History Main / YourMindMakesItReal

** Using "Headology" (''directed'' YMMIR) is a large part of being a witch. Granny Weatherwax makes liberal use of it and promotes its use in her pupils over the use of actual magic.
** Susan uses this trope to its maximum effect, developing her wards' belief in a poker she uses to beat up the monsters that hide under the bed, rather than telling them these monsters don't exist. That is, while she realizes nothing will make them stop believing in monsters, it's much easier to make them believe she's enough of a badass to take them on.

** In ''Literature/WyrdSisters'', the older witches tell Magrat that as long as ''she'' believes the contents of Nanny's laundry are the paraphenalia needed to summon a demon, the demon will believe it as well. Magrat is very aware she isn't very good at this, but Granny can believe so hard that when the demon questions whether the wooden stick Nanny uses to stir the wash copper is ''really'' the Sword of Art, Granny uses it to slice the sawhorse in half. Shortly afterwards she tosses it to Magrat, who "caught the stick by what she hoped Granny was imagining as the handle".

* Tulpas are a recently rediscovered phenomenon. They’re essentially imaginary friends that feel somewhat like alternate identities, accompanied with sensory hallucinations as if the tulpa was actually interacting with you. They’re created by first creating their appearance and personality, then imagining that you’re having conversations with them or taking them to places, and eventually the mind gets used to it and it starts to feel like an independent being that shares your body. The longer it’s done for, the stronger it becomes.

* In ''VideoGame/Persona5'', you and your friends carry model guns that do nothing in reality. But because of the nature of the Palaces, they become real guns with live ammunition, able to inflict damage on the Shadows.

* In the ''Series/ThirtyRock'' episode "The Break-Up": Liz [[BlatantLies tells Jack that her allergies are getting to her]] after her boyfriend left her. Hence, this line from Jack:

* On ''Series/{{The 100}}'', people who enter [[{{Cyberspace}} the City of Light]] have their minds downloaded into its virtual reality. This lets them continue existing in the City of Light even after their physical bodies have passed away. However, it also means that if they're killed ''inside'' the City of Light, they'll die in the real world, too.
* In ''Series/OneThousandWaysToDie'', there is a story about a woman who had persistent nightmares of a small, demonic imp strangling her. While she thought she was being strangled in her dreams, her physical heart raced to the point of a heart attack, killing her in her sleep.
* An episode of ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'' features all of the main characters being trapped in a shared dream where they had to escape from a building that was trying to kill them. This trope is brought up in that the characters don't know whether it's going to be subverted or played straight. It's [[spoiler:subverted; after Shawn is killed by an exploding window and Meghan is electrocuted, both wake up fine at the same time that the others are released]].

* [[PlayedForLaughs Played for]] BlackComedy in an episode of ''Series/ElChapulinColorado''. The title character is called by a nurse in a hospital, where she's taking care of a couple of crooks who were involved in a shootout with the police. One of the crooks is fully recovered while the other isn't expected to make it past the night. Chapulín however swaps the medical records and begins messing with both crooks, telling the healthy one to just accept his death while trying to get the dying one to eat and do some exercises. At the end, Chapulín reveals he switched the medical records intentionally so as to try and convince the dying crook that he was healthy so he would get healthy for real. It works, but in turn, the healthy crook becomes convinced that he's dying as well, and ends up dropping dead.
* An episode of ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' featured a man who could enter dreams, and when women rejected him he killed them there.

* In ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'', if, while in the Attic, you are killed in your mindscape, your body dies. [[spoiler:Used as a means to escape the Attic by Echo, by dying and using the time being unplugged to get out.]]
* Subverted in ''Series/{{Eureka}}''. During an episode of shared dreams, one RedShirt died in reality and in the shared dream at the same time... but it turned out to be coincidental.

