Quotes / All Just a Dream

In-Universe

Anime and Manga

"Now I'm supposed to work with some half-demon called Inuyasha to collect the pieces, which of course he wants for himself. I'd call it a dream, but you know what? This is too weird to be a dream!"

— Kagome, Inuyasha

Comic Books

Lightning Lad: Hey, Kara, remember wyen you first showed up here, telling us all we were figments of your imagination?
Supergirl: Yeah. Sorry about that.
Lightning Lad: Well, now you really are dreaming.

— Supergirl (2005), issue #22

Comic Strips

Peter: You've calmed down since this morning.
Jason: Well, it's dawned on me that this must be a dream. Think about it - if I'd really metamorphosized into a mini-Paige, The X-Files division at the FBI would've sent Mulder and Scully to investigate by now.
Peter: Keep in mind they only examine paranormal events suitable for a mainstream network television audience.
Jason: Curse the infallible logic of my subconscious!
Peter: I mean, there are mutants, and there there are mutants.

— FoxTrot (it turns out to really be a dream, though)

Film — Animated

Hero Boy: Are you saying this is all just a dream?
Hobo: You said it kid, not me!

— The Polar Express

Literature

"All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."

— "A Dream Within a Dream," Edgar Allan Poe

Music

From packed in a menagerie to cheese and crackers at the apogee
Add a little finding God and trying not to atrophy
I know you're whispering about me at the corner store
"We've seen the glowing light from under his apartment door!"

— The last lines of Aesop Rock's "Button Masher", which previously narrated Aesop living out his days isolated in deep space

"You beat the game, yeah, dude you were supreme
But I hate to inform you, it was all just a dream (yes, really)
You stayed up late, you played until your thumbs bled,
But it was all just made up in Homeboy's head
Mario 2, you're enjoyable, yes,
You were both grueling and fun, you put us kids to the test (for sure)
But the game ends on such a cop-out-ey note
Whoever's idea that was can lick my scrote."

— brentalfloss on the ending of Super Mario Bros. 2

I was thinking bout her, thinking bout me
Thinking bout us, what we gonna be
Opened my eyes, yes
It was only just a dream...

— Nelly, "Just a Dream"

Video Games

"Ah, the 'It was all just a dream' trope... This is actually an ancient method to end a story."

— Socks Million, Fuga: Comedies of Steel, "Reason For Crying?"

"TO THE FINDER... THE ISLE OF KOHOLINT, IS BUT AN ILLUSION... HUMAN, MONSTER, SEA, SKY... A SCENE ON THE LID OF A SLEEPER'S EYE... AWAKE THE DREAMER, AND KOHOLINT WILL VANISH MUCH LIKE A BUBBLE ON A NEEDLE... CASTAWAY, YOU SHOULD KNOW THE TRUTH!"

— Southern Face Shrine mural, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

"Yay it was all a dream everything is ok phew that was lucky."

— Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle

"You didn't think I was actually just a recording, did you? What a silly and trite explanation that would be! All the back and forth between you and me, all the absurd adventures we've been through, and it all turns out I'm just a tape recording? 'It was all just in Stanley's head!' I bet that's the kind of twist you think is revelatory. I bet each and every time you watch a movie where it turns out all to be in the main character's imagination, you must absolutely bolt off the couch in pure shock at the phenomenal and intricate storytelling. It must be so simple to be you, life being an unending waterfall of surprises and delights. How much more exciting you must find the world than the rest of us do."

— Narrator, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

Web Animation

Homestar Runner: And when your puppet show gets canceled after three seasons...
Marzipan: {angrily} You mean the whole last season was a dream?! Gimme a break! They shoulda just had babies, and then the babies shoulda gotten married.

— Homestar Runner, Hremail 2000

Web Original

"Having trouble coming up with a good resolution? Have you considered 'It was all a dream'?"

— Worst Muse

Western Animation

"Wait, you're telling me I went through all that mental anguish over a dream? What a cheat!"

— Darkwing Duck, Darkwing Duck, "Dead Duck"

Bender: But I destroyed the technology of the world! I ran on the beach and felt the sand between my foot-cups!
Technician: *shrugging* Everyone experiences the upgrade a little differently.
Bender: Oof. If that stuff wasn't real, how can I be sure anything is real? Is is not possible, nay, probable, that my entire life is just a figment of my or someone else's imagination?
Technician: No. Get out.

