History Main / SuccessHallucinations

* ''[[Film/{{Parasite2019}} Parasite]]'': at the end of the film, Ki-woo works hard, gains wealth, and eventually saves enough to buy the house where his father is trapped living in the basement. [[spoiler: This is, of course, revealed to be merely his imagination- as fitting with the film's themes of classism and poverty, it is strongly implied he will never be able to.]]

* Happens in ''Series/HikoninSentaiAkibaranger'' frequently. In the first episode, for instance, Nobuo is riding his bike when he sees a thief steal a woman's purse. He rides the bike down a flight of stairs, takes down the thief with some BikeFu, and hands the purse back to the woman- only what actually happened was that he fell off the bike on the way down the stairs, and the woman picked it up and tossed it at the thief herself. Indeed, the entire premise of the show starts out as one of these, as rather than really becoming a Sentai team as they first thought, their battles take place only in their minds. However, after some encouragement, they're okay with this, thinking it'll improve them as people. Later episodes give their battles real consequences.

* In ''LightNovel/FateZero'', Matou Karia hallucinates that he was able to [[spoiler:save Sakura as he dies right in front of her]].

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* in ''Film/OneHundredAndTwentySevenHours'', when a sudden storm comes, Aron moves the boulder under the flooding waters, and imagines running off to meet his girlfriend. Instead, he realizes at the last moment that he's still in the canyon.

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* In one of the earliest installments of the original ''Manga/YuGiOh'' manga and [[Anime/YuGiOhFirstAnimeSeries anime]], Yami Yugi challenges a would-be psychic to a Yami no Game. When the fake psychic is clearly going to lose, he starts imagining himself having ''real'' psychic powers and winning the game, even as he winds up bitterly losing in reality.

* The ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "For the Man Who Has Everything", as part of his plan to conquer Earth, Mongul sent a plant called Black Mercy to Superman due to believing the Man of Steel was the only real threat to his hopes to conquering the planet. Once attached, the Black Mercy fed Superman a reality where Krypton never exploded, he was a simple farmer with a wife and son, and his father is a disgraced old man. Batman attempted fruitlessly to several different means to remove the plant but was only able to succeed when Superman himself realized that the reality was a fake. Unfortunately, the Black Mercy then attached itself to Batman and fed the Dark Knight a reality where his father and mother survived the night of their deaths and his father fought off the gunman that killed them. Wonder Woman managed to get through to Batman and remove the plant, barely getting caught herself. Wonder Woman then threw the plant at Mongul, incapacitating the former warlord.
* In the first episode of ''WesternAnimation/OKKOLetsBeHeroes'', K.O. goes off to fight Darrell in his first day working at Lakewood Plaza. At first he appears to be winning, giving Darrell a good trashing, but then he's woken up by A Real Magic Skeleton and informed that he was knocked out cold as soon as the fight started.

* Weaponized by the BigBad in ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': He could use his MasterOfIllusion powers to simply win fights immediately, but instead prefers to make his opponents think they've succeeded first. In an infamous scene, he is apparently impaled and killed by another character. [[spoiler: The illusion then drops to reveal that Aizen switched places with the attacker's close friend.]] [[HopeCrusher He really likes getting their hopes up.]]

If you're struggling to do something, nothing can give you more satisfaction than success. That's why thinking you've succeeded at something when you really haven't can be really annoying or even downright torturous. Considering that, you have to wonder why the minds of people, both real and fictional, insist on forcing them to experience visions of such things as having dead relatives come back to life, marrying lost loves, escaping life-threatening situations, becoming rich/famous and even just getting out of bed when we're tired in the morning, even though they all have to inevitably end with the rug being pulled out from under you. Basically, if you don't know the meaning of "I can take the despair, it's the hope I can't stand," this clearly has never happened to you.

Compare: AllJustADream, DaydreamSurprise, LotusEaterMachine.

* ''[[Film/{{Parasite2019}} Parasite]]'': [[spoiler: at the end of the film, Ki-woo works hard, gains wealth, and eventually saves enough to buy the house where his father is trapped living in the basement. This is, of course, revealed to be merely his imagination- as fitting with the film's themes of classism and poverty, it is strongly implied he will never be able to.]]

* ''Film/{{Parasite}}'': [[spoiler: at the end of the film, Ki-woo works hard, gains wealth, and eventually saves enough to buy the house where his father is trapped living in the basement. This is, of course, revealed to be merely his imagination- as fitting with the film's themes of classism and poverty, it is strongly implied he will never be able to.]]