* In the ''Series/{{Haven}}'' episode "[[Recap/HavenS4E7LayMeDown Lay Me Down]]", what happens to a member of the Benson family in their dreams happens to them for real, though this stops if they can conquer their greatest fears. The evil William and his thugs modify Carrie Benson so that her Trouble becomes contagious, resulting in several townspeople getting injured or killed in their dreams. Fortunately, when Carrie conquers her fear, everybody she affected is cured as well.
* In a recent episode of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', Matt telepathically enters Angela's mind to free her from her comatose state. [[spoiler: Arthur]] uses HIS telepathy to put an image of Daphne in Matt and Angela's shared mind world thingy. This imaginary Daphne stabs Matt in the stomach. When this happens, the real world Daphne, who's right next to Matt, realizes that Matt has a stab wound right where mind-Daphne stabbed him. However, when Angela (trapped in her own mind) convinces [[spoiler: Arthur]] (who personally entered her mind near the end) to free her and Matt, Matt awakes and the stab wound is gone.
* In the season three episode of ''Series/{{House}}'' called "Airborne", Cuddy becomes sick during a flight from Indonesia to the US, having rashes, nausea, and a fever, all because she believes she's been infected with meningitis from another passenger. Who turned out not to have meningitis at all.

* ''{{Series/Legion|2017}}'': The Astral Plane functions like this. While inside it, your mind can create anything you want.
* ''{{Series/Lexx}}'': "Patches in the Sky". We're told, offhand, that "If you die in a dream, you die for real," as if it's obvious.

* An episode of ''Series/{{Medium}}'' has Alison suffer the same injuries in real life as she had in her dreams, making her afraid that she would die in reality if she were to die in her dreams. It didn't help that she was dreaming of a [[spoiler:ZombieApocalypse]].
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S7E14Mindreacher Mindreacher]]", scientists invent a new device that allows people to share dreams and cure people's mental problems. The protagonist and her boyfriend use the machine to enjoy a romantic dinner. However, after that, he goes into a coma. The machine is blamed, and the project is shut down. However, she accidentally messes up an implant injection (it latches on directly to her brain instead of a nerve in the palm), which allows to her mentally interface with anyone she touches. She interfaces with the boyfriend and finds out that he's allergic to strawberries, so when they ate them in the vivid dream, his body reacted as if he actually ate them for real. She "cured" him by convincing him that she has a cure in her hand and feeding it to him in the dream.
* ''Series/{{Probe}}'''s "[[Recap/ProbeBlackCatsDontWalkUnderLaddersDoThey Black Cats Don't Walk Under Ladders (Do They?)]]":

* ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' did an episode that ripped off ''Nightmare on Elm Street'', but with these evil nerds that called themselves "The Dream Masters". The nerds were defeated once the characters banded together, realizing that it was all just a dream, and overpowered the nerds' minds, resulting in an inability to be harmed. There was a moment where Rembrandt is cornered by the nerds and is about to be killed. He goes, "I wish I had my gun right now." The gun materializes in his hand, and he blows a few nerds away. Strangely, when we last see the nerd who tried to hit on Wade, he is walking into the room with his sleeve ''on fire''. It's not clear how that happened. Maybe he was sitting near a candle and jerked his hand.

** ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "Avatar": Teal'c gets trapped in a VR simulation that shocks him every time he dies in the game. While the simulation itself can't harm him, the continual shocks force his body to produce extra adrenaline, which eventually ''can'' kill him. He's trapped because in real situations Teal'c would never quit, and so the simulation disables the abort option. It turns out to be even worse than that: the simulations aren't pre-programmed but work off the sim runner's mind. Teal'c will never quit, never surrender... He also believes, at the time, that [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption no matter what, they can never fully defeat the Goa'uld]]. Meaning not only can he not just hit the off button, but whenever it seems like he's going to win [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard something new pops up]], kills him, then the sim restarts ''and gets harder still.''
** ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' episode "[[Recap/StargateAtlantisS04E04Doppelganger Doppelganger]]". [[spoiler:Dr. Heightmeyer dies in her sleep after dreaming that she fell off a balcony onto a pier below.]] There were other factors involved in that death...
* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'':
** The classic episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E6SpectreOfTheGun Spectre of the Gun]]" has the landing party trapped in a surreal nightmare that recreates the Shootout at the OK Corral. Spock realizes the whole experience is an illusion that is only as real as their minds accept it to be, but, as [=McCoy=] says, only someone as emotionless as a Vulcan could have the [[HeroicWillpower iron-hard certainty]] required – even a shadow of doubt would be lethal. Spock [[PsychicPowers mindmelds]] with the others to make them just as sure of the illusion as he is, [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve making them invulnerable to it]].
** In "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E15ShoreLeave Shore Leave]]", the planet creates whatever the crew thinks of - whether it's an old Academy nemesis, a Japanese warplane making a strafing run, or a Samurai warrior. Kirk realizes this and orders the crew to come to perfect attention and focus on nothing but standing absolutely stock-still and staying that way, depriving the planet's mechanisms of patterns to replicate, at which point the "keeper" walks up, along with the crew members thought to have been killed, and explains what has really been going on.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** The episode "Interface" has Geordi controlling a probe with his VISOR. When a fire suddenly engulfs the probe Geordi's hands are burned by the interface suit he's wearing.
** In an earlier episode, "Remember Me", Beverly Crusher becomes trapped inside a warp bubble, with her thoughts determining the scenario she experiences. At one point, a guest character tells Wesley that within the bubble universe, Beverly's thoughts control reality to such an extent that she remains alive "so long as she believes she is alive". Presumably, then, if she believed she died within the scenario, this belief would actually cause her death. Fortunately, it doesn't come to that.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E08ThingsPast Things Past]]" several members of the crew were in danger of this, and Garak even got a bloody nose.
* In ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', in the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS2E23TheThaw The Thaw]]", the crew of the Voyager finds a machine where the surviving members of a species whose planet was struck by a natural catastrophe were placed in stasis, and their brains were wired into the machine, which created an artificial paradise inside it. Unfortunately, when the crew looks inside the program uploading Harry inside it, they find out that inside there is an... entity, called [[MonsterClown "The clown"]], who keeps the dreamers trapped inside. When the crew tries to disconnect them from the machine, it threatens to put one of them on the guillotine. He does, and the dreamer's body dies of a heart attack.

