Basic Trope: A character's dream involves another dream within even that.
- Straight: A character wakes up from one dream to think they're awake, only to wake up from THAT dream.
- A character "falls asleep" within a dream and enters a different dream, eventually "waking back up" into the original dream.
- Exaggerated: A dream within a dream within a dream... Within a dream... Which perhaps itself may be within another dream!
- A character "falls asleep" within a dream, and then "falls asleep" within THAT dream, each dream getting weirder. They eventually "wake up" back into the original dream but it takes a long time. When they wake up for real, they assume they're still dreaming.
- Downplayed: The second dream is just a daydream or Imagine Spot.
- The character falls asleep within the dream but when they wake up from the second dream they wake up for real.
- Justified: Waking up from dreams is a concept the character thinks a lot about, so it's no surprise their dream would incorporate it.
- Inverted: Our universe is a pocket dimension inside another universe, which is inside yet another universe, and each higher universe is considered "more real" than the previous one.
- Subverted: The character wakes from one dream into what seems to be another because of its strangeness, only for a prior explanation of such strange things to be used to demonstrate the point that such strangeness does not imply a dream.
- The character falls asleep in a dream....and then wakes up for real.
- Double-Subverted: ... and then said prior explanation turns out to have been from a previous dream.
- Except the "waking up for real" turned out to be a false awakening.
- Parodied: After Bob tries to look in to Alice's dreams, he finds that he keeps waking up without the dream ending. After morning hits and Alice wakes up, she tells him to wake up. He fell asleep.
- Zig Zagged: The character falls asleep in a dream, later "wakes up" in the original dream and tells other dream characters about their dream, it turns out that This Is Reality and things are just so strange the character thought it was a dream. Until something wakes them up, which turns out to be a false awakening, and then they wake up from there where they fell asleep in the original dream, which then turns out to also be a dream itself. They wake up for real and assume it's a false awakening.
- Averted: The character wakes up from his dream directly into reality.
- The character is tired in his dream but doesn't go to sleep.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Man, I hate double dreams!"
- "I always tell people about this and they think I mean false awakenings. No, this is much weirder"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: A character has a false awakening, recognizes it right away, then falls right back asleep into the original dream.
- A character falls asleep in a dream and instead of dreaming about dreaming, the dream "time skips" to after they "wake up" again.
- A character doesn't fall asleep in a dream.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
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