— Futurama, "Obsoletely Fabulous"

Brian: So, what you're saying is that what you experienced in the simulation didn't really happen, or even matter?
Stewie: Yes, that's correct.
Brian: So, it was sorta like a dream?
Stewie: No, it was a simulation.
Brian: Yes, but, theoretically, if someone watched the events of that simulation from start to finish, only to find out that none of it really happened, I mean... you don't think, that would, j— be just like a giant middle finger to them?
Stewie: Well, hopefully, they would have enjoyed the ride.
Brian: I don't know, man. I think you'd piss a lot of people off that way.

— Family Guy, "Lois Kills Stewie"

General Specific: (wakes up) Oh my gosh, I just had a horrible nightmare!
Narrator: OH THAT'S JUST GREAT!
General Specific: What? I did!
Narrator: I mean, come on! The second something becomes implausible, BANG, it's a dream! I have to be honest here, I'm not sure I want to finish this story!

— Sheep in the Big City

Marge: Oh, Homie! You're awake!
Homer: What happened?
Lisa: You've been in a coma ever since you tried to jump Springfield Gorge.
Homer: How long?
Lisa: Two days ago.
Homer: Two days? But... I had so many adventures. More than 700!
Marge: Those were all coma dreams. None of them ever happened.
Homer: (gasp) The B-stories, too? (sobs) I never had a pet lobster? I never went to space?! What about the Halloweens?!

—The Simpsons, "Lisa the Boy Scout"

Michaelangelo: Bebop and Rocksteady, as good guys?!
Raphael: This is one of those stories where we wake up at the end, and it was all a dream, right?

— Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), "Rhinoman" (which, contrary to Raph's thought, wasn't a dream)

On works

On Comic Strips

"Ha ha, it was all a dream, everybody! ... those who have been irritated by this plot have been rewarded with the most irritating sort of ending that narrative has to offer."

— The Comics Curmudgeon on Luann

On Live-Action TV

"I remember a review I wrote, a long while back...and it's been a lot of reviews now. 100. I remember saying, 'This episode would be the best episode ever in the history of Smallville, if they had only really done it'... Clark has a dream sequence where Lex finds out his secret. In response, Lex goes ballistic, rips out a sword, and smashes it across Clark's chest into a million pieces, declaring war.

I said to myself, if that were the episode I were seeing instead of it being a dream sequence, it would have been the best episode of the series. It was bold, it was daring, it took risks, it was unsafe in all the right ways, the ways that compel you to watch or read."

— Neal Bailey on Smallville, "Reckoning"

"Cut to the inside of Tess's head. Even though we kind of knew that this whole setup was happening only on a mental level from the shaky, greyscale cam in the last scene, the dead giveaway would have been Ollie appearing with his Zod inflicted wound from last week still not just intact but actually bleeding. This is a realistic consequence being shown and therefore must be imaginary."

— Julian Finn on Smallville, "Hostage"

"First of all, we're told throughout the story that the Doctor's actions are being misrepresented. Second, we're told at the end of the Trial as a whole that the story's grand crescendo, Peri's death, was all a fabrication and that Peri is fine. What we're left with is an oddity in Doctor Who — a story defined primarily by the fact that it never happened. This is a pity, as what's actually going on in Mindwarp is quite good...Of course, in another sense the idea that the Colin Baker era would render one of its best stories non-canon is almost too fitting."

— Dr. El Sandifer on "Mindwarp"

"I don't like all of the cheats that Moffat pulls off in this episode, like a magician who shows you a trick and then reveals that it was all a con in the first place. Danny Pink is dead (shock horror)...oh no wait he's alive again in some industrial afterlife. Clara has thrown all the TARDIS keys into the heart of an active volcano (shock horror)...oh no wait it was a memory patch illusion created by the Doctor to what she is up to. The Doctor is going to cross the barrier between the living and the dead and step foot into the afterlife (shock horror)...oh no wait it is a piece of Time Lord technology that traps departing souls...It's a shame because these moments in the first fifteen minutes are about as gripping as Doctor Who has been in the past four seasons, and to have them revealed to be cheats guts them of a lot of their worth. There is nothing more irritating than a writer pretending to be bold and fearless."

— Joe Ford on Doctor Who, "Dark Water"

On Video Games

"What happened to the graphics? What the-? What?! WHAT?! IT WAS ALL A DREAM?! What the fuck! You LIED to me! TITTYCOCKS! Wake the fuck up, I'm gonna kick your fuckin' ass! Stop that snorin', I'm gonna slap the shit outta you! Fuckin'- yeah, yeah! Look at me when I'm talking to- no, don't close your eyes! *sob* Everything I know is a lie!"

— The Furious Famicom Faggot, reacting to the ending of Super Mario Bros. 2

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