* Series 2 of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' had a villain who only existed in the altered memories of the staff. He faded from existence when they used the humorously named drug {{retcon}} to erase their memories of the time he'd been interacting with them (all of two days, though he himself had retconned the staff's memories to include him further back. It only required 2 days' erasure to get rid of him, though, because obviously the memories he put in or stirred to the surface were only that much fresh).

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E9PerchanceToDream Perchance to Dream]]", Edward Hall, who has a rheumatic heart, dreams in chapters like an old FilmSerial. He has been dreaming about a strange woman named Maya at a carnival who has been trying to scare him to death by bringing him to a funhouse and for a ride on a roller coaster. As a result, Edward believes that he will die the next time that he goes to sleep. [[spoiler:It turns out that he is right.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E26ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", Adam Grant doesn't die from his dreams of being executed but the fear and pain that come along with the whole thing feel very real to him, no matter how many times they happen.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S1E4 Nightcrawlers]]", Price is a [[TheVietnamVet Vietnam vet]] who suffers from severe PTSD as a result of deserting his unit, the Nightcrawlers, while they were under attack from the Viet Cong in order to save himself. He has the ability to manifest anything that he can imagine. The first indication of this is when he briefly turns his cup of coffee into a Budweiser. Price later demonstrates his ability to the other people in Big Bob's diner when he makes a T-bone steak appear on the counter. He says that he has met four other vets with the same ability and that one of them speculated that their powers are as a result of being sprayed with a strange Soviet chemical by the Viet Cong. While he is awake, Price's creations last only a few seconds but they last far longer when he is asleep. When he fell asleep at a motel, he had his [[RecurringDreams recurring nightmare]] about his unit hunting him out of revenge and four people were killed. Trooper Dennis Wells knocks him unconscious with a ketchup bottle after he tries to escape. As a result, the Nightcrawlers unit again manifests from Price's thoughts and attacks the diner, killing Wells and Price in the process. With Price dead, the Nightcrawlers disappear.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S2E5 The Toys of Caliban]]", an intellectually impaired boy named Toby Ross has the ability to manifest any item after he sees a picture of it by saying "Bring!" As a reward, his parents Ernest and Mary show him a picture of a donut every night after dinner. Ernest is worried when Toby is able to create two donuts for himself without looking at the picture, something which has never happened before. That night, Toby is suffering from a severe stomachache after manifesting dozens of donuts. His parents reluctantly take him to an emergency room where he has to get his stomach pumped. As a result of Ernest and Mary's odd, evasive behavior, a social worker named Miss Kemp calls on them before they leave the hospital the next morning. She becomes extremely concerned about Toby's welfare when Ernest angrily prevents her from giving Toby a magazine. Although Toby only got a glimpse of the magazine, he is nevertheless able to bring it later. He sees a diagram of a heart and accidentally kills Mary when he [[AttackOnTheHeart removes her heart from her chest]]. Sometime later, Miss Kemp visits the Ross household, convinced that Toby is being horribly mistreated. Ernest is forced to demonstrate Toby's ability for her. As Miss Kemp leaves, Toby sees an old photograph of his mother. Mary's decomposing corpse then appears in her armchair, traumatizing Toby. After burying Mary's body in the backyard, Ernest believes that he has run out of options. [[spoiler:He shows Toby a picture of fire. When Miss Kemp returns with the police, they find the house in flames.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S3E5 Dream Me a Life]]", Roger Simpson Leeds burns his right hand on one of the many candles in Laurel Kincaid's room after he [[DreamWalker enters her dream]], causing him to wake up. He immediately realizes that he has a large burn mark.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S3E26 Many, Many Monkeys]]", Nurse Claire Hendricks' blindness is psychosomatic, having been caused by her guilt at [[BattleaxeNurse treating patients with coldness and indifference]] for many years. She never contracted the plague of blindness.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone2002'': "Placebo Effect" features a doctor dealing with a chronic hypochondriac patient. Normally keen on giving him placebos, she's horrified to find that he actually ''is'' showing signs of a terrible, previously unheard-of disease. It turns out that the disease was fictional, and after reading about it in an old sci-fi novel, the hypochondriac somehow "made it real" by believing he suffered from it. Soon, everyone in the hospital has caught the disease and appear to be near death. [[spoiler: The doctor manages to cure him, and thus everyone, by telling him that a meteorite crashed which contained an antidote for the "space virus." By believing her, he is cured. However, pessimistic thoughts overwhelm him, and he believes the crashed meteorite will create a new Ice Age and destroy humanity. The final shot shows the nurse motioning the doctor outside, to see the city besieged by a massive blizzard.]]
* In ''Series/VR5'', dying in VR does not kill you, but it leaves you brain-dead. (In fact, it's claimed that dying in something as primitive as a ''flight simulator'' will have this effect!)
* ''Series/WarOfTheWorlds1988'': "Totally Real", the loser of the VR game lost his life – though this turned out to be the entire point of the simulator's design.

