking comfort, but, barely recognizing him, she asks him to please leave. Their entire relationship was just a figment of Arthur's increasingly frazzled imagination.
• In Tully, the titular nanny is revealed to be a hallucination of the extremely exhausted and sleep-deprived protagonist Marlo, representing who she used to be when she was younger. This is first revealed by Marlo's husband stating to doctors that "Tully" is Marlo's maiden name.

Literature

• In Dead Beat, Harry Dresden starts a relationship with a woman named "Shiela", who helps him find a book about the Erlking. It's not until the final few chapters of the novel that we find out that Shiela was actually a mental manifestation of Lasciel, a Fallen Angel whose shadow had hitched a ride in Harry's mind a couple of books previously.
• In "Something Green" by Fredric Brown, a man has spent years walking around an alien jungle world with a pet on his shoulder which he calls Dorothy. When a human ship lands and finds him, it turns out he had actually been hallucinating about Dorothy all along. In the end, he kills the rescuer and vaporizes his ship because he Prefers the Illusion and continues walking around, Dorothy back on his shoulder.
• In one Toocool book, it appears that Toocool and his friends are struggling to catch a marlin. At the end, however, it turns out to have been in their imaginations, and the marlin was just a toy fish.
• World War Z: One of the narratives follows a pilot whose plane crashes in zombie-infested wilderness; fortunately, she is contacted on her radio by a "skywatcher", isolated civilians who monitor/assist downed pilots. Through her radio, the skywatcher, "Mets Fan", helps her stay focused and guides her through several dangerous situations. She is ultimately led to a helicopter pick-up, at which point the skywatcher goes silent. At the end of her story, it's heavily implied that the skywatcher was created by her subconscious; there never was a skywatcher named Mets Fan, the radio was damaged in the crash and could not have received a signal, and Mets Fan only provided information the pilot had already received in her pre-flight briefing.

Live-Action TV

• The second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has Fitz working on a device with Simmons advising him during the first episode. At the end of the episode, it is revealed Simmons is actually away on an undercover mission, and Fitz is hallucinating due to the brain damage he suffered at the end of Season 1.
• Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: One of the major reveals late in the series is that Sixth Ranger Jiro's friends, including his love interest Rumi, were all illusions created by his stepfather, who was also one of the rare Penguin Juto, in order to keep Jiro sedate and provide him with a reason to return home — and eventually become the Penguin Juto's new host.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Played with in "Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack". Mac and Charlie get hired at a very stressful job in an office building's mailroom. Charlie says he met a man named Barney who tipped him off that many of the office's employees, such as Pepe Silvia and Carol in HR, don't actually exist and were made up some massive fraud scheme. Charlie tells Mac, who replies that all those people definitely do exist, and they're very upset about not getting their mail. Charlie also realizes mid-conversation that Barney, who's shown standing in the mailroom with them, doesn't exist either.
  Mac: Barney?! Who the hell is Barney?!
  Charlie: YOU DON'T SEE BAR— oh, shit. Where the hell did he—?
  Mac: You've lost your mind. You've lost your goddamn mind, Charlie!
• Scrubs: Throughout the episode "My Screw Up", Dr. Cox is seen speaking to his friend Ben about a patient that died under J.D.'s care. At the end they are both seen at an event, where it's revealed that Ben was just an imagination and Cox is actually at his funeral because Ben was the patient that died.
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Doctor's Orders", Phlox and T'Pol run the ship alone while the rest of the crew are in stasis to protect them from a harmful anomaly. At the end of the episode, Phlox sees T'Pol asleep like everyone else, and realises that he was just hallucinating her being with him.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Spectre of the Gun", Spock realizes that there was nothing real about the surreal Melkotian recreation of Tombstone, Arizona, and that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scott could defeat the Earps without firing a single shot, simply by having absolute confidence in the unreality of the situation. In the end, they learn that they'd never left the ship, and that even Chekov's death had been unreal. The Melkotians were suitably impressed.
• Yellowjackets: Lottie is horrified to realize that her psychiatrist, who's been urging Lottie to embrace her visions and dig deeper into her memories, not only isn't real, but appears to her as the Antler Queen (an embodiment of the Wilderness that drove the survivors to unspeakable things) speaking in a Voice of the Legion.
  Antler Queen: You tell me. Does a hunt that has no violence feed anyone?
• You (2018): In season 4, Joe has several interactions with writer and politician Rhys Montrose, who is revealed halfway through the season to be killing off the rich group Joe had fallen in with, all while intensely stalking Joe. The plot then becomes Joe trying to defeat Rhys, eventually snapping and killing him... only for Joe to then have a moment of clarity where he realizes that Rhys never met him before. All this time, he'd been hallucinating a villainous version of the real guy due to severe mental stress and an unwillingness to confront the fact that he himself was the killer once again; Rhys Montrose the politician was innocent and unrelated to the rest of the cast.