** In "[[Recap/TheXFilesS03E17Pusher Pusher]]", a man has the ability to ''talk people into'' killing themselves in various ways. Most of the time, it's by making them do something self-injurious, but at least one of his victims dies from being given a graphic verbal description of a heart attack and then suffering the same.
** In "[[Recap/TheXFilesS09E14ScaryMonsters Scary Monsters]]", a young boy causes several people to kill themselves when his illusions are made real in their minds. Luckily, John Doggett is too stubborn to believe and tricks the boy by using his imagination against him.

Often, fictional {{cyberspace}} ICE (intruder countermeasure electronics) is said to work by channeling lethal voltages into the brain of the invading hacker, but it seems that any techhead with even an ounce of common sense would put at least one fuse, circuit breaker, or voltage regulator on any line connected directly to his brain. Presumably, most users do not know about such things, given their willingness to use an interface that could turn them into a vegetable or corpse at a moment's notice. Authors who put a little more thought into the matter may come up with some variant of the [[BrownNote motif of harmful sensation]], implying there's some kind of malicious out-of-band signal which triggers a nasty (usually fatal) seizure in its victims or [[ExplosiveInstrumentation blows up their computer]].

An increasingly common justification of this trope is {{Synchronization}}; directly wiring your brain to the machine gives you {{Technopath}}ic PowerAtAPrice of a potentially-fried brain. Most CyberPunk games — such as ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' — use this justification, and [[LampshadeHanging lampshade]] it with alternative safer but far-less effective interfaces which someone risking a BrainComputerInterface can [[CurbStompBattle destroy with ease]].

'''Why''' would such a device even exist is rarely touched. Needless to say, the very first precedent of a machine-brain connection killing or maiming the user should result in public backlash and double or triple failsafes (plus lawsuits). Some stories work around this by stating that it's that very first time, or that it's a legally enforced rule, like, against hackers. In the latter case, seemingly the lawmakers were not aware that the most dangerous hackers could and would design or reverse-engineer ''safe'' variants of the device, making the whole idea pointless. The aspect of [[DisproportionateRetribution automatic capital punishment]] for something as trivial as stealing money from a credit card is also not touched.

Let us be very clear: there is no obvious or immediately compelling reason that dying in a dream or hallucination would actually kill you, unless you are ''really'' gullible and you live in a world where the Nocebo Effect is '''much''' more powerful than it is in real life. Maybe if the pain transferred is so real and intense that it causes you to die from the shock, but then again, it has to be ''designed'' that way deliberately. Obviously, magic spells can do as they like, but the only reason that you would be actually harmed by dying in a VR simulation would be if the VR simulator was intentionally and specifically designed to murder the operator. This makes sense if it's part of a DeathTrap ([[ComplexityAddiction insofar as a death trap ever makes sense]]), but usually this is some commercial, publicly-available system, often with no stated purpose beyond simply ''[[WinToExit playing games]]''.

As an extension, perhaps to justify this trope, such systems often propose that the user's mind actually ''is'' inside the machine, having been [[BrainUploading literally downloaded]] out of his physical brain. Thus, destroying the machine would leave the user's body comatose – but destroying the physical body might leave the mind intact to have a go at [[PuppeteerParasite possessing someone else]].

** A more serious version is the episode "[[Recap/TheXFilesS03E17Pusher Pusher]]", where a man has the ability to ''talk people into'' killing themselves in various ways. Most of the time, it's by making them do something self-injurious, but at least one of his victims dies from being given a graphic verbal description of a heart attack and then suffering the same.
** Another example was in "[[Recap/TheXFilesS09E14ScaryMonsters Scary Monsters]]" in the final season. A young boy causes several people to kill themselves when his illusions are made real in their minds. Luckily John Doggett is too stubborn to believe and tricks the boy by using his imagination against him.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E9PerchanceToDream Perchance to Dream]]", Edward Hall, who has a rheumatic heart, dreams in chapters like an old FilmSerial. He has been dreaming about a strange woman named Maya at a carnival who has been trying to scare him to death by bringing him to a funhouse and for a ride on a roller coaster. As a result, Edward believes that he will die the next time that he goes to sleep. [[spoiler:It turns out that he is right.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", Adam Grant doesn't die from his dreams of being executed but the fear and pain that come along with the whole thing feel very real to him, no matter how many times they happen.

** In "Nightcrawlers", Price is a [[TheVietnamVet Vietnam vet]] who suffers from severe PTSD as a result of deserting his unit, the Nightcrawlers, while they were under attack from the Viet Cong in order to save himself. He has the ability to manifest anything that he can imagine. The first indication of this is when he briefly turns his cup of coffee into a Budweiser. Price later demonstrates his ability to the other people in Big Bob's diner when he makes a T-bone steak appear on the counter. He says that he has met four other vets with the same ability and that one of them speculated that their powers are as a result of being sprayed with a strange Soviet chemical by the Viet Cong. While he is awake, Price's creations last only a few seconds but they last far longer when he is asleep. When he fell asleep at a motel, he had his [[RecurringDreams recurring nightmare]] about his unit hunting him out of revenge and four people were killed. Trooper Dennis Wells knocks him unconscious with a ketchup bottle after he tries to escape. As a result, the Nightcrawlers unit again manifests from Price's thoughts and attacks the diner, killing Wells and Price in the process. With Price dead, the Nightcrawlers disappear.
** In "The Toys of Caliban", an intellectually impaired boy named Toby Ross has the ability to manifest any item after he sees a picture of it by saying "Bring!" As a reward, his parents Ernest and Mary show him a picture of a donut every night after dinner. Ernest is worried when Toby is able to create two donuts for himself without looking at the picture, something which has never happened before. That night, Toby is suffering from a severe stomach ache after manifesting dozens of donuts. His parents reluctantly take him to an emergency room where he has to get his stomach pumped. As a result of Ernest and Mary's odd, evasive behavior, a social worker named Miss Kemp calls on them before they leave the hospital the next morning. She becomes extremely concerned about Toby's welfare when Ernest angrily prevents her from giving Toby a magazine. Although Toby only got a glimpse of the magazine, he is nevertheless able to bring it later. He sees a diagram of a heart and accidentally kills Mary when he [[AttackOnTheHeart removes her heart from her chest]]. Sometime later, Miss Kemp visits the Ross household, convinced that Toby is being horribly mistreated. Ernest is forced to demonstrate Toby's ability for her. As Miss Kemp leaves, Toby sees an old photograph of his mother. Mary's decomposing corpse then appears in her armchair, traumatizing Toby. After burying Mary's body in the backyard, Ernest believes that he has run out of options. [[spoiler:He shows Toby a picture of fire. When Miss Kemp returns with the police, they find the house in flames.]]
** In "Dream Me a Life", Roger Simpson Leeds burns his right hand on one of the many candles in Laurel Kincaid's room after he [[DreamWalker enters her dream]], causing him to wake up. He immediately realizes that he has a large burn mark.
** In "Many, Many Monkeys", Nurse Claire Hendricks' blindness is psychosomatic, having been caused by her guilt at [[BattleaxeNurse treating patients with coldness and indifference]] for many years. She never contracted the plague of blindness.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone2002'': "Placebo Effect" featured a doctor dealing with a chronic hypochondriac patient. Normally keen on giving him placebos, she's horrified to find he actually IS showing signs of a terrible, previously unheard-of disease. It turns out that the disease was fictional, and after reading about it in an old sci-fi novel, the hypochondriac somehow "made it real" by believing he suffered from it. Soon, everyone in the hospital has caught the disease and appear to be near death. [[spoiler: The doctor manages to cure him, and thus everyone, by telling him that a meteorite crashed which contained an antidote for the "space virus." By believing her, he is cured. However, pessimistic thoughts overwhelm him, and he believes the crashed meteorite will create a new Ice Age and destroy humanity. The final shot shows the nurse motioning the doctor outside, to see the city besieged by a massive blizzard.]]