Theatre

• Next to Normal follows Diana Goodman and her family, husband Dan, son Gabe, and daughter Natalie. Diana suffers from extreme bipolar disorder, but the rest of the family thinks she has it under control... until she brings out a cake for Gabe's 18th birthday and the room falls silent; Gabe actually died as an infant, and the young man we've been seeing is nothing but Diana's hallucination.
• A Strange Loop: Usher has a surprisingly delightful conversation with an attractive man on a subway who also loves theater and shows interest in Usher's play, and he offers to take Usher to bed. Usher asks if he lives in Queens, to which the man replies that he lives in Usher's imagination. This was just one of Usher's fantasies to cope with his lack of success in sex and romance.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: Mirage has Basim's closest childhood friend Nehal. Throughout the game, players are led to believe that she's real, but if one notices that she's mostly there when no one is around or when nobody talks to her, it's clear that she's all in his head.
• Bendy and the Dark Revival reveals that several people, including the previous game's player character, Henry Stein, are actually inky clones inspired by people Joey knew in real life, and the entire world the game takes place in is an artificial pocket dimension.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops introduces the Russian soldier Viktor Reznov, who becomes Alex Mason's closest friend and ally during the Cold War. On one mission, he sacrifices himself just so Alex can escape, but he's revealed to be alive! Or so we thought; it turns out Mason was brainwashed into thinking Reznov was alive and helping him during the war. So that means, Reznov actually did sacrifice himself.
• Deadly Premonition: Francis York Morgan is an eccentric FBI agent who talks to an invisible friend named Zach and inexplicably gets called "Scar face" despite having a barely noticeable scar by the residents of the town. The game's climax reveals that York is an otherworldly entity who had been piloting Zach's body due to the latter being catatonic due to childhood trauma, and once Zach takes control, the illusion drops for the player, showing that Zach has white hair and a massive and extremely noticeable facial scar.
• Mark of the Ninja: At the end of the game, your faithful ninja companion Ora turns out to be just a figment of the Player Character's imagination, or, more specifically, a split personality induced by the toxins in his tattoo. There are hints that this is the case throughout the game, such as the fact that Ora never interacts with anyone else, nor with the environment.
• Octopath Traveler II: During Castti's story, she is at various times assisted by a mysterious friend named Malaya. When she fully recovers her memory in her penultimate chapter, it turns out that Malaya (among others) died during the traumatic incident that caused her amnesia, and she was merely a figment helping her sort through her memories.
• Psychonauts 2 reveals some cruel realities about the Aquatos, Razputin's family. Raz's "grandmother", Marona, is actually his grand-aunt, Lucrecia Mux, a.k.a. Maligula, the Deluge of Grulovia. Lucrecia and Augustus, her nephew, were brainwashed into thinking they were mother and son by Ford Cruller in an attempt to hide her from the world; twenty years later, it comes back to bite the entirety of the Psychonauts organization.
• The final reveal in Spec Ops: The Line is that John Konrad, the so-called villain that Captain Walker has been fighting throughout the game, is not only Dead All Along, but his role as the villain was all in Walker's mind, created by his desperate desire to be a hero instead of the delusional and tragically flawed Villain Protagonist he truly is.

Western Animation

• In American Dad!, specifically in "The American Dad After School Special", Stan gets a personal trainer to help him lose weight. It turns out the trainer was all in Stan's head and he was just starving himself all along.
• Final Space: Little Cato and other members of the team are trapped behind a time crystal, for 50 years while time on the other side stays the same. But it turns out, said other members were never with him.
• The Real Ghostbusters has a non-psychological example in "Transylvanian Homesick Blues". A town called Boldavia is supposedly being attacked by evil bat-like creatures; however, they turn out to just be holograms (explaining why the PKE meter can't detect them) made by the main villain to scare the citizens.
• Rugrats: In "Under Chuckie's Bed", we see what appears to be a monster under Chuckie's bed throughout the episode. At the end, this is revealed to have simply been Chas's sweater.
• The Simpsons:
  • Subverted in "Don't Fear the Roofer", in which Homer befriends a roofer named Ray (voiced by Ray Romano). Marge tells him that his friend doesn't exist... until it's revealed at the end that he is actually real.
  • In "Lisa the Boy Scout", one of the unaired shark-jumping scenes the hackers broadcast involves Homer and Moe telling Carl that Lenny never existed and was only a figment of his imagination. Of course, this reveal, like all the other clips, is non-canon.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "No Pictures Please", Patrick takes a tourist named Rube around town, causing chaos wherever they go. When an angry mob confronts Rube, he apologizes and says that he didn't actually take pictures of anyone; and more than that, he's not even real, suddenly disappearing into thin air. Patrick and the crowd are horrified and run away.
• The Venture Bros.: After dying in the season three finale, the apparent ghost of Henchman 24 appears to Henchman 21 throughout season four, with the latter believing him to be real as he searches for 24's killer. In the season four finale, "ghost" 24 turns out to be a grief-induced hallucination (21 figures it out when 24 mentions talking to the ghost of someone else that 21 later finds out to be alive), causing 24's "ghost" to stop appearing.

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