** Some corrections: the Doom thing was a very popular Free-For-All FPS game of that world, named "Labyrinth of Death", that kinda blends the single-player campaign and multiplayer, so the goal is to get to the end whilst fighting both monsters and other players. The weapons from there do not work outside the game (the ones that work are literal viruses and are unrelated to games like this). In the second installment, the game is now based on ''VideoGame/Unreal''.
** "The Deep" itself is basically just a normal virtual world, how one would imagine it.

** Some corrections: the Doom thing was a very popular PvPvE game of that world, named "Labyrinth of Death", the weapoms from there do not work outside the game (the ones that work are literal viruses). In the second installment, the game is now based on ''VideoGame/Unreal''.

Not so.

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!

You'd think that it all being [[AllJustADream just a dream]] would let you do lots of cool and risky things since it's not real anyway, and therefore you can't get hurt.

** One issue of ''ComicBook/GenerationX'' had the old wives' tale quoted at the start before the team had a slasher movie marathon. The rest of the issue consists of ComicBook/JubileeMarvelComics in a semi-lucid dream trying to wake up before combinations of movie killers and villains she'd faced in her adventures (ex. ComicBook/{{Sabretooth}} with [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy Krueger's]] outfit) killed her teammates.

* In ''Series/FallingWater'', Burton has a dream about an overweight man being murdered in a restaurant. The next day, he's called in to deal with the sudden death of a silent partner of one of his big clients. The silent partner is, in fact, the same man he saw in his dream.

* ''VideoGame/{{inFAMOUS}}'': When heading into a tunnel to destroy a tanker of tar, at one point you begin to hallucinate, seeing enemies fading in and out of reality and much larger than they should be. But they aren't just hallucinations, as their bullets still hurt you and can still kill you.

* ''VideoGame/{{Ripper}}'': The killer known as the "Ripper" has the ability to kill anybody who once played the online game ''Ripper'' (the "Ripper" is one of the original players, the protagonist has to figure out which one of the surviving players it is). The Ripper's ability takes the form of a "software rewrite" of the victim's "brain software": the hormonal and electrical layers of the human brain. When triggered (through use of a BrownNote telephone call), the fluid and air pressure within the victim increases rapidly causing them to violently explode. The protagonist has to have his own "software" modified with an immunisation so that the Ripper can't use the "long-range doohicky" any longer (he is still vulnerable if the Ripper chooses to attack him "face to face" in the virtual world).\\
\\
Later, the Ripper calls all of the surviving characters into the virtual world and demands the protagonist choose who they think it is. The protagonist at this point has armed himself with a single-use "virtual weapon" in the form of a pulsing orb of energy. Each of the characters makes their case to the player, and the player must use the virtual weapon on the character they think is the Ripper, presumably killing them, as the ending narration is spoken in the past tense. Choose badly and not only have you killed an innocent person, the Ripper attacks the protagonist directly and kills him as well.

--->'''Sonia:''' “In a distant country, there was a certain experiment carried out on one of their prisoners. The prisoner was blindfolded, strapped to a bed, and had small wounds applied to his toes to drain his blood. That prisoner was left alone in the experiment room, as the sound of dripping blood echoed throughout the room. But in fact, his blood was not being drained. He was just forced to listen to the sound of dripping water, but he believed he was bleeding to death. However, in spite of that, the prisoner still died.”

-->'''Frank''': That's one way to avoid encumbrance limitations. What did [Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast] say?\\
'''Shawn''': "Natural 20! [[DeadpanSnarker We disbelieve that we ever saw this]]!"

-->'''Blood Nannies''': Look, we told you already... that thing won't work in here. It's just a metaphor.\\
'''Schlock''': But a meta for what? I've got a [[MasterOfYourDomain pretty good immune system.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'': In "Rainy Day Daydream", Finn and Jake are stuck inside due to a [[HostileWeather "knife storm"]], and Jake suggests using their imaginations to pass the time. However, everything Jake thinks up (like a pool of lava, venomous snakes, and a "bazooka goblin") turns real, even though only Jake can see it. He and Finn have a crazy adventure in their own tree house trying to reset Jake's imagination and get rid of the threats.
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': The Riddler hooked Commissioner Gordon up to a virtual reality computer program that could do such a realistic ''simulation'' of high-G loads, that Gordon's physical body would think it really ''was'' happening and suffer cardiac arrest. In the same episode, Riddler himself gets his brain fried when the computer crashes while he's still hooked to it.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', "Power Mad", also hinges on a similar plotline, though this is because the main character has [[LiteralGenie wished himself]] [[TrappedInTVLand fully into the game]].

** Mentioned offhand in the episode "Blind Ambition":

** In the episode "The Splendid Source", Peter [[PottyFailure craps his pants]] [[BrownNote every time he hears a dirty joke]], which causes Quagmire and Joe to find different ways to get him to do so. One method involves Quagmire paying [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy Krueger]] to repeat the joke, which causes Peter to wake up and comment, "When you poop in your dreams, you poop for real!"
* Parodied and possibly subverted in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Parasites Lost". When most of the Planet Express crew take a FantasticVoyagePlot through Fry's body, it isn't the actual characters who go on the trip. They are actually [[{{Nanomachines}} nanobots]] remotely controlled by the crew interacting with a VR simulation of Fry's innards. Toward the end of the episode, [[ItMakesSenseInContext Leela chops the other characters to bits with an axe while they're all still in tiny robot mode]]. Immediately afterwards, we see the actual characters taking off their virtual reality equipment back at the office. When someone asks if everyone is okay, they cheerfully agree that they are.
** Foreshadowed in a previous episode; the internet is fully VR and dying in the 'video game' section just causes extreme annoyance.

* ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' has an episode called "Vir-Tu-Ron", which features a VR system, where its malfunction resulted in extreme aggression if the players were removed without winning the game.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': In the MusicalEpisode "Really Loud Music", Luna begins to worry if the song she wrote won't be a song the whole world will love; it's at that point she starts hearing her family burst into songs out of nowhere (Lola singing a show tune, Lana performing a toilet jam, Lisa doing a rap, Lori and Leni singing a love ballad, and so forth). [[InnerThoughtsOutsiderPuzzlement When the first three claim they weren't singing at all]], Lisa concludes that Luna is hallucinating her family singing because her brain is trying to find the right genre for her song thus brings said genres to life in the form of each family member.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Superfriends}}'': In "The Fear", ComicBook/TheScarecrow makes Franchise/WonderWoman hallucinate that TheWallsAreClosingIn. She tries to hold back the imaginary walls but can't. Scarecrow comments that her body will feel like it is actually being crushed and suffocated. Wonder Woman gasps for air and passes out.
* Used in the climax of a ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' arc in which the four are trapped in a memory virtual reality program. Complete with a ShoutOut delivered by Michelangelo to ''Film/TheMatrix''.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'', Robin is [[spoiler:exposed to a hallucinogen that causes him to see and fight Slade]], and received real injuries as a result. Whether or not those injuries were an example of this, or merely him beating himself up while hallucinating, is not entirely explained.